澳洲An article about wealth and the environment

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which largely echoes my personal view on these topics. Enjoy.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40254.html

Wealth, Greed and Global Warming

by Susan Merrell



Living on the mean streets of 19th century London, the Charles Dickens character Oliver Twist wanted more - justifiably so - he lived in dire poverty. In the 21st century poverty prevails. There are still those who justifiably need more.

On the other hand, wanting more is hardly justified if you’re an executive of one of Australia’s top 20 companies where your wage is $7.2 million and has increased 300 per cent since 1993.

You may accuse me of having little imagination - but what on earth do these people do with that much money? Are they happier than the average Joe?

Apparently not, according to Professor Robert Cummins who I had the pleasure to hear speak during the lunch break at an economic summit in Sydney last month.

The summit was a prestigious event over two days that began with a dinner at a five-star hotel in Sydney and had Treasurer Wayne Swan as the keynote speaker. The summit had only 100 invited guests, all movers and shakers in government, industry, academia and the public service - oh yes, and me.

The second day kicked off with the Hon. Eric Roozendaal MLC, Treasurer of NSW, giving the welcome address. The sessions were conducted in the Legislative Assembly Chamber of NSW Parliament House so he was right at home. The audience listened with varying degrees of scepticism to the rosy picture of the state that he presented.

The morning’s speakers, each one more impressively credentialed than the last, spoke firstly on research, development and innovation and secondly on ‘How do we get more bang for our buck’. Each had economic growth directly in their sights, rarely questioning the correctness of that position.

Just one question kept going round in my head: ‘Why’? And it kept recurring after every speaker - I was like the two-year-old who had just realised how to use the word often to really annoy her mother.

But why was it accepted that making as much money as possible was always positive. What did they intend to do with it?

A discussion on entrepreneurs moved one delegate to note: “They’re useful people. After all, the motivation of entrepreneurs is to make money.”

What rarefied, greedy world do these people live in?

The entrepreneur I know best lives on the breadline. From that position he has created an e-library that has cost him a lot of time and a large percentage of his own limited cash resources (which, admittedly is not much in his case). His motivation: to create a resource for struggling composers such as himself. He never expects to make a cent out of it.

These are like parallel universes.

Another comment from the floor took up the cause of how atrociously we paid our scientists/mathematicians who could earn elsewhere, 10 times more than the $120,000 they’re paid here. Apparently, their plight was so dire that many of them lived way out in the western suburbs (I won’t mention the suburb in order not to create offence) and have to send their children to public schools.

But $120,000 is almost double the average Australian wage, so I was finding it hard to sympathise with their plight, it was hardly of Dickensian proportions. Besides, I know some very talented musicians (and journalists for that matter) who would think they were rolling in clover if they earned that much.

Coincidentally, $120,000 per annum is the magical figure where our happiness or well-being peaks and then plateaus no matter how much money we make thereafter according to Professor Cummins. But happiness or well-being (other than financial) was not something that the other speakers that morning had thought to factor into their equations.

Professor Cummins’ message went on to become even more unpalatable for those for whom wealth creation and economic growth, for any or no reason whatsoever, was a priority. For while every extra dollar we earn adds nothing to our well-being it adds considerably to our carbon footprint. With the effects of pollution on global warming, that’s a powerful reason in itself not to create too much wealth.

The correlation between wealth and pollution is backed by the findings of a study carried out by Mosman Council in 2005. (Mosman is an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Sydney). In that year, Mosman was found to have one of the biggest carbon footprints in the world - twice the Australian average. It also has the highest average wage in Australia.

Money is only a tool to help us live our lives in a way that makes us happy and fulfilled. That’s its only function. In itself it has no value. What use is a bag of money except to exchange for something useful? And even that function has limited application. I know it’s not going to be able to provide me with most of the things that make me happy - that make most people happy - love, friendship, family. We need to challenge the paradigm that economic growth is always desirable.

评论
To be honest, I don't entirely agree with this article but I don't want to debate it.
It may be true that money doesn't buy you happiness, and without money we'd all be rich, in spirit.
But this is just not how the world works.

[ 本帖最后由 floraz 于 2010-10-23 22:53 编辑 ]

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Well-being/happiness may be more important, but they are too subjective. Money, on the other hand, can be represented by a figure and most people in the world knows that it's better to have a larger figure. Maybe that's the reason why all these people talk about economic growth as the main goal, even though they may not sincerely believe in what they are talking about.

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change how things work then, one bit a time.

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I agree with icebreaker on this point that:
Happiness is an abstract concept which is difficult to quantify and qualify.
Money, on the other hand, is relatively tangible thus attainable, though "enough" is always a goal lingers "slightly" beyond reach.
I think there is nothing wrong talking about money, the key question however is "What did they intend to do with it?"

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The article by Susan Merrell is more about questioning the obsession with material growth.
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