Drill Baby Drill: Holding my nose.

President Obama is becoming quite the straddler. Two recent issues have him standing on either side of the conflict between the environment and the economy.

In this piece by Eric Smith from the Washington Post,
we see an argument that his recently announced offshore drilling policy may not be as terrible as many greenies fear. I don't like seeing this happen now, but if safeguards are effectively deployed, I am afraid it probably fall into the category of inevitable.

I'm less likely to forgive the Obama administration if they do not substantively retreat from supporting the previous administration's mining policies, which seems like it is in doubt according to this piece by the AP's Judith Kohler (in the WaPo).

I appreciate that President Obama is trying to find common ground between conservatives and liberals, business and environmental activists, and all of the other old polarities. I don't have to like the individual decisions, and I'm pretty sure I don't like these.

Getting Dirty: Politics

I have long hesitated to spend much time & space on political topics. My original inclination with Sustainable Frederick has been to target issues that are under-represented in media, not to mention that are less divisive. I may be able to avoid national politics, but at least on the local level I've come to accept that it is naive and even negligent for me to pretend there is no elephant in this room. I hope I don't alienate -- and therefore lose the ability to influence and inform -- those who will reflexively dismiss what I write when they begin to suspect I am not on their political team, but there is no time to be timid.

So here goes -- my first political salvo:

In broad terms, sustainability requires democracy. Further, sustainability requires a government that sticks its nose right into the issues of resource use.

This is really the sticking point: conservatives tend to want little or no government. They argue that any government is a slippery slope to tyranny, and besides the economy works better and more efficiently without government busybodies getting in our business.

I felt that way once, myself -- in college as a recently declared economics major I was in love with the idea of the free market unfettered by government regulation. Who can argue that capitalism and the relatively free market provides tremendous social benefit through innovation and through the individuals raising themselves up to reap the gains of opportunity? With that in mind, my naive student self argued that businesses wouldn't pollute the Earth knowingly, because then they would face increasing costs as the labor pool sickened. I argued that because rational people agree that an economy that systematically disenfranchises the poor is inherently unstable, then who wouldn't be in favor of a progressive system that provides opportunity to all?

Well, I still believe that the innovation and motivation that are inherent in a capitalist system are among the most potent potential forces for good on Earth. Now, however, I also understand what is known as the Tragedy of the Commons. In short, the tragedy of the commons is a metaphor that describes how people tend to shortsightedly eat up and ultimately destroy all of the value of "public goods" such as clean air and water.

See, the polluting company won't face costs associated with a sick labor force for years, and investors in the form of shareholders only care about this quarter. The company will move its production to China and investors will be long gone to other stocks, bonds and god knows what else long before any accountants post the costs of polluting the environment to any income statement. And while rational people may desire the stable economy that comes with economic equity, they would just as soon take the money and run off to some fortress playground of the rich.

Here in Frederick County, we want individuals and businesses to develop the land so that people gather what value we can from our most precious resource. What we don't want is for the land to be developed such that it loses the unique and irreplaceable value of the land itself. Imagine Frederick County looking like the sprawly parts of Montgomery County, or even worse like the fully sprawled Prince Williams County, VA? We don't want that.

And so we need our representative government to help us sustainably administer the land development process. We need public servants to work with and for us to protect our land from the devils of our worst nature who want to suck the blood of the Earth and turn it into gold in their pockets.

Looking for an Argument
I hope there exists someone out there that sees these issues differently and is willing to share. I would like nothing better than to have people who support less fettered land development to help us understand what sustainability looks like to them. If you know any who works to maximize the profits to be made by turning Frederick County into one large swath of ugly houses, or politicians who want to help them -- please send them this post and ask them to get in touch.

As 2010 progresses, I will be looking into how the candidates for County Commissioner see this issue.

Apparently we can't handle the truth.

Here at Sustainable Frederick, I do my best to stay out of directly addressing politics or religion. I find that these topics tend to distract people from what is really important in the here and now. This health care reform thing has me thinking, though. Well... thinking and feeling because I'm pretty ticked off. So, here is my take on politics from the perspective of seeking a sustainable Frederick:

We need to remember our humility.

