Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T05:32:00.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comments on ‘Key issues for attention from ecological economists’ by Paul Ehrlich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2008

STEPHEN POLASKY
STEPHEN POLASKY*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota and Beijer Fellow. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Paul Ehrlich has a clear message for the economics profession: humanity faces a number of serious environmental problems and economists have a central role to play if we are to successfully address them. The article lays out an important research agenda for economists, which includes climate change, loss of biodiversity, release of toxic substances, epidemiological concerns, population, and over-consumption. Even if one disagrees with some of the particulars, and my guess is that many economists who read the article will, the big ideas contained in this article and the main messages are worthy of close attention. Rather than being on the periphery of the economics profession, those of us in economics who focus on environmental issues, whether called ecological economists, environmental economists or resource economists, should be at the heart of an economics profession focused on the most important and relevant issues facing society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 25 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ando, A., Camm, J.D., Polasky, S., and Solow, A.R. 1998, ‘Species distributions, land values and efficient conservation’, Science 279: 2126–2128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arrow, K. and Fisher, A. 1974, ‘Environmental preservation, uncertainty, and irreversibility’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 88: 312–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brock, W.A. and Xepapadeas, A. 2003, ‘Valuing biodiversity from an economic perspective: a unified economic, ecological and genetic approach’, American Economic Review 93: 1597–1614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C., Lowenstein, G., and Rabin, M. 2003, Advances in Behavioral Economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Camerer, C., Lowenstein, G., and Prelec, D. 2005, ‘Neuroeconomics: how neuroscience can inform economics’, Journal of Economic Literature 43: 9–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dasgupta, P. forthcoming, ‘Discounting climate change’, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.Google Scholar
Portney, P.R. and Weyant, J.P. (eds) 1999, Discounting and Intergenerational Equity, Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.Google Scholar