Major Ideas
When the economy’s expansion encroaches too much on its surrounding ecosystem, we will begin to sacrifi ce natural capital
- Humankind must make the transition to a sustainable economy
- Most contemporary economists do not agree that the U.S. economy and others are heading into uneconomic growth.
- They largely ignore the issue of sustainability and trust that because we have come so far with growth, we can keep on going ad infinitum.
- Birth rates must equal death rates, and production rates of commodities must equal depreciation rates.
- In the study of microeconomics, the branch of economics that involves the careful measuring and balancing of costs and benefits of particular activities, individuals and businesses get a clear signal of when to stop expanding an activity.
- The sustainable economy must at some point stop growing, but it need not stop developing.
- Sustainability can be defined in terms of throughput by determining the environment’s capacity for supplying each raw resource and for absorbing the end waste products.
- .Utility is the level of satisfaction of the population’s needs and wants; roughly speaking, it is the population’s level of well-being.
- Disutility refers to the sacrifices made necessary by increasing production and consumption.
- Marginal utility is the quantity of needs that are satisfied by going from consuming a certain amount of goods and services to consuming one unit more
- A population having uneconomic growth reaches the futility limit, the point at which it is not adding any utility with its increased consumption.
- The economic status quo cannot be maintained long into the future. If radical changes are not made, we face loss of well-being and possible ecological catastrophe.
- The transition to a sustainable economy would require many adjustments to economic policy.
Author's Main Idea |
"Man-made objects are crowding out the environment. Ways of thinking about the economy that worked well in an empty world no longer suffice in such a full world"(Daily). The author emphasis that governments must interfere with business that are not eco-friendly.The way certain people are not sustainable for the rest of the world. The way the Western economists think economy will eventually balance but the reality is far off. "The prices the World Bank has estimated to value the natural assets on its list are based on assumptions that ignore the limited capacity of natural systems to recover from disturbances"(Daily). How can humans possibly put a dollar value to ecosystems and natural elements.Once ecosystems are destroyed they are gone. That's where human man -made come into the picture once the resources become a thing of the past we also become a thing of the past. The only things that will remain is factories and material luxuries unless we learn how to become sustainable for the sake for future generation.
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My Reflection |
I think it is important that people should be conscious about their actions and the while becoming rich might their goal they should know that planet resources would not be replenished by money but through education I feel that people in the developed countries should stop for a moment and learn about the harm they are creating through consumption of material things. I think that through education about the environment and how planting a tree can go and make big a difference. In a world where we relay in technology , we should emphasis our efforts to nourishing the planet. How can CEO and world leaders focus on making more money than trying to make our Earth's resources to rehabilitate themselves, from humanity greediness. Yes there environmentalists that care about the planet but everyone has their personal agenda, environmentalists are no different but if everyone stop having those personal agendas maybe then we will start caring about the wellbeing of our planet. Hopefully it will be soon than late.
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