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The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition

Document 126: Lester R. Brown on Building a Sustainable Society (1981)

In 1974 Lester Brown, who holds a degree in agriculture and at one time worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, founded the Worldwatch Institute, an organization devoted to worldwide environmental issues relating to sustainability and global interdependency. The institute’s influential annual report on the environment, State of the World, became a sourcebook for corporate leaders and government policymakers around the world.

The concept of sustainable development is an outgrowth of ideas developed by conservationist-minded land and forest managers such as John Wesley Powell and Gifford Pinchot who, at the end of the nineteenth century, began calling for the wise use of America’s resources [see Documents 58 and 73]. Interest in sustainable development gained momentum in the 1970s, but the focus of the new breed of conservationists who supported this concept was on international economic, energy, and resource policies and on activities that would make sustainability possible.

The international community’s commitment to sustainable development was made evident in the Stockholm Declaration [see Document 119] and was clearly enunciated in both the 1987 Brundtland Report (the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development’s plan for nations to find areas of agreement on environmental issues that involve the interplay of environmental and economic factors, which extended the concept of sustainable development to the entire globe).6 and the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) “Programme of Action for Sustainable Development,” also known as the Rio Declaration [see Document 144].

A sustainable society will differ from the one we now know in several respects. Population size will more or less be stationary, energy will be used far more efficiently, and the economy will be fueled largely with renewable sources of energy. As a result, people and industrial activity will be more widely dispersed, far less concentrated in urban agglomerations than they are in a petroleum-fueled society.

The transition to renewable energy will endow the global economy with a permanence that coal and oil-based societies lack. More than that, it could lead us out of an inequitable, inherently unstable international energy regime since, unlike coal and oil, solar energy is diffuse, available in many forms, and accessible to all countries.

As the switch from fossil energy to solar energy progresses, the geographic distribution of economic activity is destined to change, conforming to the location of the new energy sources. The transition to a sustainable society promises to reshape diets, the distribution of population, and modes of transportation. It seems likely to alter rural- urban relationships within countries and the competitive position of national economies in the world market. Then too, a sustainable society will require labor force skills markedly different from those of the current oil-based economy.

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Before us now is the opportunity to adjust our values according to our changing perceptions of our world and our place in it. Of necessity, the path to sustainability will be littered with cast-off values. Materialism, planned obsolescence, and a desire for large families will not survive the transition. But they will not leave a void. Frugality, a desire for a harmonious relationship with nature, and other values compatible with a sustainable society will take their place.

Source: Lester R. Brown, Building a Sustainable Society (New York: Norton, 1981), pp. 247-48, 350.

Citation Types

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MLA 9th
"Document 126: Lester R. Brown On Building A Sustainable Society (1981)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0137.
APA 7th
Document 126: Lester R. Brown on Building a Sustainable Society (1981). The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, In P. Neimark & P. R. Mott (Eds.), Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0137.
CMOS 17th
"Document 126: Lester R. Brown On Building A Sustainable Society (1981)." The Environmental Debate, 3rd Edition, Edited by Peninah Neimark & Peter Rhoades Mott. Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Envd3e_0137.