I’ve lived in Albemarle County, Virginia, for over forty years. Albemarle is a mostly rural county in the Piedmont region. It surrounds the city of Charlottesville.
For decades, the county valued its open spaces and created many policies to ensure their protection. Recently, leadership has taken a pro-development turn, jeopardizing citizens’ quality of life and many of our community’s natural features.
In the 1990s and 2000s,
Many are beginning to sense that there is a diminishing relationship between increasing gross domestic product (GDP) and broad prosperity or “quality of life.” Environmental perils are a big part of this—from dying oceans and freshwater shortages to extreme weather events and epidemics. People readily feel these changes, even without knowing their true extent. Technological advances notwithstanding, there is little doubt that ongoing “growth” only perpetuates and amplifies such perils.
The only way to arrive at a safe, sustainable, steady state economy is with substantial behavioral and political reform. Those two categories of reform correspond roughly with the demand side and supply side of the economy, respectively. In the simplest of terms, people must conscientiously demand less—wealthy people in particular—and policymakers must help ensure that the supply of goods and services is not in a state of overshoot.
My focus here is on the supply side.
Eric Zencey reports encouraging news from the United Nations, but he knows a sustainable economic system won’t arise without concerted effort.