Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue

Long ago, E.F. Schumacher set out salient principles for a "Buddhist Economics" in a Manas article that became chapter 4 of his book "Small Is Beautiful" (see http://www.schumachersociety.org/buddhist_economics/english.html). I also recall an article from, I believe, "Whole Earth Review" along a similar vein about "Amish Economics" (see http://www.sfc.ucdavis.edu/pubs/SFNews/archive/93011.htm for an article with a similar title). That's a good starting point for understanding the essence of the economic challenge. The economic principle set out in the Bahai Faith is another useful guide: it identifies the central challenge of economics as spiritual in nature. That works as well with Carlos Casteneda's advice: All paths lead nowhere, so choose a path with heart.

There is the need to utilize existing knowledge and disciplines in an expanded frame of reference. Economics is the wrong approach first and foremost because it treats as "externalities" all that are "internalities" to ecology. Wikipedia begins to name the broad field of "bioeconomics" as the appropriate area of inquiry, although I would specifically call it the combination of bionomics and economics (not simply biology and economics), which includes the fields of environmental and ecological economics, and expands well beyond the mathematical preoccupation currently mentioned. Bioeconomics, in my view, would be properly defined as "the science of managing sustainability," just as economics is "the science of scarcity." Moreover, its practice would be hands on to seek, demonstrate, and promulgate practical and applied principles of sustainability discovered in theory and method.

Lester R. Brown's "Plan B 2.0 - Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble" is a good demonstration volume to show that what I mean by "bioeconomics" should be real world applications to attain human sustainability. Other useful texts include "Natural Capitalism" by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins; "The Nature of Economies" by Jane Jacobs; "The Economy of Commerce - A Declaration of Sustainability" by Paul Hawken; and, "Beyond Growth - The Economics of Sustainable Development" by Herman E. Daly. I would also mention "Development As Freedom" by Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in which, to quote the Nobel Prize committee, he "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems."

Incidentally, the suggestion elsewhere to measure money in terms of energy is only partly useful. There are multiple factors to consider in transactions. Basic economics concentrates on the simple fact of allocating scarcity through market transactions, and thus summarizes a "bid" and "ask" in a "price" for the exchange in the market that will result in "clearing" supply and demand at an equilibrium point dynamically approximated through the ongoing transactions. Externalities are the "cost" of that transaction imposed on others not directly party to the exchange but impacted as a consequence of use or commodity consumption, etc. The market as such does not directly value these externalities unless they are "internalized" by means of either regulation, taxation, pollution trading, or other schemes for allocating "negative value". Energy cannot be accurately accounted for. Its social use, however, has both costs and benefits, which are only approximated by harnessable joules and carbon-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. Ecological economics and related disciplines do address that now.

In order to effect a serious discipline and practice of sustainability, it needs to be organized into a named, publicized, and promulgated profession and community of practice. Bioeconomics, in my view, would be a good title (just take it away from the overly abstract and intellectualized mathematical modelers, pointing out that -nomics is management, hence management of the living system, not mere mathematical modeling).