Abstract
This chapter introduces an economics of a crowded planet as the study of a materially large economy coevolving with nature and as the engine of economic policy. It discusses whether resources for the economy are limited, a source of great misunderstanding between natural scientists and economists. It argues that, on a crowded planet, the primary purpose of economics is not the study of individual choice, as the introductory textbooks claim, but to understand how to align the economy with nature, using such institutions at our disposal as the market and government regulation. This chapter outlines the rest of the book and defines terms.
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Notes
- 1.
Diamond (1991).
- 2.
Scientists consider the ‘Anthropocene’ to begin following the end of the last ice age about ten thousand years ago (Kolbert 2014, pp. 107–110), even though it has only recently reached its full manifestation. At the time of writing, the term has yet to be officially adopted.
- 3.
Robbins (1932, p. 15).
- 4.
- 5.
Georgescu-Roegen (1971, pp. 318–319).
- 6.
Costanza (2010).
- 7.
Marglin (2008, p. 281).
- 8.
Hill and Myatt (2010, p. 6).
- 9.
Marglin (2008, p. 247).
- 10.
Marglin (2008, p. 167).
- 11.
An ontology is a statement about what exists.
- 12.
- 13.
See, for example, in Smith (1997). The term in fact term can be found as far back as Meadows et al.’s Limits to Growth in 1972. The computer model Donella Meadows and others developed to simulate interactions among natural and social factors was used to find “a model output that represents a world system that is … sustainable without sudden and uncontrollable collapse…” (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 164). That same year, Goldsmith et al.’s Blueprint for Survival argued that “the principal defect of the industrial way of life, with its ethos of expansion, is that it is not sustainable” (Goldsmith et al. 1972, p. 3).
- 14.
In fact, the ecological economists Robert Costanza and Bernard Patten did exactly this. “A sustainable system,” they wrote, “is one which survives or persists” (Costanza and Patten 1995, p. 193). Similarly, Costanza and Folke (1996, p. 19) defined ‘sustainability’ as being associated with longevity.
- 15.
Worster (1995, p. 424).
- 16.
Sachs (1995, p. 434).
- 17.
Worster (1995, p. 425).
- 18.
- 19.
Schmidheiny and Zorraquín (1996, p. 99).
- 20.
Sachs (1995, pp. 434–436).
- 21.
Worster (1995, p. 426).
- 22.
Naess (1995, p. 464).
- 23.
John Garn, pers. comm.
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Murison Smith, F. (2019). Introduction. In: Economics of a Crowded Planet. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0_1
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