Sustainable Development Is The Oxymoron We Can't Ignore
Confronting our notions of continuous growth
Imagine a world where economic prosperity flourishes alongside environmental preservation. It is a utopia where development knows no bounds, yet our planet's resources remain eternally abundant. It sounds perfect.
Welcome to the darling of policymakers, corporations, and well-meaning citizens—sustainable development.
But as we fire up curiosity and critical thinking at a concept so ingrained that the UN has a set of international goals under the banner, we'll see why this seemingly noble idea might be the ultimate oxymoron of our time.
In this issue of Mindful Sceptic, it’s time to challenge some assumptions.
Defining the Paradox
Sustainable means maintaining a certain rate or level; to keep going.
Development means to create growth, progress, positive change or the addition of physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic components, a bigger and better forward momentum.
It could have been called ‘Keep Growth Going’ or ‘Bigger and Better’, but these are crude and a little crass. ‘Growth maintained’ was an option, but the two chosen sound much better.
Put together, sustainable development, and we have ourselves an oxymoron—a figure of speech in which contradictory terms appear together.
Everyone knows this, of course. Development as growth through addition cannot continue indefinitely because the planet is finite. At some point, there are limits to a resource-based economy.
There is only so much food that can be grown in soil. Freshwater availability is constrained in time and location. Habitable land is limited. The fossil fuel that drives our economies will run out or pollute us out of existence. At the current use rate of 100 million barrels a day, about 50 years of oil are left.
Nature has a thing or two to tell us, too. There is tension between continuous growth and keeping things going because this does not happen anywhere in the natural world.
In nature, where the single primary energy source is the sun, sooner or later, growth slows, stops and what was built collapses. Admittedly, what is lost is replaced by another set of organisms mopping up new resources, but indefinite growth differs from how nature works.
At least, not on a finite planet where the laws of thermodynamics constrain everything.
We all know this, right?
Nature can balance or change.
A rainforest looks lush and full of life growing all around. Plants and animals do grow and reproduce, but they also die. What is happening is not continuous growth but recycling. Energy and nutrients are transferred between temporary storage by myriad organisms doing their best to defy entropy.
A rainforest looks lush and full of life because this cycle is rapid. It seems stable because the trees are large and long-lived, the weather is predictable, and it takes a severe storm to knock about the multi-layered vegetation that fills all the available space and protects the soil from the sun.
However, capturing the necessary energy to defy entropy can only be maintained for a finite time. The rainforest was only sometimes a forest. Any subtle shift in the climate, and it might not be again. A cyclone disrupts any temporary balance, as does a drought or a wildfire. And then, over geological time, not only does the climate change, but the tectonic plates move around, reconfigure and send ocean currents in different directions.
Nature copes with all this, appearing to stay stable by accepting disturbance and change. It absorbs disturbance as a critical driver of evolutionary processes, resulting in the diversity of life. There is always an alternative organism waiting for an opportunity. Nutrients and energy continue to cycle through a combination of ecological adaptation by some organisms and the evolution of others.
Millions of individual organisms, from microbes to mammals, look stable in the aggregate, doing what it takes to defy entropy and reproduce.
Nature can achieve balance, but mostly, it changes. Then, along comes an organism determined to beat billions of years of evolution and keep growing.
An inevitable phrase
When you look at the synonyms for the words sustainable and development, it was inevitable that someone would combine the two to create a wonderful, inspiring phrase that would capture the essence of the modern human—grow forever.
Synonyms for sustainability include
stamina, supportability, resilience, vitality, achievability, stability, reliability, acceptability, practicality, autonomy, profitability, cost-effectiveness, effectiveness, equilibrium, stabilisation, perseverance, tenacity.
Synonyms for development include
advancement, betterment, improvement, perfection, refinement, incubation, maturation, maturing, ripening, blossoming, flourishing, flowering, addition, augmentation, enhancement, supplementation, emergence, evolvement, metamorphosis.
