A guest column in today’s News & Observer from the president of the N.C. Sustainability Center in Raleigh offers a great opportunity to remind people about the shenanigans involving that center and a high-ranking state Commerce Department official.
This is also a good time to highlight Roy Cordato’s 2008 report on sustainability.
RALEIGH – Government leaders interested in “sustainability” should promote policies linked to individual liberty and a free-market economy, not policies that limit growth. That’s the key message in the John Locke Foundation’s third Macon Research Series report.
“So long as there is a free market system, where prices are allowed to fluctuate and entrepreneurs are free to pursue profits through creativity and innovation, sustainable development is assured,” said report author Dr. Roy Cordato, JLF Vice President for Research and Resident Scholar. “Indeed what is most likely to retard this process are government programs meant to manage and direct the timing and kinds of technological change that should be pursued.”
Cordato’s report points to a major shift in thinking about sustainable development. “The standard view of sustainable development is not rooted in any coherent set of philosophical principles,” he said. “Advocates for sustainability tend not to focus their arguments on the basis of liberty, equality, or economic efficiency. Instead they push a collection of anti-free market ideas that have made up the core agenda of the major environmental advocacy groups since the 1970s. A United Nations report issued more than 20 years ago offers the basic language for the ‘sustainability’ movement.”
