Geography 2412: Lecture Notes

Sept. 18: Environmental Social Science (pp. 57-69)

Having established the rise of the global economic system, the text now delves into the types of analysis of the environment undertaken by social scientists, particularly Economists and Sociologists. Harper also writes that such environmental and ecologcial analysis is relatively new to the social scientces.

Economic Thought (p. 58)

Basic idea: environment provides natural resources that humans use to produce goods and services.

Adam Smith: natural resources are shaped by labor, capital and markets into goods and services (so if you want to know the impacts of society on nature, follow labor, capital and market behaviors). Smith especially believed that markets provide the “unseen hand” that guide economic behavior, and that such behaviors are self-regulating thru competitive markets.

But the first really solid statement about the relationship between nature and society came from Malthus, and dwelt on a favorite subject of economists: scarcity.

Malthus recognized that increased production and consumption would lead to improved quality of life, and also to population growth. BUT, he predicted that human population would always tend to OVER-SHOOT the carrying capacity of the natural resources, leading to economic and social breakdown (we could call this environmental determinism).

Marx focused less on natural resources and more on labor, and the role of labor of turning natural resources into goods and services. He saw scarcity arising from accumulation of wealth by capitalists, leaving labor to suffer. Social revolution would result.

Neo-Classical economic theory focuses less on resources and production, and more on the flows of goods and services. In this view, widely held today, environment and ecosystems are background issues, and that if they have limits that create scarcity, then INNOVATION will result that, as long as markets are functioning, will outpace that scarcity. The main goal of neo-classical thought is EFFICIENCY, and we’ll see later why this issue affects environmental protection.

Efficient markets are competitive, have good information to respond to price signals and supply and demand, and are not heavily regulated (government regulation is often seen as inefficient).

Finally, Ecological economics focuses on how economies should account for ecological and human values just not well managed by pure market forces, like how to deal with EXTERNALITIES

NON-Renewables: what rate is the most economically “efficient “ rate for drawing these down? Neo-classical economists would say whatever the market demands, ecological economists might suggest that there are some reasons to slow the use of resources now vs. saving them for the future (the “inter-generational question).

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