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Title: Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics by Herman E. Daly, Kenneth N. Townsend ISBN: 0-262-54068-1 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 24 November, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Treasure Chest--The Originals Plus the Current Masters
Comment:
This is one of three books that I bought for review with the intent of selecting one for broad pro-bono distribution. Although I chose "For the Common Good" and I recommend "Ecological Economics" as the one book to buy if you buy only one (see my reviews of those books at their own pages), this book is a treasure chest of original and current thinking that should certainly be in your hands if you can afford all three books. As another reviewer has noted, it finally re-publishes some of the hard to get original thinkers from the steady-state economics era of the 1970's. However, it does so with an ample leavening of 1990's authorship, and hence could reasonably be regarded as a first-class "readings" complement to the text book ("Ecological Economics").
There is a chart on page 20 of this book that is quite extraordinary. Titled "The ends-means spectrum", it brilliantly runs down from the top: Religion and Ethics as guidelines to ultimate and intermediate ends of humanity; to the middle Political Economy as a means of managing the factors of production to specific political ends; to the bottom: Technics and Physics as the "ultimate" foundation or "ground truth" of flow-entropy-matter-energy that must constrain political and religious ends.
This book, in which Kenneth N. Townsend is the second contributing editor-author, blends practical, political, economic, and theological writings, over several decades, in a most pleasing manner. E. F. Schumacher's "Buddhist Economics" jumped out at me, reminding me that our predominantly Protestant corporate capitalist ethos is very far removed from the realities that guide and repress billions around the Earth, all of whom have fewer options than we do. With that thought in mind, I strongly recommend William Greider's "The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy" as a very current complement to any of the books that Dr. Daly has helped bring into the marketplace of ideas.
Rating: 5
Summary: Long-awaited essay collection for the ecological economist
Comment: For the advanced student of the discipline of ecological economics this essay-collection provides a handfull of the most influential classics of the field, of which many has been hard to come by for years. The essays by Garrett Hardin, Herman Daly, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Paul and Anne Ehrlich are among the most frequently cited essays of the field - and for good reasons.
Rating: 5
Summary: VTE is an example of scholarship that is rare in its field.
Comment: As a citizen who is concerned about the health of the environment, I was enlightened by the essays in the first section of this book. The authors leave little room for doubt that the Earth can sustain a finite population, and for a finite length of time. Without any of the hysterical rhetoric which so often characterizes the political debate on this topic, these scholars demonstrate the fact that our existence on this, the eastern shore of Eden, is ephemeral.
As a student of economics, I was impressed by the lucid exploration of free-enterprise, steady-states, and market forces in the third section. This section is home to some of the best essays in the book: T. H. Tietenberg's exposition of free-market solutions to the pollution problem as well as Ken Townsend's expert discussion of the ecological problems facing the nations of the former communist world are as important as they are timely.
But, the most important respect in which I was struck by this book was as a human being. It is in the second section that Daly and Townsend--with the help of such friends as C. S. Lewis and E. F. Schumacher--address the important issue of morality. Are humans obligated to preserve something off this planet for future generations? How much consumption should we engage in? Does our economic system promote an ungodly destruction of the world in which we live.
The reader should not come to this volume without a willingness to challenge his own deeply held notions about the state of the environment or the economy's role in creating that state. Neither should a reader open this book if he is searching for easy solutions to our environmental problems.
Those readers with the courage to think, however, will not be dissatisfied.
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Title: Beyond Growth : The Economics of Sustainable Development by Herman E. Daly ISBN: 0807047090 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 14 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society by Bob Doppelt ISBN: 1874719640 Publisher: Greenleaf Publishing Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: Environmental Economics: An Elementary Introduction by R. Kerry Turner, David Pearce, Ian Bateman ISBN: 0801848636 Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr Pub. Date: May, 1994 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity : A Platform for Designing Business Architecture by Jamshid Gharajedaghi ISBN: 0750671637 Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann Pub. Date: 10 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: For the Common Good : Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future by Herman E. Daly ISBN: 0807047058 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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