An Efficiency Argument for Sustainable Use

Sustainability is often viewed as a moral obligation to future generations. Robert Solow (1993), for example, writes:

The way I have put this, and I meant to do so, emphasizes that sustainability is about distributional equity. It is about who gets what. It is about the sharing of well-being between present people and future people. (p.182)

Sustainability is an injunction not to satisfy ourselves by impoverishing our successors. (p.181)

On the other hand, Solow finds the destruction of natural resources acceptable as long as it is compensated by investment in other assets, because ‘goods and services can be substituted by one another’ (p.181).