The report assesses the country's environmental record and calls for a broad range of policy innovations in the areas of renewable and non-renewable resource use, waste and pollution, and population that would help boost the sustainability of the U.S. economy while maintaining people's overall well-being and quality of life.
"Creating a sustainable U.S. economy will require a thoughtful and strategic set of national, state, and local policies that would remake the economic playing field under a new set of principles," said Worldwatch Senior Fellow Gary Gardner, the report's author. "Unfortunately, the window for shifting to a sustainable economy relatively painlessly is closing, and each year of inaction makes the eventual shift potentially more jarring and costly for a growing number of Americans."
The concept of "sustainable development"- the idea that we can generate clean prosperity today while preserving resources and ecological functions for use by future generations - entered the mainstream more than 25 years ago. Yet U.S. leaders have failed to embrace the full measure of the needed changes, according to the report. Although the technological and policy tools needed to create sustainable economic activity have advanced rapidly around the world,U.S. output continues to be bolstered by unsustainable practices such as linear flows of materials, heavy dependence on fossil fuels, disregard for renewable resources, and resource use that is strongly connected to economic growth.
As a result, the United States ranks poorly in many environmental indicators, including:
Historically, the United States has risen to meet new challenges with innovation. The report notes that the country has a long tradition of environmental leadership, dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, and became a world leader in environmental policy in the 1960s and 1970s when it established a series of progressive laws and institutions. Yet the United States has lagged behind many other countries, including in Europe and Asia, in developing more sustainable economic processes and energy infrastructure.
"The United States once set the world standard in confronting its environmental problems --protecting wild lands, establishing an environmental protection agency, and acting assertively to limit pollution of all types," noted Robert Engelman, Executive Director of Worldwatch. "Americans benefited economically and in many other ways from these efforts. Yet today the country's government plays at best a very limited role in domestic or global efforts to create sustainable societies. We need a powerful citizens' movement to help policymakers see that any efforts to make the United States enduringly prosperous are doomed to fail so long as we forget that we are living on a finite planet and cannot change the laws of physics and biology to suit our ambitions."
The report outlines a series of cogent and practicable policy measures that can be instituted today to put the United States on a more sustainable path. These include shifting from an income tax to a progressive consumption tax, creating more standard eco-labeling for products, encouraging more producer "take-back" opportunities, and promoting a more feasible renewable energy market. A deceleration of population growth will also make the creation of a sustainable economy far easier, the report notes.
Key Policy Principles in the Report Include:
"America's long 'maybe' in response to history's invitation to sustainable prosperity is no longer viable," said Gardner. "The choice is not between the status quo and sustainability. A sustainable America is inevitable. The question is whether the United States builds sustainable prosperity through prudent choices now, or declines into sustained impoverishment because it failed to steward its assets when it had the choice."
Notes to Journalists:
To obtain a free copy of Creating Sustainable Prosperity in the United States: The Need for Innovation and Leadership, please contact Supriya Kumar at skumar@worldwatch.org, (+1) 202-452-1999, ext: 510.
About the Worldwatch Institute:
Worldwatch is an independent research organization based in Washington, D.C. that works on energy, resource, and environmental issues. The Institute's State of the World report is published annually in more than 20 languages. For more information, visit www.worldwatch.org.
