What are our Obstacles?: Economic Considerations

Economic Considerations:

 

         "United we stand, divided we fall."       

-Aesop-

         

        The role of the government in sustainable development is very important. However, another obstacle is economic considerations—the cost of being sustainable. There are many people around the world who would prefer to buy products which support the environment. Sadly, having the desire is much easier than making a purchase.  It is very easy to purchase non-sustainable products because they are all around us.  This takes us to a truly sobering realization. Our world is not even close to becoming sustainable. Let’s say that an individual decides he would like to help the environment by buying solar panels. He must do a significant amount of research to find a company that sells them. Even for the few people who purchase solar panels, wind mills, or hybrid cars the money they save does not make up for the amount they have to pay for them. For a government to create a sustainable environment, they need to create economic incentives for those who purchase sustainable products.  The USA Federal government does this some, but it is not enough to strongly encourage it.

 

         When there are many companies selling the same thing, competition causes the price of that item to go down.  Each company wants their price to be the lowest. One of today’s problems is that there aren’t enough companies selling windmills or solar panels and few can afford hybrid vehicles because they are so expensive. In “A Contract with the Earth”, Newt Gingrich comes up with a fairly reasonable solution. He states that today there are many young men and women who want to become entrepreneurs and start their own business. Mr. Gingrich says that incentives need to be offered to these young people if they were to start businesses focusing on the selling of sustainable products. This would help to lower the prices on environmentally-friendly items.  Sustainable products would be much easier to find and be cheaper for the average person.  They need to be priced so that the cost of the product will pay for itself. This would ultimately help our world. However, there is one foreseeable problem to this method.  In order for this to benefit the world, this movement must be a global effort. If only one nation went forward with an increase in sustainable products, their economy would be slowed down. The people in that country would stop doing business in their own country because everything would be too expensive. Consumerism would leave their country and go to that of other nations, resulting in the possible collapse of that country’s economy.  Therefore we need to get all industrialized nations on board with this project.  We all must act to succeed, as Aesop said in his fables, “United we stand, divided we fall”.    

 

Are you a Stewardship Expert? Play our Quiz  

 

---

Sources:

 

“Business and Industry” . Encyclopedia of Sustainable Development. Accessed 15 January 2008.<http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/esd/Economy/Business.html>   

 

Gingrich, Newt and Terry Maple. A Contract with the Earth.  Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Accessed 15 January 2008. 

 

“Growing A Sustainable Economy”. Sustainable Communities Network.  8 March 2002. Accessed 15 January 2008. <http://www.sustainable.org/economy/smbusiness.html>

 

Photograph:

aussiegall. “Its Future is in our Hands - Live Earth”. Flickr.com. <http://flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/759309122/>
Used under the Creative Commons License. <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en>