Health of economy, Earth go hand-in-hand
Guest post from Chapel Hill, NC
(This letter by Steven Earl Salmony of Chapel Hill, North Carolina was published in the Chapel Hill News, on September 20, 2006. Used with permission)
In newspapers worldwide, seven days a week, we find the presentation of the wealth of the world economy by means of an array of economic indicators. We can see that economic globalization is carefully tracked and watched over.
The interlocking national economies of the world economy are also significant to us because economic systems are impressive, distinctly human inventions. The global economy is not a part of the natural world per se, nor does it operate like the economy of nature, but rather is an artificially designed, human construction.
Can you think of anything on the surface of Earth that could be even more important than the success of the economy? There are some things that come immediately to my mind: the integrity of the living Earth, the preservation of its biodiversity, and adequately functioning ecosystems. There can be no such thing as successful economic globalization if there is not a healthy planet from which it can derive resources and services.
Our children are taught that the economy is supported by the natural world in the sense that it and living things depend upon nature for existence. They learn that the human species depends on the Earth for its survival, too. There cannot be a healthy economy without natural resources and ecosystem services.
In light of these understandings there is an unmet need for data to be provided daily by the mass media regarding environmental health, such as ecologic indicators that give humanity reliable ideas about the health of the world in which we live.
If there can be no such thing as a successful economy without a healthy Earth, then more economic investment in ecologic indicators is timely and makes good sense. Let us invite the captains of economic globalization to make direct investments in the development and use of ecologic indicators that do as much to monitor and assess the health of this small planet as the economic indicators do to measure the value and status of the human economy.
– Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill
What do you feel passionate about, in the realm of science, nature or people in the 21st century? Send your essay to Earth & Sky, and we will consider posting it in our blog.
If someone would kindly care to do so, please comment on the letter above.
Thanks.
One of the reasons I am so concerned about the health of this wondrous planet God blesses us to inhabit has to do with what appears to me as a malignant preoccupation with economic globalization and power politics by the elected ‘princes’, the money lenders, the CEOs of conglomerates and multinationals, and other masters of the universe.
From among these many powerbrokers worldwide, who speaks out loudly, clearly and consistently for the protection of biodiversity, the preservation of the environment, and the maintenance of the integrity of the Earth upon which all life depends for its existence?
Please forgive my poor communication skills. Let me try again.
The world’s economy is artificially designed, organized and managed by human beings. Think of it as a sort of man-made invention.
When we look upon the natural world we find God’s Creation.
A creation of God and an invention of man are two entirely different things. The former is perfect; the latter is inevitably imperfect and could certainly be improved.
What concerns me is the extent to which leaders of the political economy unconditionally and positively regard everything having to do with the success of this human invention and so recklessly
disregard and degrade by failing to assign economic value to God’s Creation.
I can certainly understand why those millions of us who are the direct beneficiaries of the human invention think it is most important; however, there are billions of other people who do not feel the same way about the seemingly endless expansion of business conglomerations now overspreading the surface of Earth.
As our pre-eminent colleague, Dr. Partha Dasgupta, points out in his most recent E & S comments, the human beings inhabiting the planet alongside the rich, powerful and famous among us place more value on God’s Creation than they put on the human invention called the world economy because they derive so few benefits from this invention that others, perhaps Dr. Dasgupt, too, have recognized as a thinly-veiled “global pyramid scheme”. After all, it is crystal clear to billions of people in the world that God’s Creation is what they depend upon for their existence; whereas, the current economic scheme is the subject of primary regard and cause for military action by the people at the top of the pyramid.
Let me put this way: if economic globalization turns to be like a modern day Tower of Babylon, dependence on this edifice, at the expense of God’s Creation, could be profoundly misguided.
One of the things that is so worrying to me is this: concerns like long-term human wellbeing, biodiversity protection and the maintenance of the integrity of this tiny planet are now somehow momentarily at odds with powerful, predominant economic and political forces that stay securely fastened to a course of unrestricted consumption and rampant economic growth. It appears to me as if the world economy itself requires this seemingly endless and patently unsustainable growth in order to matintain the current economic structure.
Examine the one dollar bill(US currency). A template of the structure of the economy is presented on every one issued. The “pyramid” is everywhere. In our time the interlocking national economies of the international economic system is a fair reflection of a global pyramid scheme. Currency is funneled to millions of people on the planet who are fortunate enough to be at the top of the pyramidal structure while billions of people near the ever-widening/deepening base of the pyramid are left with little. In the 1980s this global financial structure was very briefly and openly referred to by politicians as a “trickle down” economy. Note that more people (+/- 3.7 billion in 2006) are surviving today on resources valued at less than $2 per day. Those billions of people are more people than comprised the world’s total human population in the year of my birth.
I imagine that few would disagree with the idea that the global economy is imperfect, precisely because it is designed and managed by humankind. That the economy can be improved, perhaps to be a more accurate reflection of the economy of nature, for the betterment of more people is not even in question. Of course, it can and it will. As well, reorganizing the world economy so that it provides substantial subsistence for more people is altogether in keeping with democratic principles and a direct expression of universally shared values.
