A transdisciplinary exploration, by one of the founders of ecological economics, of how our economic beliefs have led to social and environmental disaster.Richard B. Norgaard shows how understanding the economic system is essential for understanding modern people’s relation to nature and to morality. Economies need to be guided by moral reason and scientific knowledge. Instead, economists look to the economy for guidance, and in so doing economists have abused the assumptions and logic of markets.From this position economists have since misguided the public through policy and legal recommendations concerning ecological and ethical issues. The abuse stems from the systemic complexities of social and natural systems that defy the atomistic and individualistic assumptions of market logic .This abuse has helped sustain the economy that has been driving modernity along a road to destructive climate chaos and the sixth extinction along with ever greater income inequality.Drawing on decades of experience, Norgaard documents the illogic of economic analyses of resource scarcity, climate economics, thinking of nature as capital providing ecosystem services, and the divisibility of nature into private property. Ultimately the book argues for planned equitable, technologically selective degrowth, based on intercultural learning, to limit our degradation of the environment.
Richard B. Norgaard is Professor Emeritus of Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley. He is among the founders of Ecological Economics and a transdisciplinary scholar working at the science-policy interface.
ForewordPrologue: Life is Sacred IntroductionChapter 1 Economics as ReligionChapter 2 Modern Economic BeliefsChapter 3 The Nature of Economics—Through the Eyes of Ronald H. CoaseChapter 4 Equity: A Chosen IgnoranceChapter 5 A Delusionally Conceived CornucopiaChapter 6 Dead Wrong Policy AnalysisChapter 7 The Elusive Environmental Kuznets CurveChapter 8 Commoditizing the Complex Evolving Natural OrderChapter 9 Globalizing Structural Sin: Not Even Good EconomicsChapter 10 Three Economic Models of Climate ChangeChapter 11 Optimizing Nature’s End Chapter 12 Americanizing American Indians: A Sordid Tale of Property and ModernityChapter 13 Collective Cognizance: A Brief HistoryChapter 14 A Pluriverse of Learning Cultures with People Living in RelationalityChapter 15 Tenets for Collective Cognizance in Tumultuous TimesConcluding Hopes References
'Among the best critics of today's reigning economics and the mindset it supports, one sometimes finds economists. And one of the most profound and historically acute of them is Richard Norgaard. His new book leads not to the shoring up of a flawed economics but to something radically different. Highly recommended.'