Joewp, I've searched for the book in our public library. It is not available.
In the meantime, I also urge you to read the following two books on green economics.
Factor Four: Doubling wealth, halving resource use. Ernest Weizsacker, Amory and Hunter Lovins.
Natural Capitalism: Paul Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins.
In addition:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')cological economics presents a more pluralistic approach to the study of environmental problems and policy solutions, characterized by systems perspectives, adequate physical and biological contexts, and a focus on long-term environmental sustainability. Ecological economics can be regarded as a version of environmental science with much emphasis on social, political, economic and behavioral issues. Ecological economic science establishes the interdependence between economics and ecosystems.
Various competing schools of thought exist in the field. Some are close to resource and environmental economics while others are far more heterodox in outlook. An example of the later is the European Society for Ecological Economics. An example of the former is the Swedish Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics.
PeakOil is You
"Overshoot: ..." W.R. Catton, Jr.
Re: "Overshoot: ..." W.R. Catton, Jr.
by Graeme » Fri 22 Feb 2008, 21:36:43
wikipedia
And more recently:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')It's crazy, insanity," said Costanza, who is director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. "Insanity means doing the same things and expecting a different result."
It would seem not the best of times to be pushing the cause of ecological economics, of which Costanza is a prime mover.
He and his eco-economist cohorts preach against the classic doctrine of the dismal science. It disputes the long-standing assumption that the measure of a nation's economic health and well-being of its society is a steadily growing gross national product. They argue that traditional economic accounting doesn't factor in the cost of resource depletion and environmental damage involved in sustaining a perpetually burgeoning GNP.
In other words, the production of ever more "goods" is actually not a good thing. At worst, it's said, it could ultimately lead to the end of the world as we know it.
canada
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. H. G. Wells.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
Fatih Birol's motto: leave oil before it leaves us.
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Graeme - Fusion
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by Jenab6 » Fri 28 Mar 2008, 23:35:13
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'T')his is an excellent book, if a bit dry and academic...
That's true, but the dry, academic tone makes the significance all the more salacious, if you can get used to the phrasing. There are many passages where the nihilist doomer can become inspired to cheer and say "Yesss! Die people! Diiiie!" One thing, though. Perhaps Catton has conditioning of his own that he does not see, which forces his judgment into obsolete modes of conventional thinking at least on certain ideas. For an example, see page 9.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('William Catton', '.')..Ironically, the less optimistic the assumptions we let ourselves make about the human prospect, the greater our chances of minimizing future hardships for our species. To keep from dehumanizing ourselves (and even gravitating toward genocide), we must stop demanding perpetual progress.
I agree in part: we must stop demanding perpetual progress which comes at the expense of species that our race needs to keep us in good order--supplied in perpetuity with necessary resources, limited as necessary so we don't overtax the ecosystem again--and species which those species need to keep them likewise in good order, and so on until the whole ecology is sustainable with solar energy and the materials upon the surface of the Earth.
But not all living things can be found in that web. Some of them merely compete with our race for the same resources that we use ourselves. We don't need them; they don't need us. Genocide is not a bad thing, from my point of view, if it befalls such a rival, though it would be terrible indeed were it to happen to my race. When Cro-Magnon killed off the last Neanderthal, he gained territory for his own use and did not subtract from the ecosystem any form of life that he depended on, directly or indirectly. Likewise, when Homo erectus destroyed Australopithecus robustus, our ancestral species gained much and lost nothing. As it was then, so is it now. I don't think I need to make it plainer.
Catton's writing is superb, so long as he writes about ecology and overshoot. He rightly points out that there is a kind of political correctness that requires the denial of our resource predicament. But Catton becomes politically correct in another way, and his book suffers for it, when he pulls out this "all humans are brothers" rubbish and preaches it from the pages of his otherwise excellent book. Phooey. William Stanton has the right of things in this area where Catton falters.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('William Stanton', 'P')robably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world's unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless. Survival in a Darwinian resource-poor world depends on the ruthless elimination of rivals, not the acquisition of moral kudos by cherishing them when they are weak.
