{"id":1754,"date":"2012-05-11T11:51:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T10:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=1754"},"modified":"2012-05-11T11:51:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T10:51:39","slug":"the-planet-its-people-and-the-royal-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/05\/11\/the-planet-its-people-and-the-royal-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The Planet, its People and the Royal Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Royal Society's recent report<\/a>, People and the Planet<\/em>, had not had the sort of reception its authors might have wished. \u00a0The Economist was unimpressed<\/a>, branding it a curate's egg:<\/p>\n

... it might have been nice, in adopting the first and second MDGs as the report\u2019s first and sixth policy recommendations, to mention that the goals have already been achieved. \u00a0The latest World Bank figures show that the MDG target of halving 1990 rates of absolute poverty was met in 2010<\/a>, five years early. Another set<\/a> of World Bank figures shows that the world is well on the way towards meeting its education goals and has already achieved the aim of gender equality in schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In general, the report is weak on the trade-offs (sic<\/em>)\u00a0between economic growth and pollution. \u00a0It is extremely desirable that the poorest people in the world should become less poor. \u00a0But it is practically unavoidable that as they do so, pollution will increase. \u00a0The question is by how much. \u00a0At the moment, the average African produces less than one tonne of CO2 equivalent each year; the average American produces more than ten times as much. \u00a0A report by Britain\u2019s finest scientific minds explaining how the poorest could rise towards American standards of living without also rising towards American standards of pollution would have been extremely valuable. \u00a0Alas, this is not that report.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others have been less generous. \u00a0Take Tim Worstall<\/a> who points to inconsistencies and contradictions in the report:<\/p>\n

The mismatch between the discussions of economic growth and resource consumption in the report is almost schizophrenic. \u00a0In the economics section, we've got\u00a0recognition that these issues go beyond the simplistic stuff that the environmentalists parrot. Yet when we come to the summary and the suggestions, we find that resource constraints are binding in a manner that the economics section says they're not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so on. \u00a0He's particularly interesting on the issue of a steady state economy and growth ...<\/p>\n

... a steady-state economy is not one in which growth stops: it is one in which resource use is limited but economic growth carries on indefinitely as we find new ways to add value to our limited resources.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then there's GDP, Herman Daly, IPCC modelling, ... .<\/p>\n

A useful report, then, that stimulates such debate. \u00a0Not quite what the RS had in mind though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Royal Society's recent report, People and the Planet, had not had the sort of reception its authors might have wished. \u00a0The Economist was unimpressed, branding it a curate's egg: ... it might have been nice, in adopting the first...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}