An Introduction to Ecological Economics

Rating:
Summary: An anticipated merge of economics with the environment
Review: Ecological economics is concerned with extending and integrating the study and management of "nature's household" (ecology) and "humankind's household" (economics). Resistance to this new perspective may come from academia as well as industry and governments. On page 10: "Today's market price to polluters for using atmospheric sink capacity for carbon dioxide disposal is zero, although the real opportunity cost may turn out to be astronomical. Economists are almost unanimous in persisting in externalizing the costs of CO2 emissions, even though by 1993 more than 180 nations had signed a treaty to internalize such costs." It would be difficult to praise this book too highly.

Rating:
Summary: too simplistic for the well-informed
Review: This book is quite literally an "introduction," in the sense of discussing the environment and the deficiencies of neoclassical economics as if the reader had not a clue that multinational corporations (and the powerful governments that aid them) are destroying the capacity of the biosphere to support life, including human life. The text is simple and easy to understand since the writing is at the level of that of the World Book Encyclopedia, with some of the same excessive optimism and a general failure to examine the effects of the law of compound interest and other increasing exponential functions in any mathematically useful way. The bibliography at the back of the book goes on for several pages, but cites dozens and dozens of titles by the same five people who group-authored this book. The citations in the text are usually to entire books, and not to specific passages (except in the case of periodical ariticles), making specific assertions difficult to verify. Obviously intended as a freshman or sophomore college text, it is overpriced and underuseful.

Far more helpful than this vacuous tome is the Worldwatch Institute series "State of the World," issued every year on selected topics edited by Lester R. Brown, with a variety of individually written well-footnoted articles, each on a specific aspect of development and its effects on the environment and people all over the earth. These volumes will remain useful for years to come, and you can get three of the latest books in the series for less than the cost of "An Introduction to Ecological Economics," which you won't want to keep after reading anyway.

Rating:
Summary: too simplistic for the well-informed
Review: This book is quite literally an "introduction," in the sense of discussing the environment and the deficiencies of neoclassical economics as if the reader had not a clue that multinational corporations (and the powerful governments that aid them) are destroying the capacity of the biosphere to support life, including human life. The text is simple and easy to understand since the writing is at the level of that of the World Book Encyclopedia, with some of the same excessive optimism and a general failure to examine the effects of the law of compound interest and other increasing exponential functions in any mathematically useful way. The bibliography at the back of the book goes on for several pages, but cites dozens and dozens of titles by the same five people who group-authored this book. The citations in the text are usually to entire books, and not to specific passages (except in the case of periodical ariticles), making specific assertions difficult to verify. Obviously intended as a freshman or sophomore college text, it is overpriced and underuseful.

Far more helpful than this vacuous tome is the Worldwatch Institute series "State of the World," issued every year on selected topics edited by Lester R. Brown, with a variety of individually written well-footnoted articles, each on a specific aspect of development and its effects on the environment and people all over the earth. These volumes will remain useful for years to come, and you can get three of the latest books in the series for less than the cost of "An Introduction to Ecological Economics," which you won't want to keep after reading anyway.