<nettime> Re: Pritchett/Summers

[Soenke Zehle <soenke.zehle {AT} web.de>]

I looked at this controversy again, and Lant Pritchett said that the 
memo had been 'doctored' by a WB staff member who excerpted what was 
meant to be an 'ironic' aside from a much more comprehensive memo on 
environmental policy...whatever, but do check out the sidebar 'Toxic 
Memo' in the article that celebrated Summer's return to Harvard.

Rosenberg, John S. "Worldly Professor: The University's high-energy, 
multitasking twenty-seventh president comes home to Harvard." Harvard 
Magazine 103.5 (May-June 2001). URL: 
http://www.harvard-magazine.com/archive/01mj/mj01_feat_summers_1.html

The logic of pricing and the mechanisms of valuation at the heart of 
environmental economics, enshrined in the Handbook on Standard National 
Accounts of the UN Statistical Division and pushed in Agenda 21, are 
absurd as they are...

I'm not against attempts at (environmental) valuation as such, since 
they were (as far as I know) introduced to push GDP as the master 
measure of the wealth of nations off its pedestal, with mixed results 
(now we have 'environmental satellite accounts'). If the 'Global North' 
indeed accumulated an ecological debt to the 'Global South', I think it 
makes a lot of sense to think of that in terms of $$$ and not just 
metaphorically, so you need to calculate material flows somehow. Btw, 
have you written on 'ecological economics' (Martinez-Alier et al)? Their 
idea - the economy not as synchronic system geared toward allocative 
optima (neoclassical econ.) but as entropic system of energy and 
material flows...sounds much better to me, actually.

Soenke

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood {AT} panix.com>
To: "nettime" <nettime-l {AT} bbs.thing.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 4:41 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> China Seizes Banned E-Waste


> Soenke Zehle wrote:
>
> >Remember the 1991 memo by Larry Summers, leaked to Greenpeace, on how =
> the .....

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