May 14, 2006
Green accounting instead of Green GDP
Letter to the Editor of the Financial Times
Sir,
Patrick Hubert interprets your article on China scrapping its "green GDP index plan" (May 10) as a potential case of "breaking the thermometer in order to deny the evidence of rising fever" (May 12). I interpret it as a potentially misleading headline.
After quoting a Chinese government official as saying that green GDP is "virtually impossible to calculate", your article goes on to say that China will still pursue green accounting. In other words, China will create a second thermometer measuring the state of its environment -- a set of "environmental satellite accounts" in the green accounting lingo. That should have been done all along. It will provide much more information than one single index number.
Gernot Wagner
Repsol YPF-Kennedy School of Government Fellow in Energy Policy,
Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA 02138, US
Posted by Gernot Wagner on Sunday, May 14, 2006. 
