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(1) Bruno Ingrao and Georgio Israel, The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science, tr. Ian MacGilvray (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990).
(2) Philip Mirowski, Against Mechanism: Protecting Economics From Science (Lanham, Md.: Rowan and Littlefield, 1988); Mirowski, More Heat Than Light (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Robert L. Nadeau, The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Has Failed the Environment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Nadeau, The Environmental Endgame: Mainstream Economics, Ecological Disaster, and Human Survival (Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2006).
(3) Robert Nadeau, The Environmental Endgame; pages 81–145.
(4) Nick Hanley, Jason E. Schrogren, and Ben White, Environmental Economics in Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); page 358.
(5) W. Michael Hanneman, "Valuing the Environment through Contingent Value," Journal of Economic Perspectives 8 (Fall 1994); page 19.
(6) Mark Sagoff, "Some Problems with Environmental Economics," Environmental Ethics 10 (Spring 1988); page 55.
(7) Robert C. Mitchell and Richard T. Carson, "Valuing Drinking Water Risk Reduction Using Contingent Evaluation Methods," paper prepared for Resources for the Future, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986).
(8 ) George Tolley et al., "Establishing and Valuing the Effects of Improved Visibility in the Eastern United States," paper presented for Environmental Protection Agency (Washington. D.C., 1986).
(9) James Bowker and John R. Stoll, "Use of Dichotomous Choice Nonmarket Methods to Value the Whooping Crane Resource," American Journal of Agricultural Economy 23, No. 5 (1987); pages 943–950.
(10) Kevin J. Boyle and Richard C. Bishop, "Valuing Wildlife in Benefit-Cost Analyses: A Case Study for Endangered Species," Water Resources Research 23, No. 5 (1987); pages 943–950.
(11) James Gustave Speth, Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis in the Global Environment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); pages 77–98.
(12) Gareth Porter, Janet Welsh Brown, and Pamela S. Chasek, Global Environmental Politics, 3rd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000).
(13) R. Sugden, "Rational Choice: A Survey of Contributions from Economics and Philosophy," Economic Journal 101 (1991); page 783.
(14) "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," www.sternreview.org.uk
(15) www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?MenuId=MTY5&ClickMenu=LeftMenu&doOpen=1&type=DocDet&ObjectId=MTgyNDE
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18 Comments
Add CommentLet me see; we will call this new entity Environmental Theocracy (God, for short). And we will all submit to God for the greater good!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn response to srchuck, obviously there are some who don't plan to submit to such an EnvironGod, but to serve as his high priests. Prof. Nadeau might be one such individual, while the rest of us, in our hundreds of millions, can safely plan to give up on our hopes and dreams of a better life. But, hey, it's for the greater good, so it's got to be worth it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe comments 2,3 - but isn't free market capitalism also supposed to be for the greater good? Are you rejecting that as well? (Yes, this is more of a pun than an argument; I don't have time to argue just now.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe true explanation is far simpler than those offered by any current economic or environmental theory. The graph of the human population precisely follows that of an animal in plague mode. According to the current decline in our rate of growth, our population will peak between 2025 and 2035 and then collapse at a rate that mirrors our growth rate. This pattern is underwritten by the nature of genetic material, the chemistry of the biosphere, and the laws of thermodynamics. Culture and environment are just two sides of the same thermodynamic coin. We are but one of 20100 million extant species and do not differ from the others in any fundamental respect. In other words, our anthropocentric assumption that we are special hinges on a bet that has odds of at least 20-million-to-one stacked against it. Such astronomical odds might seduce the odd deranged gambler, but no respectable scientist should fall for it. ( Hydrogen: Humanitys Maker and Breaker & www.regmorrison.id.au)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobert:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm very surprised this article doesn't mention
Charles Hall, Vaclav Smil, or Robert Ayres+Benjamin Warr, since they have been offering compelling theories for years.
I just established a Yahoo Group to discuss the issues raised by Professor Nadeau's splendid piece! http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/econEnvironment
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's discuss it!
Thanks for this shocking expose'. I had no idea that mainstream economics was such intellectual garbage. It is appalling that mainstream economics is still taught in colleges and universities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor Nadeau has delivered a very precise inditement accompanied by a forgiving invitation to work for the most noble of reasons; the huge cooperative effort required to save all life from certain impending catastrophe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo where do we start? Promote gargantuan energy schemes like cap and trade? Develop huge imaginary power plants that sequester their exhaust? Work on international agreements that will constrain nations and corporations designed to grow faster and faster forever on a finite planet?
No. Instead look for a basic somewhere that has worked, is working and suggests a direction for improvement. Notice that the price of energy and food is not rising so much as the value of the dollar is falling. Compare european agreements for budgetary restraint with the value of the euro and the dollar. Realize that economists who defend deficit spending are defending the art of borrowing from children and thus helping undermine halting steps toward harnessing the intellectual feedback loop we call democracy.
