From Book News, Inc.
If you're beginning to feel that the phrase "sustainable development" might be going down the semantic doublespeak path where being fired from your job is now dubbed "occupationally challenged," then Daly is the economist for you. The innovative scholar and World Bank rabble rouser argues that the catchword of environmentalists and international financiers is being used by both to further their own ends. Sustainable development, as conceived by Daly, becomes a radical proposition of economy as part of the ecosystem, requiring that we give up an ideal of economic growth and reevaluate basic ideas about economic theory, poverty, trade, and population. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.


Book Description
Named one of a hundred "visionaries who could change your life" by the Utne Reader, Herman Daly has probably been the most prominent advocate of the need for a change in economic thinking in response to environmental crisis. An iconoclast economis t who has worked as a renegade insider at the World Bank in recent years, Daly has argued for overturning some basic economic assumptions. He has won a wide and growing reputation among a wide array of environmentalists, inside and outside the academy. In a book that will generate controversy, Daly turns his attention to the major environmental debate surrounding "sustainable development." Daly argues that the idea of sustainable development--which has become a catchword of environmentalism and international finance--is being used in ways that are vacuous, certainly wrong, and probably dangerous. The necessary solutions turn out to be muc h more radical than people suppose. This is a crucial updating of a major economist's work, and mandatory reading for people engaged in the debates about the environment. "Daly is turning economics inside out by putting the earth and its diminishing natural resources at the center of the field . . . a kind of reverse Copernican revolution in economics."--Utne Reader

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Herman Daly is probably the most prominent advocate of the need for a change in economic thinking in response to environmental crisis. an iconoclast economist who has worked as a renegade insider at the World Bank in recent years, Daly has argued for overturning some basic economic assumptions. He has a wide and growing reputation among environmentalists, both inside and outside the academy. Daly argues that if sustainable development means anything at this historical moment, it demands that we conceive of the economy as part of the ecosystem and, as a result, give up on the ideal of economic growth. We need a global understanding of developing welfare that does not entail expansion. These simple ideas turn out to be fundamentally radical concepts, and basic ideas about economic theory, poverty, trade, and population have to be discarded or rethought, as Daly shows in careful, accessible detail. These are questions with enormous practical consequences. Daly argues that there is a real fight to control the meaning of "sustainable development," and that conventional economists and development thinkers are trying to water down its meaning to further their own ends. Beyond Growth is an argument that will turn the debate around.

FROM THE CRITICS

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