Counsel for Getting There - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 159

people and generations. Conversely, maximizing the quantity of any mate-
rial withdrawn from the Earth's finite supply to feed the insatiable appetite
of today's consumer economy can only squander nature's limited wealth.
This said, we must choose unequivocally because we cannot maximize both
quality and quantity simultaneously.
Lesson 2: Recognize That Loss of Sustainability Occurs over Time
A biologically sustainable use of any resource has never been achieved with-
out first overexploiting it, despite the lengthy catalog of disastrous historical
examples (such as the passenger pigeon and the North American bison or
“buffalo”) and the vast amount of contemporary data. If history is correct,
resource problems are not environmental problems by nature, but rather
human ones that we have created many times, in many places, under a wide
variety of social, political, and economic systems.
Lesson 3: Recognize That Resource Issues Are Complex and Process Driven
The fundamental issues involving resources, the environment, and
people are complex and process driven. The integrated knowledge of
multiple disciplines is required to understand them. These underlying
complexities of the biophysical systems preclude a simplistic approach to
symptomatic, ecosystem manipulation. A straightforward regulation,
which is a typical response, will almost never suffice, no matter how well-
intentioned. In addition, the wide, natural variability and the compound-
ing, cumulative influence of continual human activity mask the results
of overexploitation until they are severe and largely irreparable within a
human lifetime, if ever.
Our “management” of the world's resources is always to maximize the
output of material products—to put conversion potential into operation. In
so doing, we not only deplete the resource base and degrade habitat but also
produce unmanageable, unintended outcomes often in the form of hazard-
ous wastes. In unforeseen ways, these unintended products (euphemistically
termed by-products ) are altering the way our biosphere functions, usually in a
negative way. Such unintended products include not only hazardous chem-
icals in our drinking water but also several veterinary drugs with which
farmers inoculate their livestock that could kill scavengers—those species
that clean our environment. 6
Lesson 4: Accept the Uncertainty of Change
As long as the uncertainty of continual change is considered a condition
to be avoided, nothing will be resolved. However, once the uncertainty of
change is accepted as an inevitable, open-ended, creative process, most deci-
sion making is simply common sense. Consider that common sense dictates