Comments on: Nine ways to stuff up a planet

By: Carol Stewart

Carol Stewart — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:19 +0000

Interesting idea and a step in the right direction. The ‘chemical pollution’ category strikes me as being far too messy and vague to be workable in the foreseeable future.

By: samv

samv — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:19:01 +0000

Bandersdad, if you are interested in people who are integrating ideas such as the above into a new measure for a reformed economy, see for instance this post at The Standard about Genuine Progress Indicators. It really is the way forward IMHO, it easily encompasses global warming and also poverty, inter-generational debt etc ... it's also very flexible, allowing you to include or exclude metrics that most people in a country would agree upon vs those contentious.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:49:25 +0000

You make a good point, Bandersdad. Somehow we have to find a way to operate within the planetary boundaries, however many of them there are. We have to live within our means. To do that, we have to find an alternative to “growth” as the be all and end all of economic well-being, and get our leaders to buy into it. The last part is the hardest…
There’s an interesting “guest post” at Sciblogs from George Preddy that goes into considerable (and depressing) detail on the subject.

By: Bandersdad

Bandersdad — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:23:59 +0000

Whilst I agree that the work to establish nine interlinked planetary boundaries is worthwhile and commendable I cannot but feel we are still missing the bigger picture somewhat:
The mechanisms we use to establish “good decisions” relating to the boundaries are still not integral to our economies (hence bargaining positions).
The limits are going to change as we understand them better, some in our favour, some against.
The nine planetary boundaries are inevitably going to be found to be 10, then 11 etc.
Given the first three points we’re not going to be making good, timely, decisions when we next run into a boundary (and one day we’ll really find out far too late).
So what is also required is a philosophical (or, if you wish, moral, ethical, spiriual, etc) shift in the way we perceive our relationship with the planet. We need a viewpoint that doesn’t firstly ask how close to disaster can we go before we stuff it up. We’re not good at using that measuring stick.