People who are trying to heard on the political stages act like they know the truth. I'm referring to pretty much everyone from the smiling /sneering politicians and pundits to the red-faced mobs and the faceless ivory tower snobs.

They act like they know. They pretend they have a blueprint for Utopia. They hold the position 'if you disagree with me, then you are wrong.'

Here's the thing: the truth is that we don't know what the truth is. No one knows the best way to organize the relationships between government and industry and the communities and the individuals. No one knows.

One of the really good things we Earthlings, and especially we Americans, have been doing these past few centuries is trying to figure out the best way to live together while balancing the opposing forces of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, for rhetorical purposes it makes sense to promote a political position with the guise of certainty. Who gets excited about a politician whose clearest message is his or her uncertainty?

But we have never been certain. Do you think the so-called founding fathers agreed on exactly how to do what should be done? Was there ever universal agreement about slavery or this or that war? That we have so diligently worked on figuring out these issues is why we should have a little faith that we can keep on doing it.

Should the Federal government be embroiled and enmeshed into the health care industry (that is, enmeshed more or differently than it already is)? I don't know and neither do you.

When we talk about it, we shouldn't pretend otherwise. We should remind ourselves that this is an experiment and we're all in it together, whether we agree or not.

Healthy capitalism: neither reality or myth

The difference between the ideal of sustainability and traditional environmentalism is the explicit inclusion of the goals of a sustainable economy and community. I believe a sustainable economy is a growing economy -- it just has to grow in a healthy manner. We are so far from that ideal that its easy to doubt that an economy can grow in a healthy manner -- but it can.

This opinion piece is not great, but I like some of the points it makes:

-- The main point is to argue against an idea that is apparently getting some traction in Europe; that it is possible and desirable to achieve an economy that is stable and does not grow. The author doesn't really make a decent argument against the idea -- he just invokes the faith that innovation, regulation, efficiency and behavior change can overcome the criticisms made by no growth-ers. I happen to have the same faith; though for me its more of a hope. I'm not at all sure we humans have what it takes to find the right balances we need.

-- The author pins some hope on genetically modified (gm) foods. This is a tough one. I am unwilling to support or attack the idea of gm foods on principle, because the potential upside is so huge. The problem is that the downside is just as huge. On some levels, watching genetic engineering appear and grow as a practice feels like it must have to know that the atom was just about to be split for the first time; it's just another way we can destroy the planet and ourselves.

-- I like that the author concedes that "there's something to these critiques." First of all, GDP is a bad metric or prosperity. Using GDP to measure growth assumes every dollar spent is a good thing, and everything dollar not spent (e.g., volunteering, non-tax deductible charity, backyard gardening) is a bad thing. We know that it is not a good thing to spend money buying refrigerators that leak CFCs and to purchase goods made with exploited labor. Consider that our GDP grows if we go out and spend money on gasoline that we dump straight down the drain.

-- The other point the author concedes is that capitalism can have significant negative effects in peoples' lives, including stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. I'd suggest this list of capitalism's ills is much too short; it should definitely address the fact that unfettered capitalism increases inequity -- that is the economic distance between the haves and the have nots. Still, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

-- If we are to judge capitalism harshly for its ill effects, we have to remember the benefits we have gained over the last few hundred years. Without an economy that rewards growth, we wouldn't be having this conversation and our breath would be really bad while we didn't have it. What we now consider minor injuries would be lethal, and we'd never have seen this:

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost (1915)

Photo by Jim Merry

We Are What We Eat

The Union of Concerned Scientists tells us there are three really important things that we consumers can do to reduce our negative impact on the environment: 1) reduce our energy use in the car and home, and 2) choose sustainable food choices. It shouldn't surprise anyone that both of these arguments boil down to reducing the use of fossil fuels, but I think it does. Everyone knows that we use non-renewable energy for transportation and for heating and cooling our homes, but fewer people understand the relationship between food and oil.


In the aptly labeled "industrial food system" we obviously use polluting non-renewable energy to run the vehicles that transport the food from far away, but the fertilizer and pesticides we use are also both largely made from petroleum and requires a great deal of energy to produce, not to mention the packaging. So, for every calorie of food that is produced in this system we have burned an awful lot of oil. Producing and transporting meat is even worse, especially when you consider the tremendous amount of plant food it takes to raise meat producing animals. In The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, the UCC concludes that two of the most beneficial changes in food consumption are to eat less meat and eat more organic foods.

