The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [165]
How do we actually promote adoption of a different metric as an official macroeconomic welfare indicator at the international, national, and local levels? John Talberth, a senior economist at the Center for Sustainable Economy who worked on the GPI, says that community-based sustainability planning processes provide fertile ground: community leaders often need help defining key environmental, economic, and social objectives and measuring progress toward those objectives.6 Many organizations, including the Center for Sustainable Economy and Earth Economics, track public planning processes and legislation that promotes sustainability. To find out more, visit www.sustainable-economy.org and www.eartheconomics.org.
Of course, we’re not measuring for measurement’s sake. The new indicators must inform and evaluate a comprehensive set of goals, policies, and systems that prioritize the well-being of people and the planet.
Source: Redefining Progress, 2007.
2. Do Away with War
In 2008 governments around the world spent a record amount of money on upgrading armed forces—and that amount continues to increase. They spent $1.46 trillion in 2008, which is 4 percent more than in 2007 and 45 percent more than a decade ago. The United States continues to be the largest arms spender, followed by China.7 The nonprofit National Priorities Project (NPP), which maintains an ongoing tally of the costs of war, calculates that as of July 2009, U.S. spending since 2001 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has topped $915 billion.8
In our work for clean renewable energy and carbon reduction, public transportation, nontoxic alternatives in industrial production, cleanup of polluted sites—as well as health care for all, excellent public schools, and just about any social good—how often do we hear that our suggestions are nice but are too expensive? That there just isn’t the money to pay for the changes we seek? It is infuriating to hear this while we’re hemorrhaging billions for needless wars that destroy lives and communities and devastate the environment. And don’t forget, many of our wars are fought primarily to maintain access to oil, a substance from which we absolutely need to be weaning ourselves! Imagine how we could have built the electric grid that would enable decentralized renewable energy generation, or the high-speed train network which would replace millions of individual cars—not to mention how many lives we could have saved—had we invested the war money in real solutions instead. As mentioned earlier, the top ranking on the Happy Planet Index is Costa Rica, which abolished its military in 1949 and redirected those funds to social goals.9
In my home state of California, we have a severe financial crisis. Our news is filled with stories about additional teachers being laid off, libraries and state parks being closed, and cuts in health care for poor children. The NPP calculates that taxpayers in California have paid about $115 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.10 For the same amount of money, we could have had:
47,712,271 people with health care for one year, or
206,545,462 homes with renewable electricity for one year, or
346,992 affordable housing units, or
1,664,958 elementary school teachers for one year, or
2,070,973 public safety officers for one year, or
1,464,132 port container inspectors for one year.11
Enough of letting our leaders cut vital public services or deny funding for transitioning our economy toward sustainability, claiming there’s no money. There is money, plenty of it, being wasted on wars around the world. It’s our right and responsibility as citizens to make sure that our government’s spending is consistent with our values. Funding wars while cutting schools and health clinics and other vital social needs doesn’t work for me and I hope