ABSTRACT
Joan Martinez-Alier is Professor Emeritus in Economics and Economic History and senior researcher at the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Lorenzo Pellegrini did a long interview with the author a few years ago in Development and Capitalism. In Peru the issue was the defence of communities by an indigenous peasantry claiming also the neighbouring land appropriated over the centuries by haciendas, and refusing to be displaced. The theory of climate change because of excessive emissions of carbon dioxide was firmly established in the 1890s. Some problems are shared with heterodox economics. The main problem is to consider the economy as a system that can be explained by itself. Most mainstream economists also use the approach from methodological individualism in microeconomics. Heterodox economics and political ecologists focus instead on how power influences the use different classes of humans make of economic resources and also of the environment.
