This press release came to me via email:
British Columbia Field Ornithologists take a position on the fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation
At their Annual General Meeting in Lillooet on 26 May 2007, the BC Field Ornithologists (BCFO) adopted a position on the fundamental conflict between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. The BCFO addresses the study and enjoyment of wild birds in British Columbia through research and conservation efforts to preserve birds and their habitats.
The timing of the vote was opportune as Birdlife International announced the previous week that 22% of the planet’s birds are now at increased risk of extinction. A total of 1,221 bird species are presently considered threatened with extinction and an additional 812 species are considered Near Threatened, an increase of 28 species from last year….
The British Columbia Field Ornithologists group is one of a growing number of conservation groups, ecological economics groups, and others which have adopted official positions stating that economic growth is fundamentally incompatible with environmental protection. They include the United States Society for Ecological Economics and the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section.
Brian Czech and the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) have played a key role in promoting this awareness and activism. On the CASSE site, you can see listed a number of other groups which have adopted positions based on or similar to the CASSE position.
More importantly, you can sign a petition endorsing the position yourself! I did, and I urge you to as well. We need a thorough reexamination of the economic growth imperative which has long remained unchallenged in our society as it has eroded our ecosystem. That a steady steady state economy is a superior alternative is just screamingly obvious.
Thanks again to Bob Fireovid for passing this along.
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Image source: A.Currell, posted on flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license
Growth is Madness! 
One business group (Grant Thornton LLP) wrote a report that, in their words, “highlights the incompatibility between continued rapid growth in the global economy and the sustainability of the environment….” See http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2007/06/manche-mgens-hei.html for a link to that report and to a Deutsche Bank Report on the same subject.
Heh, Bill, we seem to be on a very similar track in some of our recent posts. 🙂
That we do. 🙂 I just posted a link to a 1995 Jay Forrester paper that I think is worth reading, too. See http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/2007/06/counterintuitive-behavior-of-social.html .
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