It is like describing the human condition.
Getting better, doing better, and everything better is in our genes. It drives us to take risks to make more. And we have become so good at making more that we ignore what we know about nature and the finite dimensions of space and resources on this tiny blue planet.
At least, that is what we tell ourselves.
Only that growth has come about because we harnessed a pulse of ancient free energy from fossil fuels. Without that input, we would not have modern agriculture, and we would not have converted billions of tons of food into more humans. Thanks to near-free exogenous energy stored in rocks, we have experienced the miracle of the Great Acceleration.
Humans don’t do balance
Development—coming into existence or creating something new or more advanced—is an attractive antidote to the threat of entropy. It has all the moving forward, resource use and defiance of gathering energy to keep going.
It makes biological and human sense for the individual.
Humans have become masters of creating something new. What we call development has changed lives throughout history, mainly for the better. Sure, there are negatives in the development of weapons, inequitable economic systems, reality TV, and the like, but modern humans are materially and economically way better off than our ancestors.
Why wouldn’t we want to keep going?
Another retort to all the oxymoron negativity is that sustainable development is not about ‘growth that uses resources’ but progress toward greater well-being for everyone. This is the essence of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015…
A shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
The agenda gives us the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that, if achieved, would end poverty and other deprivations through strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth—all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
It is a laudable, politically correct agenda that can only happen if there is development to generate wealth because the economic model is the only one we have to end poverty—a term defined as the state of being extremely poor.
But we also know that most wealth begins with nature.
The first steps out of poverty are access to food, clean water, and shelter, which are nature’s services. The market starts by selling fruit, vegetables and bushmeat.
Modern economies can grow without natural resources because some goods and services are produced and consumed outside nature. Not all capital and rent require land, soil, minerals, or oil, but these traditional sources of capital are still effective. However, it takes a while before markets trade in derivatives. Before then, they trade food and raw materials.
Meanwhile, when we create new people, they must have somewhere to live and a way to earn a living. They also need 2,500 kilocalories worth of food every day. This is great as it means more rational actors in the market and more opportunities for profit.
Humans don’t do balance.
We align with our basic biology and do more making. Typically, we make more people, but we also make and consume more stuff. This means we like development because it suits this purpose. Sustainable is a handy word that allows us to think we can keep making more forever.
We can’t.
The planet is finite. At the crudest, 8 billion cannot become 16 or 32 billion because we eventually run out of space to sit down. But the laws of thermodynamics will ensure we don’t reach such an absurd outcome.
So, sustainable development is impossible. It’s an oxymoron.
The upsides of an oxymoron
Sustainable development can't be valid if it's an oxymoron. In this case, the contradictory terms appearing together are impossible.
A novice sceptic with just the rudiments of curiosity, critical thinking, and evaluation frequently uncovers myths, fantasies, and paradoxes that humans invent to make us feel better. Sustainable development is a ripper. It is so obvious that it must hide in plain sight.
The temptation is to rant at such mind-blowing stupidity. What were we thinking? It’s just an excuse to rape and pillage mother earth.
A mindful sceptic pauses, takes a breath, and thinks some more.
Perhaps there are upsides to the realisation that sustainable development is an oxymoron.
All oxymorons have an inherent tension. Sustainability and development push real-world limitations into the desire for more and imply trade-offs in any decisions made. Recognition encourages a more honest and nuanced dialogue about economic growth's true costs and benefits. Honesty should lead to better policy-making and more transparent corporate practices.
Instead of trying to make inherently unsustainable practices slightly less harmful, we might be inspired to reimagine our systems and processes completely. This could lead to genuinely transformative solutions that work within ecological limits rather than attempting to overcome them. Innovation should happen differently.
Recognising the contradictions in sustainable development compels us to examine ecosystems more closely. If resources cannot be extracted forever, how could we use them? Is there a way to live off the interest rather than mining the capital? This deeper understanding can inform more effective conservation efforts and help us design human systems that better mimic nature's resilience and efficiency.
