ECONOMISTS LEAD THE CHANGE
These economists are the leading visionaries in the charge to take down
neoclassical economics. You’ll find they provide sturdy shoulders to stand on.
E.F. Schumacher
E.F. Schumacher liked it
when fellow economists dismissed his unorthodox ideas and called him a crank. He
took the barb as a compliment because “the crank is the part of the machine
which creates revolution and it is very small. I am a small revolutionary!”
Besides, Schumacher’s economic credentials were too impressive ... [more]
Kenneth Boulding
Kenneth Boulding gave the field
of economics a healthy dose of self-criticism. “Anyone who believes exponential
growth can go on forever in a finite world,” he argued “is either a madman or an
economist.” And while his fellow economists may not have appreciated the dig,
they couldn’t dismiss Boulding’s opinion ... [more]
Howard Odum
Chaos theory. the laws of
thermodynamics. few economists understand how these principles could possibly
impact their work, even though they trumpet their profession’s supposed
scientific rigor. For Howard Odum, however, these principles were central to
economics and life in general: “The classical struggle ... [more]
Herman Daly
Herman Daly has been ostracized from
the fraternity of economists because he doesn’t worship at the altar of
unlimited growth. He believes that one of the main problems with his estranged
colleagues is that “they think that the only way to solve environmental problems
is to get richer and don’t consider for a minute that growth ... [more]
Robert Costanza
Robert Costanza figures that if
the earth were a company, its balance sheet would look so lousy that “we would
definitely fire the CEO.” And Costanza would be among the most active
shareholders. He is a co-founder and past president of the International Society
for Ecological Economics, which currently boasts over 3,000 members ... [more]
Bill Rees
Bill Rees remembers the day he had his
first ecological epiphany. He was nine or ten years old, sitting down for lunch
on his grandmother’s country porch after toiling in her fields all day. Looking
down on his plate of young new carrots, little potatoes and fresh lettuce, he
“realized that there wasn’t a single thing on the plate ... [more]
Marilyn Waring
Marilyn Waring wishes her election
to new zealand’s parliament at 22 – making her the country’s youngest MP ever –
wasn’t such a remarkable feat. After all, “It’s supposed to be a house of
representatives, so it shouldn’t have been so quaint.” There was no questioning
Waring’s competence, however, once she rose to chair the Public Expenditures
Committee after a mere two years as MP...[more]
Paul Hawken
A spider can spin silk as strong as
kevlar, without using high temperatures or sulphuric acid. Trees use sunlight
and water to make cellulose, a sugar with greater bending strength than steel.
In his acclaimed book Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken (with co-authors Amory and
Hunter Lovins) proposes an industrial system ... [more]
Amory Lovins
To Amory Lovins, an energy efficient
vehicle isn’t just one that uses cleaner fuel in a traditional combustion
engine. It’s a machine in which every part is efficient, from lightweight carbon
fiber materials shaped to reduce drag, to a clean burning hydrogen fuel cell
engine...[more]
Lester Brown
When Lester Brown challenged China’s
right to advance its economy by emulating Western patterns of consumption, his
critics jumped. His 1994 book, Who Will Feed China? predicted that if Chinese
rates of consumption increase to US levels, neither China nor the rest of the
world will be able to support its food needs ... [more]
Clifford Cobb
In 1995, Clifford Cobb and two
colleagues from the california think tank Redefining Progress wrote an eloquent
critique of the Gross Domestic Product. The article, which appeared as a cover
story for the Atlantic Monthly, explained how this outmoded measure of economic
growth is itself crippling progress ... [more]
RISING STARS
David Batker
Six years ago, David Batker was
arrested for talking to reporters on behalf of Greenpeace in a protest against
factory trawlers in Seattle. Since then, the former World Bank economist has
rarely strayed from public view as a vocal critic of the WTO and IMF, a
community educator on pollution, deforestation and fisheries and as co-author of
an influential study on the perils of shrimp aquaculture. In 2003, Batker’s
peers awarded him the first ever Herman Daly Award for his work in ecological
economics.
Josh Farley
Josh
Farley is a renaissance economist. with degrees in economics, international
affairs and biology, the University of Vermont professor embodies the
transdisciplinary nature of the new economics paradigm. Recently he co-authored
the first comprehensive textbook on ecological economics with Herman Daly. Not
content to just teach in the classroom, Farley has traveled to Australia, Brazil
and the Philippines to work hands-on with community groups and governments in
community-driven projects. In his opinion, “ecological economics is too
important to focus primarily on academic studies that circulate among a group of
. . . peers before slowly diffusing out to the broader public.”
Mark Anielski
Mark Anielski started out as a
forest economist and has become a leading light in the field of natural capital
accounting. His work with the Pembina Institute and Redefining Progress has been
essential to the development of the Genuine Progress Indicator. In 2001 he
released a GPI scorecard for Alberta, Canada, making that province one of the
few jurisdictions with an accurate measure of progress. He has used the GPI to
help governments and businesses develop sustainability programs that account for
all forms of capital. As far as he’s concerned, “If Coca-Cola operated its
accounts the way we operate our System of National Accounts, they’d be
bankrupt.”
Peter May
Peter May’s
work bringing agroforestry to Brazil has taken on a new dimension as the
consequences of global warming become more urgent. Besides combating rainforest
degradation, his work combining native plant reforestation with small-scale
agriculture has created newly competitive real estate markets and local
industries around seed trade and forest management. But lately it’s the role
these born again forests play in reducing carbon emissions that has the
attention of policymakers looking for ways to implement Kyoto. As carbon credits
gain credibility, look for May’s agroforests to be cropping up everywhere.
Tom Green
The Great Bear
Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada, accounts for a quarter of the world’s
remaining unprotected coastal temperate rainforest. Three years ago,
conservation groups, logging companies and aboriginal groups reached a landmark
agreement to develop an ecosystem-based approach to using the land. At the time,
local ecological economist Tom Green co-authored an influential report on the
ecological impact of economic subsidies for the logging industry. Three years
later, with promises of protection slipping under political pressure, Green’s
economic analyses are at the forefront of the struggle to protect what’s left of
our natural resources.
Peter
Tyedmers
Peter Tyedmers uses the accounting tools of ecological
economics to measure the amount of energy commercial fisheries consume against
the nutritional energy we’re getting in return. Large scale, industrial
fisheries now account for the majority of fish caught globally. According to
Tyedmers, the fossil fuel energy used in most of these fisheries exceeds the
nutritional energy reaped by the catch by at least ten times. In related work,
Tyedmers is using natural accounting methods to measure the amount of greenhouse
gases emitted by commercial fisheries.
Mathis Wackernagel
As a doctoral student under
Bill Rees, Mathis Wackernagel helped develop Rees’s idea of the ecological
footprint into a tool that measures the natural resources we use compared to
what nature can provide. The resulting book, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing
Human Impact on Earth introduced the concept to the world. Now, with his Global
Footprint Network (www.ecofoot.net), Wackernagel is taking his tools for
sustainability to governments and urban planners, recently working with the city
of London’s business council to find ways to reduce that city’s
footprint.
Richard Howarth
Are
people concerned enough about the environment to change the way they consume?
Who really cares about future generations? Richard Howarth is a scientist who
compares our habits of consumption with our perceptions of well-being to see how
willing we are to sacrifice our lifestyles for future generations. In one study,
he models various carbon tax levels and the reduction in global warming each
would result in. Combining economics, human psychology and ethics, his work is
shaping the way policies like Kyoto will be implemented.
