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As the natural resources are shrinking, there have been calls for the no-growth and the de-growth
Powerbrokers, technocrats, political leaders and business magnets leave no stones unturned to make the Gross National Product (GNP) a thing to be wished and worked for by governments and citizens world-wide. Commodification of a nation’s wealth and its people’s actions is a prerequisite for it. Thus, total activities in a country are treated as the national product – to be traded and to be sold. This market-based approach to a nation’s total activities, however, conveniently ignores whether they constitute effectively to the welfare of the people. This act of welfare of the people finds no place in the discussions conducted by powers-that-be while formulating the economic policies of the government. The economic model followed governments believes that purchasing power of an individual, directly and indirectly, drives up the GNP of the nation. As long as there is growth, the business lobby in the country is happy and new jobs will be created by them. Governments treat the money and the efforts spent to wage a war and the measures taken to feed the people of the country at par.
In the GNP way of economic thinking, the earth and its resources are treated as infinite or infinitely substitutable. When the world economy was at a nascent stage two hundreds years ago, this thinking pattern was viable. The picture took a drastic turn when companies turned into transnational corporations (TNCs) and large-scale productions became the norm of the day.
Experts even say that Simon Kuznets, who pioneered the GNP into the economic history, did not use GNP as a tool to measure overall social welfare. GNP is mere a measure of market-based expenditures and does not no way take into account the welfare of the people and does not bother whether this spending increases or decreases welfare of the people nor does it care for ecological sustainability and social breakdown.
The system is made in such a way that once transnational companies enter a new pasture they never look back. Some companies are making deep holes on the earth and on the seabed in the name of mining and drilling, while some others level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to make disposable furnitures for the movers and shakers of the world. Smarter among them extract the rare earths to churn out new iThings. Bees, butterflies, birds, frogs, small farmers and crop diversity will soon end up in the class room of the biological history. As long as an activity is measured by its economic growth and the pecuniary gains it brings to the coffers of the people who play the game behind the scenes, there will be many takers for it. If people are willing to live in a virtual world do we need the nature in its freshness?
People who oppose the GNP in its present state and commodification of the national wealth have been trying to integrate ecological considerations into the epistemological bases of mainstream economics. Contrary to the belief that raw materials are infinite or infinitely substitutable and waste products are unquantifiable externalities, they say that economy is an open system, embedded with a closed system, which is the earth. Inputs (such as raw materials, soil, plants, water, and so forth) and waste (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and so on) get equal importance when decisions about spending and expenditures are calculated to measure the GNP, according to them.
As the natural resources are shrinking, there has been calls for these group of people for the ‘no-growth’ and the ‘de-growth.’ However, those in power will not have any of them, for reasons connected with accumulation of wealth. Today, the people treats accumulation of wealth and possession of physical goods as highly desirable and socially positive. Starting from kindergarten, a man’s time is wasted for fulfilling this pecuniary dream. Oh! what a waste of human energy! Or is it slavery at its best?
After two centuries of unbridled growth, aided by fast-moving technology and fossil fuel, everything today is a product. Most pathetic among the products are females. They are up for sale everywhere. They are prevented from shedding tears for themselves. From top to bottom, they are commodified completely. A thing of beauty, as a famous former German model is reported to have said. But men are not far behind.
From 1950 to 2000, the human population in the world more than doubled from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. During this period, consumption of major natural resources increased sixfold on average. Natural gas consumption grew twelve-fold and bauxite fifteen-fold. Americans had one car for every three people in 1950 and the population of the planet then was 2.6 billion and total number of cars were 53 million. Today, there are 7 billion people on the planet and more than 1 billion cars and industry captains expect the figures to reach 2 to 2.5 billion cars by mid-century. China, the factory of the world, alone is expected to have a billion cars! By 2040 international demand for energy is expected to grow by 35 per cent in the developing world and fossil fuels are expected to meet his demand.
Climate scientists warn of a planetary emergency by 2050. They argue that global warming will cross the tipping point by then and it will be difficult to arrest its fall. But these are cries in the wilderness. Every government in the world is walking that extra mile to accelerate growth, thereby the GNP. Many heads were put together at Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun and Cape Town to incorporate ecology into economy. But the results were damp squib.