This video gives a brief overview of the rise of the environmental movement, how this affected thinking in economics and led to the establishment of environmental economics. One aspect of the historical account is how environmental economics then failed to fulfil its promise of revolutionary change in the approach of mainstream economics and was confined to a minor role by conformity to orthodox economic concepts. Ecological economics then arose as a reaction to this failure. However the lecture also introduces the need for a broader understanding of environment-economy interactions which bring in society and the connected social problems created by current economic systems. This is expressed by the need for a social ecological economic understanding which is distinct and separated from mainstream resource and environmental economics.
The video is the first of a short series that covers the following topics:
PART I: Where does ecological economics come from? A brief historical background
PART II: How does ecological economics view the environmental crisis?
• Mainstream Economists Shutout Reality
• The Realist Agenda in Ecological Economics
• Fighting for a Radical Alternative Economics
PART III: The Need for a Different Economic System
• Growth for What?
• Growth for Whom?
• Growth & the Competitive Spirit
The lecture was recorded at the University of Manchester, 25th February 2014, as part of the Post-Crash Economics Society series on heterodox economics. This society was established as a student protest against the restrictive mainstream economics curriculum imposed in higher education throughout the UK. The students were stimulated to act in light of their own economics department failing to address anything outside of the narrow confines of an orthodoxy that failed to be able to foresee, understand or explain the most recent financial crisis. The restrictive curriculum in economics is something prevalent throughout economics departments in the UK and indeed internationally. This is producing a generation of passive economists who are unable to understand or even relate to the reality of the world economy, its mode of operation and power structure.