I won't argue with that advice except to say that I would suggest emphasizing local food more than organic food. Author Michael Pollan determines in The Omnivore's Dilemma that buying organic food produced far away provides far less benefit than does buying conventional food grown locally. The main problem is that the industrial farm system has co-opted "organic" and seriously diluted the relative benefits it provides.

In contrast, conventional food grown on relatively small, local farms generally use significantly less fertilizers and pesticides than factory farms and the transportation factor is obviously greatly diminished.
As you consider what you might do to strive for a sustainable Frederick, consider buying food from people who love where you live as much as you do -- local farmers.

New Voices: Introducing William Widmaier

Sustainable Frederick continues to evolve. Hopefully you have seen our wild Facebook success -- we are still working out the best way to use it, but we've already found the interaction we had been missing. Now I have the pleasure of introducing SF's first new writer!

William has an undergraduate degree in History & Journalism, and is now studying Environmental Biology. He has already been published in the Gazette here and here. As you might imagine, I am delighted that William brings such important and relevant skills and interests to the Sustainable Frederick blog.

Getting to the point, here is William Widmaier:

I rarely remember my first conversations with people, but I always remember meeting them.

And so, I would like to introduce myself.

My name is William Widmaier and I am going to help contribute to Sustainable Frederick, adding a new voice, opinion, and state of mind to an already well seasoned blog.

I’m from New York, but now I live in Frederick after graduating from Hood College last January. I don’t want to bore anyone with an autobiography so I’ll keep it short.

Growing up, I learned about growing food. My dad’s sizeable vegetable garden in Brooklyn taught me that some of the best things to eat are grown in your own backyard. Tomato, cucumber, and onion salad tastes that much better when you can say you picked the ingredients twenty minutes ago in a raised bed not twenty feet from the back door. Summer becomes the freshest tasting season you know.

Tomato season was a particular favorite, but as I grew older, my palate did as well. Now I treasure the chard and the arugula that sprout from the rich soil, the onions and the radishes just as much as the first cherry tomatoes off the vine.

Composting helps. Heaps of black gold in our little backyard have grown and grown over the years, and the parts of the yard that have grass are getting smaller and smaller.

But here in Frederick I rent a room in someone else’s house. I cannot simply change the landscape as I see fit.

Growing food is sustainable correct? Is it important for me to understand where the seeds are coming from, or how much water the plants may need? Does gardening save me more than buying cucumbers at the store? Is there some calculator that can tell me how much I am reducing my carbon footprint?

I will remember our first conversation, and how we met.

The Faithful and the Lazy

Call me cynical, but I'm really starting to believe that science deniers are not actually acting in good faith. I know this might seem intolerant of me, but I can't help thinking that alot of these folks are really just intellectually and spiritually lazy. In a crazy way, it is actually easier to grit your teeth and dig in your heels and deny, deny, deny than it is to deal with the fallout of accepting humility and saying, "I was wrong."

Its easy to see this flaw in every side of every human argument. If I am being self-aware and thoughtful, I detect the urge to take the righteously indignant ostrich-in-the-sand strategy myself, often.

But to follow this course is to deny truth.

I do not practice Buddhism, but one of my heroes on this front is the Dalai Lama who has unequivocally stated that anywhere science can truly contradict scripture, then scripture is wrong. He understands that we humans are fallible, so anything we have written down -- no matter how divinely inspired -- is also fallible. He understands that science offers the best way to understand this material world in which we live. Holy scripture offers a way to understand our place in the world, a way to organize our priorities and the maddening impulses in every breast and brain on the planet.

Too often, and maybe always, people define themselves by the maddening impulses and then wield scripture as a weapon to re-order the world for their own selfish and cynical comfort.

Years ago I asked my 4 year old niece what happens to the sun at night. Her immediate answer with complete faith: the sun is in bed, asleep. It was cute and we all smiled.

Here we are in 2010 letting people who believe that the sun spends every night in bed set policy.

Image by David Russo from Malibu Magazine: http://bit.ly/92dhnK

Many voices!

