Session 4. (Week 2). Are We Headed for Environmental Catastrophe? What Are the World-Views Concerning How to Understand It and Deal with It? (1) The Survivalist Response: “We’re Headed for Catastrophe If We Don’t Make Radical Changes.” (2) The Promethean Response: “Markets and Human Ingenuity will Take Care of It, So There’s No Genuine Crisis!” (3) Are There Ecological Limits to Economic Growth?
Read in this order:
John Dryzek, “Looming Tragedy: Limits, Boundaries, Survival,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 25-43 ONLY
Dryzek, “Growth Unlimited: The Promethean Response,” The Politics of the Earth, READ pp. 52-63 ONLY
Kenneth Arrow et al, “Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity, and the Environment,” Science 268 (April 1995): 520-521. [Available on Moodle.]
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Lester Brown, "A Planet under Stress," in Debating the Earth, ed. Dryzek and Schlosberg, pp. 37-48. [Available on Moodle.]
A survivalist interpretation and warning on the global food supply.
Julian L. Simon and Herman Kahn, "Introduction to The Resourceful Earth," in Debating the Earth, ed. Dryzek and Schlosberg, pp. 51-73. [Available on Moodle.]
W. Arthur Lewis, "Is Economic Growth Desirable?" The Theory of Economic Growth (London: Allen and Unwin, ): 420-435. [Available on Moodle.]
An illuminating survey of the benefits of growth, and the criticisms that point out its costs. Written by one of the great
development economists.
Kenneth E. Boulding, "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth," in Economics, Ecology, Ethics: Essays toward a Steady-State Economy, ed. Herman E. Daly (WH Freeman, 1980): 253-263. [Available on Moodle.] Famously argues that we must realize that we are converting the Earth, through economic growth, into a closed system, in which resources are finite and in which increasing production and consumption may on balance do more harm than good.
Herman E. Daly, "Economics in a Full World," Scientific American, September 2005, pp. 100-107. [Available on Moodle.]
Updates Kenneth Boulding's Spaceship-Earth arguments with new data and uses illustrations. Contains a useful counterpoint by economist Partha Dasgupta, who agrees with Daly in rejecting Prometheanism and more-growth-is-always-good, but rejects his commitment to a steady-state in favor of safer and smarter growth.