The "Quantuum Economy": Beyond the Green Party's "Sustainable Development" Agenda

Protagonists for environmental protection among Green Party of Canada leadership have pinned their hopes on the achievement of "sustainable development". Indeed, "sustainable development" does support sensitization to balancing "economic development" with conservation. There have been apparent success stories regarding "sustainable development" at local levels. Kitchener-Waterloo in the Province of Ontario, Canada, is one such community, which has been critically acclaimed for its sustainable development related initiatives. Some Scandinavian countries also embrace sustainable development at a sectoral-level, in respect of their forestry industry. However, sustainable development remains a somewhat elusive goal on regional, national, and trans-national fronts. It is therefore pertinent to consider why is this the case?

The key problem is that "sustainable development" thinking has evolved within, and has also subscribed to a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index of economic development. GDP is an index which substantively ignores the social and environmental costs of "economic development". The system of economic thought associated with GDP, does not care about the quality of prescribed "growth". As a result, the efforts to achieve enhanced environmental protection will continue to be undermined, as long as nations, and trans-national entities, continue to be economically motivated by a system of GDP-related targets. Societies must therefore move beyond the current paradigm of a "sustainable development" within GDP-focused economic development measurements. Societies must correspondingly move toward a rejuvenated economic development index, which integrates the diminution of social and environmental costs, as integral to an "enlightened" conception of economic development.

The book entitled 'Quantuum Economics: Wage Slavery or the Quality-of-Life: Choices in "the New Economy"', ISBN: 1894839609, presents the context of such a needed rejuvenated economic development index. The presented rejuvenated economic development index is called the Quality-of-Living Index (QLI).

The 'Quantuum Economy' refers to the progressive evolutionary transformation of the current market-based economic regime, to a people-centred economic development context. The protection of biodiversity, the reduction of greenhouse emissions embraced by the Kyoto Agreement, and other environmental efforts, will continue to be frustrated as long as societies use impacts on GDP, as a vital barometer of economic success or failure. Policy-makers continue to rely on a model of economic development that is based upon a nineteenth century paradigm of "unlimited and financially-indicated commercial growth", which ignores environmental and social costs.

Quantuum Economics presents an alternative economic development approach for Canada to "free trade"; and "Economic Globalization" in general. Free trade has been embraced as 'economic doctrine' by government in Canada, since the Brian Mulroney Progressive Conservative government championed so-called "free trade" in the mid-1980's.

Recommended Readings:

The Kyoto Protocol Is Not Enough!, Part I, 1894839978, 2005, and The Kyoto Protocol Is Not Enough!, Part II, 1894934342.