The title of this book of advocacy is a direct reference to Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher's seminal work that accelerated, if not precipitated, the Green revolution just over two decades ago. Written by an Oxford don of impeccable credentials, Small is Stupid is a long overdue sequel to his In Defence of Economic Growth, published in 1974. It is devoted mainly to new environmental issues such as climatic change, biodiversity, the concept of sustainable development, the validity of discounting future costs and benefits, the crucial need for economic growth to remedy the pressing problems of the South and why we need not be too concerned with using up finite resources. An economist both numerate and literate, whose interest in the environment is, by his own admission, intermittent, the septuagenarian Wilfred Beckerman would have been in grave danger of being summarily dismissed as a right-wing ultra were it not for his passionate belief in sanity and reason. While this book will certainly raise the hackles of many members of the Green movement, the intention is more towards providing a balanced debate on environmental vis a vis socio-economic development issues.

During the last decade the Green movement, essentially an invention and perhaps, if you believe in a conspiracy theory, instrument of the North, has renewed its attack on the desirability of economic growth, and has been freely shaping world opinion, calling for immediate drastic action to prevent global warming, the exhaustion of raw materials, and the extinction of species. It has gained sympathy and support through its clever manipulation of the (mostly Western-owned) media.

Beckerman fulfills his promise of Blowing the Whistle on the Greens by making use of information previously available only in specialized sources and by presenting the facts in an objective a manner as only a trained economist can. He sets the record straight by revealing the flaws in the Green's alarmist predictions of global environmental catastrophe. Small is Stupid exposes the hollowness of the Green's claim to occupy the moral high ground in environmental policy, and the superficiality of their views on key ethical issues, such as the nature of our obligations to future generations, or the real case for preserving biological diversity.

In the course of his argument Beckerman demonstrates that the fashionable Green slogans of "sustainable development" and the "precautionary principle," oft-repeated parrot fashion by environmental policy-makers, conceal basic confusions, and that their adoption by the world's policy makers as guiding principles would only reduce social welfare in the long term as well as today. Commissions and committees, national and international, have been (and are being) set up to supervise and report on the adoption of these policies, and politicians who fail to pay lip service to them do so at their peril. Environmentalists, many scientists, media commentators, politicians and public figures, all eager to demonstrate their sense of social responsibility, as well as many genuinely concerned members of the public, treat these "guiding principles" with reverential respect without realizing that both are fundamentally flawed. Continued invocation of these catch-phrases can only pressurize governments into hastily devised, inefficient and expensive environmental regulatory policies that usually involve unwarranted intervention in the market place. In many cases, these expensive environmental regulatory policies are measures many developing countries of the South can ill-afford.

Beckerman argues that if "sustainable development" implies that all other components of society's welfare are to be sacrificed in the interests of preserving the environment exactly in the form it happens to be in today, then it is morally indefensible. Similarly, to apply the "precautionary principle" would be simply stupid if it is taken to mean that irrespective of the chances of future loss, the scale of the loss, and the costs of preventing it, one must nevertheless incur those costs. Yet, alarmist environmentalists would have us do this, and more.

Far from imminent global environmental catastrophe, the most serious environmental problems in the world today are local ones, particularly the provision of clean drinking water and decent sanitation in the South and long term economic growth is necessary for their solution. This is a key message of Small is Stupid.

After reading this book, it is easy to see why an organisation like Greenpeace, which is more interested in confronting the establishment with a conflict of values, than in engaging in a rational scientific debate, is now losing credibility in the public's view. Unlike the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace and other radical Green charities are not interested in pragmatic, co-operative approaches towards resolving environmental issues. Perhaps, it is because they are charities, and therefore dependent on public generosity, that the Greens invariably take the moral high ground in order to extract "guilt money" from a gullible public. With highly emotive issues such as Brent Spar and the Bakun dam project in Sarawak now high on the public's minds, this book is a refreshing dose of sanity and clarity of thought.

By moving away from the Green's agenda and providing a sensible platform for a balanced debate, Small is Stupid is of immense interest and direct relevance to all those involved in development issues. It certainly is must reading for Third World policy makers who need to balance biodiversity and sustainability concerns on the one hand, with poverty alleviation and socio-economic development imperatives on the other. Beckerman advocates the need to ensure the pattern of economic growth is one which best represents the needs and preferences of society as a whole, rather than of particular Green pressure groups. This involves much greater use of economic instruments for reducing pollution to socially optimal levels, and much greater application of economic assessments in environmental decision-making.

An Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, Wilfred Beckerman served as one of the original members of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, from 1970 to 1973.

Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered

Wilfred Beckerman

"We should not be taken for a ride by the environmentalist movement's predictions that we are one the verge of environmental catastrophe," writes Wilfred Beckerman in the Cato Institute book, Through Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered.

Beckerman, an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and a former member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, has written this volume as a sequel to his widely acclaimed In Defense of Economic Growth, which originally appeared in 1974. Like its predecessor, Through Green-Colored Glasses, which was published in England last year under the title Small Is Stupid: Blowing the Whistle on the Greens, has garnered significant praise. The Economist stated that its "arguments are piercing" and Nature remarked, "Environmentalists tempted to ignore Wilfred Beckerman's latest book better think again. . . . Beckerman has written a thoughtful book as well as an entertaining one."

