Ecology comes before economics
March 26th, 2009Ecological economists at the University of Vermont think the most obvious fact about ecological economics is this: ecology comes before economics.
Joshua Farley offers an example:
Without healthy ecosystems to regulate climate and rainfall and provide habitat for pollinators, agriculture would collapse.
Which would make it tough to sell cars, or anything else.
We need economic production to survive, but we also need healthy ecosystems and the service they provide.
No bees, no food, no trip to the grocery store.
In a paper published in the February 24 edition of PNAS, Rachael Beddoe and her co-authors argue that efforts to increase material growth have become a roadblock to quality of life rather than a road to increased happiness. While in the “empty” world at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution it may have made sense to expand our consumption of natural resources and ignore the abundant services — like clean air and water — provided by ecosystems, in today’s “full” world continued material growth decreases the ability of ecosystems to provide the life support that makes monetary wealth meaningful.
A finite planet can’t sustain endless growth. The result of efforts to do so is not increased happiness, it’s accelerating climate change, soil depletion, declining energy resources, and loss of species that threaten the underpinnings of civilization.
Says Beddoe :
It’s a crazy, maladapted system – but we’re so used to it, it seems sensible.