Sustainability Thought 198: Sustainability or sustainable development solutions: Pointing out the first major blunder in terms of development thinking and critical socioenvironmental problems solving

It can be said that dealing with the socio-environmental consequences of living undersocio-environmentally distorted traditional market thinking since 1776 when the world endorsedand promoted Adam Smith’s ideas there have been according to this author three clear majordevelopment thinking blunders when trying to address those market distortions while thedistortion problem remains active, one after the other: 1) First in 1987, the BrundtlandCommission had a choice, to recommend a fix through sustainability market based solutions orto recommend a patch through sustainable development solutions to the critical socioenvironmental problem created by the distorted market they were dealing with; and they chose apatch; 2) In 2012 Rio + 20, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development had achoice, to implement an environmental fix through green market-based solutions or torecommend a patch through dwarf green market-based solutions to the critical environmentalproblem they were addressing created by distorted traditional market pricing; and they chose apatch; and 3) In 2023 the world had again a choice, to finally internalize socio-environmentalexternalities to fix the pollution production problem embedded in the linear traditional marketand make it circular or to move from traditional linear pollution production markets to traditionalcircular pollution production markets assuming again socio-environmental price distortionneutrality, and hence, leaving the root cause of the pollution generation problem embedded inboth linear and circular pollution production markets untouched; and they chose to go circulareconomy thinking as a pretend patch.Notice that the Brundtland Commission in 1987 found a socio-environmental pollutionproduction problem associated with working of the traditional market not an inefficient use ofresources and that the United Nations Commission on Sustainable development as welldocumented in 2012 an environmental pollution production problem associated with thetraditional market, not an inefficient use of resources, therefore, none of them found that theproblem generating pollution embedded in the traditional market was an inefficient use ofresources. Hence, all those development choices made since 1987 are all considereddevelopment thinking blunders because all those choices made to address critical sustainabilityproblems violate the theory-practice consistency principle as they do not match the nature of theproblem and as well as violating the expectations of the Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm evolution loopunder academic integrity. This paper focuses on the first development thinking blunder, thechoosing of sustainable development solutions over sustainability-based solutions in 1987 toaddress a critical socio-environmental sustainability problem.