Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
embracing sustainable practices in their businesses, in large part to reduce their
costs, but again there is still a long way to go before the majority of companies, let
alone municipalities, follow suit. One of the most positive signs of progress in this
context comes from the way that business organizations have also been created to
encourage and rate the adoption of sustainable practices, such as the U.S. Green
Building Standards Council described in a previous section.
There are still barriers associated with the extra expenses of adding many of the
sustainable practices. Yet the costs of these new initiatives compared to keeping the
status quo are often not properly accounted, as four main examples will illustrate.
First, it is clear that many of the
full costs of current practices
are never properly
taken into account, especially the externalised costs, such as already described in
the case of the burning of polluting fossil fuels such as coal in Chap. 5. When these
are added into the accounting system many of the existing status-quo practices are
seen to be far less cost-effective than has previously been recognized. Second, al-
though many sustainable practices do involve additional expense, the variety of
polices already being practiced have very different cost implications, so there is al-
ways the possibility of choosing
cheaper but effective options
in many cases. Third,
there is still insufficient research to show the
real costs
of the wholesale adoption
of these practices. As described in Chap. 5, a comprehensive report for the U.K.
government on sustainability argued that the annual costs would be 1-2 % of GNP
(Stern
2007
; Stern and Taylor
2007
). Although the figure is disputed by many peo-
ple, even the trebling of this figure would be within the ability of most developed
countries to afford, given sufficient support from the population and governments,
together with agreements at an international level to ensure countries are not disad-
vantaged by such policies, difficult although reaching such agreements have been.
Unfortunately, the financial crises from 2008 and the subsequent focus on reducing
the debt problem in most developed countries has tended to de-priorize the adoption
of new sustainable initiatives at a national state level. Also the government cut-
backs have led to a decline in incomes of so many of the middle and lower income
classes. Hence fewer people believe they have the finances to adopt sustainable
policies without government subsidies, while many governments have withdrawn
or reduced such practices in an attempt to cut their expenditures and reduce debt.
A fourth cost issue involves the
long term consequences
of doing nothing, or only
implementing weak practices in a limited fashion, by only looking at costs as a cur-
rent or short term expenditure. There is little doubt that people in cities will be much
healthier and will have more active and varied life-styles if greater progress towards
sustainable practices is made. Also, given the increase in greenhouse gases pro-
duced by cities, which most climate scientists believe is leading to climate change,
then the wider adoption of sustainable practices need to be promoted on the basis of
being an insurance against the even greater costs that are highly likely to be incurred
in the reconstruction of cities hit by the increasingly intense storms or floods that
we have been experiencing, or in the higher costs of using many increasingly scarce
resources. So incurring the costs of sustainable practices today, or spreading them
over a near future to mitigate these effects, ought to be seen as an insurance against
the far, far greater expenditures for mitigation and recovery that will be incurred in