Budgetary balance is one small step toward proper alignment of intelligence with the other natural forces springing from the big bang. Big solutions are diversions from the small steps that lead toward justice for life trampled in the rush to grow faster and faster forever on a finite planet.
And then? Use the current accounting system with money units based on calories.
And? It is too hazy out there for one person to see clearly, my guess is that bright young minds will eventually find a way to incorporate disruptions caused by pollution into an accounting system which will be a free market used by responsible citizens who automatically clean up after themselves in order to avoid cost accounting which includes environmental and social costs of doing business.
Splendid, does it help when power goes down?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShip clearly sinking, out of control, scarcity or peaking of everything and leaders bombing. How to protect your family from canibals, that will be the challenge next decade after our succesfull collective suicide by consumption.
One big civil world war is what it is. Wake up and seek shelter in nature which will teach us live prof lives.
Good luck. JCWhitefang
It is a shame that this article has been published by Scientific American. Professor Nadeau is not an economist, not a mathematician, nor even a economics historian. Publishing this article gives a very bad image of Scientific American. Only some one without the slightest knowledge of basic mathematics might think that it is possible to substitute variables in some equation and hope to get any meaningful relation out of it!! How was this article ever published?? Some of the best minds of the 20th century (including many brilliant mathematicians) have worked in economic science. Does anyone seriously believe that they are all so, so, so stupid?? that they have just spent decades substituting variables without thinking?? This is a shame for Scientific American!!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor Nadeau's analysis is much needed, particularly for a new generation of economics students and economic thinkers who have a chance to get it right this time. It is a shame there are readers who think it is a shame for Sci Am to publish such an enlightening piece. Professor Nadeau's article is EXACTLY what I expect from a quality publication like Scientific American, and one of the reasons I read this magazine. I don't know what people who criticize Dr. Nadeau's points are afraid of -- who doesn't want full cost accounting? Who doesn't want to have all the cards on the table when making decisions? Only people who have something to hide or are afraid to face reality would want to continue burying externalities or using flawed models. We need articles like this to improve the art and science of economics. Thanks for putting things in perspective, Dr. Nadeau!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this--
Edited by innoventor at 05/29/2008 3:35 AM
Maria Edgeworth was a novelist, and the aunt of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, who was an economist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not an "article of faith" that the market delivers the social optimum. It is a theorem -- the First Welfare Theorem, in fact. It is therefore well understood under which conditions this is true or not, and generally acknowledged that these are strict assumptions.
Stern (2006) was not the first economist to look into the science of climate change. That was Nordhaus (1977). Nor was Stern (2006) the first economist who "cooked the books" for political ends. That was Hohmeyer (with Gaertner, 1992). Stern (2006) was merely the first climate economist who had the disposal of the impressive spin apparatus of the Blair-Brown government.
“The natural environment is not separate from economic processes”: so, what was first-an egg or a bird?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore on money-energy (with no excessive modesty) is being provided in “Time: the economics application” by M. Kerjman, Proceedings, IMACS World Congress, Berlin-97,
http://sab1.sscc.ru/Imacs_97/imacs_97/contents.htm p.745, vIII.
M. Kerjman
Uh, yeah--that's the point. These "great minds" were not stupid, they just had a pre-analytic vision of how the world operated--one that, with more knowledge, we now know is not true. There is, essentially, an entire discipline of stalwarts still claiming the earth is flat. And this has been common knowledge to the researchers who actually study these phenomenon for a long time; the real debates got started in 1971 with Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. The fact is, Scientific American is 40 years behind the curve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for offering us an article which assumes we have both minds and attention spans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrank W. Heatherington
Thank you for treating your readers as if we had minds and attention span.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: the comment of FBlasques above, I learned in school that the value of an equation is that it works for variables. If it does not, you are dealing in arithmetic.
Below are links to other related commentary and resources on this topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-- Philip Bogdonoff
Charles Hall et al., The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics
http://www.eroei.com/pdf/Need_to_reintegrate.pdf
Biophysical Economics
http://web.mac.com/biophysicalecon/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
Charlie Hall's web page at SUNY/ESF:
http://www.esf.edu/EFB/hall/
Kurt Cobb: Faith-based economics: Peak oil and the "Cornucopians"
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2004/11/faith-based-economics-peak-oil-and.html
Post-Autistic Economics Network
http://www.paecon.net/
And to understand how energy is the key input to any economy, esp. a "growth" economy, see:
Charles Hall et al., Chapter 5 - Peak Oil, EROI, Investments and the Economy in an Uncertain Future
http://web.mac.com/biophysicalecon/iWeb/Site/Downloads_files/20080905145802141_000.pdf
re 14 & 10, I'd say "shame on scientific Americans"! I thought the evil usurers had better control of our mass media than this. (Note none of the references above are even learned journals)
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