photo by IUCNweb (Flickr Creative Commons)

The Economist recently featured an interview with ‘green economist’ Pavan Sukhdev on their regular segment ‘Tea with The Economist’.

Pavan Sukhdev is a study leader for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study (TEEB), a report commissioned by the G8+5 and funded by the European Union. He is special advisor and head of the UN Environment Program’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative, also funded by the EU/EC and Norway.

In the following video interview, Sukhdev discusses natural capital and economic as well as political solutions to preserving and encouraging biodiversity an environmentally conscious business practices.

Pavan Sukhdev on the green economy

The head of the UN Environmental Programme’s Green Economy Initiative on how to assign an economic value to nature

Graham Land

But with all these possessions, are we any happier? It sure doesn’t seem so.  Social scientists now tell us that experiences, not possessions, make us happier over the long haul.  Pretty, shiny things quickly lose their luster, especially when the bill arrives.  Too many possessions seem to own us, rather than the other way around.  Could we be happier with less?  That seems likely.  Do we have a moral obligation to consume less, so that future generations may know a few of the luxuries we take for granted?  I say we do.

Image by bchow (source: Flickr)

We need a new religion to replace consumerism, but anti-consumerism seems so, well, negative.  Hard to rally folks for that. Besides, we want to be for things, not against them.  And it’s not very realistic to buy nothing, sometimes we really do need a product.  So, our new philosophy should not be called anti-consumerism, because it is not only about being against buying things.  Instead, it is about making very deliberate and conscious decisions about the things we do buy.  Let’s call it ‘conscious consumerism.”

Every purchase we make helps somebody.  Somebody make money from us.  Who do we want to help?  Some purchases we make—far too many of them—hurt people.  Most of us don’t really want to do that.  So, what we really want to do is to use our purchasing power to help the most people and hurt the fewest.  By hurt, I don’t mean that the losers in these transactions may need our money more, or put it to better uses, though that certainly is a possibility.  No, some products cause real harm.

For instance, when we buy gasoline made from oil pumped in places we never see, like Colombia, or the Niger River Delta in Western Africa, we are buying a product which has contributed to the destruction of an environment upon which people and critters rely to live. These far-off forests and rivers were felled and fouled, many of the critters died, and the people are hungrier, sicker and poorer for it.  That’s a stark example, and oil companies are not fundamentally worse than many other industries that make the things we buy.  We get the benefit of the shiny new product, and somebody far away gets the pollution.  Justifiably, many of them are highly pissed off.

When those pissed off people in far-off lands take up arms to protect their world or take a piece of the action, consumerism becomes a national security issue.  We should form a department in the Pentagon or the CIA to study whether buying less stuff could reduce the amount of fighting in the world.  We could probably save billions.

Recently, well-meaning folks have attempted to put a price on the “carbon-content” of a product.  This is a useful start to measure sustainability.  Corn-based fuels looked like a winner until we added up the total energy input to grow the crop and make the fuel, and compared that to regular oil, then it didn’t look so good.  But things can get way more complicated than that.  For instance, which is more carbon friendly: the big-box store-bought, organic-factory-farmed lettuce 6-pack, shipped 800 miles by rail and then 80 miles in a new, ultra-clean diesel truck, or the farmer’s-market-bought lettuce that came 100 miles round trip in the farmer’s clunky old truck?  That calculation might be a lot closer than you think.  So, embodied energy is a key concept of conscious consumerism, but there is more to it than that.

Many years ago, the trade unions and others sounded the call to “look for the union label” or by things Made in the USA.  This comes back to “Who do we want to help?” People need jobs.  These days, a lot of them are our neighbors.  Most of us would prefer to create jobs that pay a decent wage, and don’t kill the people doing them or desecrate the places they live.  That ultra-clean diesel truck was likely built by well-paid American workers in a clean, well-regulated factory.  Sure, overseas production may have raised thousands of people out of abject poverty, but poor people don’t necessarily win when they leave their families and their hard-scrabble villages to work 90-hour weeks in a polluted third-world slum.

The localvore movement takes that concept a step further.  When you buy something made locally, you certainly are helping the local yokel who made it, and if that’s different than the one who sold it to you, then there’s two happy neighbors.  The farmer with the clunky truck may not employ that many of his neighbors, but he probably treats them better than the factory farm.

When you buy stuff at the local big-box store, your neighbor got a job, but that job is probably not as good as owning or managing the local hardware store or nursery, and some of the profits on your purchase left your town to points unknown.  They may have went to somebody you would like if you could just sit down and have a beer with them, but you will never know that for sure.

So, conscious consumers strive to buy products made in countries with strong protections for workers and the environment, and if we can put our neighbors to work, so much the better.  American trade unions can’t afford TV ads any more.  So many American manufacturing jobs went overseas to countries with low wages and weak protections in the so-called “race to the bottom.”  What we need is a race to the top.  As conscious consumers, we can demand that.

