Economic Growth - Human Loss

Why a corporation based in Canada wants to create jobs in the US and stop US oil dependency is not explained and remains a mystery to me.
Milton Friedman trained the economic advisors of the head of the Chilean military dictatorship Augusto Pinochet and use Chile as an example of a success story. How Milton failed to see how Pinochet had to reduce civil freedoms to impose his economic policies is a mystery to me.
The word wilderness does not exist in most languages in the world. Neither Spanish or Portuguese (the Languages official spoken in the Amazon Rain Forest) or the hundreds of native tongues have a word equivalent to wilderness.
According to this report the Ecological Foot Print of the average citizen of the United States is far greater than the Ecological Foot Print than a Chinese citizen.


Santiago Florez
Fundamentals of Environmental Science
Prof. Robert L. Chapman
12/15/2014

"If Bolívar were alive today, his motto might well be: Equality and sustainability are the laws of laws"

Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster
2011

Economic Growth Human Loss

Environmental conservation and environmental thinking have evolved searching the right place and a better relationship between humans and the natural world. The dichotomy between culture and nature has shaped the debate on how we must use and/or preserve the natural resources for the benefit of mankind and the environment. However we do not understand the complexity and the diversity of our planet and the universe. Current environmental debates are deeply limited by the dichotomy between culture and nature and by debates between conservation and economic growth, because they fail to take into account the complexity of earth ecosystems. In the grand history of the universe and the planet earth, humans have only existed for minimal part. Astronomy, geology, genetics and paleontology should be incorporated into environmental debates regarding the place of man in nature, to provide a better understanding of the long-term impacts of culture on the environment, and the challenges life forms face on earth and the universe. Neither policy makers nor environmental activists are taking into account information that is being provided by different sciences and should be used to expand the complex understanding of living things, ecosystems, the earth and the universe.

Why environmental debates should incorporate other sciences? Human knowledge of the natural world, the universe, our bodies, ecology and many other things is limited and incomplete and through history different societies have used religion and myths to explain what we don´t understand. Christianity has created the delusion that humans are the center of creation and nature was created for our benefit. William Coleman argues in Providence, Capitalism and Environmental Degradation how Christianity played an important role in the current environmental degradation crisis, because Christianity helped to create moral justification for individual economic ethics in Europe in the late 17th century (Coleman, 1976). Research and advancements in different fields of knowledge have helped in eliminating the myths and illusion created by religion. Aldo Leopold believed that Darwin´s theory of evolution and the development of geology as science were the most important cultural advances of the 19th century because they helped to erase the walls that Christianity created between man and nature (Nash, 1967). Evolution led to the understanding that through a common ancestor humans are related to all living things in the planet and geology proved that the earth was much older than what the bible stated. This ideas help shape how are understanding of our species and our role in the world. There should be no controversy or debate in teaching evolution and the Big Bang Theory in schools, education is not about the separation of church and state is about forming students with the best tools and information possible to let them form themselves as active social members with a proper understanding of their environment.

In November 2014 the United States Senate stopped by a single vote a legislation that would have approved the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Senators and TransCanada Corporation defended the construction of the pipeline because it would create jobs and economic benefits for local communities and it would eliminate the dependency of the United States on crude oil from Venezuela and the Middle East. TransCanada argues that the pipeline would not affect global warming and that the current trends of environmentalism are misleading and extreme (TransCanada, 2014). On the other hand opponents of the project oppose, like the Sierra Club, appeal to the Clean Air and Clean Water acts to stop the development of the pipeline due to oil spill could affect negatively the environment (Club, 2014). Other opponents to the construction of the pipeline argue against more oil production and its effects on global warming and environmental degradation as expressed by one of Greenpeace executives: "There's a reason it's called 'dirty energy,' and it's time we put it behind us. Let's stop the spills and move forward with clean energy now" (Radford, 2014). It is surprising that the arguments used in the Keystone XL pipeline debate are almost identical to the arguments used in the Hetch Hetchy dam construction inside Yosemite National Park, debate held at the beginning of the 20th century. Although President Roosevelt identified with the conservation movements and organizations, he supported the construction of the dam because he considered that it would be bad to interfere with the material development of the United States and its citizens (Nash, 1967). On the other hands opponents of the dam argued on preserving the natural world untouched and unspoiled by men and to stop the commercialization of every land and the conquering wilderness for economic purpose and called for new alternatives without proposing new ideas.

