Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash
It was nice to have an article appear in WIRED World in 2023, their annual trends briefing. Bernice Lee, research director of futures at Chatham House, and I co-authored the piece. This was the jist "In 2023, as the world faces unprecedented climate breakdown and economic recession, the scramble for alternatives to GDP will begin in earnest."
Previously I had forecast that the 2020s would see an end to the financial Mother of All Bubbles and a period of high inflation/ stagflation, deglobalisation/geopolitical discord and societal breakdown. With all of these challenges and crises ahead (and no I don’t think its all over yet), I think that policymakers, especially in the advanced nations, will be forced into using metrics beyond GDP - if nothing else because they won't be able to deliver! But there are inspired bureaucrats, economists, activists and even politicians working on new ways to measure progress because they believe its in our best interest. This might not be immediately evident in the UK at the moment with the government clinging on to 'growth' but eventually I think the tectonic shifts will force their hands. GDP will either disappear or just be part of a dashboard of metrics across the advanced nations by 2032.
This will have a major impact on the future of humanity, because GDP growth has been such a major North Star for so long. Just listen to any G7 or G20 nation, they are obsessively talking about (GDP) growth. But it’s no longer functioning as a useful barometer for human progress, quite the opposite, it might be counter-productive now to what we really need to do. If we bury this defective compass in the graveyard of history, we can focus our attention and energies on more important things like happiness, health, community, and living on a clean, thriving planet. Lets grow these things not just just domestic production (which includes all sorts of anomalies like oil spills!).
Years ago, as a budding new venture capitalist, I asked a top climate scientist what should we do about the ecological crisis. I expected him to tell me about various technologies such as renewable energy, which I could then invest in. But without blinking he said “change the way we measure GDP”. This can probably be said of many dimensions to our current polycrisis. Changing our North Star will be one of the biggest keys catalysing the emergence of a new, technologically advanced but ecological civilisation.
“ON JUNE 3, 2022, as United Nations members gathered to celebrate the 50th World Environment Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was time to eschew using gross domestic product as a measure of economic strength, as it rewards pollution and waste. “Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GPD,” he said. “GDP is not the way to measure richness in the present situation of the world. Instead, we must shift to a circular and regenerative economy.”