miscalculations DESTROY THE PLANET
By: Ambassador Oswaldo de Rivero
After global warming and its disastrous consequences is, without doubt, the ideology of perpetual growth of gross domestic product (GDP). This indicator of the aggregate of all domestic production does not discount the plundering of nonrenewable natural resources and the emission of greenhouse gases. That is, accepting an economic growth that uses the environment as if it were an inexhaustible commodity. But the GDP is growing and the planet.
Although GDP growth means the human habitat destruction, most economists, and especially politicians pay homage to this growth as the totem of the development of national wealth. This veneration of the destruction of the habitat itself is as illogical as venerating the role of destroying cancer cells that grow their own body.
Today we are making efforts to replace GDP with new indicators scientific and ethical. Herman E. Teachers Daly and John B. Cobb Jr., of the University of Maryland, have created a new calculation called Prosperity Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW, for its acronym in English) which subtracts from GDP ecological losses. When applied, U.S. prosperity changed. Per capita income had declined 10% since 1976.
Other experts have created the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which also subtracted from GDP the external costs of the destruction of nonrenewable resources, which adds pollution, energy waste, traffic congestion costs crime. After applying per capita income of U.S. between 1982-2002 did not increase 56%, as it is officially calculated, but only 2%.
There is also the proposal of Professor Hiroyuki Yoshikawa of Tokyo University, called "factory reverse." Said that the world should establish a new industrial ring system consists of industries engaged in recycling and create only recyclable products. Leave no waste industries to create additional input but also recyclable products. Could only be accounted for as a wealth of industrial production.
While GDP is not replaced by a new indicator, the ecological destruction of the planet will not cease. And so, in the not too distant we measure the infeasibility of nations by the acute shortage of water, food and energy.
Maybe in a century, when a future generation study our civilization and see what we count as economic growth development was destroying biodiversity, warm the atmosphere, melting glaciers, creating shortages of food, water and energy and rise dangerously the sea level, GDP classified as the most conspicuous indicator of our barbarity. Texts taken
Although GDP growth means the human habitat destruction, most economists, and especially politicians pay homage to this growth as the totem of the development of national wealth. This veneration of the destruction of the habitat itself is as illogical as venerating the role of destroying cancer cells that grow their own body.
Today we are making efforts to replace GDP with new indicators scientific and ethical. Herman E. Teachers Daly and John B. Cobb Jr., of the University of Maryland, have created a new calculation called Prosperity Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW, for its acronym in English) which subtracts from GDP ecological losses. When applied, U.S. prosperity changed. Per capita income had declined 10% since 1976.
Other experts have created the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which also subtracted from GDP the external costs of the destruction of nonrenewable resources, which adds pollution, energy waste, traffic congestion costs crime. After applying per capita income of U.S. between 1982-2002 did not increase 56%, as it is officially calculated, but only 2%.
There is also the proposal of Professor Hiroyuki Yoshikawa of Tokyo University, called "factory reverse." Said that the world should establish a new industrial ring system consists of industries engaged in recycling and create only recyclable products. Leave no waste industries to create additional input but also recyclable products. Could only be accounted for as a wealth of industrial production.
While GDP is not replaced by a new indicator, the ecological destruction of the planet will not cease. And so, in the not too distant we measure the infeasibility of nations by the acute shortage of water, food and energy.
Maybe in a century, when a future generation study our civilization and see what we count as economic growth development was destroying biodiversity, warm the atmosphere, melting glaciers, creating shortages of food, water and energy and rise dangerously the sea level, GDP classified as the most conspicuous indicator of our barbarity. Texts taken
El Comercio
of August 24, 2009
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