Example of Student Work on Ecological Economics
"Oil Spills are Good for Us! Rethinking the GDP"
The
following skit was created by freshman students at Ann Arbor's
Pioneer High School in 1998 and was performed at a public
forum on sustainability hosted by Washtenaw County government.
The activity can be found in "Indicators and Economic
Measurement," a chapter in our high school curriculum
"Economics
for the Common Good." |
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The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is all smiles about environmental disasters such as oil spills. In a humorous skit, students demonstrated how negative activities such as clear cutting and crime count as positive economic growth in the eyes of the GDP simply because money is exchanged.
"But imagine if we subtracted the costs of environmental degradation and social decay from the Gross Domestic Product," the student wrote. "What would things look like then? Would we still seem to be making progress and headed in the right direction?"
Students then made the case that measuring progress towards sustainability requires new indicators that take into account the true social and environmental costs of activities. The Genuine Progress Indicator, developed by economists at the thinktank Redefining Progress, is one such indicator.
[view close up]
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The
graph compares the GDP with The Genuine Progress Indicator
and shows that when social and environmental factors are
figured in, the genuine progress of the country has been
dropping even as the GDP has been rising.
Some of the Concepts, Standards, and Skills Addressed by this Activity:
- comparing and analyzing data on
economic indicators
- developing criteria for fair policies
- evaluating impacts of economic activity
- posing questions and defending a
position on important policy issues
- using data to defend an argument
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