Peter G. Brown - Böcker

Ecological Economics for the Anthropocene provides an urgently needed alternative to the long-dominant neoclassical economic paradigm of the free market, which has focused myopically-even fatally-on the boundless production and consumption of goods and services without heed to environmental consequences. The emerging paradigm for ecological economics championed in this new book recenters the field of economics on the fact of the Earth's limitations, requiring a total reconfiguration of the goals of the economy, how we understand the fundamentals of human prosperity, and, ultimately, how we assess humanity's place in the community of beings. Each essay in this volume contributes to an emerging, revolutionary agenda based on the tenets of ecological economics and advances new conceptions of justice, liberty, and the meaning of an ethical life in the era of the Anthropocene. Essays highlight the need to create alternative signals to balance one-dimensional market-price measurements in judging the relationships between the economy and the Earth's life-support systems.In a lively exchange, the authors question whether such ideas as "ecosystem health" and the environmental data that support them are robust enough to inform policy. Essays explain what a taking-it-slow or no-growth approach to economics looks like and explore how to generate the cultural and political will to implement this agenda. This collection represents one of the most sophisticated and realistic strategies for neutralizing the threat of our current economic order, envisioning an Earth-embedded society committed to the commonwealth of life and the security and true prosperity of human society.

Ecological Economics for the Anthropocene provides an urgently needed alternative to the long-dominant neoclassical economic paradigm of the free market, which has focused myopically-even fatally-on the boundless production and consumption of goods and services without heed to environmental consequences. The emerging paradigm for ecological economics championed in this new book recenters the field of economics on the fact of the Earth's limitations, requiring a total reconfiguration of the goals of the economy, how we understand the fundamentals of human prosperity, and, ultimately, how we assess humanity's place in the community of beings. Each essay in this volume contributes to an emerging, revolutionary agenda based on the tenets of ecological economics and advances new conceptions of justice, liberty, and the meaning of an ethical life in the era of the Anthropocene. Essays highlight the need to create alternative signals to balance one-dimensional market-price measurements in judging the relationships between the economy and the Earth's life-support systems.In a lively exchange, the authors question whether such ideas as "ecosystem health" and the environmental data that support them are robust enough to inform policy. Essays explain what a taking-it-slow or no-growth approach to economics looks like and explore how to generate the cultural and political will to implement this agenda. This collection represents one of the most sophisticated and realistic strategies for neutralizing the threat of our current economic order, envisioning an Earth-embedded society committed to the commonwealth of life and the security and true prosperity of human society.

A pioneering work in ethics and economics for the new global era raising all the hard questions that we need to think about in the coming decades, and proposing a radically new way of thinking about how the global community should function.'Peter Singer, IRA W. De Camp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University'One of those rare books whose every chapter is a source of both exhilaration and despair.'William E. Rees, University of British ColumbiaIn the first edition of this remarkable book Peter G. Brown identified three challenges that lay ahead of us:* to come up with an adequate account of our minimal obligations to each other, and to the rest of the natural order;* to redefine and reshape the institutions of economics, government, and civil society to reflect those obligations;* and to re-conceptualize and redirect relations between nations so as to foster those institutions and discharge those obligations.In this second edition he revisits and expands on those original ideas and draws some new, and innovative, conclusions that will redirect what we do and give substance and direction to the institutions that must be adopted if life is to flourish. Finding our historical attitude of 'full-human- use' toward the environment unsatisfactory, Brown offers an alternative: an 'all-species- use'. What he calls 'the commonwealth of life' and the acceptance of this reasoning has vital implications for all life that share this planet.

The world's emerging water crisis has ignited efforts to reconnect policy to human values. According to the book, all approaches to managing water, no matter how grounded in empirical data, involve moral judgments and cultural assumptions. Each of the book's six sections discuses a different approach to thinking about the relationship between water and humanity, from utilitarianism to eco-feminism to religious beliefs. Contributors range from Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church to Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and water policy expert Sandra Postel. "Water Ethics" will help readers understand how various moral perspectives have guided and will continue to guide water policy around the globe.