“Dr. Victor brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and insight to the Greenbelt Council,” said Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rick Bartolucci, who announced Victor’s appointment Tuesday. “I look forward to working with Dr. Victor and Council as they provide advice on the ongoing implementation of the Greenbelt.”

A professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at 91��ɫ, Victor is an economist who has worked on environmental issues for 40 years as an academic, public servant and consultant. He was Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies from 1996 to 2001, following several years as an assistant deputy minister in Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment. Prior to that he worked in the private sector, where he undertook many policy-related economic studies in Canada and abroad.

“I look forward to working with the Council as we consider and make recommendations to the Minister,” said Victor. “We have come to understand economies as subsystems of the biosphere and realize that a healthy environment and a strong economy go hand in hand.”

Victor continues to provide public, private and non-governmental organizations with technical advice on air pollution and health, emissions trading, emerging issues and full cost accounting at national and corporate levels. He is author of .

By Janice Walls, media relations coordinator.

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To prove his point he created a computer model that duplicated the modern Canadian economy. He then adjusted it so that three crucial elements – consumption, productivity, and population – gradually stopped growing after 2010. He shortened the workweek to four days, imposed higher taxes on the rich, provided more public services for the poor and imposed a carbon tax to provide government revenue. His model showed that within a couple decades things had changed.

The outcomes of Victor’s model were lower unemployment, a rise in standards of living and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The economy reached a steady state after a couple decades.

The complete article is available on the .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Prof Peter Victor says growth shouldn't drive the economy, and has numbers to prove it appeared first on Research & Innovation.

“We need a new measure of success,” said Victor, who was the keynote speaker at Environment Hamilton’s annual general meeting earlier this month at the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board auditorium. “We have to knock the concept of economic growth off its pedestal. We are being sold a bill of goods that growth reduces poverty.”

He argues that as richer western nations pursue ever higher gross domestic product figures, they consume more land and energy, which only depletes the world’s resources, contributing to peak oil and climate change. If poorer nations, such as China, India and other so-called Third World countries follow the western nation economic model, the world’s finite resources will be consumed ever faster, just to meet the ideal western lifestyle. “Growth doesn’t solve the poverty problem,” he says.

Victor says western governments must change how they do business if the planet is to survive. He points out, for instance, that to help reduce poverty, western countries should look toward establishing full-employment measures, as some European countries have done. It means more people work, while receiving less in salary. “There would be less work, but more leisure,” he said.

Consumers should also start paying the correct price for products, he says. Victor advises that a carbon tax be added to goods so that prices “become more meaningful” in the marketplace. “(The goods) would become more durable (rather than continue what has become a throw-away culture). You would repair products. And there would be fewer status goods,” he said.

The complete article is available on the .

Victor was also quoted in the April 22:

91��ɫ economics Professor Peter Victor takes up the idea, writing Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster. He argues that growth isn’t achieving expected goals: eliminating or reducing poverty, protecting the environment and providing full employment.

But at the moment, the idea of changing our capitalist system is only talk and a far-off idea that no person or institution wants to think about. But the day will come when our blue planet will revolt and impose a harsher penalty to our profligate material needs than anything we as a society could impose on ourselves.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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