Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene by Michael Shellenberger; Ted Nordhaus

Author:Michael Shellenberger; Ted Nordhaus
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Breakthrough Institute
Published: 2011-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

THE RISE AND FALL OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

A Cautionary Tale

Mark Sagoff

In September of 1982, a group of scholars met in Stockholm intending to reform — even to revolutionize — the study of economics. The new ecological economists saw the economy as embedded in, and supported by, natural systems; nature was not simply a factor in, but the foundation of, economic activity. By integrating models from ecology and economics, ecological economists sought to provide scientific arguments for preserving the natural world.1

The Stockholm meeting came at a critical time. During the 1970s, prominent environmentalists, encouraged by what they saw as a public awakening to environmental concerns, issued best-selling books and reports that predicted that if population, consumption, and with them the global economy continued to grow, the world would soon run out of food and other resources. By the early 1980s, however, these predictions had been discredited. The public worried more about unemployment and recession. They feared that the regulations environmentalists proposed would derail the economy or slow it down. Environmentalists faced a populist backlash.

President Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980 promising to get the economy moving again. Reagan had campaigned against “environmental extremists” who he said favored “rabbits’ holes” and “birds’ nests” over jobs and economic growth.2He arrived in Washington determined to roll back environmental and other social regulations. He named anti-environmentalists to fill top spots at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the Forest Service. The president promptly issued an executive order that subjected every major regulation to an economic cost-benefit test.

The Reagan administration and other advocates of growth invoked mainstream economic science to justify pulling back regulations. Ecological economists responded by attacking mainstream economic science and contended that mainstream economists failed to properly acknowledge the value of the natural world and the services it provides.

The environmental movement quickly embraced ecological economics because it promised to reconcile ecology with economics in a new science that would be reliably on the side of environmental protection. The MacArthur Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and other large foundations invested heavily in ecological economics. Leading environmental figures such as Amory Lovins, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, and Al Gore, and popular writers like Thomas Friedman picked up its language and its concepts, as did the United Nations, European governments, and nongovernmental organizations.3

Ecological economics set out 30 years ago to be a redemptive science — to “right size” the human economy for its natural infrastructure.4 But today, ecological economics finds itself at a political and academic dead end. Trapped in the amber of its mathematical models and conceptual constructs, ecological economics presents an object lesson for those who would appeal to scientific theories, rather than to popular concerns, to provide an intellectual and political basis for an effective green politics.

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