Robert Stewart?s opinion piece on sustainable development in The Royal Gazette last week has received some ferocious responses, and no doubt there will be more to come.

Mr. Stewart, who writes occasionally for The Royal Gazette, is perhaps Bermuda?s foremost proponent of free market economics, and as such, it is hardly surprising that he will bring a sceptical view to the issue.

That is needed, because a rare consensus has developed about the idea of sustainable development. Normally that would be welcome, since it is usually impossible to form a consensus about anything in Bermuda. But this consensus has developed without much in the way of anyone knowing precisely what it will mean, since the committee developing the policy is still hard at work.

Such hints as there have been have been made at public meetings and only the last few of these were well-attended.

So sustainable development remains what it has been since the outset; a fine-sounding phrase that means wildly different things to different people.

Mr. Stewart was being, perhaps, deliberately provocative when he compared sustainable development to various totalitarian five-year plans, but he was not wrong when he warned against attempts to determine the future based on imperfect current knowledge.

This of course, is the advice that is given to all investors everywhere, and if anyone has learned anything about investing and the world economy in the last five or so years, it is that past performance does not guarantee future results.

In fact the questionnaire that has been circulated by the committee does suggest that it is engaged on a far-reaching and ambitious plan that has the potential for dictating how Bermuda will develop in the future.

That may not be a bad thing. It might well put politicians out of work, which some people (wrongly) would welcome. And certainly, Bermuda needs to plan for the future. To leave everything up to the invisible hand of the market, as Mr. Stewart might like, cannot be done.

But his warnings are useful nonetheless. If there is a consensus that Bermuda has become ?over-populated? or that it should not become the next Manhattan or Hong Kong, then which aspiring entrepreneurs are going to be told that they cannot bring in the staff they need and which will get the go-ahead?

Mr. Stewart?s greatest concern is over the risks of trying to determine the future based on the present. Ten years ago, perhaps the four best known Bermuda-based insurance companies in Bermuda were ACE, XL, Mutual Risk Management and Centre Solutions. Today, two of those four companies are effectively gone. Similarly, who would have thought 20 years ago that Trimingham Brothers would no longer exist, or that Bermuda would have half the hotel beds it did then.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to say what Bermuda will be like in 20 or 30 years, and trying to control its direction can lead to unforeseen consequences. The sustainable development team says it is aware of this, and that?s why the plan needs to be flexible; but if it becomes too flexible, it is no longer a plan at all.

Of course, Governments have always regulated and this is right. Determining how land will be developed through zoning, encouraging environmentally friendly policies, attempting to guide the economy so that it neither overheats nor contracts, adapting the school curriculum to the needs of the economy and fighting crime, congestion and the like are all part and parcel of any Government?s duties.

As such the sustainable development committee is doing important work. But it should also beware of overreaching itself.