Economics, or How we do things at home.

The television news personality reads what the prompter says: we must achieve a "balance between environmental concerns and the need for economic growth."

That's a statement created by the mantra-makers whose copyrights also include "God Bless America." Let me translate: "neither the life of this earth nor life on this earth is more important than making money." That's what it says. That's what we read and hear every day.

Suppose we answer: "Okay. You say the world can't have economic growth without environmental damage. We don't agree--but we will accept it, provided you accept as a corollary that the world can't survive continued and continuous economic growth."

Or what is called economic growth. Economics is a word we get from the ancient Greeks: oikonomikos. Oikos means home, and nomos means culture, so that oikonomikos means something like "how we do things at home."

At home, we all work together in order to survive. We share what we have; we are a commonwealth. That's good economics.

But if what is called "economic growth" means that we can't have a home, whether as a result of the current mortgage brokers' greed or because we have killed our planet, then we should reject the idea that our environment and economic growth are of equal value.

If our environmental health isn't more important that what is called economic gain, we will discover--soon enough--that we have chosen death over life. Economic growth is a lot like cancer--which is a disease that eats cells, and eats cells, and doesn't know how to stop. Cancer is greedy--and eventually it kills its host, and thereby kills itself.

I remember when, in the 1970s, the CEO at Chrysler Corportation said at a press conference, in response to a question about pollution, "Americans can't afford clean air." At least people scorned him, laughed at his stupidity. Now the people who talk about the need for a"balance between environmental concerns and the need for economic growth" are pundits.

Which reminds me: Wolff Blitzer keeps advertising his CNN "team" as the best journalists in the business. He also tells us that CNN offers "an American perspective on the U. S. Elections."
How do Europeans respond to this astounding news?

1. Is there anybody who doesn't understand that?

2. Which American perspective does CNN represent? It certainly isn't mine!

3. Everybody--in Europe, anyway--has long understood that CNN is a tool of the U.S. government and of U. S. industry.

Bert
14 March 2008