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2 - Orono Weekly Times Subscriptions $38.09 + $1.91 GST = $40.00 per year. No Refunds. Publishing 48 issues annually at the office of publication. "We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) toward our mailing costs." Wednesday, June 24, 2009 ORONO WEEKLY TIMES - 5310 Main St., P.O. Box 209, Orono, ON L0B 1M0 E-mail: oronotimes@rogers.com or Phone/Fax: 905-983-5301 Publisher/Editor Margaret Zwart Production and Display Advertising - Donna Anderson Wood Classified Advertising - Sue Weigand The Orono Weekly Times welcomes letters to the editor on subjects of interest to our readers. Opinions expressed to the editor and articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Orono Weekly times. Letters must be signed and contain the address and phone number of the writer. Any letter considered unsuitable will not be acknowledged or returned. We reserve the right to edit for length, libel and slander. If your retail or classified ad appears for the first time, please check carefully. Notice of an error must be given before the next issue goes to print. The Orono Weekly Times will not be responsible for the loss or damage of such items. In defence of Gross Domestic Product By David Seymour Senior Policy Analyst, Frontier Centre for Public Policy Measuring what makes life pleasant --a decent community or time off-- sounds like one of those things that's almost impossible to be against. After all, an index that could integrate "community vitality," "time use," and environmental indicators to produce a single, national measurement of quality of life sounds bold and promising as the creators of the new "Canadian Index of Wellbeing" no doubt believe it to be. However, as with many such attempts to measure "well being," this new index--the brainchild of the Canadian Institute of Wellbeing -- produces little better information than what it is supposed to replace, and introduces an elitist template for living a good life. In the gun sights of the Wellness Index is Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of the value of everything bought and sold in an economy. Advocates of the "Wellbeing" index argue GDP fails to capture things that really matter, and is overused as a measure of national success. By introducing the Index, their avowed aim is to refocus the political discourse in Canada--which is about where the difficulties begin. The new attempt at a non-GDP Index rests on at least one elementary economic fallacy: It contends that undesirable events like natural disasters, smoking, car crashes, and pollution inflate GDP. They do not. While flood clean-ups, heart by-passes, and towing cars from ditches might be activities whose value is counted as GDP, none of these inflate it. Any resources used for such remedial activities must be diverted from some other use that could otherwise have generated additional wealth. By the logic of the Index, crashing cars would be a get-rich scheme, but they forget to count the car that is lost to GDP in their haste to count the new one that crashes necessitate. The Index appears to be on more stable ground where it is possible to increase GDP while degrading the environment, but GDP does have a way of capturing environmental degradation too. It may be possible to profit while polluting, but to the extent that pollution is bad, it reduces the prices people will pay for goods and services that rely on a healthy environment, and this is reflected in GDP. Take overfishing or air pollution. Want to make short run profits by destroying the fisheries? You can, but you would go out of business as a fisherman, and future GDP would reflect that lost production. Air pollution diminishes the prices people will pay for services like tourism that rely on clean air, an effect which is also captured by GDP. The framework of GDP already motivates governments to introduce such things as fishing quotas and pollution ordinances to curb such harms. It's true that not everything worthwhile is measured directly by GDP--but that's a banal point and doesn't argue for attempting to quantify that which cannot be quantified; that actually pretends human happiness is subject to complete scientific verification. Besides, whatever else may be said of GDP per capita as a measure of national success, it has one very appealing feature in a free society: Every dollar counted towards GDP is the result of a voluntary transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller and it is measurable; GDP is agnostic about how anybody earns or spends their money. If you choose to sit at home, smoke and watch Survivor after working overtime at a confectionery marketing company, that's your choice and the dollar values of your activities are counted as GDP. According the Index, you would be a blight on Canadians' "shared destiny" if you participate in these activities No matter that you like your job, people choose to pay for your candy or that you choose to pay for reality TV, you produce the wrong stuff and you are unhealthy and isolated; you have dragged down the aforementioned national scores for health, time use, and community vitality. You should, according to the Wellness Index, be volunteering, making more friends, and marketing tofu or at least something healthier than confectionery. That's fine as a private opinion, but to the extent the Index succeeds in its goal of refocusing Canada's political discourse, it becomes a matter of national importance to be pursued with the full force of government. Because GDP is the sum of what individuals will pay for things in their communities, GDP is the most democratic reflection of well-being. The voluntary financial transactions that people engage in every day are all counted by GDP, and they reveal far more about peoples' nuanced preferences than any statistical exercise could ever anticipate. If anything, the new Index demonstrates the best alternatives to GDP as a measure of national success involve imposing an elitist template for good living on everyone else. Letters to the Editor Incineration NOT safe One-sided Effects" notes that "incineraRe: Half-page CUPE tors release hundreds of toxic advertisement regarding P .R. barrage chemicals into the atmosphere incineration published on June 17, 2009 Dear Editor: Incineration is not a safe option for waste disposal. There are a range of studies that indicate a clear association between exposure to air emissions from incinerators and adverse health impacts. CUPE Ontario understands that official reports often claim that emissions levels will be "acceptable" or "not significant" - this is not true. No one is sure what levels of exposure to many of the chemicals in question are safe. Given the extremely toxic nature of substances such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, particulates, PCBs, arsenic, cobalt, cadmium, lead and dioxins that incinerators will emit into the atmosphere, it is not possible to say that emission levels will be "safe." CUPE Ontario, along with its community partners, takes the position that any exposure constitutes risk. In this, we are following the Irish Doctors Environmental Association, whose position paper on "Incinerators and their Health when the waste is burned. Little is known about the risks of many of these toxic chemicals, particularly when they are combined. The exact composition of the emissions from incinerators is variable depending upon the waste being burnt, the efficiency of the incinerator and the pollution control measure available. As the chemical nature of our waste is changing, the potential for adverse health effects from incineration emissions are very difficult to assess." The advertisement that Mr. Allan Harris, who identifies himself as an informed citizen of Newcastle, refers to is based on information contained in a number of research studies. In particular, I draw your attention to "Incineration and Human Health: State of Knowledge of the Impacts of Waste Incinerators on Human Health" prepared by Drs. Allsopp, Costner and Johnston of the University of Essex, which notes, "A broad range of health effects have been associated with living near to incinerators as well as Dear Editor, Re: Fear mongering - Orono Weekly Times, June 10 Mr. Alan Harris of Newcastle complains of fear mongering by CUPE Ontario in their ads warning about the dangers of incineration, yet he freely trots out the fear of landfills. Actually, CUPE Ontario, allied with the CAW Durham Regional Environment Council and local community activists, are doing what they can to counterbalance the one-sided public relations barrage of myths and lack of detail about incineration that is propelling the project forward. If Durham Region had wanted a fair and inclusive environmental assessment study about the best way to handle our waste, there would have been information sessions across the region in the last two years. Considering the cost and long term effects, some would even suggest a referendum. Instead, the project was initially called "thermal treatBARRAGE see page 10 INCINERATION see page 3