Summary: Rebuild,3/16/2011, after skimpy start. Enhances ESS from 2005. This page dumps everything so that I start fresh.
Topics include:
Please examine two articles that complement this essay but are referenced rather than repeated:
1. Fairness in a Fragile World: A Memo on Sustainable Development by Wolfgang Sachs. Sachs has contributed a sobering explanation of the current status of sustainable development without resorting to orthodox economic analysis.
2. Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development: Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI by Peter Montague. Montague provides a succinct overview of the seminal book in ecological economics, Beyond Growth: The Economics Of Sustainable Development, by Herman Daly.
Polanyi dramatic quote starts ch 12 re destruction of culture. Polanyi used at both micro and macro: markets and global capitalism.
Are human culture and nature incompatible with Global Capitalism? Can this most dynamic system adapt to constraints that preserve and nurture both culture and nature? This question is fundamental here. Attention to both culture and nature would then use government as a shield, but such interference runs counter to the ideology of neo-liberalism and poses obstacles on the free exercise of the rule of markets. An obvious first casualty will be equity, perhaps even fairness as commonly understood. The results might be unsatisfactory for many, which suggests democratic remedy but which also poses the threat that the proponents of Global Capitalism may lobby against any such measures. The nation-state and Global Capitalism may be on a collision course.
The outcomes of this presumed collision may hold the key to how economics and sustainability co-exist. Can global capitalism and World Sustainability partner so that both thrive?
"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. " Aristotle
UNEP summary re ecosystems in development of green economy
But then again, as the global crisis pushes up the limits of the finite
planet, the wisdom coming from a prophecy of the Cree American Indian
tribe is worth a serious reflection:
Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.