Thanks for the book leads. I just ran into a reference to Leakey’s book yesterday when I was researching the issue of current versus past extinction rates. (Figures around 100-1000 times the normal background rate appear commonly in recent articles and books.)

So yeah, I’ll put those on the list — though I may not get to the “incredibly dry” one for a while. :-/

John

Warning – Delaney’s archaeological application to this issue follows.

For an incredibly dry view of the intricate interplay between humans and the environment, check out Karl W. Butzer’s “Archaeology as Human Ecology.”

You may also want to check out Dr. Richard Leakey’s “The Sixth Extinction” (remind me to tell you a funny story about this one, lol), and Morton Fried’s “The Evolution of Political Society.” Fried’s work doesn’t so much touch upon this specific issue (hell, none of them do, really, lol, but putting the issue into a pre-historic perspective, to me, is always educational and fascinating), but it gives a good VERY GENERAL overview on cultural/political development (which of course is dependent on, and impacts, a culture’s environmental circumscription)(see also, if interested, Levi-Strauss’ work on variation in cultural mythology as an explanation of – and/or a culture’s justification of – said culture’s relationship with their environment)….

I’m happy to bring – si, bring – the aforementioned text’s to ya, if you’d like.

Happy New Year,
Tim

I think that gets into something I was going to touch on in the article, but it was getting too long as it was. Daly and others (e.g., the Rocky Mountain Institute in some of their writings) talk about the difference between growth as measured by quantitative increases in throughput etc., and development as indicated by qualitative improvement, increased efficiency, etc. (I think the latter would include growth in services too.)

To some extent it seems like quibbling over terminology, but I think the ecological economists want to emphasize the importance of the physical dimension of growth. So actually, I don’t think they disagree with your friend. But Daly argues that measures like GNP don’t distinguish between growth and development, and that we need to take steps to deal with growth while allowing development, or qualitative growth, to continue indefinitely.

I would agree with your points here. I have a friend though who is a Harvard educated academic economist who counters the argument in this way:

- you can grow the value of things by making better “recipes” not just adding more “ingredients”

- you can grow an economy through growth in service.

In reality, you and I both know that this is not what is happening and that material inputs continue to grow exponentially. I wonder what your thoughts on these points are?