We can’t know everybody who is helped or hurt by every purchase, and trying to figure that out may drive us crazy.  If all of us stop buying things altogether, because it’s just too hard to do that mental calculus every time, then economists tell us the world as we know it will crumble.  Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.  Maybe elements of our manic capitalist system are indeed too big to fail.  But saving them may mean consuming all of the resources on the entire planet.

Big business controls just about everything these days.  They control the extraction of resources, the manufacturing of products, and the transport of these products to your town; they’ve always controlled that.  Now they control much of the retail outlets.  Now they control banking and finance, and the mass the media.  With the media firmly in their grip, they are working hard to control our government.  Some say they already do.  Getting our government back is a top priority these days, but folks are not necessarily connecting that concept with where they shop, who they’re paying for their mobile phone service, or who’s growing their food.  We need to wake up to that connection.

About the only thing we can control, every day, is how we spend our hard-earned money.  If we spend it wisely, consciously, helping the most people and hurting the fewest, maybe we can take back our government, put our neighbors back to work, and clean up the environment.

—

Guest post by Bob Horowitz (anti-consumer advocate). You can read more about Bob on his new blog
If you are interested to guest post on our blog, click here to create an account or click here to contact us directly.

Lead image source: stock.xchng

photo by mommamia (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Due to concerns over the rapid decline in the population of Britain’s insect pollinators in recent years, a research program was launched on Tuesday, allotting £10m (€12m) to the discovery of why bees and other insects are dying off.

If all insect pollinators in the UK became extinct, it would cost the national economy £440m (€534m) per year. And although honeybees get most of the attention, they are just one of Britain’s many crucial pollinator insect species.

From an article in the Guardian:

According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, three of the 25 British species of bumblebees are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s. In addition, around 75% of all butterfly species in the UK have been shown to be in decline. The new £10m Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI), the largest programme to date of its kind, will look at the multiple reasons thought to be behind this devastation in insect population.

One reason for the honeybees decline could be that pesticides are interfering with the navigational functions in the brains of bees, preventing them from finding their way back to their hives. Unfortunately, some researchers claim that too little is known about both the causes for the decline of pollinators and about how much each species of insect contributes to pollination.

From an article in the Telegraph:

One of the amazing things is that we don’t know how important the different species are. Some studies say that honeybees contribute 10 per cent, some say more. We know that bumblebees are very important, as are hoverflies. There are more than 20 species of bumblebee in Britain, and several of them are causing concern. Three are already extinct. Some species are doing OK, and we don’t understand what’s making the difference.

–Professor Andrew Watkinson, director of the Living with Environmental Change program

On the other hand, some believe that scientists already know very much indeed about the decline of bumblebees and honeybees, due to extensive research in other countries. Not surprisingly, pesticides and loss of wildflowers are being blamed as the culprits. Yet any concerted action to change the industrial farming practices that are deemed responsible would surely face fierce opposition from the agriculture and pesticide lobbies.

For more on this perspective, see Allison Benjamin’s piece ‘Action – not research – is needed to save our pollinators’ in the Guardian.

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

BBC News – Loss of bees could be ‘a blow to UK economy’

Independent – Bees fitted with tiny ID tags for study

photo by SSE (source: Wikimedia Commons)

London: At a press conference on low carbon transport, the UK government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, criticized the country’s industry and political leaders for not preparing for decreasing oil supplies. King claimed that conventional oil reserves are actually 30% less than commonly stated and that demand could overtake supply by 2015.

From a report in the Guardian:

While transport is seen as the most difficult sector to decarbonise, action needs to be taken immediately to keep people and goods moving while reducing reliance on fossil fuels, he said.

As oil supplies diminish, we are being pushed into riskier, more damaging ways of getting at it, as exemplified by the recent Gulf oil disaster and the tar sands oil extraction project in Alberta, Canada. King believes that the only economic winners in this scenario will be oil-exporting nations.

From a BBC News report:

The world’s poorest countries will be the first to suffer – but for Britain and the US it will also be difficult to cope, added the scientist.

King also encouraged government incentives to stimulate existing low carbon transportation options into the marketplace.

by Graham Land

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons: By: Roland303.

I have been reading The Lord of the Rings lately. One of my favorite characters from these books is Treebeard (or Fangorn—and the rest of the Ents). Not only are the Ents tree-like in appearance, but Tolkien did an awesome job at showing us how important they are to the world, even without us realizing it. They provide us with shelter and protection, food and nourishment, and even wisdom and council. They will listen to us talk when no one else will and they are quite steadfast and strong, even through the direst of storms.

