Long-term view

To the editor:

Richard Hassur (Public Forum, Nov. 20) replays developers’ old saw that divides the world into pro-growthers and no-growthers. In this all-or-nothing view, short-term business interests should outweigh all other considerations, and those who worry about immediate and long-term costs to be paid by society, other species and ecosystems are vilified. We are to accept developers’ profit-seeking and consumers’ acquisition of “new, innovative products” as the social entitlements of an unfettered market.

Market fundamentalists measure society’s success solely in economic terms as the sum of goods and services produced, but this calculus erases important costs paid now and in the future. To illustrate, commercial tobacco kills first- and secondhand smokers, yet both tobacco production and cancer treatment are added to the plus side of our economic ledger. Endocrine-disrupting pesticides cause genital abnormalities and sterility, yet our free market calculus sees their sale and the rise in fertility clinics as evidence of “progress.” Road construction erases biodiversity, yet loss of life’s foundation is not subtracted from the measure of short-term benefits.

Are the desires to make money and the manufactured desire for new things more important than this and future generations’ rights to a healthy, viable world? Our development discussions should distinguish between growth driven by need and growth driven by greed. We do need, for example, development of clean, renewable, locally available energy resources. We don’t need more consumer junk or self-serving, polarizing arguments for economic growth that diminishes Earth’s life-support capacity in the service of developers’ bank accounts.

Jane Gibson,

Lawrence