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TODAY Friday 25 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 25 April 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Growth
"Monetary Fund Sees World Growth Up 4.4%" said the modest headline on the fourth page of yesterday's business section of The New York Times. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were holding their semi-annual ingathering in Washington, and the Fund was circulating a report that predicted the largest annual increase in global aggregate GDP in nine years.
The growth is not uniform, of course. Last week's Economist ran a fascinating table that compared increases in GDP and industrial output in some representative countries. Africa is essentially stagnant on a per-capita basis. Russia is still going backwards. The US economy is robust in overall terms. Some of the East Asian countries are electrifying. Industrial production this quarter in Malaysia increased 12% over the same period last year. Output was up 14% in China and 18% in Indonesia.
Well, as we say around here, you gotta problem with that?
There's a school of thought, well represented by the group Redefining Progress, that claims that the measurements themselves are a big problem. GDP, they say, calculates every human transaction that can be assigned a monetary value, without reference to whether it actually creates value. From the GDP's point of view, the production of the oil that went in the hold of the Exxon Valdez and the cleanup occasioned by its wreck are both good things. A fee to a divorce lawyer is a good thing, etc. Redefining Progress and its allies would like us all to develop and employ standard measures that try to calculate the real net worth of transactions.
For the moment, though, let's put that debate to the side. GDP, as it happens, is actually a convenient measure for environmentalists. If GDP counts all human activities that are assigned dollar values, it thereby stands as a good indicator of the cash economy itself. What can we say are the environmental plusses and minuses associated with precisely the kind of undifferentiated cash-economy-growth that's captured by GDP?
Enviros worry about that growth because many of us see it as a long-term threat to nature at the same time that it's a short-term socio-political necessity in the real world (including our own private real worlds). Growth-boosters, of left and right, reply that wealth is the prerequisite of environmental protection; only wealth, they say, allows you to devise and install scrubbers on your smokestacks and treatment systems for your effluent.
They're both right, it seems to me, but only in limited ways. The pro-growth people are right (under current circumstances in the industrialized world) if the definition of environmental harm is pollution. The growth-doubters are right (under current circumstances in the industrialized world) if the definition of environmental harm is loss of biodiversity.
If pollution is the problem, it's hard to argue with the success of American society over the past thirty years to deploy its wealth to reduce many of the worst befoulments of air and water. In theory -- and in increasing numbers of practical examples -- pollution can be prevented by clever design and materials usage, but our primary approach has been to clean up pollution at the stage right before it enters the commons. And that does require wealth.
But if loss of biodiversity is the problem, then it's hard to argue with the tendency of high-GDP societies to consume natural resources and alter ecosystems, either in their own territory or in the territory of other societies. Here we're talking of deforestation, soil loss, habitat impoverishment, climate change. (Actually, as Alan Durning points out, the richest one-fifth of the world and the poorest one-fifth of the world are the worst offenders, but only a miniscule number of Americans fit the second category.) Again, in theory there is a robust literature on how one can spend money without causing such damage, but in practical terms the most reliable predictor of how much ecological harm is occasioned by an American is his or her annual income.
So for today, at least, let's rest with a question. What are the practical possibilities for a developed nation to accommodate both vigorous economic growth and the vigilant preservation of natural systems? I'd say it's the Big Question.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Readers who want more information on biodiversity and threats to biodiversity can take two paths. First is to go to High Fives, "Biodiveristy," and link up with the Websites recommended by Marian Farrior and Anita Daley.
Path Two is to check into the special report on Biodiversity and American Public Opinion that you'll find at In The Trenches. Prepared last year for the Biodiversity Project by the Communications Consortium Media Center, it's a useful primer for environmental activists and anyone else looking for a summary of what biodiversity is and how to talk about it.
-- New York, 25 April 97, 07:00
4/16: Coca-Cola and the Merrit Parkway
4/17: Our White Guy Problem
4/18: Victims of Extremism
4/21: Toyota Steps Out
4/22: Doorman Ecology
4/23: The Day the Earth Day Stood Still
4/24: Refrigerator Wars