Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Towards a Sustainable Society
- 2 Scarcity, Wealth and Income
- 3 Matching Ecological and Economic Realities
- 4 Science and Technology - For What Purpose?
- 5 Economic and Ecological Issues in Resource Management
- 6 Resource Management and Environmental Law
- 7 The Quality of life and Its Assessment
- 8 Is Democracy Alive and Well?
- 9 Technology, Economic Change and Political Strategy
- Bibliography
3 - Matching Ecological and Economic Realities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Towards a Sustainable Society
- 2 Scarcity, Wealth and Income
- 3 Matching Ecological and Economic Realities
- 4 Science and Technology - For What Purpose?
- 5 Economic and Ecological Issues in Resource Management
- 6 Resource Management and Environmental Law
- 7 The Quality of life and Its Assessment
- 8 Is Democracy Alive and Well?
- 9 Technology, Economic Change and Political Strategy
- Bibliography
Summary
Introductory lecture to symposium on ‘Environmental Quality and Resource Management: Political, Legal and Administrative Realities’, Twelfth Pacific Science Congress, Canberra, August 1971. Published in The Journal of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand, 1972.
IN a recent lecture entitled ‘Man's Place in Nature’ Professor R.O. Slatyer (1970) of the Australian National University outlined what he believed to be the main requirements for ecological stability and long-term human survival - which he summed up as ‘living ecologically’. There was no doubt in Slatyer's mind that it was possible for humankind to live ecologically, but he commented that to attempt it ‘in the short run probably makes economic nonsense’. This comment sounds odd to economists who have always believed that being economic meant making the best use of limited resources, an object which seems closely allied to that for which ecologists plead. Indeed, Professor Lionel Robbins (1932), a distinguished economist and teacher, once defined economics as ‘the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses’. Perhaps what Professor Slatyer means is that for humankind to live ecologically would be unwelcome to those who make profits from helping it to live unecologically; or possibly that those now living would be called on to make unwelcome sacrifices in the interests of future generations. In any case the use of scarce resources is involved in the issues with which Professor Slatyer was concerned and, therefore, they can be looked at in economic terms.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Return of ScarcityStrategies for an Economic Future, pp. 39 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990