'We will not act to save the planet" - Herman Daly

Herman Daly is not confident humanity will act to save the planet.



Herman Daly.

Although he doubted we would come to our senses sufficiently to preserve conditions favourable to man, Daly does believe, however, there will be a shift in the composition of economic activity, ensuring it will become less damaging to values that are currently not priced in the marketplace.

Daly (born 1938) is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland, College Park, in the United States.

He was a senior economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank and helped develop guidelines for sustainable development and played a key role in the establishment of theories of a Steady State Economy.

Writing in the newly published “2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years” by Jorgen Randers, Daly, in a piece entitled “The End of Uneconomic Growth” and reflecting the forty years had passed since the “The Limits to Growth” had been published said:

Jorgen Randers
 new book.

“Well, it is now forty years later and economic growth is still the number-one policy goal of practically all nations; that is undeniable. Growth economists say that the “neo-Malthusians” were simply wrong, and that we should keep on growing as before. But I think economic growth has already ended that the growth that continues is now uneconomic; it costs more than it is worth at the margin and makes us poorer rather than richer. We still call it economic growth, or simply “growth” in the confused belief that growth must always be economic. I contend that we have reached the economic limit to growth, but we don’t know it, and desperately hide the fact by faulty national accounting, because growth is our idol and to stop worshipping it is anathema.”