Both the Keystone XL pipeline and the Hetch Hetchy debates were between on economic growth or protecting the environment from human greed and intervention. It´s shocking that one hundred years after the Hetch Hetchy dam construction started, environmental debates haven´t evolved and are failing to add or to consider the developments and discoveries done in several sciences like genetics, astronomy, geology, anthropology and paleontology. The dichotomy between culture and nature is present in both environmental and economic arguments, and has not changed in a century.

Policy makers, environmentalist and corporations are still using the same discourse that has been used for more than one hundred years and have failed in accomplishing their purpose. Defenders of current economic trends have argued that through capitalism (globalization and neo liberalism) society will be able to eliminate raise the living standards and end poverty, but poverty and inequality have increased greatly in the last two decades. On the other hand environmentalists have framed their concerns on the idea of saving the planet (or the rain forest, or different species) but have failed to stop the environmental degradation or the increase of CO2 emissions.
Bill Clinton gave the following statement at a conference at The World Economic Forum in 2000 "We have to reaffirm unambiguously that open markets are the best engine we know of to lift living standards and build shared prosperity." (Clinton, 2000) He shows the blind faith that policy makers and politicians had regarding neo liberalism economic policies and the need to implement them worldwide. Grow is Good for the Poor is one of the most influential books that helped the expansion (and in many cases imposition) of the neo liberal capitalism through the entire world through the expansion of corporations into the third world. Written by two economist of the World Bank it established that when the average income of a nation rises, the income of the poorest must raise proportionally effectively eliminating income inequality (Dollar & Kraay, 2001). Finally several economist and politicians have used Milton Freedman ideas about equality and freedom to justify politically and ethically their economic policies. "The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both." (Friedman, 1980). During the 90´s and the first decade of the 21st century neo liberalism has expanded though the world with the idea of improving through free trade and free markets in a global society.
However we can see that the efforts of neo liberalism have failed worldwide. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened all around the world, especially between rich and poor nations. The current economic trends have proven to benefit only a select few while diminishing or eliminating governments, social networks and the natural environment. According to a study done by Oxfam and the World Economic Forum, half of the world wealth is owned by the richest top 1%, the 85 richest individuals in the world have the same wealth as every person that lives under the poverty line in the world. In the United States, the richest 1% increased their wealth after the post financial crisis in 2008 while the bottom 90% became poorer (Oxfam, 2013), 50% of Scotland is privately owned land is presently in the possession of just 432 owners; the total population of Scotland is of 5.295 million (Hunter, Peacock, Wightman, & Foxley, 2013). Recently appeared in the news the controversial statistic that in the United States the present income gap between blacks and white is bigger than it was in South Africa during the Apartheid (Kristof, 2014). It's simple to understand why neo liberalism has failed to eliminate poverty and has successfully incremented inequality; its values represent to private interests of increasing private property and capital not in social or communal benefits. While promoting neo liberalism governments around the world have managed to enlarge the problem they have been trying to solve, by defending economic growth they are failing on protecting common interests of their citizens. What economists have called success stories, like Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, are currently under deep social unrest due to the rising inequality and corruption scandals. The tragedy of the commons has been successfully exported from the United States and Europe to the rest of the world. The French economist, Thomas Piketty, argues in his book Capital in Twenty-First Century that the global inequality in the world is a direct consequence of capitalism and that its negative impacts on society can only be stopped through state intervention. He calls for the unlikely (but highly needed) implementation of global tax on wealth as a solution for current inequality in the world and to save democratic institutions (Piketty, 2014).
