Economics in a full world

Ecological Economics, 2020

Our environment and economy are at a crossroads. This paper attempts a cohesive narrative on how human evolved behavior, money, energy, economy and the environment fit together. Humans strive for the same emotional state of our successful ancestors. In a resource rich environment, we coordinate in groups, corporations and nations, to maximize financial surplus, tethered to energy, tethered to carbon. At global scales, the emergent result of this combination is a mindless, energy hungry, CO2 emitting Superorganism. Under this dynamic we are now behaviorally 'growth constrained' and will use any means possible to avoid facing this reality. The farther we kick the can, the larger the disconnect between our financial and physical reality becomes. The moment of this recalibration will be a watershed time for our culture, but could also be the birth of a new 'systems economics'. and resultant different ways of living. The next 30 years are the time to apply all we've learned during the past 30 years. We've arrived at a species level conversation. "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology."-E.O. Wilson "We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning."-Jean Baudrillard "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."-James Baldwin 1. Overview Despite decades of warnings, agreements, and activism, human energy consumption, emissions, and atmospheric CO2 concentrations all hit new records in 2018 (Quéré et al., 2018). If the global economy continues to grow at about 3.0% per year, we will consume as much energy and materials in the next ∼30 years as we did cumulatively in the past 10,000. Is such a scenario inevitable? Is such a scenario pos-sible? Simultaneously, we get daily reminders the global economy isn't working as it used to (Stokes, 2017) such as rising wealth and income inequality, heavy reliance on debt and government guarantees, populist political movements, increasing apathy, tension and violence, and ecological decay. To avoid facing the consequences of our biophysical reality, we're now obtaining growth in increasingly unsustainable ways. The developed world is using finance to enable the extraction of things we couldn't otherwise afford to extract to produce things we otherwise couldn't afford to consume. With this backdrop, what sort of future economic systems are now feasible? What choreography would allow them to come about? In the fullness of the Anthropocene, what does a hard look at the relationships between ecosystems and economic systems in the broadest sense suggest about our collective future? Ecological economics was ahead of its time in recognizing the fundamental importance of nature's services and the biophysical underpinnings of human economies. Can it now assemble a blueprint for a 'reconstruction' to guide a way forward? Before articulating prescriptions, we first need a comprehensive diagnosis of the patient. In 2019, we are beyond a piecemeal listing of what's wrong. A coherent description of the global economy requires a systems view: describing the parts, the processes, how the parts and processes interact, and what these interactions imply about future possibilities. This paper provides a brief overview of the relationships between human behavior, the economy and Earth's environment. It articulates how a social species self-organizing around surplus has metabolically morphed into a single, mindless, energy-hungry "Superorganism." Lastly, it provides an assessment of our constraints and opportunities, and suggests how a more sapient economic system might develop.

Rethinking economics, 2017

2001

Economics is the science of the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends. Market forces are efficient at allocating market goods: resources that are both excludable (one person can prevent another from using the resource) and rival (one person's use of a good or service precludes use of the same by another), and produce no negative externalities. However, the growth of the human system relative to the global ecosystem that sustains us is rapidly increasing the scarcity of ecosystem goods and services. Many of these services are non-excludable and/or non-rival, and hence not efficiently allocated by market mechanisms. Further, economic 'production' is actually the transformation of natural capital, and the process of transformation destroys or degrades the vital ecosystem services that natural capital otherwise provides-i.e. negative externalities are ubiquitous. Neo-classical economists tell us not to worry, that as a good becomes scarce, its price increases and entrepreneurs develop substitutes. Yet non-market ecosystem services have no price, are predominately non-excludable, and will not be produced by market forces. Other economists assure us that we can create markets in environmental goods, or else internalize externalities in the prices of market goods. The former assertion presumably assumes that because we can create markets in waste absorption capacity, which is rival and can be made excludable through proper institutions, we can do so for other environmental services. Such is not the case. The second assertion proposes a task at least as difficult as centralized planning of an entire economy. This paper will show how a proper analysis of ecosystem goods and services in the context of 'rivalness' and excludability can dramatically enhance the rigor of economic analysis and help us develop an economic system compatible with a full planet.

