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Jonathan

Grade Requirements

• Reading
• Special Interest Article by Herman E. Daly
• Radio Show on Globalization
• Course Evaluation
• Group Project on The Economics of Street Lighting
• Web Research Report on Local Economy

Final Draft on Special Interest Article

'''Herman E. Daly, the author of over one hundred scholarly articles on environmental economy and sustainability, is a professor at the University of Maryland, school of public affairs. He also the author of five books including, Beyond Growth. In 1996, he received the Honorary Right Livelihood Award (Sweden's "alternative Nobel prize") and the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science., awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, he was awarded the Sophie Prize (Norway) for contributions in the area of Environment and Development. He has served as Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank and Alumni Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University.

Economics in a Full World; September 2005; Scientific American Magazine; by Herman E. Daly touches on many subjects regarding a sustainable economy and, its polar opposite, the economy we have now. These subjects include, employment, finances, GDP, and resource use. According to Daly, we view growth as the panacea to all our economic ills; a remedy that only works if our planet existed in a void. However, as Daly points out, our planet does exist in a void but in a finite bio-sphere that the economy is a sub-system of. Daly believes this is the common thought on growth because the way we use it. If there is a problem with poverty, just grow the economy (that is, increase the production of goods and services and spur consumer spending) and watch wealth trickle down. A Problem with overpopulation just push economic growth and rely on the resulting demographic transition to reduce birth rates, as it did in the industrial nations during the 20th century. Taking that into consideration, when our economy starts to encroach upon our natural ecosystem we begin to sacrifice natural capital that is worth more than the man made capital added by the growth. This is When Un-economic growth, as Daly calls it, sets in. Un-economic growth is when we produce more harmful things, than we do good things. A major problem, Daly outlines, is that some people benefit from un-economic growth. For example, oil producers production costs have not gone up much, but the raw cost of oil has. Or, by making goods poorly so they work for a short period of time and then break, which forces you to by new, increases production and creates un-economic growth. These people ignore the fact that we need a sustainable economy because the dark veil of growth has been over their eyes for so long, they don’t see why we cant keep going on like this forever. Or if they do, they don’t want anyone to know.

A problem some people have with a sustainable economy is that they feel that the rate of growth of GDP should remain the same. In this view the sustainable economy is the equivalent of the growth economy, and the question of whether our not our planet can handle it is begged. One important factor that people need to understand is that a sustainable economy must stop growing at one point, but it need not stop developing. We don’t need to stop improving design and furthering technology, we just need to do it in such a way that does not deplete the ecosystem faster than we can restore it, or it can restore itself.

The growth economy we have now is impossible to sustain. But, as Daly points out, this does not mean that we need to all together stop advancing our species and our technology. We simply need to re think how our economy can grow by not producing more stuff.'''

Extra

I also read a list of goals from the global ideas bank on how a sustainable economy should work. I was disappointed. There was not one mention of a local economy and they always made statements like, "if we can," or, " if it is possible. I think they need to read the work of Richard Douthwaite, and re-write their page of rules. the web site is globalideasbank.org