Environmentalists have failed in stopping environmental degradation and climate change. After the Rio Conference of sustainable development in 1992, the CO2 emissions have increased 40%. Environmentalists have been usually been portrayed as the enemies of social development. Recently high officials of the Colombian government have accused environmental conservation efforts to be the cause of poverty and economic stagnation in Colombia (Revista Semana , 2014). Environmental discourse has fallen into deaf ears and has alienated millions of people around the world. Ideas about extinction, genetic diversity, evolution, earth history, astronomy and human culture are missing in current environmental discourse. Environmentalist have argued for the need of protecting the wilderness (the wild animals and landscapes) of Alaska or the Amazon Rainforest forgetting that humans have lived there for thousands of years and do not consider their environment as wilderness. Environmental protection usually comes after industrial development, humans that live within the wilderness do not conceive it in the same way urban citizens in the developed world conceive it. When discussing the creation of a National Park in Alaska in order to conserve the last wilderness in the United States, many indigenous tribes complained that they were not being taken into account in the discussion, that environmentalist failed to see that they have been living in the wilderness for thousands of years (Nash, 1967). Many countries in the third world resent the conservation efforts that are imported from the first world. Protection of animals and natural landscapes have been seen as a tool for colonization that wants to keep them in permanent poverty by not letting them exploit their natural resources. Julian Huxley, an English biologist and an advocate for the conservation for the creation of National Parks in Africa, heard many Africans complain "You white man have killed all your wolves and bears, why do you want us Africans to preserve our lions and elephants?" (Nash, 1967). Environmental conservation advocates need to create a coherent discourse that joins both the need for protecting other species and the social and economic needs of individuals around the world, instead they have focused their discourse on preserving what industrialized nations have lost.
Conservation efforts done by Greenpeace WWF and other NGO´s do not include the complexity of life on earth. They fail to speak about the more than 3 billon years of evolution of life in the planet and the interconnectedness of living things through ecosystem in a living biosphere. Their efforts do not include a wider perspective of humans in earth. If the earth has 4 billion years and humans species evolved only 250 thousand years ago, that means we have only existed for 0.005% of the history of our planet (if we count the 200 years since the effects of human intervention on the environment starting from the industrial revolution it would represent 0.00000045% of the history of the earth). When we use the time used in geology and astronomy we can understand we have only existed for a second on the history of our planet. With this perspective is easy to conclude that environmental conservation is not about saving the earth (the earth will continue to exist without us) is about saving the human species and all the other species that have evolved with us and with whom we share this planet. Environmental discourse is to narrow and needs to be able to include many more elements in order to be relevant for all humans in the world, not only a few.
"Education, I fear, is learning to see on thing by going blind to another" (Leopold, 1966). In the constant struggle for economic success and economic growth, education has transformed itself to fulfill the needs and demands of the market. Policy makers and education institutions (both schools and universities) are focusing more on abilities for profit making than developing citizenship and democratic values. Students learn more often how to profit using nature than how to protect it or to understand the complexity of the natural world. In the United States Charter Schools and other forms of Education Management Programs (EMO´s) are on the rise as new and successful education models; but many people fail to recognize that the education for profit model is incompatible with citizenship and democracy (Stitzlein, 2013). Profit education is based on individual gain and benefits while democratic values and good citizenship are based on communal and social benefits. In 2006 the U.S. Department of Education´s Commission released a report on the state of higher education in the country titled: A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. higher Education. The report focused exclusively on education as a tool used for economic national gain, it recommended the implementation of applied learning in engineering and sciences used to generate skills for profit making. Arts, humanities and even research in sciences that due not generate profit (like astrophysics) were omitted in the report, suggesting that they were not important in higher learning (Nussbaum, 2012). Education while adapting itself to the values of neo liberalism, is neglecting many other fields of knowledge that are essential for the development of the individuals and society.

