Because this issue of Vermont Business Center’s Newsletter examines sustainability, we turned to Robert Costanza, the Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, to provide some of his favorite books on the subject for our reading list feature. Costanza’s research has focused on the interface between ecological and economic systems. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 scientific papers.
Costanza recommends these books; he has written reviews of three of them in major academic journals.
In the April 5, 2007, issue of Nature magazine, Costanza writes: "Peter Barnes is a progressive businessman who created a successful company, Working Assets, that donates 1 percent of its revenue (not just its profits) to environmental causes. Now he has produced a landmark book that gets to the heart of one of the most important systemic problems of the current capitalist system, and proposes workable solutions. He argues that the previous (1.0) and current (2.0) versions of capitalism that evolved up to the 20th century, under conditions that no longer hold, are in serious need of an operating-system upgrade. Version 3.0 must address the conditions and problems we face now. Barnes fully recognizes the benefits of capitalism, and does not recommend replacing it wholesale with something completely different. But he also recognizes the major flaws in version 2.0, and describes some of the features that will be needed in version 3.0 to fix them.
"A major flaw, according to Barnes, is the failure of the current system of capitalism to adequately value and manage the commons. The commons, or more descriptively the common wealth, includes the atmosphere, clean water, oceans, airwaves, social networks, cultures and many other things that are essential to sustainable human wellbeing, but that either cannot or should not be put under private ownership (in other words, our natural and social capital assets). The failure of communism can be traced to the desire to put too many assets into the commons. But capitalism 2.0 puts too few of humanity’s assets into the commons, or leaves them as open access to be plundered by private interests. Barnes’ capitalism 3.0 would recognize the importance of the commons as a separate and distinct sector of the economy that deserves to be valued and ‘propertized’ – but not privatized. The commons can be treated as property without privatizing them by creating various kinds of common property institutions, including trusts."
In Ecological Economics (No. 59, 2005), Costanza writes: "It is an interesting coincidence that these two books appeared at approximately the same time. The human-dominated subsystems on earth are facing increasingly crucial decisions. Both books are about how we got to this point and what we can do about it. Diamond's book does this with a highly readable and engaging narrative that uses the comparative method and ‘natural experiments’ to analyze a series of case study human societies that have either collapsed or succeeded across the broad span of human history. Meadows et al. use the now familiar World3 computer model in this 30-year update of their groundbreaking first use of the model in 1972. While each of these approaches has their benefits and deficiencies, together they present a compelling picture of the choices facing modern society.
"Both Diamond and Meadows et al. agree that the world is now one big interconnected system and (unlike past civilizations) it will succeed or fail as a unit. Diamond uses the metaphor of the Dutch polder to drive home this point. The recent experience of New Orleans is a vivid manifestation of this metaphor. If the levees collapse, we all are sunk."
Two other books that Costanza highly recommends:
Last modified May 24 2007 12:19 PM
