Sustainable Development, Capital Substitution and Economic Humility: A Response to Beckerman

Abstract

Wilfred Beckerman1 accepts two of the premises of the environmentalist argument that long-term environmental impacts may have serious effects on future generations, and that these future generations should be the object of ethical concern. However he rejects the conclusion that is widely claimed to follow: namely that 'sustainability ' should be a principal objective of economic policy. For him, the proper (and ultimately the only) objective of economic policy remains optimality, the maximisation of benefits over costs even when environmental concerns are taken into account. His argument has five elements: a redefinition, a positive proposition, two negative ones, and a very large assumption. I shall take each in turn.