Introduction
Humanity has entered the era of dramatic climate change and resource depletion yet our decision making institutions have not shifted their focus towards reducing harm to earth’s natural systems. Instead we remain fixated on boosting commercial marketplace growth.
Mainstream media organizations cover many of the impacts of climate change from floods to droughts and even mention their increasing frequency and severity as consequences of human activity. Despite this they continue to call for growth of both population and consumption – the primary drivers of our social, environmental and resource problems.
The political conversation reflects this imbalance. This disconnect between the what and the why of current events is derailing an effective response to the threats before us.
Economics measures the portion of human activity that involves exchange of one form or another of currency for real goods and services in the commercial marketplace. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the prime metric representing the total of all currency transactions within a national market. It is an extremely useful tool and metric if used as intended and designed – to show the scale and structure of paid activity and to serve as a basis for an equitable tax system.
But economics is dangerously misleading when applied to the larger national policy and environmental issues which it has no means of directly measuring.
GDP was never designed as an enterprise accounting system, whether it be a hot dog stand or a nation, and its authors warned against its use as an indicator of national health or as a guide for national policy. Yet it has become widely misapplied in exactly that role.
In contrast, science measures the processes and structure of our physical world directly in real units, not dollar proxies. It measures all aspects of a process to allow that process to be understood to the point that its behavior can be predicted.
Science vs Economics
Compare the development paths of science and economics over the past 800 years. Science has developed continuously providing enormous leaps in knowledge and capability in scores of fields including medicine, transportation, agriculture and communication. It is rapidly expanding our knowledge of our planet and the universe. It is a process of continuous learning, part of which is correcting erroneous assumptions made in the past.
Eight hundred years ago, debt, currency devaluation, financial fraud and inflation brought down governments and nations. Today, financial crises and collapse are still happening regularly and for the same reasons because economics and finance are not science but rather a system of accounts and methods extremely vulnerable to misuse and fraud. See:
This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
By Carmen M. Reinhart (Author), Kenneth S. Rogoff (Author)
Economics is not only silent on depletion, climate change and social issues, its finance sector continually demands more growth which exacerbates these problems. Economics and finance cannot fix themselves let alone deliver solutions for problems they were never created to address in units they simply cannot process.
Science does deliver the biophysical challenges message loud and clear as befits something designed to illuminate the world around us.
The differences in both capability and purpose of economics and science need to be brought to the fore in our national conversation and policy making. We need to apply the tools to the jobs for which they were designed. Our actions must match our calls for action.
Journalists and politicians need to recognize the limitations of economic metrics and distinguish between growth and progress. Effective real world measures need the biophysical overview only science can provide.
Resolution
Economics is not a science. It is a measurement system designed to quantify the commercial marketplace portion of human activity. It should not be used as an indicator of social health or as guide to the solution of environmental issues. Calls for continued growth of the commercial economy are counterproductive.
Science cannot guarantee success but only science can provide the information, the learning capacity and the perspective necessary to effectively address the biophysical challenges which confront us.
I support the above resolution.
Our goal is to get as many scientists as possible to sign this petition and bring attention to the dangerous misapplication of commercial economics as a central component of national goals and strategy.