Economics and GDP

A choice between national happiness – and global misery

Sep 6th, 2021 | By
[Photo by Passang Tobgay on Unsplash]

by Julian Cribb, AM FRSA FTSE. With 30,000 wildfires blazing from one end of the Planet to the other on any single day, melting icecaps and glaciers, dying coral reefs, polluted oceans, lakes and rivers, vanishing wildlife and forests and growing scarcity of water and soil, the outcome for humanity is already plain to see.
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The Economics of Nature: The Need for Transformative Change

Feb 11th, 2021 | By
rwenzori double collared in flight

By Suzanne York. It was a blip for most news outlets, but a recent report out of the UK – led by Cambridge economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta – underscores the global biodiversity crisis and humans relationship with Nature.  The fact that it comes from an economic viewpoint has its pros and cons, but is
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The Price of Worshipping Endless Growth

Sep 25th, 2019 | By
SF climate march 2019

By Suzanne York, Transition Earth. Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City this week.  She’s gotten a lot of press and focused much attention on climate issues.  Which is a good thing, given that the Northern Hemisphere, which holds 90 percent of the world’s population, had the
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The Future of Growth

Apr 2nd, 2019 | By
[Photo by Flickr user Images Money via Creative Commons license]

By Dr. Milton Saier and Art Elphick, guest writers. Recent articles call for higher birthrates to spur economic growth. But upon observing the human impact on our resources and environment, many scientists consider even current economic and population growth rates unsustainable. Our world has just experienced prenominal growth. Since 1900, the population has grown by
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“Have Children for the Country” – Changing Misguided Assumptions on Declining Population Growth

Jan 8th, 2019 | By
View of Tokyo 
[Photo: Creative Commons license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tokyo_from_the_top_of_the_SkyTree.JP]

By Suzanne York. It is commonly accepted by the ‘powers that be’ that continued population growth is a great thing and declining population growth is terrible. This assumption permeates the global economy mentality, where constant growth of people and markets is the mantra. And if population growth is on a downward course, that is cause
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Confronting Our Global Growth Obsession

Feb 24th, 2017 | By
[photo credit : Suzanne York]

By Suzanne York, Transition Earth. (A longer version of this article was originally written for the online magazine, ReImagining, published by the Chicago Wisdom Project) Lately it seems as if the entire world is veering wildly off course. From climate change to species extinctions to rising inequality, many people – not to mention nature – are crying out
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Trade Trumps Climate: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

Oct 8th, 2015 | By
[photo: www.globalresearch.ca]

By Suzanne York It’s ironic that while much attention is focused on getting to a climate agreement in Paris that at the same time the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being negotiated.  On the one hand you have efforts to reduce global carbon emissions as a means to protect people and the environment.  On the other
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Can the World Move Beyond “Infinite-Planet Thinking?”

Mar 17th, 2015 | By
[image credit: http://neanikoipalmoi.blogspot.com/2013/01/blog-post_1924.html]

By Suzanne York. “Can the world get richer forever?” asks a recent article in the BBC News. If you ask a politician, mainstream economist or the 1%, the answer is likely to be “yes.”    As noted in the BBC piece, growth “is almost universally seen as a Good Thing.”  If you ask most environmentalists, scientists
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To Grow or Not to Grow: The Wild Card of Aging Populations

Feb 3rd, 2015 | By
Shanghai [photo credit: www.designyourway.net]

China’s population growth has been popping up in the news recently.  It seems the government’s concern about too much population growth has now swung in the other direction – today the issue is a shrinking labor pool. The Chinese labor force has already peaked and its population will shrink after 2030, though some experts  think
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Where Do We Go From Here?

Oct 16th, 2014 | By
[image credit: projourno.org]

By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The stock market is up and down, oil companies are making record profits, there is a growing gap between the have’s and the have nots, a large number of people take anti-depressants, and the environment is increasingly being degraded.  Do we accept this as the way it is, or is there
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