sustainability

With four million more people expected to flock to Southern Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe by 2031, something has to be done to ease the region’s debilitating traffic gridlock and unchecked urban sprawl. The McGuinty government’s response is a major growth management initiative, referred to as Places to Grow. ­Introduction of the Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt in 2006 was a first step.

Dave Thompson pocketed a cool $1.75 million a couple of days after the Ontario government released details about its greenbelt and Thompson learned that his land sat just outside its borders. Four years from now, he’ll receive the balance – another $1.75 million earned from the sale of his 40-hectare dairy farm in Caledon, a rural area northwest of Toronto. Thompson’s grandfather, father and his brother once tilled this fertile soil, but it’s hard to fault Thompson for accepting the $86,000 per hectare ($35,000 per acre) paid by the developer. Who wouldn’t?

Doubtless, people are optimistic that sustainability is possible. Pessimism is enervating and deflating. However, both optimism and pessimism are merely states of mind that have little connection with reality. What we really need is a good dose of realism, and from this perspective much of what we take to be progress is delusional. It creates a false – or at least inflated – sense of achievement, and thus relieves the psychological and political pressure needed for real change. ...

No economist would deny that welfare is more than just money, and nobody living in a market economy would doubt that money is an important element of welfare. The best way to measure non-monetary contributions to well-being, however, is not clear. As a result, economists have traditionally neglected them. ...