aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Dollars devastate diversity

Guest post by Jen.

Do billions botch biodiversity?

A letter in this week’s journal Science (written by the president of the Center for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy, and others) draws an explicit correlation between rising GDP and falling biodiversity (R = 0.99 in the U.S., for you statistics fans).  CASSE has already told us that

What has become, slowly but surely, a primary threat to our national security, the environment, and future generations? Economic growth,
our highest domestic priority! Yet our students and citizens are continually told that economic growth is the key to our national security and environmental protection...in defiance of ecological principles and basic physics!

Now CASSE’s data rich article reaches out to the world’s academic sector, reminding us that

a higher GDP cannot resurrect an extinct species.

Hungry Hyaena supports CASSE’s tenets.  Do you?  Interested folks can sign their position statement.