Technology and optimism: more thoughts on Common Wealth
A few weeks ago, I posted my preliminary thoughts about Jeffrey Sachs’ book Common Wealth. Now I’ve finished the book and had a bit of time to digest the ideas in it, and I still think that Sachs suffers from too much optimism about what technology can do for us, and too little consideration of just how much consumption each of us needs to do in order to enjoy a good life.
Sachs’ ideas are strongest when they explore ways to reorganize human society to improve living standards. For example, he provides a fairly clear outline of why improved access to health care and strategies to create jobs through infrastructure spending will help to stabilize population growth and improve individual well-being. In a later chapter, Sachs also compares different social insurance models, including the relatively free market North American economies, mixed European economies, and the Scandinavian social welfare states, and concludes that high levels of social spending by states is beneficial. This form of spending, according to Sachs’ evidence, leads to less poverty and inequality compared to the other two systems, and also may lead to greater prosperity; Sachs cites evidence that the social welfare countries actually have much higher levels of innovation and mobilization of new information technologies, and they spend higher portions of their GDP on research and development.
Although many of the ideas and suggestions that Sachs raises concerning social organization and sustainability are not new, they are clearly explained for those of us who are adamantly not economists, and the discussion is fairly nuanced. I appreciate that Sachs spends some time on the fact that the Scandinavian states are ethnically homogenous, and that this impacts the willingness of citizens to invest in their society, so a wholesale adoption of this model by a country like Canada or the US requires major effort to combat racism and other forms of intolerance and discrimination. Sachs’ suggestions for how to do so are extremely vague, but I’ll forgive him for that: it’s really not within the scope of the book.
That said, I find it much harder to accept Sachs’ discussion of the technological responses that can be made to pressing environmental problems. My previous post already outlined one of my main complaints, which is the focus on reducing carbon emissions through improved efficiency and carbon sequestration. In addition, Sachs argues that peak oil is not going to be a serious issue because of the many other varieties of energy available for humans to exploit. Sachs has a PhD and worlds of experience in international development, and I don’t, so perhaps it’s presumptuous of me to challenge his ideas, but I think he’s wrong.
For example, Sachs points to non-conventional fossil fuel sources, such as the Alberta tar sands, but fails to note that oil extraction from some, if not all, of these sources is resource-intensive and ecologically devastating. Extraction from the tar sands has become economically viable because of improved technology, but also because there is less available oil from conventional sources. I think that Sachs feels that technological improvements will allow us to exploit resources such as the tar sands, coal, and nuclear power without risk of environmental damage, but the recent revelations of the impact of the tar sands tailings on local water supplies suggest to me that that’s wishful thinking. After all, the problem of sequestering mine tailings has been discussed in many countries and in many eras. Perhaps it is simply not possible to store a pile of toxic waste in a way that prevents it from leaking away into its surroundings. (See here for some of the recent attempts to improve carbon sequestration; here for the effects of acid from the Alberta oilsands; the impact of oil sands exploitation on birds; a report on leakage from the tailing ponds; and more on the oilsands. On the topic of coal-mining, see this paper on mountain-top removal mining in the US from the Union of Concerned Scientists, and here for some recent and worrisome developments.)
What about solar, wind, and geothermal? I firmly believe that all of these will be major energy sources in the future, and require substantial public and private investment. (They also tap a social issue, at least in the developed world where we have the luxury of worrying about the impact of wind generators on the view from our houses. This will require some public relations effort from those of us who feel that wind power is essential and that wind generators have their own kind of beauty.) However, all of these sources are a long way from general deployment, and though I think we can improve our technology relatively quickly, it does take time to build the infrastructure. It will also take us time to decide on the best ways to proceed with alternative energy, if we want to avoid potential tragedies of unintended consequences.
Sachs assumes, in other words, that at least in the developed world, we will never again be faced with an energy shortage and all the consequences that would entail – including, I strongly suspect, a food shortage. Thus, even if we need to shift our energy sources and improve efficiency, there is no need to change our consumption patterns. I think that assumption is, at best, unwarranted by the evidence.
Common Wealth is, I think, a useful primer on some of the things that make some human societies unsustainable, and discusses some of the things that those of us in the developed world can support to improve well-being in the (so-called) developing world. It offers some solutions to environmental justice issues, though it does not address causes such as racism, gender inequality, and poverty to any great extent. However, the book is marred by the lack of consideration of the lifestyle of the developed world and whether or not this lifestyle can in fact be sustainable at all. The focus on technical solutions to what may be a social problem is a serious flaw in an otherwise interesting book.