"Out bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy" (Leopold, 1966). Profit education and the search for profit has limited greatly the human experience and its negative consequences are not limited to the environment. Suicide and depression rates are much higher in industrial countries. In highly industrialized Asian countries economic trends focused on growth have destroyed traditional social and communal networks, creating the context for the increase in loneliness and depression. In South Korea one of the most popular paid You Tube channels is of an attractive young woman that eats every day in front of a camera providing the much needed company for thousands of viewers while they are having their meals. In Japan several bars and coffees offer stuffed animals, cats and rabbits to help individuals to deal with loneliness.

Some economists, philosophers and sociologists have been calling for new ways to measure how individuals are feeling inside society, because economic growth does not reflect properly the complexity of the human experience. The Happy Planet Index was created as way of measuring nations well being instead of economic growth as more accurate measurement of what citizens need and feel about their governments and their living conditions. The index is measure with the following equation:


Image taken from the Happy Planet Index website: http://www.happyplanetindex.org

Experienced well-being is measured by using the Ladder of Life of Gallup World Poll that asks individuals to imagine a ladder where 0 is the worst conditions and 10 the best possible conditions. Life expectancy represents health of the citizens of each nations and the Happy Planet Index uses data from UNDP Human Development Report. Finally for the Ecological Foot Print that represents the relation between and individual and his environment and environmental justice, Happy Planet Index uses Ecological Foot Print provided by WWF. Of the 150 countries surveyed the United Stated ranked #105, Australia #76, The United Kingdom #46 and China #60. None of the top ten countries is in the first world, 9 out 10 are from Central and South America, the only exception is Vietnam ranked #2 (Abdallah, Michaelson, Shah, Stoll, & Marks, 2013).

The education system is failing to recognize the problems it's magnifying into the world by focusing on teaching for profit skills and neglecting other forms of education. It's helping to legitimize and prolong an economic system that is creating a greater inequality gap between the rich and the poor, a system than in its infinite search for growth is degrading the environment putting at risk the survival of the human specie. In the endless search for economic growth and profits most nations and their educational systems are neglecting the arts and the humanities, because these areas do not provide abilities that are relevant in the global market. If education fails to develop critical thinking, understanding (and empathy) for different human experiences, and an understanding of the complexity of the world we share, both the ideals of democracy and citizenship will be at grave danger (Nussbaum, 2012). Currently we are focusing on profit making skills, that represents private interest and neglecting social and common interest. Without developing abilities that develop empathy for social structures and values and the complexity of the world, democracy will be replaced by a plutocracy (the rule of the wealthy) and both poverty and environmental degradation will continue to expand in our society.

Economists and philosophers like Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Manfred Max-Neef have worked during the last two decades on new proposals on how to approach development and eliminate poverty in the world. In his books From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics and Human Scale Development, Chilean economist Manfred Max Neef argues that there is no direct relationship between industrial economic development and the relative happiness of humans beings; in fact he argues that evidence supports the idea that industrial economic development lives to an increase on loneliness and alienation from social structures in industrial nations (Max-Neef, 1992) The growth of the economy should not be the ultimate goal of any nation; instead nations should use the economy to provide well-being to its citizens. Max Neef proposes ten needs that all humans should fulfill to achieve well-being: subsistence, protection, affection, comprehension, understanding, participation, creation, leisure, identity, freedom and transcendence (although for practical reason he usually separates this last one from the others) (Max-Neef, 1989). Most the needs proposed by Max Neef, are not fulfilled in system based in profit making. Needs like affection, comprehension, understanding, participation, leisure, identity and transcendence become irrelevant. It's important to understand that neo liberalism is based on quick profit making while the needs of Max Neef might take a whole human life to fulfill. Policy makers and economist have mocked Max Neef needs proposal. How can they provide affection or understanding or even transcendence? Can a government provide affection to its citizens? The point of Max Neef argument is that government (and the economy) should create the necessary conditions so that the 10 needs can be fulfill, not to help create the conditions were most of the needs are going to be ignored. Economic growth should be used as a tool for improving society, not as a purpose. Both schools and universities should be a place were students gain the necessary tools to be able to fulfill their personal needs and of the needs of other members in society.

