The Desired Ends of Ecological Economics

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The Desired Ends of Ecological Economics

• And the relationship between visioning and
  desirable ends

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Announcements

• Visioning survey will take you 10 minutes. Ill
  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 youve 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.

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Brief introduction to Ecological Economics
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What is Economics?

• Economics is the Science of the Allocation of
  Scarce Resources Among Alternative Desirable Ends

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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?

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Pre-analytic Vision of Ecological Economics

• Laws of thermodynamics are binding
• Cant create or destroy matter energy
• Entropy increases in an isolated system
• Economic system is sustained and contained by the
  global ecosystem

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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

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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

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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?

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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?
• Whats the future ever done for you?
• How do we know if weve got it?
• Scientific question
• Cant be answered using standard science, i.e.
  experiments and repeatable observations

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Whose projects focus on sustainability?
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Just Distribution

• Ethical question
• Poverty implies a low QOL
• If we cant have growth, we cant 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 dont have enough today
  to sacrifice for the future?

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Just Distribution

• How do we know if weve got it?
• Two types of justice
• Procedural justice
• Are markets just?
• Do we all play by the same rules?
• Just deserts
• Are markets just?

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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

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Whose projects focus on just distribution?
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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 weve 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?

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Whose projects focus on efficiency?
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How are these instrumental goals related to each
other?
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Sustainability and Distribution

• Same ethical issue
• The poorest do not care about the future
• The richest consume the bulk of the worlds
  resources
• No sustainability without just distribution

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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

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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

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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

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Visioning and Desirable Ends
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The Necessity for Vision

• Current vision is unsustainable in absence of
  star trek technologies
• Systemic change requires societys agreement
• If we dont know where were going, we might not
  get there

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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 were making great time.
• If were not careful, well get where were going

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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