The Sustainable Frederick Facebook page has been an immediate and huge success. As of this moment we have 291 fans!

I think its time for Sustainable Frederick -- the blog and the FB page -- to take on more voices. Looking back on my old posts, one of my problems was that I was trying to provide too many voices and too much context on a given issue. It made for exhausting writing and probably only barely readable prose.

I want some writers and photographers and artists to come forth and volunteer to become part of the voice of Sustainable Frederick. We'll figure out the particulars later -- just get in touch!


Image from Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. http://www.vam.ac.uk/index.html

Lightning up

So, the Sustainable Frederick blog experiment has been trundling along, hasn't it? When I review what I have written and the commentary it has inspired and not, I see a lot of good -- a lot of what I wanted to do with the blog. I also see a lot that I want to accomplish differently.

The biggest change I want to make is one of voice and tone. I don't really see enough of me in the posts. I've tried so hard to provide objective commentary, to cover too many bases and frankly to be too damn smart. One ugly casualty of this is that I think I have come across as if I live a super sustainable life, when the truth is much closer to me being the ugly American I am trying to wake up! On that note, my very next post will be a fast and dirty review of my own cosmic insustainability.

In the meantime, I am also going to move much of my activity to Facebook. Come become a fan of the new Sustainable Frederick Facebook page. Help me keep it light.

Sustainable Frederick's Phoenix Will Rise!

I have taken some time to reflect, rejoice and renew and will be relaunching Sustainable Frederick. I am excited about my new direction -- which will include:

-- Much more stuff about Frederick
-- Some very interesting Public Announcements, and
-- More practical information for consumers and businesses

Stay Tuned!

(and even better, e-mail me to let me know that I'm not a tree falling in the forest of NoOneHears!)

marc.e.scott@gmail.com

Bumper Sticker Alert: Drill, Daby, Drill.

Bumper stickers just might be evil.

Of course I see some with which I agree, and many that make me laugh. But we can never let ourselves forget that putting a slogan on our car is NOT the same thing as communicating. What bumper stickers do, in effect, is identify you as part of a team -- which draws a line between you and their team. There are times for teams, and public dialogue is not really one of them. Once that line is drawn, something funny happens in our brains: we choose sides. It's automatic and unconscious. Again, there are times for sides, but finding understanding isn't one of them.

I'm starting a recurring segment: Bumper Sticker Alert. I'll try to tackle BSs from both sides, as both sides are equally likely to be foolish. But don't be surprised if most are on the "conservative" side, for the simplistic reason that conservatives are more likely to argue against change.

Anyway, today's BS:

Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.

First, my emotional response which largely mirrors the greenies' response: if we know oil is ultimately a big part of the problem we face in the world -- why should we work so hard to get more of it out to pollute the world?

Of course, the economic reality is that oil runs our machines and non-oil machines are not yet near. The sad fact is that we'll need to keep drilling and burning oil while we work to turn this ship around (let's just try to systematically reduce our usage and increase our efficiency as we work on those green machines).

So, as time rushes us forward we'll probably eventually get at that approximately 19 billion barrels underneath the arctic and off the U.S. shores. I don't like it, and I'll drag my feet, but I suspect it will happen.

The reason I would yield -- that is, raise my dragging feet, is NOT because of the argument behind this idiotic sticker. The simple fact is that drilling here anytime will not effect our prices one bit. Understand this -- global oil consumption is currently running somewhere around 80 billion barrels a day. Every day. So, if we get jiggy and drill baby drill right now, we'll add 19 billion barrels of oil to the global market over the next 25 years.

Do you understand the idea of supply and demand and how it determines price? Does it make sense that if the current quantities demanded and supplied net out to 80 billion barrels per day at a given price, then adding some fraction of 19 billion of oil to that supply, the prices will not go down.

Do you think you can grow a bushel of tomatoes for sale and expect them to drop the price that grocery stores charge?

Consider the oil companies who will invest whatever they invest to get at that oil. When it starts pumping out of their refineries, do you think they will check out the current global prices and charge less for their oil? Why, because they love America? Get real.

