Can ecological economists stop the mainstreamers before it’s too late?

Mainstream economists are trying to kill us. They don’t think of it that way, but they should. The standard policies promoting endless economic growth of the conventional sort are destroying the ecosystem. Converging and interacting with other threats such as population growth, peak oil, and excessive per capita consumption, such policies and the economic growth they promote are hastening a looming global ecological collapse. And when influential economists push ecocidal policies when they could instead play a central role in protecting the ecosystem, how is that not homicide?

A ray of hope, though, comes from that transdisciplinary group of economists, ecologists, and others whose work falls under the heading, “ecological economics.” Those concerned with the environment today need to understand how this group compares to their mainstream counterparts. Herman Daly, one time economist for the World Bank and now one of the most influential ecological economists, has argued persuasively that the mainstream or neoclassical model sees the economy as “everything,” with the ecosystem being merely one element within it. Because this acknowledges no physical limits, it allows for the irrational notion of endless growth.

The ecological economics camp pushes for a fundamental revamp of economic theory to account for the limits of the ecosystem and the economy’s being a part of it, as dependent upon it as any other aspect of human culture. They want an acknowledgment that economic growth, as it’s typically understood, cannot continue indefinitely on a finite earth. They want it understood that such growth is unsustainable and destructive to our natural life support system.

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