Clash of two world views – economic growth or environmental catastrophe

I had been wanting to construct a post on this subject for some time, but had been avoiding it, in part because friends told me that I was in danger of promoting an unrealistic utopian vision. However, I can no longer resist some idealism, driven on by two recent-ish events that spurred me to pitch some ideas into this debate. I started to write this post last year – and wanted to create a more comprehensive commentary. However, rather than continuing to hold back  on the assumption that I would have the time to create something better (which will never happen) I have closed this post off somewhat abruptly. As a consequence its not as well thought through as I would have wished it to be – and there are perhaps some obvious ‘holes’ in the rationale.

The first event was large and obvious – the ongoing financial crisis, which started to make people think about the precariousness of the world economic system on which we all depend. The second was small, and not widely promulgated beyond a sub-population of avid science readers, which was a special report in the UK’s New Scientist magazine.  This report is entitled “How our economy is killing the earth”

The issue that I had been wanting to raise for discussion was one of how we measure well being and what the impact of this measurement is on national and international social and economic policy. What concerned me, and obviously many others,  is that GDP does not measure whether we are improving our lot or not. One of the New Scientist articles points to a number of alternative indices to GDP including the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare, which has evolved into the General Progress Indicator. If you read the Wikipedia article on GPI you will note that its states the following “By the early 1990s there was a consensus in human development theory and ecological economics that growth in money supply was actually reflective of a loss of well-being”.

Despite this, when you hear politicians speak, you will only infrequently hear concern for our well being. More often than not, you will hear instead them talking about the need for sustained economic growth, and how important the UK’s GDP is for the “health” of our nation.

So the situation we presently find oursleves in is:

(a) If we have growth we are arguably less content, less happy with our lives.

(b) We have an economic system, supported by our political elite, that suggests that sustained growth is good for us

(c) Our planet has finite resources that are being consumed at a frightening pace – and unless some real science and technology breakthroughs occur – the accelerating consumption spurred on by the sustained growth that economists and politicians claim we cannot do without – cannot be sustained. Worse than this – we will potentially create an environment in which life is much less pleasant than it is now. Frighteningly, if you listen to James Lovelock – of Gaia hypothesis fame – he already thinks we are too late to stop things deteriorating badly.

The question would appear to be pretty obvious – why are we not changing direction now – and quickly?