This book is written in desperation. The human species has launched the planet on a trajectory that threatens to make all previous environmental disasters pale by comparison. Despite the fact that more and more people do “get it,” our leaders, and the current political and economic systems we labor under, have proved unable to make any progress whatsoever toward heading off climate change disaster.
The much-anticipated climate meetings in Copenhagen in December 2009 ended in disaster, threatening to undo diplomatic progress that had consumed decades of precious time. And as Bill McKibben, cofounder of the campaign to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at 350 parts per million, recently lamented, after “the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record … in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn’t do less than they could have—they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action” (TomDispatch.com, August 4, 2010).
This book is not written because the author thinks he has all the answers we need. Quite the contrary, I believe it may be some time before anyone provides a grand theoretical synthesis suitable to analyzing all facets of the relationship between human economic activity and the natural environment. While we can build from insights provided by various heterodox approaches as well as by mainstream economics, unfortunately all schools of economic thought fall short of what is needed in one way or another. And while the efforts of those who advocate on behalf of the environment have often been inspirational and heroic, unless political strategies improve there is little reason to expect the environmental movement to achieve better results in the future.
After acknowledging pioneering work by environmental, ecological, institutional, Marxist, and other economists, it may appear unseemly to proceed to criticize them. But improvements will not come without criticism, which should not be confused with pointing the finger of blame at those we owe a debt of gratitude for all they have done. Those who study and work to protect the environment are not the reason the environment is in serious danger, even if better analyses and more effective political strategies will be required to better protect the environment.
I want to thank all the students in my environmental economics classes over the past decades at American University, Lewis and Clark College, and Portland State University who worked with me to separate the wheat from the chaff in received wisdom. I thank my editors at M.E. Sharpe—Lynn Taylor, who rescued this project when it was all but lost, and Henrietta Toth and Laurie Lieb, who labored mightily to make the book more readable. But mostly I thank Kristen Sheeran for teaching a long-time radical economist that he needed to take environmental issues more seriously.
As much as I owe to these and others, the views expressed here are entirely my own responsibility.