As cofounder of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, as a civil servant, and more recently, as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, I have watched the erosion of our environment and particularly our growing climate crisis with deep concern. It has become clear to me that these crises are exacerbated by the basic way we have organized our economy and made a priority of its growth above all else. Many potentially effective solutions to climate change are rejected because of their perceived impact on the economy. We find ourselves today in a strange place where in order to stave off a planetary catastrophe, saving the planet from climate disruption, we must show that it will not hurt the economy.
In the climate context and otherwise, our quality of life is being steadily sacrificed to a single goal—growth of the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. It is time that Americans thought more deeply about this goal and its limitations.
This book brings a fresh and needed perspective to our common efforts by asking a simple but essential question: What is our economy for, anyway? It answers that question in a manner originally suggested by Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and a former Yale Forestry dean himself.
What’s the Economy For, Anyway? goes beyond a challenge to the mythology of GDP and the primacy of economic growth, asking how our economy might be organized if quality of life, justice, sustainability, and that right to the pursuit of happiness enshrined in our Declaration of Independence were its goals. How might our economy look then? How might we measure its successes and failures? And how can we get from here to there?
The authors, one an economist and one a journalist, offer a critique of our current unsustainable system, but theirs is not a message of gloom and doom. With humor, solid evidence, common sense economic arguments and a truly patriotic spirit, they suggest solutions that can help restore our country’s place in the world.
This is a time of fear, of loss of confidence in the future, of denial in the face of grave ecological danger, and of rapacious greed. But it is also a time of intellectual ferment and ideas that can, if we encourage them, bring forth a happier, healthier, fairer, and more sustainable future. This book provides a valuable contribution to that much-needed ferment, and does so in an accessible fashion, offering pragmatic solutions to our economic woes. It makes clear that the dangers of climate change, peak oil, species extinction, the ever-widening chasm between rich and poor, and the insecurity and pessimism that characterize our era demand that we seek more of what matters, and not simply more.
James Gustave Speth, professor of law at Vermont Law School, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World, and former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
June 2011