Recontexualizing Economics for Sustainability (and other topics)
An IBM supercomputer named Watson easily defeated the two most successful past winners of the popular game show Jeopardy. Meanwhile, there are three billion brains out there trying to survive on $2.50 per day. What if we could tap into it? Could we figure out a way for the poor to earn income through brainwork rather than begging or back-breaking labor?
World population growth and rapid economic development in the less developed countries has put inexorable pressure on the value-chain economy. Over the past 40 years we have recognized that we are exhausting our fossil fuels, mines, soils, forests, and fisheries. The value chain economy is dyin
Advanced anaerobic digestion is the best technology available for cost-effectively and environmentally recycling municipal organic wastes back into the ecosystem and returning value to the econosystem. It has not been deployed in the United States simply because until recently our economic calculations have not incorporated environmental costs and benefits. When the values of green energy, GHG reductions and organics recycling are added into the equation, anaerobic digesters are the “natural” solution.
If humanity had a brain – if we had a truly global society rather than a world of suspicious and antagonistic tribal nations – it would be obvious what we must do. We would collaborate on a massive overhaul of our buildings, transportation systems and economic infrastructure to improve energy efficiency and to shift away from burning fossil fuels. But we cannot wait for a slow process of consensus. Let us not whine about whether we will be somewhat disadvantaged by moving first in a direction which all must move eventually. It is better to take a small disadvantage ahead of the crowd, in order to gain the benefits of leadership.
GDP is killing us. What we call Gross Domestic Product is an attempt to sum all the value added, in every step of production, of every monetary good or service within our national economy. But GDP doesn’t measure the standard of living of anybody. And that’s where it fails us and leads us into ruin.
A slideshare presentation introducing Econosystemics as a discipline of study merging economics and ecology in pursuit of sustainability.
We are used to cheap oil and inefficient consumption, so we have trouble seeing a higher value in that gallon of gasoline.
A sustainable economy can include a human society that delivers more good to its members, even while enriching, rather than degrading, the ecosystem we live in.
It is time to put aside, explicitly and decisively, the objective of higher GDP. GDP measures quantity, not quality of production. GDP presumes that a growth in production is a growth in quality of life, when in fact we have reached a point that the opposite is true. Not even our current level of goods production can be sustained, much less continual increases.
Economics is perhaps most simply and comprehensively be defined as: the study of the exchange of value among humans. Why then introduce a new word, EconoSystemics? First, because we can no longer distinguish the...
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