Posts


Population and the Steady State Economy

By Max Kummerow

Sir David Attenborough remarked in a 2011 presidential lecture to the Royal Society that “every environmental and social problem is made more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people.” Wherever women’s status has improved and societies modernized, he said, birth rates have fallen. He begged his audience to “talk about population.”


The Poison Beer of GDP

By Herman Daly

Disaggregating reported GDP growth to reveal the differences in growth by income class, as per the Schumer-Heinrich Bill, is a good idea. After all, telling us, say, that average income grew by 4% is not nearly as informative as telling us that the richest ten percent received the entire growth increment while the bottom ten percent suffered a decline in income.


Use and Abuse of the “Natural Capital” Concept

Herman Daly explains how we can use prices now as tools for rationing a fixed predetermined flow of resources, rather than determining the volume of resources taken from nature, or the physical scale of the economic subsystem.


The Populations Problem

Herman Daly offers an original take on the tired debate of “too many people vs. too much consumption” — a spot-on reframing of a critical issue.


Ecosystem Services: The Traveling Salesman and the Trophic Conundrum

Valuation of ecosystem services is an important, but insufficient, step toward achieving a sustainable economy.