Macroeconomics—Is It Still Helpful in an Age of Scarcity? - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 110

world output is guaranteed not to be labor. Unemployment means, by defini-
tion, that labor is a superabundant resource.
Therefore, assessment of the productive capability of any macroeconomy—
and of the global economy—demands a balanced examination of the com-
plete range of all other potentially useful economic resources. This means,
given the point we have repeatedly emphasized, that all such resources are
in some way extracted from the environment, and that accurate economic
assessments can only be carried out in conjunction with an equally com-
prehensive environmental assessment. In fact, they must, for a sustainable
future, become virtually the same analysis.
Two methodological points must be mentioned in conjunction with any
robust and useful macroeconomic assessment of the long-term availability
of climate, land, air, water, minerals, energy, and so on. These refer to the
vital contributions of the biosphere, without which an economy of any kind
would be impossible. The first question is one of quantity . Are the required
resources permanently available in the desired amounts, or are they deplet-
able ? The second question is one of quality . Are resources available in the
condition required, or are they degradable ? We must ask where quantity ends
and quality begins, and can we tell them apart?
To elaborate, land, minerals, and fossil-fuel energy are examples of
resources subject to depletion. Air, water, soil, and climate are examples of
degradable resources. The quality of air, water, and soil may be inadequate
to support healthy human life or to be used in a production process. Thus,
a resource “failure” for human societies can either mean that the resource is
effectively gone (exhausted), or that it is degraded beyond the point of use-
fulness (polluted).
Further, these tests occasionally interact, and we can be lulled into think-
ing our major problem is one, when, in fact, it is the other. For instance, many
analysts and policy makers, and the public at large, have long worried about
the specter of running out of oil. Currently, many climate specialists con-
tend that given the carbon saturation implications of burning fossil fuels, the
environmental carrying capacity will be destroyed long before we ever burn
all the known fossil fuel (or perhaps even just petroleum) reserves. In other
words, we may think we have a depletion (quantity) problem when we actu-
ally have a degradation (quality) problem, which is guaranteed to dominate.
If these predictions are true, this means that the environment will not even
allow us to consume all that is available. What are the chances of taking the
correct steps in promoting socioeconomic sustainability if we are not even
responding to the real problems?
Little more needs to be said about the status of the world's resources that
has not been acknowledged. Both depletion and degradation are threat-
ened in many areas: oceans, fresh water, forests, clean air, plant and ani-
mal biodiversity, and the all-important characteristic of climate change.
We do not need to go into resource-by-resource specifics here, and that is
not our purpose. Rather, in order to properly conclude this section dealing