ABSTRACT
In the essay entitled The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, we are presented by Boulding (1966) with an early overview and summary of the modern environmental crisis facing humanity and its roots in the total neglect of physical limits by economists. Boulding’s distinctive contribution was to introduce aspects of entropy and highlight materials throughput from and to the environment, leading to a critique of the roles of growth and consumption as means of creating human well-being. He also questioned how future generations could be given voice. At the time he was amongst a small number of unassociated people making connections between social and economic systems and environmental degradation.
