Additional ReadingsBeautiful Economy - A Question of Value● origin of wealth is still natural creation, not humans● there is no wealth but life; plants and trees in ecosystems are great wealth creators● nor are our businesses governments, or technologies● measure wealth in terms of what the earth can carry, whether we can ecologicallyafford to produce a product ● do we have a sustainability case for business?○ we suffer from a fatal misjudgement of what life is worth○ miss prioritization○ more importance on derived product of wealth (man made concept of economy) than the source of all wealth (healthy, diversely creative, self balancing ecosystemRostrom et al. - A safe operating space for humanity, short version● identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change● new approach for defining preconditions for human development● crossing certain biophysical thresholds could have disastrous consequences for humanity● three of nine interlinked planetary boundaries have already been overstepped● anthropocene: new era since industrial revolution in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change● boundaries define the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the earthsystem ● nine processes in which it is necessary to define planetary boundaries: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss, interference with nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, change in land use, chemical pollution, and atmospheric aerosol loading● humanity approaching boundaries for global freshwater use, change in land use, ocean acidification, and interference with global phosphorus cycle● climate change, biodiversity loss and interference with nitrogen cycles have already transgressed their boundaries● climate change○ human changes to atmospheric CO2 concentrations should not exceed 350 parts per million by volume, radiative forcing should not exceed 1 watt per square meter above pre industrial levels○ three considerations: must include long term reinforcing feedback processes that further warm the climate; stability of large polar ice sheets,earth's subsystems are already moving outside their stable holocene state● rate of biodiversity loss○ biodiversity loss accelerated massively○ human activities main cause of this especially changes in land use○ loss of biodiversity can have pervasive effects on how the earth system functions○ increase vulnerability of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to changes in climate and ocean activity, reducing safe boundary levels of these processes● nitrogen and phosphorus cycles○ additional amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus activated by humans are now so large that they significantly perturb the global cycles of these two important elements○ anthropogenic distortion of nitrogen cycle has shifted state of lake systems from clear to turbid water; polluting waterways and coastal zone, accumulating in land systems, erodes resilience of important earth subsystems○ if there is a greater than tenfold increase in phosphorus flowing into oceans then anoxic ocean events become more common in next 1000 years● scale of human activity● work on understanding essential earth processes ● resilience and its link to complex dynamics and self regulation of living systems Daly & Townsend Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem● sustainable growth is impossible: impossible for world economy to grow its way out of poverty and environmental degradation ● when something grows it gets better, when something develops it gets different ● the earth ecosystem develops but does not grow● the subsystem, the economy, must eventually stop growing, but can continue to develop● sustainable development makes sense for the economy but only if its development without growth● we have developed a culture dependent on exponential growth for its economic stability● limit to the population of trees that the earth can support, just as their is a limit to humans and cars ● the present scale of the economy shows clear signs of unsustainability ● multiplying that scale by a factor of five to ten would move us from unsustainability to imminent collapse● the concept itself is logically self contradictory in a finite, non growing ecosystem● Strive to hold throughput constant at present levels (or reduced truly sustainable levels) by taxing resource extraction, especially energy, very heavily. ● Seek to raise most public revenue from such resource severance taxes, and compensate (achieve revenue neutrality) by reducing the income tax, especially on the lower end of the income distribution, perhaps even financing a negative income tax at the very low end.E.F. Schumacher - Small is Beautiful, Ch. 3 - The Role of Economics● economics plays a central role in shaping the activities of the modern world● anything that is found to be an impediment to economic growth is a shameful thing and energetically declines○ to be uneconomic is to fail to earn an adequate profit in terms of money● what sort of meaning does the method of economics actually produce?● judgment of economics is an extremely fragmentary judgment: supplies only one aspect: whether a thing yields a money profit to those who undertake it or not● give more weight to short than the long term● based on a definition of cost which excludes all free goods○ the entire god given environment● an activity can be economic although it plays hell with the environment, and that a competing activity at some cost it protects and conserves the env, will be uneconomic ● inherent in methodology of economics to ignore man’s dependence on the natural world● the market institutionalisation of individualism and non responsibility ● neither buyer nor seller responsible for anything but himself● in ‘the market’ everything is equated with everything else (given a price)○ nothing is held sacred even simple non economic values can only surviveif they prove to be economic● cost benefit analysis: higher is reduced to level of the lower and the priceless is given a price○ leads to self deception or deception of others● money is the highest of all values● a vital part of methodology of economics has to be derived from the study of nature● economics acts as