Millions of fortunate people in this planetary home we are blessed to inhabit may adamantly insist on the imposition of their desire to live without having to accept LIMITS TO GROWTH of the human economy, per human consumption and absolute global human population numbers. Human wishes may indeed be as insatiable as a babe’s need to suckle at its mother’s teat, never to be weaned. Certainly, human beings are free to ignore bipophysical reality and to believe anything they choose to consensually validate. So goes the human world.
On the other hand, thanks to the gift of science, we can see and come to more adequately understand the biophysical reality of this tiny planet, its environs and the wider Universe beyond. Is it not yet evident that the Earth exists in space-time, is finite and possesses limited resources? In natural reality, what influence do human wishes have? Human activities influence the natural world; however, it does not appear that wishing will do such a thing. What objective evidence from science persuasively indicates that wishful and magical thinking about how the world works will make it so?
Despite an infinite number of human wishes or humans wishing, whatsoever is is, is it not?
Hurry up, please. Perhaps NOW is the time to do what is necessary to preserve what is HERE in the natural world because this blessed world, provided to humankind by God, is what ALL life and the man-made economy depend upon for existence.
As great leaders and scientists like Kofi Annan, Partha Dasgupta, R.K. Pachauri, Kunio Waki, David Pimentel, David Policansky, David Tilman, Hal Mooney, Mary Kritz, Joseph Baker, Harry Rosenberg, Walter Kistler, Werner Fornos, Jane Goodall, Richard Cincotta, Jane Lubchenco, Michael D. Shelby, Tony McMichael, Tony Cassils, Jan Janssens, Jean Francois Rischard, Russell Hopfenberg, Jeffrey McNeely, Richard C. Duncan, Peter Salonius, Michael Lerner, Stuart Pimm, Mickey Glantz, Humam Ghgassib, Joseph Romm, John Guillebaud, Albert Bartlett, W.E. Rees, Martin J. Rees, Stephen Hawking, Bruce Alberts, Donald Kennedy, Caroline Ash, E.O. Wilson, Michael K. Dorsey, Gretchen Daily, Anne Ehrlich, Hania Zlotnik, Vivien Ponniah, Thoraya Obaid, Stan Becker, Jesse Ausubel, Joel Cohen, Walt Reid, Stan Bernstein, Jeffrey Sachs, Malandang Jaiteh, Susan Oyama, Dana Raphael, Mary Ellen Zuppan, Janine Benyus, Dee Boersma, Jean Krasno, Alex de Sherbinin, Amory Lovins, Ernst von Weizsaecker, Rudolph Bulatao, Raoul Weiler, Roseann Runte, Barney Cohen, Peter Gleick, Chris Flavin, Carl Pope, Richard Cellarius, Jared Diamond, Wolfgang Sachs, Jan Juff, Neville Ash, Lester Brown, Talat Halman, Roberto Peccei and HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal have helped make visible to us: there can be no economic wealth, no environmental health and no human wellbeing without adequate resources and services of nature.
Thanks always,
Steve
Before the economic system we know today was ever invented, human beings lived in an evidently sustainable way on Earth. Otherwise, we would not be here today. The human species did not require an economic system for its survival. Even today, there remain examples where human beings are living well without participating in the global economy. I suppose the human species can live without economic activity; however, it simply makes no sense to believe that an economy can exist, let alone thrive, without a resource base and ecosystem services provided by the Earth.
Several thousand years ago, with the establishment of the culture of the agricolae and the artificially designed economy derived from it, something man-made began to grow without regard to limits to its growth. In the 21st century a point in human history may be reached when the world economy is so large that it is literally too huge for the Earth to support.
Imagine for a moment economic globalization as a runaway elephant that is overspreading Earth and, all the while, being prodded by its masters to go faster and grow larger. The impossibility of the ‘elephant’s’ infinite growth in our finite planetary home is ignored. Good scientific evidence, indicating that the current scale and rate of growth of the gargantuan world economy is patently unsustainable, is everywhere eschewed.
Nevertheless, many proclamations by the managers of the elephantine economic construction make one thing clear to the rest of us: humankind is somehow exempt from limits to the growth of its production, consumption and propagation activities. Human beings can live in this world without accepting the physical limitations imposed upon living things by the small planet we inhabit and hope to preserve in a stewardly fashion. We are told that human beings alone among the species of Earth can defy its biophysical reality. The human species is exceptional.
Is this widely shared and consensually validated perspective reality-oriented? Or, on the other hand, is it an unreal view borne of hubris?
Thank you for considering what could soon become humanity’s most pressing challenge: responding humanely and ably to problems posed worldwide by the continuous and endless expansion of economic globalization. If allowed to remain unregulated and actively encouraged to increase without regard to limits, perhaps the current scale and rate of growth of the world economy will come, literally, to overwhelm the resources and ecosphere of Earth, that the interlocking national economies of economic globalization are dependent upon for existence.