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"As the first biography of Professor Herman Daly, this book provides an in-depth account of one of the leading thinkers and most widely read writers on economics, environment and sustainability. Herman Daly's economics for a full world, based on his steady-state economics, has been widely acknowledged through numerous prestigious international awards and prizes. Drawing on extensive interviews with Daly and in-depth analysis of his publications and debates, Peter Victor presents a unique insight into Daly's life from childhood to the present day, describing his intellectual development, inspirations and influence. Much of the book is devoted to a comprehensive account of Daly's foundational contributions to 2. It describes how his insights and proposals have been received by economists and non-economists and the extraordinary relevance of Daly's full world economics to solving the economic problems of today and tomorrow. Innovative and timely, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, researchers, activists, and policy makers concerned with economics, environment, and sustainability."

Contents: Preface -- 1. The idea of economic growth -- 2. Why manage without growth? -- 3. Systems, information and prices -- 4. Pricing nature -- 5. Limits to growth - sources -- 6. Limits to growth - sinks and services -- 7. Limits to growth - synthesis -- 8. Scale, composition and technology -- 9. Economic growth and happiness -- 10. The disappointments of economic growth -- 11. Managing without growth: exploring possibilities -- 12. Managing without growth: from simulations to reality -- References -- Index.

Scale (gross domestic product), composition (goods and services), and technology (impacts per unit of goods and services) in combination are the proximate determinants in an economy of the resources used, wastes generated, and land transformed. In this article, we examine relationships among these determinants to understand better the contribution that changes in each have made in the past, and might in the future, to reduce the burden placed on the environment by the economy. Using the IPAT equation we assess quantitatively historical changes in scale, composition, and technology in Canada and their respective contributions to changes in environmental impact. The Kaya equation provides a similar framework for a more in-depth consideration of the changes in scale, composition, and technology required to achieve a substantial reduction in global emissions of carbon dioxide. We conclude that it is essential to address scale as part of the solution.

This Handbook assembles new contributions from influential authors such as Herman Daly, Paul Ekins, Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Jeroen van den Bergh, William E. Rees, Peter Bartelmus and Tim Jackson, who have helped define our understanding of growth and sustainability, as well as new thinking on topics such as degrowth, the debt-based financial system, cultural change, energy return on investment, shorter working hours and employment, and innovation and technology. Explorations of these issues can deepen our understanding of whether growth is sustainable and, in turn, whether a move away from growth can be sustained. With issues such as climate change looming large, our understanding of growth and sustainability is critical. This Handbook offers a broad range of perspectives that can help the reader decide: growth? Sustainability? Both? Or neither? Contributions are drawn from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, engineering and journalism, placing the work of established luminaries alongside emerging scholars who offer fresh new perspectives. A special section dedicated to exploring 'growth imperatives' that make transitioning away from economic growth difficult is provided, and the book includes a focus on cultural change and economic growth

Contents: 1. from growth to sustainability / Brett Dolter and Peter A. Victor -- 2. Growth, development and learning to live in a finite world / Peter Timmerman -- 3. Sustainable development, limits and growth: reflections on the conundrum / James Meadowcroft -- 4. Sustainability metrics and their use / Peter Bartelmus -- 5. A new economics for our full world / Herman Daly -- 6. Ecological modernisation and green growth: prospects and potential / Paul Ekins -- 7. Climate change, growth, and sustainability / Anders Hayden -- 8. Climate change, happiness and income from a degrowth perspective / Filka Sekulova, Giorgos Kallis and Francois Schneider -- 9. Green agrowth: removing the GDP-growth constraint on human progress / Jeroen C.J.M. van Den Bergh -- 10. Innovation, technology, and economic growth / Matthais Ruth -- 11. Energy, economic growth and sustainability: an energy primer for the 21st century / Charles A. S. Hall -- 12. Shortcomings of a growth-driven food system / Michalis Hadjikakou and Thomas Wiedmann -- 13. Land as a planetary boundary - a sociological perspective / Helmut Haberl and Karl-Heinz Erb -- 14. Prometheus unwound: shorter hours for sustainable degrowth / Andrea Levy -- 15. Is there a monetary growth imperative? a review / Sebastian Strunz, Bartosz Bartkowski, and Harry Schindler -- 16. Thomas Piketty, growth, distribution and the environment / Steven Pressman and Robert H. Scott, III -- 17. Growth and sustainability in a material world: the self-reinforcing cycle of population, GDP and resource use / Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Julia K. Steinberger -- 18. Economic growth, biophysical limits and sustainability in economics textbooks since 1948 / Tom L. Green -- 19. From growth to sustainability: cultural transition beyond consumerist lifestyles / Halina Szejnwald Brown and Philip J. Vergragt -- 20. Navigating the anthropocene: environmental politics and complexity in an era of limits / Stephen Quilley -- 21. Questioning sustainability in Latin America / Maria Páez Victor -- 22. Going down? human nature, growth and (un)sustainability / William E. Rees -- 23. Beyond consumer capitalism - foundations for a sustainable prosperity / Tim Jackson -- Index.

This book is a convenient and comprehensive collection of seminal papers on the costs of economic growth. The papers are grouped in 6 sections covering: the origins of the debate, the limits to growth, measurement, international and global dimensions, developing countries, and looking ahead. The original introduction, written by the editor, draws out the main themes that run through this extensive and thought provoking literature. This timely collection is is intended for academics, students, researchers and anyone interested in this controversial topic

Modern western economies (in the Eurozone and elsewhere) face a number of challenges over the coming decades. Achieving full employment, meeting climate change and other key environmental targets, and reducing inequality rank amongst the highest of these. The conventional route to achieving these goals has been to pursue economic growth. But this route has created two critical problems for modern economies. The first is that higher growth leads (ceteris parabis) to higher environmental impact. The second is that fragility in financial balances has accompanied relentless demand expansion. The prevailing global response to the first problem has been to encourage a decoupling of output from impacts by investing in green technologies (green growth). But this response runs the risk of exacerbating problems associated with the over-leveraging of households, firms and governments and places undue confidence in unproven and imagined technologies. An alternative approach is to reduce the pace of growth and to restructure economies around green services (post-growth). But the potential dangers of declining growth rates lie in increased inequality and in rising unemployment. Some more fundamental arguments have also been made against the feasibility of interest-bearing debt within a post-growth economy. The work described in this paper was motivated by the need to address these fundamental dilemmas and to inform the debate that has emerged in recent years about the relative merits of green growth and post-growth scenarios. In pursuit of this aim we have developed a suite of macroeconomic models based on the methodology of Post-Keynesian Stock Flow Consistent (SFC) system dynamics. Taken together these models represent the first steps in constructing a new macroeconomic synthesis capable of exploring the economic and financial dimensions of an economy confronting resource or environmental constraints. Such an ecological macroeconomics includes an account of basic macroeconomic variables such as the GDP, consumption, investment, saving, public spending, employment, and productivity. It also accounts for the performance of the economy in terms of financial balances, net lending positions, money supply, distributional equity and financial stability. This report illustrates the utility of this new approach through a number of specific analyses and scenario explorations. These include an assessment of the Piketty hypothesis (that slow growth increases inequality), an analysis of the "growth imperative" hypothesis (that interest bearing debt requires economic growth for stability), and an analysis of the financial and monetary implications of green investment policies. The work also assesses the scope for fiscal policy to improve social and environmental outcomes.