We owe the trees and forests of the world a great debt and thanks for all they’ve provided us with, but how do we repay them? We have them cut down for our furniture, homes, roadways, shopping malls, and other similar reasons. Fortunately, there are at least some people who care enough to stand up for the trees and give them a voice where they would not be heard otherwise.

Over the past 6 weeks and throughout 33 regional public meetings across the US, people have spoken for the trees. They made it clear to the Obama administration that they want greater protection for our National Forests; this includes applying a sound science to the process, preserving clean drinking water supplies, addressing climate change (once and for all), and better protection of fish and wildlife.

You may wonder why it’s a big deal to protect the National Forests; why should you, or anyone else, care what happens to them? Well, according to Mike Anderson of The Wilderness Society:

“What happens on our national forests affects everyone in the country, from the water we drink to the places we turn to for recreation. This public hearing process gave citizens the chance to urge the Forest Service to establish the strongest possible protection for water, trees and other natural resources needed by people and wildlife alike.”

If that quote isn’t enough to change your mind (or at least consider it), then maybe this bit of information will help:

National Forests (and grasslands) provide clean water for millions of US citizens, provide habitat for most of our species, and offer a vast number of great recreational activities. Given this information, it’s no wonder over 200 million people visit National Forests every year. Oh, and there’s also the job factor: National Forests provide and support thousands of jobs and small businesses, making the recreational economy worth more than $110 billion nationwide!

So, what can you do about it? Well, I’ll tell you.

The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) intends to develop a new National Forest Service Planning Rule, which is used to create a framework for the development, amending and revising of land management plans for individual National Forests and Grasslands. Special importance is being placed on the planning rule now because of the vital role the forests play in the fight against climate change, as well as sustaining local economies and protecting wildlife and habitats across the country.

Since the USDA is aware of the impact the National Forests have on millions of US citizens, they want your opinions on the matter. So, they’ve been hosting a series of public meetings to give people the opportunity to speak out for (or even against) the trees; by doing this, any US citizen can give their input on the National Forests and the new Planning Rule, and thus become a part of an important process that could mean the difference of saving or sacrificing our beloved forests. Let’s do whatever it takes to help our forests and give them the thanks and protection they deserve!

To find out more on the National Forest Service Planning Rule and how you can get involved, check out this site.

You can also find additional information and resources from one of these awesome conservation organizations.

By Heidi Marshall

Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, Östhammar, Sweden; photo by Östhammar (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Job growth and climate change trump safety concerns amongst most Swedes when it comes to the use of nuclear energy and apparently also the storage of nuclear waste.

The Swedish parliament may have (at least until recently) regularly voted to phase out nuclear power in Sweden, but the Swedish public is less steady in their feelings about atomic energy. A poll from 2008 by market research agency Synovate and newspaper Dagens Nyheter showed that 48% supported the construction of new nuclear power stations, with 39% against and 13% undecided. By contrast, only one political party (Folkpartiet or the Liberal Party) was pro new construction at the time of the poll – and they only captured 7.5% of the vote in the last general election in 2006.

Futhermore, according to Snyovate only 20% of Swedes wanted nuclear power to be phased out, while 80% prefer its continued use. This is a stark contrast to the largely anti-atomic energy feelings that swept Sweden in the 1980s.

Admittedly climate change, nuclear power and the economy are all hot issues in which opinion can change quickly and so these polls may not reflect current public opinions as accurately as they did two years ago. But several Swedish municipalities are even competing to be home to a new nuclear waste dump. Östhammar, a municipality around 100 km north of Stockholm, is one of the two finalists.

From a New York Times piece:

Sweden, which swore off nuclear power after less than 20 percent of Swedes approved of it in a referendum in the 1980s, would seem an unlikely place for such a competition. But it has reversed course recently and plans to begin building new nuclear reactors, adding to the 10 it already operates.

Fears of a climate change may indeed contribute to the pro-nuclear position in Sweden, but what about fears of nuclear accidents? Östhammar is already home to Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, site of an incident in 2006 described by a former Forsmark boss as the ‘most dangerous’ nuclear incident since Chernobyl.

So maybe it’s just the economy, stupid. (I love when I get the opportunity to paraphrase that quote). Besides, it’s only right that they should store the waste that they themselves create instead of shipping it off elsewhere. Maybe most people in Sweden trust their government and large corporations enough to feel safe – even when they’re burying nuclear waste in their ‘backyards’.

by Graham Land

Swedish language sources:

Synovate – Kärnkraftsopinionen 25 år efter folkomröstningen

DN – Varannan svensk vill ha nya kärnkraftverk

photo from greenforall.org (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

In an interview with Der Spiegel, economist and globalization critic Noreena Hertz discusses the flaws of judging a country’s success by GDP and brings up other ways to measure economic and material prosperity:

GDP only measures a small part of economic success. Some really important aspects are ignored. Take sustainability, for example. It’s absurd that a country can have high growth rates because it has a lot of polluting industry. The quality of the air, health, progress made by women, child care and social cohesion — these are all important economic factors.

