Sustainability or Bust?

This is the text of a short essay I wrote a year or two ago.  Not recommending adding monkey to your Tesco order (other supermarkets are available!), but wanted to comment on the complexity of sustainability:

As a species, we humans are very dependent upon the resources we get from the Earth and the increasing human population will undoubtedly place additional pressures upon this. We are all aware of the concerns related to the human-induced enhanced warming of the planet, which is due in no small part to the way these resources are being used. These apparently simple comments raise a number of issues; it is sometimes said that if everyone on the planet lives (that is, uses resources) the way the average European or American lives, we would need several Earth-sized planets. Is it really in our interests to support the development of developing nations? Where should the main responsibility be when it comes to making changes?

Apart from the pollution associated with resource use, the sustainability of the resources themselves must be considered. If we use them up faster than they are being produced, they will eventually become exhausted. There are, essentially, three ways a resource can become exhausted – the first is obvious, that is, the cupboard is empty, but it is possible for the materials of interest to still be there, but they are harder to get at, which costs money (who will pay?), or our technology may not yet be up to the job. Of course, we can’t do much about the first (unless we can find alternatives), but if people are willing to pay more maybe we can squeeze a bit more out, or we may develop our technology and techniques to such an extent that resources once beyond our reach can now be accessed and exploited. Of course, the second and third possibilities are likely to go together, but it is interesting we are already seeing some possible outcomes of working at the extremes of our technology by extracting oil from below a deep-water seabed (the Gulf of Mexico event).

Magazines with a focus on the natural world have been criticised for giving space to advertising for holidays to far-off places. I would like to come to their defence on this matter, not because I think we should just use resources however we like without as much as a nod to sustainability, but because the situation is not that simple.

As well as the developed nations making changes toward a more sustainable lifestyle, we need the developing countries to develop in a way that permits development without threatening the future. It is also interesting to note that, though the Wildlife Trusts, for example, are focussed on the UK, many species and habitats we are interested in are in the territories of the developing countries. Indeed, many of our migrant species spend our winters in African countries where the ‘average’ person uses a fraction the resources used by his or her counterpart in the UK. It is likely that tourism is, or could be, an important source of income for many in the developing world, in which case it is important this is supported, if we can, or should we just leave them as it is not in our interests for them to develop to our level? After all, if they have no money, there are plenty of monkeys in the forests to throw on the barbecue!