[Ngo-sanrm] More on "growth"

Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Working Group ngo-sanrm at ngocentre.org.vn
Sun Nov 3 22:32:42 ICT 2013


This is slightly at the margins of the interests and mission of the
Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resources Management Working Group, but
since I circulated Dr. Vandana Shiva's article earlier and a number of
people sent me positive comments, I'm passing along this essay by James
Gustave Speth entitled *"*5 Reasons Why Prioritizing Growth Is Bad Policy."

Speth quotes from a book by historian J. R. McNeill entitled *Something New
Under the Sun* in which McNeill writes that the "growth fetish" solidified
its hold on imaginations and institutions in the twentieth century:

"Communism aspired to become the universal creed of the twentieth century,
but a more flexible and seductive religion succeeded where communism
failed: the quest for economic growth. Capitalists, nationalists -- indeed
almost everyone, communists included -- worshiped at this same altar
because economic growth disguised a multitude of sins. ... Social, moral,
and ecological ills were sustained in the interest of economic growth;
indeed, adherents to the faith proposed that only more growth could resolve
such ills. Economic growth became the indispensable ideology of the state
nearly everywhere."

In his essay, Speth suggests some alternatives.

CHUCK








*============================CHUCK SEARCY71 Tran Quoc Toan, Hanoi,
VietnamMobile:      +84 (0) 903 420 769Email:         chuckusvn at gmail.com
<chuckusvn at gmail.com>Skype:        chucksearcy============================*
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