The promise of ecological economics

Excerpt

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, social philosophers and economists explored the ultimate constraints to economic growth and the production of material goods. Their conclusions were not positive for society. Humankind, they said, was condemned to live at a subsistence level because land was limited and the human propensity to procreate was not.

Periodically, the issue of ultimate constraints is raised, argued, then put aside again. This occurs about every three decades, although the cycle appears to have shortened lately.

The emergence of ecological economics as a field of scientific inquiry has its roots in these intellectual debates, particularly the last round in the 1960s on “limits to growth.” In this latter round, neoclassical economists provided largely rhetorical answers but an unsatisfactory paradigm as to how the limits to growth would influence the economy in the future.

Most macroeconomic models do not recognize the existence of a natural environment or an anthropogenically organized set of productive ecosystems. Few consider the availability of exhaustible resources, and none of the models embodied in textbooks or used by Washington, D …