The Desired Ends of
Ecological Economics
And the relationship between
visioning and desirable ends
Announcements
• Visioning survey will take you 10 minutes. I’ll
post it on line after class (or e-mail it?). Do it
before discussion sessions.
• Quiz Friday– this is the only one that will be
announced. If you’ve gone to lecture and done
your readings, it will be a breeze
• Readings are supplement to lectures, and often
will not be covered in lecture. The reflections are
designed to make you think for yourself about
links between readings, lectures and projects.
Brief introduction to Ecological
Economics
What is Economics?
• Economics is the Science of the Allocation
of Scarce Resources Among Alternative
Desirable Ends
Questions posed by this definition:
• What are the desirable ends?
• What are the scarce resources?
• What are the characteristics of the
resources relevant to allocation?
• What do we know about human nature
and society that will help us allocate?
• How should the resources be allocated?
Pre-analytic Vision of Ecological
Economics
• Laws of thermodynamics are binding
– Can’t create or destroy matter energy
– Entropy increases in an isolated system
• Economic system is sustained and
contained by the global ecosystem
Pre-analytic Vision of Ecological
Economics (cont.)
• Economic growth displaces ecological
functions through resource depletion and
waste
• Resources are finite, infinite economic
growth is impossible
• Humans are biological organisms that
depend on the ecosystem for survival
• Ecosystem services have become the
scarcest resources
What are the desirable ends?
• The highest possible quality of life for this
and future generations
• Quality of life is a lot more than just what
we consume
Instrumental ends
• What do are the minimal requirements we
need for achieving a high QOL for this and
future generations?
– Ecological Sustainability
– Just distribution
– Economic efficiency
– Participatory democracy?
Ecological Sustainability
• Sustainable scale
– Scale is the size of the economic system relative to
the ecosystem that contains and sustains it
– Has the history of development in Vermont been
sustainable?
• Is it a desirable end?
• What’s the future ever done for you?
• How do we know if we’ve got it?
– Scientific question
– Can’t be answered using standard science, i.e.
experiments and repeatable observations
Whose projects focus on
sustainability?
Just Distribution
• Ethical question
• Poverty implies a low QOL
– If we can’t have growth, we can’t grow our way out
of poverty
• Follows from sustainable scale
– How can we care about the well being of future
generations and not care about the well being of
people alive today?
– How can we ask people who don’t have enough
today to sacrifice for the future?
Just Distribution
• How do we know if we’ve got it?
• Two types of justice
– Procedural justice
• Are markets just?
• Do we all play by the same rules?
– Just deserts
• Are markets just?
Just Distribution: basic rules?
• You get to keep what you earn with the sweat of your brow
– Locke and Marx
– Who creates the 4 capitals?
• You share in the wealth created by nature or by society as
a whole
–
–
–
–
Alaska permanent fund
Culture, knowledge
Social capital
Built capital
• You pay for what you take from others
– sky trust
Whose projects focus on just
distribution?
Efficient Allocation
• How do we create the most of what is desired
from what is available?
• Is the market best at this?
– What role did markets play in the ecological
restoration of Vermont?
• How do we know if we’ve got it?
– Pareto optimality and markets
– Markets are supposed to balance what is possible
with what is desirable
– Are there markets in the things we desire?
Whose projects focus on
efficiency?
How are these instrumental goals
related to each other?
Sustainability and Distribution
• Same ethical issue
• The poorest do not care about the future
• The richest consume the bulk of the
world’s resources
• No sustainability without just distribution
Sustainability and efficiency
• Supply must be determined by ecological
signals, not economic ones
– Sustainable scale determines what is
available to allocate
• Economic growth and diminishing
marginal utility
Distribution and efficiency
• Markets balance supply and demand.
– Demand is preferences weighted by wealth
– Different outcome for different distributions
• Diminishing marginal utility and
distribution
– Who gets more QOL out of $1000, a
starving Bangladeshi or Bill Gates?
• Negative externalities
– Positional wealth and status
– Distribution of built capital vs. natural
capital, e.g. mangroves
Distribution and Democracy
• Wealth, power and rent-seeking
behavior
"We can have a democratic society,
or we can have the concentration
of great wealth in the hands of the
few. We cannot have both."
– Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis
Visioning and Desirable Ends
The Necessity for Vision
• Current vision is unsustainable in absence
of star trek technologies
• Systemic change requires society’s
agreement
• If we don’t know where we’re going, we
might not get there
Visioning clarifies alternatives
• Is ever increasing consumption the
ultimate goal towards which we should
strive?
• Is it even a desirable goal?
• We might be lost, but we’re making
great time.
• If we’re not careful, we’ll get where
we’re going
Visioning and Desirable Ends
• Visioning is an approach to identifying
desirable ends
• Visioning is a continuous process, not a
one time thing
• Broad participation in the visioning
process assures buy in and commitment
to goals
• Sustainability as fulfillment, not sacrifice