My suggestion for drilling in ANWR and other sensitive areas: sell extraction leases (for a bazillion dollars) and place environmental restrictions to protect the local environment that are so rigorous, and therefore expensive, that no oil company can sell it for less than triple the current global price of oil. Don't worry, oil company -- as global oil reserves dwindle, that oil will become more and more valuable, and can therefore be priced high enough to cover the high costs.

Eventually, it will make economic sense to drill.

How about some Happy Fish?

We had sushi a few nights ago. I love sushi.

I know a little about the perils of over-fishing, but I have to admit I didn't think about it before, during or after the meal. Yesterday I read this article about a DC chef who is working to raise awareness about having yummy seafood and being sustainable, too. I love his attitude -- he agrees that sustainability isn't about denying ourselves, it's about making good choices. I'm not going to dub this guy a hero, but he's on the right track.

So, this morning I checked out this Seafood Guide published by the Blue Ocean Institute. They have analyzed seafood based on abundance and on the environmental impact of catching and/or farm-raising practices. Take a look. Think about it.

It turns out we did pretty well -- the one piece we had that has a status problem is Mackerel.


Fishthumb image courtesy of www.sputnikdesignworks.com

If wishes were fishes...

I sure wish Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania had been able to get something done -- anything -- to show that we can turn around the slow suffocating death of our Chesapeake Bay. If we had made any real progress at all in the last 25 years, we would now be able to build on that success in ways that protect our local constituencies (i.e. farmers, citizens, municipalities, and even developers).

Instead, we now have the Federal government stepping in like a bull in a china shop. I can hear the complaining already: Its socialism! It's fascism! It's a conspiracy! It's __(insert ignorant, ugly and false claim here)______!

I don't care what your politics, no one wants the Feds coming in and splitting our baby in half.

None of this is new -- we saw it coming a long time ago. In fact, did you know it was President Reagan who essentially created the Chesapeake Bay Program with funds committed in his State of the Union address in 1984?

We saw how that worked out -- no one wanted to make any hard decisions. Every constituency protected itself and waited. Farmers lost ground every step of the way because their run-off was an easy and obvious target and they were busy trying to justify not selling their land and retiring semi-rich to somewhere else. Developers made a bundle of cash. People -- native and immigrant -- were able to buy plenty of cheap houses for cheap. Municipalities collected more and more taxes (which allowed them to defer other hard choices which are showing up now). The States -- also flush with tax income -- pointed fat fingers at each other.

The Bay kept dying.

I hate that we can now look forward to the Environmental Protection Agency deciding who does what and when. I hate it. But I hate the death of the Chesapeake Bay more.

The Big Squeeze. Where do we go from here?

Part of success -- with sustainability like everything else -- is staying engaged even when there seems to be no answer. When things get really hard, its easy to let your mind step back from the problem and kind of give up. It's very frustrating to have no answer while the problem stares you in the face. It feels like something has to give -- its just not going to be the unsolved problem.

It's times like these that people disengage -- and it's times like these we can't disengage, or we lose. This is the lesson we learn when we see real life heroes doing the mundane heroic work of raising their children, of getting the job done, of continuing the conversation even when every cell in the body wants to scream, holler and leave.

Here are two sides of one of those frustrating impasses: farms and farming vs. the growth and development of Frederick County.



This article by Ike Wilson in the Frederick News Post captures some of the issues that might be best summed up by the opening line, "A merger of city dwellers with rural living continues to impose problems for agriculture..."

Development has put the squeeze on our farmland, and Wilson touches on several of the conflict points. I suggest you read it and understand that this conflict won't go away until it's solved. Sit with the tension.

Here are a few points I don't think get made well enough in our stilted public dialogue:

--- Our population is growing and everytime we put in a new toilet or sink we are adding burden to our over-burdened wastewater system, which in turn burdens the Chesapake Bay with death. Maryland and the U.S. EPA are very industrious when it comes to regulating farms, but they are not so industrious when it comes to asking all those builders and flushers to carry their fair burden.

-- Economies of scale are forcing farmers to expand into what are known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation -- CAFOs. With regard to pollution, CAFOs are like farms on steroids. But to a farmer trying to run a business, scaling up is one of few options.

