WTF is GDP?

From theworldcounts.com:

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all goods and services produced in a country. The gross world product (GWP) is the combined gross national product of all countries in the world – world GDP.

So that’s everything from cars to haircuts to accounting services to aged care support to software.

A few quick numbers:

• GDP as of today is around $77 trillion USD per year.
• GDP is made up of roughly 30% industry, 6% agriculture, and 64% products and services.
• We use up around 1.75 “earths” worth of natural resources per year.

2 things:

One of the quickest and most achievable wins is to increase renewable energy from 18% globally to 100%, which is possible – according to the same site, the sun provides us with more than 7000 times the energy we need to power the world.

Businesses, both product-based and service-based, need to change things up. We can’t continue with the same extract, sell, use, dispose system we’ve been using. The planet literally can’t sustain it.

How do we start?

Power: Switch to a renewable energy provider – if you can’t capture energy on your roof, buy it from someone who can.

Business: What do you provide or produce. Is it valuable? Wasteful? Somewhere in between? What part can you play in reducing the reliance on 1.75 earths each year?

That last question is huge. Waste reduction, circular economies, safe working environments, and green tech might provide ideas for starting points.

If not, flick me a reply – every organisation has low-hanging fruit to get started with.