2017

The current paradigm of global economics with exponential and continuous economic growth is unsustainable as far as Earth system ecology is concerned. To support the Earth system and boost sustainable development, a functional and operational linkage between global ecology and economics should be established – which we term ‘carbonomics’. The simple basis of ‘carbonomics’ is that the more fossil and non-fossil carbon one has as stocks, and not flows, of carbon, the richer one is. This opinion piece makes some suggestions about how we might establish such a balanced relationship. Author Notes: John R Porter is an internationally known agricultural scientist with an expertise in agronomy, crop ecology and physiology, simulation modelling and food systems. From 2011 to 2014 he led the writing of the critically important chapter for the IPCC 5th Assessment in Working Group 2 on food production systems and food security. He has served or continues to serve on many national, regional and ...

2004

Even though there is no consensus about the extent to which the current situation constitutes the largest level of global economic integration during the last two centuries (Glyn, 2004; Massey, 1999), there are remarkable trends characterizing the so-called present economic globalisation process. Some of them are the following: • Enlarging complexity of global production and consumption chains (internationalisation of production), connecting economic agents and nodes located in very distant places, whose overall control is normally in the hands of transnational corporations. This constitutes a radical shift in relation to the traditional economic paradigm that conceived production essentially as an endogenous and national process. • Increasing market concentration due to mergers and fusions of large transnational corporations in several sectors (UNCTAD, 2000). • Increasing relative size of trade (in relation to GDP) and a general dismounting of trade barriers in almost all regions o...

2017

The remarkable economic achievements of the past two centuries have cast an illusion of omniscience on the discipline of Economics, which even repeated catastrophic policy failures have still not entirely banished. The gap and disjuncture between prevailing economic wisdom and its effective application to promote human welfare and well-being are enormous and widening rapidly. The gap between current economic performance and the economic potential of global society has never been greater. Both have been aggravated by the rapid evolution of economy and society in recent decades. An ideology masquerading as scientific theory, mainstream theory fails to provide the necessary insights to guide us through the next phase of global social evolution. This paper summarizes major conclusions from a series of meetings organized by the World Academy of Art & Science over the past half-decade. It examines important premises and principles of a transdisciplinary framework for ecologically-sustaina...

Ecological Economics, 1995

The self-organizing principles of markets that have emerged in human cultures over the past 10 000 years are inherently in conflict with the self-organizing principles of ecosystems that have evolved over the past 3.5 billion years. The rules governing the dynamics of ecosystems, within which all human activity takes place, are ultimately a function of biological laws, not a function of human-created economic systems. The conflict between these systems is illustrated by the fact that economic indicators have shown vigorous growth during the last century while a variety of environmental indicators have exhibited negative trends. Ultimately, however, the growth of human economies faces the constraints that limit all biological systems. In this article we outline the bases for the conflict between biological and economic activity and suggest policy approaches that will enhance the chances for creating cultures that are economically and environmentally sustainable.

The Economics of Nature and the Nature of Economics

Like any field of scientific inquiry, ecological economics has evolved along several different fronts. One important element is an understanding of the history of the field, which is characterized by interwoven strands from ecology, physics, the physiocratic and classical schools of economics, and other fields in the social and natural social sciences. Another important area is the relation of neoclassical economics to ecological economics. Part of the impetus behind the creation of the International Society for Ecological Economics was the growing recognition that, by itself, neoclassical economics could not fully explain the sources of depletion and degradation, nor could it provide a reliable compass for future development. A third broad strand of work is the empirical analysis of energy and material flows within and between economic and environmental systems. This work ranges widely, from the construction of sustainability indicators to land use models. This book covers some of the important recent developments in the theory, concepts and empirical applications of ecological economics and sustainable development. It contains contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field of ecological economics. The book is divided into two parts. Part I, The Nature of Economics, includes chapters on the contribution of classical economics to ecological economics, valuation in ecological economics, the role of communication in the discourse on sustainable development, and a classification system for theories and methods in ecological economics. Part II, The Economics of Nature, includes chapters on alternatives to the growth paradigm, case studies of sustainable development and critical reviews of the environmental Kuznets curve, green national accounting, indicators of natural resource scarcity, and alternatives to gross domestic product.

Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought Volume 1, Ed. Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2008). Pp.161-176., 2008