Singer, S. Fred. 1992. "Sustainable Development and the Global Environment: Resolving the Conflict." International Journal on the Unity of the Sciences 5(2): 107-122.

Thesis:

Sustainable development "is an achievable goal but...it would require a greatly increased use of energy, and especially fossil fuels" (p.107). It is impossible to "avoid increasing the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases significantly if one wants to raise the living standard of the developing world" (ibid)

Summary:

Singer critiques what he calls the "utopian view" of sustainable development, where "a stabilized or even decreasing global population [is] living a good life without using an appreciable amount of natural resources" (p.108). He argues that raising the standard of living of the poor to acceptable levels is not feasible without an extreme increase in energy consumption and "greenhouse gases." However, he argues that this is not a problem, because "conventional greenhouse theory greatly overestimates the climate warming caused by increases in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide" (p.107)

Singer says that the "facts" (no source cited) suggest a general improvement in the well-being of the world's population since 1972, as energy and resource consumption increased rapidly (p.109). This has been accompanied by increased environmental protection (defined as pollution control). People only invest in pollution control when their basic needs are met. Singer argues that in this sense, therefore, economic development and pollution control are compatible, which is in contrast to the sustainable development paradigm (p.110).

In regard to natural resources, if they are depleted, "substitutes have always been available" and we "can always create the resource or its equivalent from lower-grade ores, provided we have sufficiently low-priced energy" (p.114). Singer proposes that nations will be less interdependent as each nation finds that it has adequate low-grade resources.

In regard to energy, it is crucial to development, and in order to eradicate poverty, world energy consumption rates must increase by a factor of ten (p.115). This will create more carbon dioxide emissions. First, if one uses UN scientific standards to calculate the requirements for stabilizing atmospheric concentration, Singer says that CO2 emissions would have to be reduced by 60 to 80 percent worldwide. Singer charges that "greenies" have eliminated nuclear energy as an option, and have throttled fossil fuel use by attempting to impose a carbon tax, which "condemns most of the world's population to a life of poverty and misery", by hindering economic development (p.112). Carbon taxes on industrialized nations and uniform per-capita quotas, where the revenues are used to buy emission permits for poor countries are unworkable because they enable "Third World kleptocrats" to encourage population growth and poverty (p.117) and to use the sustainable development dialogue as an opportunity for the United Nations to take care of them for the rest of their lives (p.113).

Singer concludes that the "only moral way" to resolve the conflict between economic development and the global environment is for democratic, free-enterprise nations to attract investments by multinational corporations to supply capital and technology and create jobs and prosperity (p.117-118). This will require increased energy use, which raises the flag for many about emissions. Singer counters that the IPCC studies on the topic are not the final word, and that it is "quite premature to take any drastic actions based on the results of theoretical climate models that have not even been validated by the climate record" (p.120). Sustainable development can be achieved through raising the standard of living of the poor rapidly, which will drive down the population growth rate before any global warming occurs (p.107).

Keywords: global climate change, economic development, emissions taxes