Some thoughts on radical environmentalism and heterodox economics

Ecological economics emerged in the 1970s, as a sub-field of mainstream economics, using some of the conventional tools of neoclassical economics, but trying to move away from it, not only regarding some of the theoretical choices, but also distancing from some of the ethical concerns of the mainstream (Holt and Spash, 2009). Even though there were precursors to ecological economics, in particular the work of Kenneth Boulding, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Karl William Kapp, it is clear that the profound crisis of capitalism in the early 1970s, and the preoccupations with population growth, famine, and exhaustible resources, exacerbated by the oil shocks, were central for the sudden prominence of environmental concerns within the economics profession. Paul Ehrlich’s book, The Population Bomb, and the celebrated report on The Limits to Growth, published by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team and the Club of Rome marked a significant cultural shift, and the beginning of the international concern with the ecological limitations of human activity.

The 1970s was also a period of significant macroeconomic turbulence, with the collapse of Bretton Woods, stagflation and a crisis that brought about the end so-called Keynesian Consensus. It was in this period of crisis of Keynesian economics that an heterodox alternative to the mainstream was developed. In part for that reason, Ecological Economics is seen as being critical, and part of the broader heterodox tradition. But their are good reasons to be skeptical about this view.

From Environmental to Ecological Economics

Herman Daly (1973: 8), one of the founders of ecological economics, argued that the fundamental concern of the new sub-discipline was “to root out the faddish politic economics of growth and replant the traditional political economy of scarcity.” The idea of scarcity, in this view, extends not only to nonrenewable resources, but also to renewable resources, something that neither the authors of the old classical political economy, or the neoclassical authors took into consideration. Ecological economics criticizes reductionist thinking that presupposed that humans were exempt from the laws of nature. For them the economy is an open system takes in and gives out both matter and energy, in contrast with a closed system that imports and exports energy only, and where matter circulates within the system but does not flow through it. Planet Earth would approximate a closed system. Where conventional environmental economics accepted the possibility of growth forever, some ecological economists envisioned a steady-state economy at optimal scale, since throughput in the ecosystem is finite and nongrowing [1].

The conventional method for understanding the optimal ratio of extraction of nonrenewable resources, like fossil fuels and minerals, within mainstream economics is based on the Hoteling Rule, which suggests that provided the price of the nonrenewable resource grows faster than the intertemporal discount rate, then it would be left unexploited since it would be more valuable than extracting it, selling it and investing to obtain profits [2]. In general, mainstream economics assumes for simplicity, perfect competition and information, and well-defined property rights. The discount rate is associated with the normal or natural rate of interest, that in marginalist economics is associated with the real forces of productivity and the intertemporal consumption preferences of economic agents.

Further, conventional economics assumes that by the time of total depletion there will be a relatively smooth transition towards the best possible substitute backstop technologies that allow to produce a close substitute. If there are no known substitutes or backstop technologies, then the resource would be exploited at a slow pace if its price rises above that of the substitute. If the discount rate is high, reserves are large for the regular consumption, and there are plenty of substitutes, then extraction would more likely be at a higher pace. This, of course, as noted by many ecological economists ignores the ethical problems associated about leaving resources for future generations. In general, it is assumed, not completely without reason that neoclassical economists have a relatively optimistic outlook on the notion that technological progress would allow for persistent growth, with the exemption perhaps, at least among early marginalists, of William Stanley Jevons that predicted that the scarcity of coal would lead to the stagnation of the British economy.

In contrast to exhaustible resources, renewable resources can regenerate, but would still be depleted if they were consumed faster than their capacity to recover. The typical example in conventional resource and environmental economics is the case of fisheries, which in the absence of property rights that limit excludability would be subject to the infamous tragedy of the commons [3]. In this case, fisheries and other open access renewable resources would be exploited in an unsustainable manner. The intertemporal discount rate would also play a role in the drama of the depletion of renewable resources, since, for any resource that harvesting were relatively cheap, and the rate of growth were slower than of the interest rate, then it would make sense, in order to maximize profits, to engage in overharvesting.

Once one accepts that humans are part of nature, the problem is not just to maximize resources, so that they last for as long as possible, but also how to recycle all the waste associate with human material production. As noted by Daly (1973: 17), the laws of thermodynamics guarantee that commodities used as means of production do not vanish, and must be transformed into high-entropy waste [4]. The basic ecological problem is how much waste can be assimilated by the ecosystem. Recycling used commodities, renewable ones, and managing waste assimilation from both exhaustible and renewable commodities are essential for the maintenance of ecosystems on which human life ultimately depends, even if that might not be enough since entropy implies that limits must be imposed. However, while the conversion of commodities into waste can be managed by controlling the increase of the throughput, the rates of extraction of nonrenewable resources, and the harvesting of renewable ones, absorption occurs only at a fixed rate. Waste absorption capacity is relatively rigid, and the destruction of ecosystems, in fact, reduces natures ability to process waste. If the economic system discharges waste beyond the ecosystem’s capacity to absorb it, then waste would accumulate faster leading to buildup, which would affect other ecosystem functions, and perhaps even reduce its ability to assimilate waste.

The concern with waste emissions is more recent that the concern with exhaustible resources and population growth. The most discussed waste in the environmental literature is the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and its effect on global climate, leading to warming that might have significant economic and human impact. But of course, concern with other polluting emissions, coming from industrial mining and other productive activities have become a relevant concern for economists and national governments.

