economy
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A three-part series profiling ecological economists
In 1776, the year the Scottish economist Adam Smith invented free-market economics with his book The Wealth of Nations, the total population of the globe was less than 700 million people. The coal-hauling locomotives and steamships that were to drive the Industrial Revolution were still 30 years off. Free-market economic theory grew and flourished in […]
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It’s time to end the race to the bottom
Here’s a simple game that makes a not-so-simple point. Stand in a line, with several friends. Each of you hold your right index finger out in front of your body. Now place a long stick across all of your fingers, balanced upon them. Your collective goal is to lower the stick to the ground. There […]
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A post-Sept. 11 manifesto for environmentalists
I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of Sept. 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day. II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a “new world order” and a “new economy” that would […]
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The Roquefort Files
José Bové milks 250 sheep in the Larzac region of France, a rocky, windswept place where you would think no farmer could produce anything. But Bové turns sheep milk into one of the gastronomical treasures of the world, Roquefort cheese. Bové is a leader of the local Roquefort producers association and of the second largest […]
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Fallout Shelter
Civilization did not collapse into computational confusion on New Year’s Eve. The worst Y2K glitch I experienced was finding all my email files suddenly dated 1944, and that was easily fixed. What happened? Or rather, what didn’t happen? There is a self-congratulatory answer to that question: We were clever and fast and rich enough to […]
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Industrious endeavors in the former Soviet empire
America’s market-based solutions to environmental problems tend to look a lot like something you might have seen in an old Soviet propaganda film. Real Soviet propaganda. Take emissions trading. Under this system, I, an evil capitalist, sell you, another evil capitalist, the right to spew tons of air pollution, which I can do because I’ve […]
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There's What They Tell Us — And What They Don't Tell Us
What they tell us: The income tax is unfair. The top one percent of income earners pay one-third of all income tax. What they don’t tell us: The reason the top one percent pay so much of the income tax is that they have so much of the income. The richest 2.7 million Americans — […]
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How Many Scientists Does It Take to Screw in a Message?
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist from Oregon State University, has been elected to many scientific honors, one of which was the presidency of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. For her presidential address at the AAAS annual meeting, she looked straight out at the huge assembly of scientists and delivered an unapologetic, […]
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Rewriting the Story of the Ant and the Grasshopper
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper plays his fiddle and dances the summer away. Come winter the ant is warm and fed. The grasshopper dies in the cold. This tale is attributed to Aesop, a Greek ex-slave who lived around 600 B.C. […]