The innovation or robustness of an economy are not reflected in GDP, nor is economic or social equality. Hertz would like a new method of judging economic success that includes justice, equality, environmental protection and population health along with GDP. Real economic health should also be sustainable.

She would also like to see a shift from what she calls ‘Gucci capitalism’, where people simply trusted the market, to cooperative capitalism – capitalism characterized by ‘complexity, diversity and collaboration’.

Former New Zealand Minister for the Environment Simon Upton makes a similar case in an opinion piece entitled ‘Time to make the numbers add up for the sake of the environment’ for the Dominion Post:

GDP is, of course, just one measure and an increasingly questioned one at that. As we contemplate a world with more than nine billion people and increasingly compromised life support systems, it seems likely that other measures will become commensurately important.

Upton expresses concern about the strain the growing global middle class will have on the environment and the Earth’s natural resources, and how New Zealand will need to respond.

These voices join other economic ideas that offer fresher, greener alternatives than those simply based on production and consumption, such as the green economy and the concept of ‘natural capital.’

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)

Image Source: Flickr. By: Christopher Chan.

The world today faces two main problems: the economy and the environment. Some would suggest these 2 issues go hand-in-hand. Many have different ideas on how to deal with them. However, very few can agree on what should be done about them. Recently, I was sent a rather interesting video that gives some interesting ideas on how to deal with these very problems.

Promoted by The Wilderness Society, this particular video talks about how helping the environment will also help the economy. In particular, it focuses on creating a more “green economy”. Considering the path the world has been on in recent years, more people are taking notice of climate change, eco-friendly products, and the environment in general. You’ll see people switching from energy suppliers of the past to a more renewable source. Recycling bins are apt to fill up more quickly, while consumers keep a sharp eye out for organic or green-labeled products. Needless to say, the green lifestyle is rapidly growing and as such, more green jobs are becoming available.

What does all of this have to do with a video? Well, the video discusses how we (citizens, companies and governments) need to “eliminate wasteful spending” and “prioritize what must be done” to help the environment and economy”. One thing it suggests is to put a stop to tax breaks and other giveaways that are reaped by top polluting industries. According to their example given, “closing a loophole that lets big corporations write-off oil and gas production would save 13.3 billion dollars over 9 years”. Imagine what good that saved money could do for the environment and economy.

Another interesting thing about the video is the series of points it makes throughout it. For example, did you know that outdoor recreation (such as hiking, camping, skiing, etc.) contributes nearly $730 billion per year to the US economy and supports 6.5 million jobs nationwide? That’s quite a lot of environmental work available and the best part is there’s expected to be a rise in the number of such jobs available. How much of a rise? Well, according to a study by the International Labor Organization, it’s estimated that “8.4 million jobs will be created by 2030 in wind energy and solar panel production alone”. That’s only one small part of a potentially large green economy!

So, where do you fit into all of this? Well, if you’re interested in promoting a green economy, you can start by checking out SaveOurEnvironment.org. Here, you will find information on a proposed green budget for 2011, a list of ways you can take action, and much more information. A vast number of groups are supporting this campaign, including: Greenpeace, WWF, The Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, The Sierra Club, and many more. It is definitely something worth checking out.

By Heidi Marshall

photo by robstephaustralia' s (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

The green economy is the only sustaining economy. It is one that values its natural resources properly and uses them sparingly and for the right intent.

In the spirit of the earlier post on ‘new economics’ or non consumption-based economic ideas that include green issues, here is a bit more on models for economic development that don’t depend on standard GDP growth:

In an interview with The Ecologist, Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev explains economic ideas that factor in conservation, climate change, biodiversity and the concept of ‘natural capital’. Proposed and existing models of carbon trading schemes put a negative value on greenhouse gas emissions, so why not put a positive value on the preservation of rainforests and other crucial ecosystems?

At a certain stage I believe that almost any society can reach stages where progress does not result in, or correlate with, getting bigger, i.e. GDP, but progress relates to quality of life as in improved environment, relationships, reduced poverty, inequalities, better protected ecosystems.

–Pavan Sukhdev in The Ecologist

‘Natural capital’ essentially means putting a value on nature or natural resources that isn’t simply based on commerce. In other words – resources such as clean water, food, clean air and their sources have inherent value, yet they aren’t necessarily commodities. We need them and benefit from them whether or not we trade them or make money from them. The poor rural inhabitants of the Earth know this. They may be outside of the growth and consumption based economy, but they already operate in terms of natural capital.

Pavan Sukhdev heads The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity study or TEEB, ‘a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.’

by Graham Land

Additional resources:

European Union website – THE ECONOMICS OF ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY