Planetary boundaries, as the Stockholm resolution wanted to espouse, are limiting conditions imposed by the rational mind confronted by the stark reality that if the world wanted to extend prosperity or its conditions to a much larger section of people we have problems aplenty. But it is rational inattention that has led us to believe that we have enough resources to extend every benefit to all the inhabitants of this globe and it is equally wrong to stop a chosen few from enjoying it by putting a price that would be unaffordable; pricing of opportunities on a global scale would need a fundamental change, for which the discussions as referred in the article is the natural step.



I cannot believe that the whole world can enjoy a breakfast with the same amount of calories as an American or an European one, or the same number of pages as in an American newspaper could be distributed to all the people of the globe (it would probably mean felling all the trees of the world !). Resource constraints should remind us that we have a finite limit to what the endowments of this world could be shared and distributed, and only through innovation we could actually shift our preferences.



Procyon Mukherjee

