The current pandemic, which we all hope will end soon, will have achieved something unprecedented: international cooperation to develop effective vaccines in record time. But there is another calamity, more insidious and less recognized because it acts in a long-term and unequal way on the planet: climate change. Dr. Derek Lever Paul, physicist and professor emeritus, has spent several years of his life thinking about this important issue. His approach to the subject is innovative because it tackles the problem through economics. For Dr. Paul, it is essential and urgent to change and adopt a new approach to the global economy in order to avoid, in his words, hitting a wall. Dr. Paul therefore proposes a new economic system based on the well-being and health of all living things on our planet. The Ecological Economy will be based on the sound management of natural resources, rather than solely on profit. The role of money will be called upon to change; it will no longer direct our destinies but will instead be used to facilitate projects that will not only create employment for all, but that will allow for a healthy use of resources and an improvement of our entire environment for our benefit and that of future generations. It is with honour and pride that we present to you, in the form of an interactive multimedia manual, the third edition of the book "A Leap to an Ecological Economy" by author Derek Paul. We are convinced that this new economic approach will eventually lead to decisions that will lead us all to a better future.

The most important change for humanity will be to recognize its interdependence with the other living species on this planet. The new economy will invest fully in restoring and augmenting natural wealth. This book describes and economic system that would be sustainable and would thus enable humanity to address climate change.

This book describes an economic system that would be sustainable and would enable humanity to address climate change. The most important change for humanity is to recognize the interdependence of all living species and adopt life of the biosphere as a prime value. The ecological economy will invest fully in restoring and increasing natural wealth.

Is the present economy working for you and those around you? Is your government in debt? In your country, is there a real drive to deal with climate change? Are you aware of the great urgency of doing this? Are you aware that many economists consider that one cannot address climate change and other urgent problems within the economic system we now have? If it seems to you that the world has come to an impasse, theres a solution in the form of a new kind of economic thinking, with many practical changes to match. Its called an ecological economy (EE). It calls us to put the health of all life on this planet as the central issue. The EE will focus on resources rather than only money. Money will no longer rule us; rather it will help us do what needs doing. And well measure capital in natural units, not money. Therell be employment for those who want it; and the extra jobs will be found in projects that will be directed at the health of the ecosphere; and that includes your health. The fields and forests that have been denuded of nutrients will, over time, be restored; carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels will be eliminated. The costs of such projects will be assessed in terms of resource requirements and the needed human effort, with money as the servant, not the boss. The nations will learn to cooperate betterit will be in all of their interests. The worlds burgeoning population will halt its expansion, just in time to give wild life the breathing space it needs.

An elegant argument for a bold new economic direction

The world has changed dramatically. We no longer live in a world relatively empty of humans and their artifacts. We now live in the “Anthropocene,” era in a full world where humans are dramatically altering our ecological life-support system. Our traditional economic concepts and models were developed in an empty world. If we are to create sustainable prosperity, if we seek “improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities,” we are going to need a new vision of the economy and its relationship to the rest of the world that is better adapted to the new conditions we face. We are going to need an economics that respects planetary boundaries, that recognizes the dependence of human well-being on social relations and fairness, and that recognizes that the ultimate goal is real, sustainable human well-being, not merely growth of material consumption. This new economics recognizes that the economy is embedded in a society and culture that are themselves embedded in an ecological life-support system, and that the economy cannot grow forever on this finite planet. In this report, we discuss the need to focus more directly on the goal of sustainable human well-being rather than merely GDP growth. This includes protecting and restoring nature, achieving social and intergenerational fairness (including poverty alleviation), stabilizing population, and recognizing the significant nonmarket contributions to human well-being from natural and social capital. To do this, we need to develop better measures of progress that go well beyond GDP and begin to measure human well-being and its sustainability more directly.

This clear-thinking collection brings together 25 of Daly s essays, speeches, reviews and testimonials from the past decade. . . as a whole they provide a useful masterclass on the principles of ecological economics. Daly s vision, as well as his frustration with mainstream economists refusal to engage with his arguments, comes through loud and clear. New Scientist It s hard to imagine ecological economics without the numerous and profound contributions of Herman Daly. These papers reveal the consistency of his analysis and clarity of exposition that have made him one of the most influential economists of his generation. Because of Herman Daly we have a much better understanding of how economies relate to the environment, why so much is wrong with this relationship and what must be done to fix it. Peter Victor, York University, Canada This thrilling compilation outlines the origins of the young discipline of ecological economics by the intellectual leader of the movement, Herman Daly. He recounts how, as a member of the recently demoted environment department at the World Bank, he integrated ecology with economics during his six years in the bowels of the beast. Herman lucidly and compellingly combines common sense with profound understanding of both economics and ecology to arrive at sustainable solutions to the global problematique. Herman s rigorous yet compassionate solutions to climate change, peak oil, globalization vs. internationalization, poverty reduction, and the unsung concept of scale leading to uneconomic growth, are precisely what we need to prevent the current liquidation of our beautiful world. This book will galvanize you into the action we need so much. Robert Goodland, Environmental adviser, World Bank Group, 1978 2001 In this book, written in crystal clear style, Herman Daly reiterates the main points of his analysis and vision, he praises some teachers (John Ruskin, Frederick Soddy, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth Boulding), he fearlessly attacks some adversaries in the World Bank and MIT, and he offers some advice to the government of his own country, to the Russian Duma, and especially to OPEC that, if followed, would change the world very much for the better. Finally, on a different line of thought, he interrogates conservation biologists on their reasons for wanting to keep biodiversity since, as biologists, they claim that evolution has no particular purpose. Why not let the Sixth Great Extinction run its course? In other words, science cannot provide an ethics of conservation, which Herman Daly finds in religion more than in democratization deliberations. Joan Martinez-Alier, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona, Spain Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development comprises a carefully chosen selection of some 25 articles, speeches, congressional testimonies, reviews, and critiques from the last ten years of Herman Daly s ever-illuminating work. This book seeks to identify the blind spots and errors in standard growth economics, alongside the corrections that ecological economics offers to better guide us toward a sustainable economy one with deeper biophysical and ethical roots. Under the general heading of sustainability and ecological economics, many specific topics are here brought into relation with each other. These include: limits to growth; full-world versus empty-world economics; uneconomic growth; definitions of sustainability; peak oil; steady-state economics; allocation versus distribution versus scale issues; non-enclosure of rival goods and enclosure of non-rival goods; production functions and the laws of thermodynamics; OPEC and Kyoto; involuntary resettlement and development; resource versus value-added taxation; globalization versus internationalization; immigration; climate change; and the philosophical presuppositions of policy, including the policies suggested in connection with the topics above. This fascinating work will appeal to scholars and academics of ecol