Economics, the Environment and Our Common Wealth - Softcover

Boyce, James K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782540202 ISBN 13: 9781782540205

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013

Synopsis

This fascinating volume has at its heart a simple but powerful premise: that a clean and safe environment is not a commodity to be allocated on the basis of purchasing power, nor a privilege to be allocated through political power, but rather a basic human right. Building upon this premise, James K. Boyce explores the many ways in which economics can be refashioned into an instrument for advancing human well-being and environmental health.

Comprising a decade's worth of essays written since the publication of the author's pathbreaking book, The Political Economy of the Environment (2002) (978 1 84064 366 4), this volume discusses a number of diverse environmental issues through an economist's lens. Topics covered include environmental justice, disaster response, globalization and the environment, industrial toxins and other pollutants, cap-and-dividend climate policies, and agricultural biodiversity.

The first economics book to explore the idea that the environment belongs in equal measure to us all, this pioneering volume will hold great interest for students, professors and researchers of both economics and environmental studies.

Awarded Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2013

Contents: 1. The Environment as Our Common Heritage
2. Is Inequality Bad for the Environment?
3. In the Wake of the Storm: Disasters and Environmental Justice
4. Justice in the Air: Tracking America's Industrial Toxics
5. Where Credit is Due
6. Cap and Dividend: Carbon Revenue as Common Wealth
7. A Chinese Sky Trust
8. A Future for Small Farms
9. Globalization and Our Environmental Future
Index

About this title

About the Author

James K. Boyce, Professor of Economics and Program Director for Development, Peacebuilding, and the Environment, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US

Review

If you're interested in the cutting-edge of the very best thinking on economics and the environment, it's right here. Boyce has done a masterful job integrating issues of equity and ecological thinking into economics, and presenting deep and important ideas accessibly with the latest research to back them up. Not just recommended, but essential. --Juliet Schor, Boston College and author of True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-rich, Ecologically-light, Small-scale, High-satisfaction Economy

Boyce provides a foundational volume bridging modern political economy and environmental resource economics. . . Although the volume is written to be highly approachable, its greatest achievement is in providing academic depth and modern analyses on a wide variety of issues where the common environmental heritage is at stake (inequality, environmental justice, tracking toxins, credit facilitation, climate change, globalization, and the prospects for small holdings in agriculture). . . An essential read for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the field of environmental resource economics. . . Essential. --S.R. Steele, Choice

A colleague of mine puts it best: when thinking about the fundamentals of the economy and the environment, there is Pigou, Coase, and Boyce. Boyce adds to traditional economics the critical understanding that social power is a determinant of the extent and spatial scale of environmental degradation. In these essays, on subjects ranging from housing and credit markets to agriculture and globalization, Boyce mixes a data-driven picture of unequal environmental protection with a keen and useful discussion of the many forms of social power that can help right the scales. --Eban Goodstein, Bard College

About this edition

• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1782540202
• ISBN 13: 9781782540205
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192