In 1993 Oxford University published the collaboration between Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in the book Quality of Life. Their approach to development and the end of poverty shifts from the traditional model of economic growth and the conception of poverty as income depravation. They introduce the concept of capabilities, as the personal opportunities each individual has to access or develop different capacities depending on their circumstance, like living to old age, participating in the political process and being able to have good health (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). Following their analysis we can infer that there are several kinds of poverty, most of them different from income depravation poverty, and distributed all around the world. For example people that live in highly polluted cities like Beijing, London, Santiago de Chile or Mexico City may have fewer opportunities to suffer from income depravation because they are most likely to have a job than people in other parts of the world. However due to the pollution of their cities they are not able to develop their capacity to have good health due to their environment. In their analysis industrial development has led to many citizens to live (without choosing) in circumstances and environments that leads them to live with poverty of not being able to achieve some capacities such as: affiliation, health, senses, imagination and thought (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993).

Sen and Nussbaum mention two important capabilities relevant to social equality and environmental degradation, the capability to being able to live with other living species and the capability to control our own environment (Nussbaum & Sen, 1993). The research done by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, shows how the indiscriminate and uncontrolled use of pesticides for the economic profit of corporations is poisoning the environment, other species and humans, without considering its consequences or its costs. "Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that supports all life" (Carson, 1962). Industrial nations have effectively created poverty in their population, not the income depravation poverty that is present in the third world (although thanks to the growth of inequality poverty and homelessness have grown in the United States in the last two decades) but because the use of pesticides used to increase the profits of agro industrial corporations it has created the a circumstance where its citizens are not capable of having a healthy life (thanks to the poison introduced in their foods and ecosystems), they do not have the capability of interacting with other species because most have been killed and do not have any control on their own environment. The contributions of Max-Neef, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum help to eliminate the dichotomy between economy and environment, because according to these authors both the economy and the environment are part of the needs that each individual has for being able to develop his or hers personal well being inside society.

What is the role of education within society? Is it a tool for preparing students to become employees? Is education a tool for economic growth? What a about democratic values that are essential for our society? Does education has anything to do with emotions, creations and transcendence of their students? If schools and universities prepare students for life and not only to find employment, it must be expected that education has also the mission of preparing students to be able to achieve well-being in their personal lives and be able to engage within a society. A wider approach to education is needed, there are many important skills that should not be neglected, such as art, the humanities, astronomy, geology and genetics because they help students to fulfill all their needs and giving the tools to be able to develop multiple capacities. For profit skills should to help students achieve personal well-being.

"The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet earth" (Sagan, 1980). The world famous phrase of Carl Sagan had the aim of making us reflect our place inside the cosmos. Sagan often said that astronomy was a humbling experience that taught the microscopic place of humans inside of the universe and taught us to appreciate earth, the only planet that we know that supports life. Evolution has taken more than 3 billon years to create the genetic diversity we have in the world today. Neo liberalism and economic growth are not natural to the humans; there are many examples in history, archeology and anthropology of different economic systems and different relationships with nature. We live in a complex world and must recognize that we are far from understanding the complex relations between different ecosystems and living things. Humans need more than an economic income to have a meaningful life; they have several other needs that need to be fulfilled. Aristotle used to say that education is about teaching the art of living well. Education should aims should not be limited towards its students find employment after graduation, education should aim to help students engage social life and fulfill their personal and social needs to achieve wellness. Unless education is able to teach to understand and appreciate the complexity of the cosmos, to appreciate and comprehend all living things and how to address all human needs; environmental debates like the Keystone pipeline will continue to use the old arguments that represent a dichotomy that does not exist and will continue to fail in solving the greatest problems of humanity in the 21st century inequality and environmental degradation.







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