-- Many people from urban backgrounds want to live in the country and many from rural areas want to live nearer to work. This should be a strength for Frederick County! People want to live here and whether they know it or not they want to preserve the natural and agricultural aesthetic of our land. (Slipping into a mini-rant: I just wish these suburbanites who fancy themselves nature lovers would preserve our natural aesthetic, instead of living in ugly developments that seem to sprout like cancerous weeds on our hills and dales. I also want them to understand that living in the semi-rural comes with the earthy reality of living next to farms. Oh, and one more thing -- what are these folks going to do when their ugly development is surrounded by 50 other ugly developments? Move to Pennsylvania or West Virgina and muck them up, I guess.)

We need farms. We need land on which people can live. Neither of these facts are going to change. Stay engaged. Don't give up.

Ice Water in Boomers' veins

According to David Ignatius of the WashingtonPost, the typical boomer -- born between 1945-1965 -- was looking at a pretty lean retirement even before the stock market's dive off the cliff.

Stat 1: 53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000. But that includes younger households, so let's look at...

Stat 2: ...households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. (That would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates.)

This is not a demographic that has proven to be particularly willing to suffer a fly in their latte.

It's going to be interesting.


(Photo courtesy of SkiGB.com)

The Price isn't Right

Here at Sustainable Frederick, we believe in the mostly free market. There is no doubt that a market economy is among the most amazing inventions in the universe. Let's take a minute to admire it.

Milton Friedman is the famous classical economist that is most associated with touting the amazing benefits of the free market.

Friedman talks about the simple pencil and the important point that no one person or organization could plan to gather the resources -- wood, graphite, rubber, metal, paint and labor -- from around the world and put them together into a pencil that costs only pennies. It happens so cheaply because markets exist where sellers of those resources meet buyers and exchange the goods for money and everyone walks away happy. Here is the video -- its worth seeing because this idea is (was) truly revolutionary.



Friedman and his ilk contend that the one true evil in this scenario is regulation. Only by mucking around with rules can we diminish the magic of the market.

Oh, the idealist! Really, right wingers always talk about lefties living in a fantasy world, hanging on to unreal and insubstantial dreams that look good but aren't realistic. The problem I see is that these folks are the one's living in fantasy world.

Going back to the pencil, do you think that the company that clears the forest to extract the wood to sell to the pencil maker is paying the true costs of the wood? Sure, that company is paying the labor something (we won't even get into the topic of a fair wage here), and is paying for the oil that runs the chain saws and trucks and stuff, and is paying an accountant to track it all. That's the part of the system that works. But, that company is not paying the local population for the fact that their water is now polluted because it is NOT being filtered by the wood that is now a pencil and no longer a tree. That cost falls to the poor individuals who get sick, the local government, and international aid agencies (who get most of their money from us, by the way).

Eventually those costs cost someone a lot of money, but the pencil was used up years ago.

I was inspired to write this post by an op-ed in the TheWashingtonPost that makes this same case regarding the comparison of green energy and oil energy. Check it out.

Finally -- I am listing Friedman among my heroes of this blog for his theorizing that has inspired as much good as bad. That's sustainability.

Yay Frederick Community Garden!

The Frederick Community Garden has a website. Community gardens rock!

Poking along:

I don't mind the killing off of the newest "new" analysis -- good God, we have been analyzing for far too long -- but then say what you ARE going to do, please.

A Sustainable Global Population?

In his April 5, 2009 New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof talks about the increasing need for more effective family planning activities in developing nations -- his example is a woman from Haiti. I'm posting the link because we should remember that an ever growing global population is as dire a challenge as any we have ever faced.

I also think this issue serves as a great model for understanding sustainability. A great deal of the column addresses the promise and challenge of effective contraception and counseling; it isn't until the end that we learn that the sustainable solution is economic stability and growth, or as Kristof put it "There’s abundant evidence that when parents are confident that their children will live, they will have fewer and invest more in each of them."

"...are confident that their children will live..." How's that for a little cold water in the face.

Effective contraception can put a little pause in population growth for a bit, but it will take the forming of a solid economy for a real change in trends. Similarly, there are lots of things we can do to minimize the damage we cause now, like recycling or driving a more fuel efficient car and driving much less, but it will take a new economy to start resembling sustainability.