Below is a summary of the theme of Stephen Hickson's presentation at the commerce conference on sustainability.

Is the world really coming to an end? Many doomsayers would have us believe so. If bird flu doesn’t get you then Y2K (remember that?) will. And if that doesn’t then you can rely on peak oil, dwindling food supplies, rising population or climate change to. Ever since Thomas Malthus in 1798 published his dim view of the future of humanity, the doomsayers have been with us. In the 1960’s we were over populated and the 90’s would be a disastrous decade. In the 1970’s we were running out of every important resource and humanity was doomed to a miserable existence. So why is the world now more populated and on the whole better fed than ever? Why are many resources cheaper than ever rather than non-existent? The doomsayers continue to miss two very important points. First, as any good economics student knows, prices matter. Prices carry information to consumers and producers. Rising prices of a particular thing tell consumers to economise on their consumption of that thing and they tell producers where the most profitable opportunities are. As the price of oil rises it becomes worthwhile to extract previously expensive oil reserves and the returns to oil alternatives become more attractive. Second, people are very clever and very adaptable. We have consistently risen to challenges and we keep coming up with new ideas. Not just improvements on old ideas but genuinely new ways of doing things. Could your grandparents have imagined a box into which you put your frozen dinner and only 3 minutes later it comes out hot? Even more remarkable is that the plate isn’t hot and nor is the inside of the box. The stuff of fiction they would think but we call it a microwave and most households in New Zealand have one.

We can’t ignore important issues so correctly pricing carbon emissions matters. But if we had taken the medicine prescribed by the doomsayers in the 1960’s and 1970’s we would be a whole lot worse off now and the poorest of the world would be the worst off of all. Drastic action is not a sensible path.

We also have to remember that every policy to tackle a problem means that something else doesn’t get done (opportunity cost). There are many problems we would like to tackle – all of them worthy. However, we cannot escape the fact that we must prioritise. What we want are policies that bring about maximum benefits per dollar. Hugely expensive climate change policies that have small and uncertain benefits at some distant point in the future may make the wealthy in the West feel good but something else doesn’t get done. That something else may be saving or improving the lives of millions of poor children now.

I’m optimistic about the future. History teaches us to be.