The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Has Failed the EnvironmentColumbia University Press, 2003 - 253 páginas Virtually all large-scale damage to the global environment is caused by economic activities, and the vast majority of economic planners in both business and government coordinate these activities on the basis of guidelines and prescriptions from neoclassical economic theory. In this hard-hitting book, Robert Nadeau demonstrates that the claim that neoclassical economics is a science comparable to the physical sciences is totally bogus and that our failure to recognize and deal with this fact constitutes the greatest single barrier to the timely resolution of the crisis in the global environment. Neoclassical economic theory is premised on the belief that the "invisible hand"-- Adam Smith's metaphor for forces associated with the operation of the "natural laws of economics"--regulates the workings of market economies. Nadeau reveals that Smith's understanding of these laws was predicated on assumptions from eighteenth-century metaphysics and that the creators of neoclassical economics incorporated this view of the "lawful" mechanisms of free-market systems into a mathematical formalism borrowed wholesale from mid-nineteenth-century physics. The strategy used by these economists, all of whom had been trained as engineers, was as simple as it was absurd--they substituted economic variables for the physical variables in the equations of this physics. Strangely enough, this claim was widely accepted and the fact that neoclassical economics originated in a bastardization of mid-nineteenth-century physics was soon forgotten. Nadeau makes a convincing case that the myth that neoclassical economic theory is a science has blinded us to the fact that there is absolutely no basis in this theory for accounting for the environmental impacts of economic activities or for positing viable economic solutions to environmental problems. The unfortunate result is that the manner in which we are now coordinating global economic activities is a program for ecological disaster, and we may soon arrive at the point where massive changes in the global environment will threaten the lives of billions of people. To avoid this prospect, Nadeau argues that we must develop and implement an environmentally responsible economic theory and describes how this can be accomplished. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 82
... Environmental aspects . 2. Globalization - Economic aspects . 3. Globalization - Environmental aspects . I. Title . HD 75.6 .N34 2002 333.7 - dc21 2002192651 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid ...
... Environmental Crisis 1 CHAPTER 2. THE NOT SO WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERS Metaphysics , Newtonian Physics , and Classical Economics 19 CONTENTS CHAPTER 3. THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES The Neoclassical Economists and Mid - Nineteenth Century ...
... Doing Business in the Global Environment 185 CHAPTER 10. THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE Science , Ethics , and the Environmental Crisis 207 Notes 225 Index 241 INTRODUCTION Once , during a flight from San Francisco to viii CONTENTS.
... environmental problems within its framework . The primary reason this is the case , which is not widely known or appre- ciated and which will be examined and explored throughout this discussion , is the following . The conception of the ...
... environmental problems could be overshadowed by the seem- ingly more pressing need to protect public safety , conduct military strikes , and ensure military preparedness . If the war on terrorism had been declared a few decades earlier ...
Contenido
SPACESHIP EARTH Homo economicus and the Environmental Crisis | 3 |
THE NOT SO WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERS Metaphysics Newtonian Physics and Classical Economics | 21 |
THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES The Neoclassical Economists and MidNineteenth Century Physics | 39 |
NO FREE LUNCH Mainstream Economics and Globalization | 79 |
A GREEN THUMB ON THE INVISIBLE HAND Environmental Economics | 115 |
SCHISMS HERESIES AND KEEPING THE FAITH Ecological Economics | 135 |
THE REAL ECONOMY IN BIOLOGY Emergence and a New View of Order | 151 |
THE REAL ECONOMY IN PHYSICS Cosmic Connections | 165 |
TOWARD A NEW THEORY OF ECONOMICS The Costs of Doing Business in the Global Environment | 187 |
THE CEREMONY OF INNOCENCE Science Ethics and the Environmental Crisis | 209 |
Notes | 227 |
243 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
The Wealth of Nature: How Mainstream Economics Has Failed the Environment Robert L. Nadeau Vista previa limitada - 2003 |