Time for a Gross National Product for the Environment?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 11.23.07
Image courtesy of LoopZilla
The economy has the gross national product to track its health. Shouldn't the environment have its own system of analogous indicators? That, in essence, was the principal recommendation made by a review panel commissioned by several government agencies.
A pilot project aimed at establishing a national system of environmental indicators could start by creating a national indicator for water quantity, the panel suggested, to help better coordinate federal and state efforts in the drought-stricken regions of the South and Southwest. Eventually, the system could encompass dozens of indicators, looking at everything from air quality to urban land-use. The hope is that it would impose a certain measure of consistency between agencies and different levels of government.
Predictably, reaction to the report was mixed as some argued that national indicators - though helpful for top policymakers - could prove to be less than useful for local officials. "Water use is local," said Ted Heinz, a member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).
Indeed, while certain measures may ultimately be better tailored to local needs, there is a case to be made for any indicator that could help governments more effectively track their progress in reaching their environmental goals. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of such a system is that it would help insulate environmental monitoring from the vagaries (and excesses) of political leadership. Assuming it's a broad-based effort involving independent-minded scientists and policymakers from various agencies, it could prove to be a crucial tool.
Via ::Science Magazine: Panel Calls for Pilot Program for National Indicators (scientific journal, sub. required)
See also: ::Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index, ::Be Prepared: For Climate Protection Policy Making
This is a great idea, sure it may be difficult in the beginning to scale it properly but an environmental health indicator is needed to let the public know how good or more importantly how bad we are doing.
Makes the environment easy to ignore over the economy when you have a tangible scale for one and none for the other.
Perhaps the way to reconcile the local/national issue is to base (at least in part) the national indicator on numerous regional indicators. Inconsistencies between regional implementation might be a problem, but even having guidelines for establishing regional measurements would be helpful to regional groups
As our companies grow with more power capitalize and control our government the problem is if we all become independent on energy needs like with solar power the large companies wont be able to charge us for our energy needs thats were the problem is greedy companies that control the politicians and the government