He explodes a number of myths currently advanced by radical environmentalists, including the assertion that natural resource depletion is imminent and the never-ending claims regarding global warming. He contrasts those supposed "threats" to the environment with the very real ecological problems that face Third World countries and concludes that economic growth is the only way those areas will be able to develop the technology and wealth needed to handle their problems. In addition, he insightfully discusses the question of what society owes future generations.

Beckerman believes the argument regarding natural resource depletion is "flawed in every respect." It is "at variance with the whole of historical experience, and it takes no account of the way that societies adapt to change in the demands and supplies of materials." Defending his position, he cites numerous examples of how the market has dealt with temporary resource shortages, such as the development of synthetic rubber during World War II and the creation of plastic as a replacement for various metals.

While acknowledging that global warming "has to be taken seriously," Beckerman maintains that it is "no cause for alarm or dramatic action." If dramatic action were taken, the effects on human welfare would be horrendous--even more horrendous perhaps than the effects of global warming itself. "With the global-warming problem," Beckerman writes, "society is faced with the choice between (i) accepting some remote and unquantifiable possibility of sharp climatic change in the longer run with possibly severe economic effects and (ii) certain economic and social catastrophe if draconian policies are adopted to avoid it."

The ecological problems of the Third World, Beckerman contends, are a direct result of the low level of economic development those countries have achieved. They simply have not produced the technology necessary for environmental protection, nor have they accumulated the wealth to buy it from abroad. And to do either one, they must first industrialize and grow--paradoxically, the exact thing that many Western environmentalists lament. He writes, "The best--and no doubt the only--route by which these countries can overcome their appalling environmental problems is to become richer."

One of the most vexing philosophical problems facing those who write on the environment is what, if any, moral obligations society has toward future generations. Is it necessary, for example, to leave the environment completely unaltered, or even approximately so, as many environmentalists argue? Beckerman contends that such a proposition is overly simplistic and narrow in focus. While it is conceivable that we could leave posterity a relatively unchanged environment, doing so would be too costly, not only to us, but to future generations as well.

Beckerman leaves the reader with the following thought: "Above all, we should not be panicked into the sort of drastic action urged on us by many environmental activists. . . . In short, the message of this book is that we have time to think. What is needed is the will to do so."

"Environmentalists tempted to ignore Wilfred Beckerman's latest book had better think again...Beckerman has written a thoughtful book as well as an entertaing one." -Nature

1996/230pp./$19.95 cloth ISBN: 1-882577-36-2 /$10.95 paper ISBN 1-882577-36-1

This book is written by the type who speaks from the head - an intellectual rather than a humanist. The central theme to the book is that restraining industrial and corporate predation in the name of planetary stewardship is causing and/or excaberating social inequalities which the author would like us to see as single issue problems. This is, of course, a naive and dis-ingenuous way to present highly complex issues such as over-population and the decline of subsistence agriculture in marginal lands. I have only two conclusions from reading this book, and they are both founded on the motive of it's author. These conclusions are: either Wilfred Beckerman is a hopelessly indoctrinated special interests lobbyist, or he is too academically rational to see the spiritual side of the arguements against unrestrained capitalist expansion. And I'm a fully paid-up member of the Capitalist Pigs, so I'm not unsympathetic to the stance he tries to promote. I have, however, a firm belief, not shared by Mr Beckerman, that some of the most important aspects of humans and their psycological needs are not dollar-quantifiable so cannot be factored into a system of economics.
By the end of this book, I was impressed only by the selective and incredibly mechanistic supporting arguments. I was sadly unable to either on-lend my copy or recommend anyone else to read this because it says only what we have already heard from pro-development apeasers - the assumption that the spread of Western values and attitudes is 'religiously' correct in all cultures, and that to refute the proposed development potential of third world cultures is a selfish and patronising vision of 'unqualified idealists'. There is much to dislike in the attitude of the author, not least his contention that critics of development are either 'unqualified' or 'uninformed' (how's that for patronising?) but my main review point here is that he has not addressed the crucial pivot-point of the debate - we are knowingly gambling with huge risk to our ecosystems and our diversity of cultures and all for the real benefit of profit-hungry corporations and political power bases. The real losers in the fight to preserve diversity and beauty (two concepts that the author places no dollar value on) should be these mindless and remorseless entities.
The alternative scenario, boosted by the author using selective and disturbingly simple 'facts' will see the powerless of the third world move into a different and more unpleasant bondage, to a system that is even less interested in self-monitoring or spiritual values than the one they are being 'saved' from. Read this book only to see the dry and brittle hand of the older generation, still sure that it's money and military cancers are helping people live a better life. One wonders what the author does when confronted by wilderness, or wet earth after rain, or any one of a huge number of reminders to most of us that we hold a precious and vital responsibility to act at all times as if we were borrowing this planet from our grandchildren, not inheriting it from our parents.