For the past three years, I have been leading an important project for the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), which led to the release on May 25th of our Discussion Paper and a 100-page technical report on global change and public health.
In these documents, we identify what we call the “ecological determinants of health”: clean air and water, food, materials, fuel, the great cycles of water,
Ecological Economics represents the extension into economics of the thermodynamic revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In physics, that revolution dethroned Newton and brought relativity. In biology, it was midwife to the birth of ecology, the study of ecosystems as wholes in which energy networks—food webs—are a defining structure. In chemistry the laws of thermodynamics brought clarity and rigor to a science that struggled to bring theoretical unity to diverse phenomena.
Ecological Economics and its corollary, steady-state economic thinking, represent a step forward for the discipline of economics and also a return to how it was practiced in the past. In the nineteenth century, economics was a part of a larger enterprise: political economy, the integrated treatment of morals and economics, ultimate ends and efficient means. Late in that century economics calved off from political economy, leaving behind political science and political philosophy as the residuum.
A renewable energy revolution is sweeping the planet. This revolution has profound implications because it signals that the global economy is moving to stop the growth of our human carbon footprint.
The global economy has run for a century primarily on fossil fuels but is now undergoing a rapid transition to a global economy based significantly on rooftop solar, wind, and efficiency. This is a tangible movement toward a steady state economy because with wind and solar,
Jimmy fox suggests three steps necessary to shrink our ecological footprint to fit within Earth’s biocapacity.
The next nonsensical strategy for maintaining the dream of endless GDP expansion? Negative interest rates!
Laissez-faire takes on a new meaning — it is the ecosystem, not the economy that must be “left alone” to manage itself and evolve by its own rules.
Alexandra Paul says it’s time to put aside politeness when it comes to opening a dialogue about overpopulation.
No corner of American culture, including the corners of football fields, is immune to the untenable philosophy of perpetual growth.
Brian Czech explains the nuts and bolts of technological progress and why it won’t solve the dilemma of growth.
