Healthy environment is needed for functioning economy

Perjantai 9.3.2018 klo 16.42 - Mikko Nikinmaa

To be sustainable, any economic theory needs to take into account the limits set to economies by the global environment. Otherwise any economic actions are just very hard-repayed loan from future generations. As the two worst alternatives are either that a small proportion of mankind can leave this planet, when it becomes uninhabitable, to continue the wasteful way of living in another planet until that is also spoiled or that most people dye and a small proportion continues to live in the spoiled environment.

To avoid these worst-case scenarios, one should actually give the Nobel price in Economics in continuation to economic theories that strive to reconcile economics and environment, as suggested by Ripple at el. in “The Role of Scientists’ Warning in Shifting Policy from Growth to Conservation Economy”, which can in full be viewed at https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biy009

"Most helpful for this paradigm shift, both symbolically and pragmatically, would be for the scientist members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to insist that its Economic Sciences Prize Committee give greater weight to awarding prizes for economic theory that accounts for environment–economy interlinkages and feedback loops. If Nobel memorial prizes in economics were given to those drawing attention to economic drivers of environmental degradation and the well-being implications of degraded ecosystems, it would draw attention to problems with mainstream economic theory as well as encourage other economists and natural scientists to collaborate and to do more work in this area."

Economy and environment are not opposite, but there cannot be a functioning economy without healthy environment in the long run.