ABSTRACT

While environmental economists have taken an important step forward in including the value of environmental resources in their economic model, they have not addressed the possibility that the very nature of their discipline, which begins with theory and mathematics and then applies these to the natural world, might be inherently incapable of protecting the planet. The ecological economists have taken a different tack, beginning with the science of ecology and seeking ways to link it to the discipline of economics. As well as having different origins, these two approaches to tackling the environmental consequences of economic activity differ in their definition of sustainability:

l Neoclassical environmental economists favour a goal of weak sustainability (technology will lead to manufactured capital substituting for natural capital) and have sought to adopt an objective stance.