Ecological economics

[NeuraltNätverk]

I'm currently reading Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications after looking at the reviews. It's really lucid and breezy so far. The basic idea about ecological economics from what I've learned so far is that neoclassical economical tools aren't bad in principle; it's just that the economy is seen as the whole rather than part of the whole. Now I have reasons other than environmentalism for being suspicious of neoclassical economics and anything else based on rational choice theory, psychological and philosophical, but I'm playing along for now. Not bad. What I really like about the ecological economic approach is that, rather than sort of bolting on environmental effects after the fact in the form of, say, negative externalities, they get primacy. Thermodynamics is especially important: now is as good a time as any to point out that the only genuinely renewable source of energy we have is the Sun and we can't change the Sun's output so, to uphold thermodynamic disequilibrium (in our society / economy) we have to recognize that fact and act accordingly. The beauty of this approach is that it might even reach people who don't otherwise care about the ecosystem or whatever: as far as we know, there is way to beat the (current) laws of physics. Highly concentrated sources of energy like coal and oil can only go so far. Indeed they can only be recycled (from CO2 emissions) so far. It were better that we learned how to collect the diffuse (but superabundant) energy of the Sun now.

Discuss.

[Toruk Makto]

The carbon cycle takes too darned long to circle back to a form that we know how to use for energy.  

I just wish we could get some null-G manufacturing going to create the long straight-chain silicon needed for serious solar PV use.
I bet that would put the bang for buck within reach for most uses. Let's get the space program ramped up in the private sector and make it so!

[NeuraltNätverk]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/07/MNGNEPMD801.DTL

This might be more attainable.