Both now, as in the past, economic development (especially if it seeks to be sustainable) is something that must be viewed in the long term if one wants to understand its tendencies and its social flaws. Consider the conclusions we could draw since the start of industrialisation: the world is more and more productive economically but remains socially defective. Wealth creation is accelerating, the health of populations is improving, work is becoming less arduous, the old under-industrialised nations (China and India) are emerging, and the developed nations have virtually eradicated pockets of poverty and health epidemics.

This view of ongoing development can be portrayed statistically, but inequalities remain in the poorer nations and an environmental threat haunts the entire planet. As growth and consumption are stimulated unchecked, with no end in sight, by the relentless advance of globalisation, the ecological cloud spreads its shadow over the surface of the world and deposits unlimited and never-ending pollution. Increasingly fierce economic competition has created this infernal pairing between consumption and pollution, the economy-led concept unhindered by ideological barriers. The Schumpeterian ‘destruction-creation’ cycle that facilitated progress prior to the industrial age works less well today, as the new creation of goods and services is not content merely to destroy those that preceded them as they become obsolete (which is easy to understand). Instead it encourages increasingly risky innovations, ‘disposable’ in the short term and liable to disrupt the natural balance in the future.

Old Sores

Global warming is causing a resurgence of old ‘sores’ that have blighted human history. Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis are re-emerging in regions where development has not been accompanied by improvements in personal hygiene standards. Infectious epidemics of various origins (bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc.) are associated with migratory movements, placing whole populations in quarantine and decimating the livestock destined for human consumption. The root cause of these damaging pandemics is often poverty and an unhealthy environment, but also a lack of information due to authoritarian regimes that adopt globalisation principles for their economic advantages while balking at the democratisation of feudal and totalitarian power systems. A possible outcome is that, through lack of knowledge, or following inopportune scientific decisions, one can find oneself exposed to possibly fatal health risks–as in the contaminated blood affair in France–but for most epidemics, whether BSE or avian influenza, the scale of the problem and its human consequences have resulted from socio-cultural dysfunction or political failings. There is of course a certain social disenchantment born of the spirit of the age in affluent nations, with some Western elites embracing cultural ‘declinism’ to better get across their message to society; for all that, political democracy remains the most appropriate means to counter the propagation of endemic illnesses. In a sense, freedom of information curbs infection.