Session 4. (1) The Market-Solutions Response to the Environmental Crisis. (2) The Sustainable-Development Response to the Environmental Crisis. (3) How Does the Current Global Economic Fail to Be Sustainable? Do the Environmental and Equity Costs of a Commitment to Rapid Economic Growth Outweigh the Benefits? What Would a Sustainable Global Economic Order Look Like? (4) Biodiversity: What Is It? What’s So Good about It? How Should We Allocate Our Resources among Alternative Means of Preserving or Conserving Species?
Come prepared to discuss:
Dryzek, “Leave It to the Market: Economic Rationalism,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 122-138 ONLY
Dryzek, “Greener Growth: Sustainable Development,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 147-150 and 155-159 ONLY
John B. Cobb, Jr., "Toward a Just and Sustainable [Global] Economic Order,” in Environmental Ethics, ed. Light and Rolston, pp. 359-370. Available on classesV2.
Bryan G. Norton, “A Rationale for Preserving Species: An Apology and a Taxonomy,” Why Preserve Natural Variety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988): 3-22. Available on classesV2.
Norton, “Avoiding Triage: An Alternative Approach to the Priorities Problem,” Why Preserve Natural Variety, pp. 258-269. Available on classesV2.
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Roger Scruton, "Market Solutions and Homeostasis," Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously about the Planet, pp. 137-182. Available on classesV2.
Argues from a conservative perspective that markets should be one part of solutions to environmental problems, but faults economic rationalism for failing to distinguish between big business and small business, and having insufficient sympathy for small business and local control.
Robert E. Goodin, "Selling Environmental Indulgences," Kyklos 47 (1994): 574-596. Available on classesV2. Challenges one of the most popular proposals of economic rationalism: the selling by governments of emissions permits to businesses, who can then trade them on an open market. Argues that there is a strong analogy between the selling of such permits and the medieval Catholic Church's selling of indulgences for sins--which sold forgiveness for wrongdoing. Explores the many objections to selling indulgences, and to what extent those objections apply to selling emissions permits.
Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen, "Human Development and Economic Sustainability," World Development 28 (2000): 2029-2049. Available on classesV2.
David Carruthers, "From Opposition to Orthodoxy: The Remaking of Sustainable Development," in Debating the Earth, ed. Dryzek and Schlosberg, pp. 285-300. Available on classesV2.
Norton, "Formal and Substantive Priority Systems," Why Preserve Natural Variety, pp. 243-257. Available on classesV2.
Kristin Shrader-Frechette and E. D. McCoy, “Biodiversity, Biological Uncertainty, and Setting Conservation Priorities,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 167-195. Available on classesV2.