Prosperity and Growth 

I started my work for the day reading an article by the Brookings Institute touting “sustainable growth” as the panacea for communities in the US suffering from economic insecurity.  It ticked me off enough to actually write to the Brookings Institute and ask them how growth could be sustainable on a finite planet in which clear signs that we are reaching ecological limits, such as global warming and massive depletion of all ocean fish stocks were becoming more and more obvious. 

I have made the questioning of the panacea of growth part of my work since serving as a volunteer with the Maine Economic Growth Council back in the early 1990’s.  Obviously I have not yet had much success as every few years I read another report on economic growth as the goal of all community efforts.  I keep hoping I will some day read a report on prosperity that actually looks at how to create prosperity within the ecological limits of the earth.

Actually, my focus is on more than the ecological in all of this.  I base my work on the 4 green pillars, ecology, equality, democracy and peace.  I actually say to people you can not end poverty without healing ecosystems and ending violence.  You can not heal ecosystems without ending poverty and violence.  You can not end violence without healing ecosystems and ending poverty.  You must tackle them all simultaneously, and that can only happen in a democracy in which real information is accessible and the people are able to act upon it. 

It is the integration of poverty, ecology, non violence, and democracy as the way forward (I just had a flash that Emperor Bush describes his plan for Iraq, the plan to kill more Iraqis, as The Way Forward, but I will not allow him to steal the language).  We must work on all things simultaneously, holistically.  And we can not grow our way out of our problems when growth is one of the factors causing the problems.

Dear Brookings Institute, I received a link to your article on Prosperity that I have included below.  Y’all have a reputation as a pretty respectable operation, but here is much about your article that I find exceedingly troubling.  Most fundamental is your confusion between growth and prosperity.  Back in 1992 I served a stint with the Maine Economic Growth Council.  I watched as they too seemed to have that confusion.  The confusion seems to come because neither you nor they reality have any conception of the limits to growth on a finite planet.  You would think that global warming, the loss of forests, the erosion of top soil, and the total depletion of ocean fisheries would give you some conception on how close the earth is to ecological limits, and I would hope you have some conception about how much the ecosystem underlies the economy.  You can have robust growth, you can even have growth that works to reduce inequality, (though that is very rare) but you can not have sustainable growth when the growth depletes ecosystems.

Would you please explain how your program fits in with the health of ecosystems or at least acknowledge openly that it ignores ecosystem health and therefore is at least a bit suspect?  Here in Rhode Island we have on rare occasion been able to thwart the development of truly inappropriate economic development scams.  Often they are stopped for purely local reasons, but at all times there is an undercurrent spreading the word of how the project also will undercut itself due to long term ecological collapse and that backs up the local support for doing the right thing. 

When are you going to come up with prosperity proposals that actually fit in with ecosystems, and therefore are much more likely to work over the long term? 

Greg Gerritt Founder Prosperity Project Providence RI

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