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To enable students to:
- evaluate environmental policy alternatives using an "environmental
methodology;"
- address ethical questions implicit in contempora;ry environmental
concerns;
- apply relevant and useful tools of economic thought and analysis to
the evaluation of environmental policy alternatives;
- criticize and evaluate the notion of a sustainable economy and
consider the requisite political activities for the institution of
such a structure;
- describe the gravity of environmental problems and assess the ro le
of the individual in political advocacy and action.
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I. Impasse: ecology vs. economics
II. Solving problems "from the outside, in"
III. Biophysical constraints: energy, ecology
IV. Counter-ecological economics
V. Economic concepts: external costs, opportunity costs
VI. The econosphere: two models
VII. Economics of a sustainable society
VIII. The "five fatal flaws" of throughput economics
IX. Transition strategies for a sustainable society
X. Political advocacy and action
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REQUIRED TEXTS:
Lester Brown et al., SAVING THE PLANET: how to shape an
environmentally sustainable global economy, Norton, 1991.
Senator Al Gore, EARTH IN THE BALANCE: ecology and the human
spirit, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
OPTIONAL BOOKS:
Daniel Quinn, ISHMAEL, Bantam Books, 1992.
Paul Hawken, THE ECOLOGY OF COMMERCE: Harper Business, 1994.
Daly & Cobb, FOR THE COMMON GOOD, redirecting the economy toward
community, the environment and a sustainable future, 2nd ed.,
Beacon Press, 1994.
E.C.O.: THE NEW COMPLETE GUIDE TO ENVIRONMENTAL CAREERS,
revised edition, Island Press, 1993.
