Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Selected Essays of Herman Daly

by Herman E. Daly

Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development comprises a carefully chosen selection of some 25 articles, speeches, congressional testimonies, reviews, and critiques from the last ten years of Herman Daly's ever-illuminating work. This book seeks to identify the blind spots and errors in standard growth economics, alongside the corrections that ecological economics offers to better guide us toward a sustainable economy - one with deeper biophysical and ethical roots. Under the general heading of sustainability and ecological economics, many specific topics are here brought into relation with each other. These limits to growth; full-world versus empty-world economics; uneconomic growth; definitions of sustainability; peak oil; steady-state economics; allocation versus distribution versus scale issues; non-enclosure of rival goods and enclosure of non-rival goods; production functions and the laws of thermodynamics; OPEC and Kyoto; involuntary resettlement and development; resource versus value-added taxation; globalization versus internationalization; immigration; climate change; and the philosophical presuppositions of policy, including the policies suggested in connection with the topics above. This fascinating work will appeal to scholars and academics of ecological, environmental, development, and environmental resource economics and studies.

Genres: Economics, Environment, Science, Ecology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Dr. Herman Edward Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy.

Before joining the World Bank, Daly was Alumni Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University. He was a co-founder and associate editor of the journal, Ecological Economics.

He is also a recipient of an Honorary Right Livelihood Award, the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Sophie Prize (Norway), the Leontief Prize from the Global Development and Environment Institute and was chosen as Man of the Year 2008 by Adbusters magazine.

He is widely credited with having originated the idea of uneconomic growth, though some credit this to Marilyn Waring who developed it more completely in her study of the UN System of National Accounts.

Reviews

[The Capital Institute · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of essays presented with what reviewers call a “crystal clear style”, Daly discusses the way economies relate to the environment as well as the problems in this relationship. The book covers climate change, peak oil, globalization versus internationalization, poverty reduction and scale leading to uneconomic growth. As a former member of the World Bank, Daly writes with an inside perspective on the economy and ecology debate. The book questions the logic of conventional thought and suggests new solutions to environmental problems.
Ecological Economics covers the fields of standard growth economics along with ecological economics, including topics such as limits to growth, full- versus empty-world economics, uneconomic growth, definitions of sustainability, climate change and the philosophical presuppositions of policy.