Our whole idea of Gross Domestic Product as a measure of economic success is an absurd fallacy.
GDP is stupid, like having just one orange and measuring your well being by how fast you can eat it.
Some years ago the idea of Green GDP was put forward in China, but rapidly buried when the results turned out too bad.
Independent estimates of the cost to China of environmental degradation and resource depletion have for the last decade ranged from 8 to 12 percentage points of GDP growth.[4] These estimates support the idea that, by this measure at least, the growth of the Chinese economy is close to zero.
The most promising national activity on the Green GDP has been from India. The country’s Environmental Minister, Jairam Ramesh, stated in 2009 that “It is possible for scientists to estimate green GDP. An exercise has started under the country’s chief statistician Pronab Sen and by 2015, India’s GDP numbers will be adjusted with economic costs of environmental degradation
Now the inventor of Chinese Green GDP has come up with a much less green fudge which has been floated semi officially in the Chinese media, ahead of the many such proposals for the Rio Summit next year.
The idea of ‘Green GDP’ is a good one for educating people on the real limitations of the Biosphere we inhabit.
However this in itself changes nothing, the ruling capitalists and Corporations will only have to add a little greenwash.
If you factor in the exponential costs of climate change and the real costs of environmental destruction every country on Earth already has a plummeting GDP.
The ‘GDP Quality Index’ now being floated in China is one of many proposals worldwide to use economic theory to reverse environmental degradation and encourage sustainable values. No governments have adopted such measurements but they are likely to be given a push as next year’s Rio+20 United Nations summit. Last year, India said it would become the first country in the world to commit to publish accounts of its “natural wealth”.
The Free 