It is a persistent feature of political correctness that the one afflicted by it pictures himself as being somehow "above it all," looking down at the struggles of others as though he were a benevolent god of impartial judgment. But that's never really true. The afflicted is himself a part of the struggle, not its referee. The divine point of view is improper for such as he. His proper task is to play nature's game as he believes will best advance the molecular information that led to his birth, not to comment on the wisdom of (or suggest changes to) the game's rules. If it is all the same to him whether his race or another inherits the Earth, it does not mean that he has a loftier mind than most men do; rather, it means that there is something wrong in the mind he has. Normal organisms act to perpetuate their genes, whether they exist in themselves, in their families, or in their race. Social conditioning that disrupts that pattern of behavior is not an improvement from the evolutionary point of view; it is a flaw that nature will get rid of in the natural course of events.
Edit: I thought that I would add text from a review of Catton's book that I posted elsewhere.
I've some problems with Catton. Not his assessment of the primary problem - he's OK there, though his presentation is just a shade too dry. It's where he starts on his "we're all in this together" preaching, especially where you can read "racism is bad, race is unimportant" between the lines. Racial harmony did not really exist even during the high point of the exuberant period. There never was interracial brotherhood, but only sort of a tense truce which: was subsidized with energy drawdown, was falsely termed brotherhood, and was loudly cheered with liberal slogans.
If you build a machine while being legally required to assume that pi equals three, then it will not work right. The circumferences of circular parts will not be complete: a wedge or a few gear teeth, will be missing from each. Belts won't fit on their tracks. Etcetera. For each instance in which the falseness of pi=3 is important, you'd have to construct a mechanical apology. And then some of the apologies would need apologies for similar reasons. And so on.
The sort of revision in thought, the kind of progress, that Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and Galileo made in the astronomical understanding of how the planets move, the multiculturalists accomplished in reverse for civilization. What they did by mixing the races and imagining that transracial competition, with its strife and emotion, would somehow disappear is similar to moving from a post-Copernican understanding of planetary motions back to a fallacious and cumbersome Ptolemaic astronomy -- with its "epicycles" which had their own epicycles, which in turn had epicycles, and so on.
All the problems we've had with racial strife in the past will seem to be nothing in comparison with what will happen in the not too distant future when racial minorities can no longer be "bought off" with goods and services, obtained through taxation applied to other people's earnings from trade or labor.
What is Progress? It's making improvements in reliable functioning, creating that which works better than its predecessors did. Progress is what occurs when a race carves out for itself a territory, fills it, and effectively wards it against intrusion from outsiders. Our bodies do the same thing with respect to bacteria.
The scientific check on theory is experiment. The same check applies to social ideology. If it doesn't really work, then it doesn't matter how ennobling it seems on paper. Multiculturalism should have been reversed in Abraham Lincoln's time, when it was already quite well known that two races don't live well in under one government. Nations should have remained racially unmixed, and those that were mixed already should have been de-mixed. Anyone who didn't like it should have been regarded with the suspicion that they might be putting personal or partisan interests before the welfare of their nation; in a word, traitors.
Too difficult? Racial mixing "impossible" to reverse? Hardly. And in view of the consequences of having applied no remedy, the effort would have been worthwhile. You hear the same excuses made in relation to powerdown: too difficult, not possible, etc. Nature will soon show us the meanings of difficulty and possibility.
How on Earth did we succumb to such obviously counterintuitive liberal blandishments, so that we let our progress be undone by letting so many outsiders come hither? Slavery is one reason. But the failure to correct that intrusion as Lincoln attempted to do was only the first of a long series of blunders. The whole "melting pot" idea was an error every bit as colossal as was our coming to rely on drawdown in fossil fuels. Our countries have been very poorly led this past hundred years.
The devil approaching us has not one horn, but two. The horn on the right is overshoot. The horn on the left is race-mixing.
Jerry Abbott
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Jenab6 - Tar Sands
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