The 1818 Society World Bank History Thematic Group and the World Bank Group Library will host a webinar by Herman Daly, Emeritus Professor, School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland entitled Ecological Economics in Four Parables. A parable of course is a little story that teaches a big lesson that opens one’s eyes. It depicts a different vision than the prevailing one.
Part I contrasts the pre-analytic vision of ecological economics with that of conventional economics by recounting a true story about the drafting of the World Bank’s World Development Report for 1992. That story serves as a basic parable by which to envision ecological economics as the study of the relationships between the economic subsystem (the economy) and the ecological parent system (the biosphere).
Part II provides the beginning analysis of the ecological economics vision. Here the instructive parable is provided by the story of Samuel Plimsoll and the maritime institution establishing a ship’s load limit represented by the “Plimsoll line”, and the absence in conventional economics of an economic analog to the Plimsoll line.
Part III tells a tragic story about a chemical engineer, Thomas Midgley, Jr., and the too eager reliance on technology as the sufficient solution to the problems revealed by analysis of the ecological economic paradigm.
Part IV considers the philosophical and ethical foundations needed to support the radical policy reversals indicated by a scale-limiting economic analog to the Plimsoll line.
Professor Daly was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank from 1988 to 1994, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America. He is closely associated with theories of a steady-state economy.
For more on Professor Daly’s ideas, see the July 17, 2022 interview with him in The New York Times Magazine:
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Meeting number (access code): 2305 345 8436
Meeting password: Jc3V8dCAdY2
