Why did Sustainability, Steady-State and Ecological Economics Become so Important?

The global economy is now so large that society can no longer safely pretend it operates within a limitless ecosystem. Developing an economy that can be sustained within the finite biosphere requires new ways of thinking. The world has changed from being a relatively empty world to a relatively full world, from a world of unemployed biophysical carrying capacity to a world of fully employed carrying capacity.

When the world was relatively empty of people and their artifacts, throughput could be considered a flow from an infinite source to an infinite sink. The services of Nature were free, hence not regarded as a cost because they were not scarce. Environmental sink services, such as assimilation of Greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, oceans and forests have often been treated as open-access free goods, and therefore outside the purview of economics.

In an empty world it made sense to focus on human artifacts because they were in short supply and were the limiting factor for economic ... more.

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