In "A New Bottom Line for Progress", John Talberth discusses a variety of macroeconomic and microeconomic indicators of a sustainable economy. Today I will discuss macroeconomic indicators. Talbeth classifies macroeconomic indicators according to the economic development objectives they are meant to measure. The 5 sustainable development objectives, along with their indicators (in parenthesis), and desired directionality (in brackets), are:

• Genuine human progress (Genuine progress indicator [+], Happy planet index [+], Well-being index [+], Human development index [+])
• Renewable energy platform (Carbon footprint [-], Energy return on investment [+], Energy intensity [-])
• Social equity (Index of resentational equity [-], GINI coefficient [-], Legal rights index [+], Assess to improved water and sanitation [+])
• Protect and restore natural capital (Ecological footprint [-], Genuine savings [+], Environmental sustainability index [+])
• Economic localization (Local employment and income multiplier effect [+], Ogive index of economic diversity [-], Miles to market [-])

Currently, all of these economic indicators are taking a back seat to the almighty GDP indicator which has nothing to say about whether economic performance is sustainable or not. Each of these economic indicators has an academic literature associated with it and claims to better reflect important aspects of our economic health and performance than a single GDP score.

Note that when these indicators are moving in the wrong direction, where there is a gap between how the rest of the world is performing and how the U.S. is performing, there is an opportunity for a green entrepreneur to propose a project to help move that macroeconomic indicator in the correct direction. These sustainabiliy indicators have a role to play in discovering and justifying the need for various types of green projects.