Accepting the truth could promote a shift in values away from materialism and towards other measures of well-being. If we accept that indefinite material growth is impossible, we're challenged to find alternative ways to improve quality of life.
Rather than relying on vague promises of sustainable growth, people might be motivated to make more significant changes in their consumption habits, career choices, and political engagement. This grassroots shift could ultimately drive more substantial and lasting change than top-down sustainable development initiatives.
Just kidding.
And I’m going to give into my bias here. Upsides are possible, but they feel like making a silk purse from the exploited sow's ear.
Confronting the contradiction
It is time to stop deluding ourselves.
Sustainable development is an oxymoron—a figure of speech in which contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
There is nothing wrong with optimism and a ‘yes, we can’ attitude. For example, the SDGs are a grand gesture that, should they be met, will benefit many people most in need of resources. But we have to know they are based on a false premise, implying that the growth necessary to meet the goals can somehow happen alongside preservation.
Some conservation is possible. Maybe we could rewild a third of the planet and still feed everyone well. Maybe we could all consume less, waste less, and put our prejudice and fear aside. And yet, food will become the priority.
This means giving up growth as the paradigm that protects us from entropy, the concept that means we survive, the one we latched onto and have seen spectacular success.
Maybe we could give up growth.
A mindful sceptic might envision a world beyond the growth paradigm. This doesn't mean abandoning progress or innovation but redefining what progress looks like in a finite world. It means embracing circular economies, regenerative practices, and modes of development that truly sustain rather than deplete.
Clearly, we are questioning deeply ingrained beliefs and resistance to the comforting allure of oxymoronic phrases. But as we face the complex challenges of our time, this critical examination is not just valuable—it's essential.
Confronting this contradiction requires intellectual honesty and creative problem-solving. By acknowledging the limitations of our current model, we open ourselves to new possibilities and more resilient solutions, perhaps in quality over quantity and in redefining our measures of success and wellbeing.
Key Points
The concept of sustainable development contains an inherent contradiction. It combines sustainability, which implies maintaining a certain level, with development, which typically involves growth and expansion. This paradox challenges us to reconsider how we think about progress and our relationship with the planet's finite resources.
Natural ecosystems operate differently from human economic systems. While nature functions through growth, decay, and renewal cycles, human development often pursues linear, continuous growth. This fundamental difference highlights why our current development models may be unsustainable in the long term.
Human civilisation's rapid growth and development over the past 150 years have been largely fueled by fossil energy. This massive energy subsidy has allowed for unprecedented progress but is ultimately unsustainable. Recognising this forces us to confront the need for alternative energy sources and new development models.
Acknowledging the oxymoronic nature of sustainable development can lead to positive outcomes. It encourages more honest dialogue about economic growth's actual costs and benefits, spurs innovation in creating systems that work within ecological limits, and prompts us to reconsider our values and measures of success beyond material growth.
Here are three options for some forward-thinking
Consider the concept of 'enough' in your life.
What would it mean for you to have 'enough' rather than always seeking more? How might this shift in perspective change your relationship with consumption and growth?"
Reflect on a natural cycle you've observed, maybe the changing of seasons or the life cycle of a plant. How does this cycle differ from human notions of progress and development? What insights can we draw from nature's approach?"
Imagine a world where human development perfectly mimicked natural ecosystems. How would your daily life be different? What aspects of current society might need to change, and how do you feel about those potential changes?"
In the next issue
Next week, we'll pierce the fog of carbon credit markets, where good intentions meet market forces with unexpected consequences.
Can a system designed to price pollution drive meaningful climate action?
Join us as we apply mindful scepticism to untangle one of today's most misunderstood environmental solutions. You'll gain practical tools for evaluating climate action claims and discover why some 'green' solutions might mask more profound problems.