The conventional way for dealing with negative externalities, or public bads, is to impose a tax. Note that, at least since Ronald Coase’s seminal work, mainstream economists have suggested that assigning property rights would eliminate the externality problem, and even a tax would be unnecessary under these circumstances. Both the imposition of a carbon tax or the creation of secondary markets for carbon emissions, for example, are typical solutions that would be compatible with the mainstream analysis of the environmental problem. Note that in general mainstream economists prefer solutions that involve changes in prices, rather than quotas that limit production, emissions, extraction or harvesting, since price changes would trigger substitution effects and maintain the efficient allocation of resources.

Traditionally, the conventional view, has minimized the dangers of resource depletion, for example associated with peak oil, and climate change. William Nordhaus’ work, for which he received the Bank of Sweden Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel, can be characterized in such a way [5]. Two sorts of responses have been developed within Ecological economics.

Daly, an early advocate of the steady-state, no growth economy, suggested that the limitations with neoclassical economics derive from a model that presupposes too much certainty, and rationality from economic agents. In this his critique of the mainstream parallels the views of some heterodox economists on both the need to incorporate fundamental uncertainty, and more complex models of human behavior that depart from methodological individualism. Daly seems to suggest that part of the problem is that policy makers cannot measure the full social costs of pollution, in line with Kapp’s views on the issue, but that even if they could pollution markets would still fail to generate all the efficient outcomes, again in line with heterodox critiques of the self-adjusted market.

The emphasis on the importance of uncertainty about the future, and the complexities for economic decision making in an environment in which the effects of choices are interdependent, and where the fallacy of composition holds, approximates Daly’s critique of neoclassical environmental economics from the Post Keynesian approaches. However, Daly’s argument seems to be based on the notion that individuals have different utilities functions, and value differently the possibility of a less polluted environment or a less warm global climate. Markets, in spite of its extolled abilities for producing efficient outcomes, would not be able to cope with the necessary complexity of creating exchanges in which individuals would be paid by the polluters according to their dislike of pollution. In many ways, the idea of complexity here is, simply put, another market imperfection.

More radical elements within Ecological Economics have pushed for a more anti-growth strategy, in contrast with Daly’s steady-state economy, and calling for degrowth and the notion that the planet carrying capacity requires a much smaller population than currently alive. In fact, the call for degrowth was already implicit in Georgescu-Roegen’s work, as noted by Martínez-Alier and Muradian (2015) [6].

In fact, some of the concerns of ecological economists align with view of the radical environmentalism, a movement that goes back to early conservationist groups. In this respect, it is important to note that one of the fundamental ideas of the conservationist movement was that it was important to preserve nature for its own sake. As noted by Woodhouse (2018), the critique of growth and the quest for preservation of pristine nature went hand in hand with a social critique of the value of mass consumption and consumerism in modern society, with a critique of individualistic values associated with the mass production, consumer society, and, perhaps, more shockingly with an anti-humanistic bias. Woodhouse argues that: “[e]nvironmentalism is generally skeptical of humanism in that it suspects limitations to human reason and so proposes limitations to human behavior” (Ibid.: 3) [7].

Degrowth versus economic development

Mainstream models used to evaluate the effects of economic growth on resource stocks, and service flows are based on the supply-side constrained growth model, built on the basis of Robert Solow and Frank Ramsey’s intertemporal versions of the neoclassical approach [8]. In contrast, heterodox economists have tried to extend the principle of effective demand to the long run since the seminal work by Roy Harrod and Joan Robinson. For the most part the modern debate among heterodox authors is between Neo-Kaleckian models that put an emphasis on the ambiguous effects of income distribution on accumulation, and supermultiplier models that emphasize the importance of autonomous non-capacity generating spending in determining the normal rate of accumulation [9]. A distinctive characteristic of alternative models would be that the process of economic growth is not driven by the exogenous rate of growth of the factors of production, labor force in particular, or in the more recent vintage of mainstream growth models, by the endogenous process of technological progress, resulting from investment in education, dubbed human capital within the mainstream literature.

However, even among those that heterodox groups that do believe that growth is demand driven, it has been increasingly common to suggest that that is possible to improve income distribution in a no-growth, or even degrowth, environment. In their view, that would be ethically superior to the modern consumerist, capitalist society. This argument, for example, is framed as a refutation of the prominent book by Thomas Piketty on inequality, that suggested that slow growth and higher inequality would go hand in hand (e.g. Jackson and Victor, 2016).

The counter argument, emphasized in Tim Jackson’s work, is an old notion associated with the radical conservationist movement, that presumes that well-being is detached from material conditions, at least to some extent, and that even with degrowth the minimum requirements for the material well-being of the global population can be obtained simply by redistributing income [10]. In order for this to work it seems that an implicit presumption that income redistribution would have a limited effect on patterns of consumption and on economic growth.

The conventional argument in heterodox circles about the effects of redistribution and growth is fundamentally based on the Neo-Kaleckian model of effective demand, and Jackson tries to build upon it. Redistribution towards the less privileged would lead to a consumption boom, since the propensity to consume out of wages is higher than out of profits. Particularly in developed countries were wages have been repressed for a long while since the crisis of the Keynesian consensus in the 1970s, redistribution is bound to lead to a recovery of growth rates that have been lower, and led many authors to talk about secular stagnation. Jackson, as noted, has tried to engage with this question, but the purported results are compromised by the acceptance of many elements of the mainstream argument. In Jackson and Victor (2016: 206) they tried to develop a “demand-driven model of Savings, Investment and Growth in a Macroeconomic framework”, but in spite of the claim the model remains inadvertently a supply constrained model with a tendency to the full utilization of resources. Note that the authors claim that they “employ a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) production function, not to drive output as in a conventional neoclassical model, but to derive the marginal productivity rK of capital K” (Ibid.: 208). They do this, in spite of suggesting that they understand the problems with the neoclassical notion of capital, and the issues raised by the capital debates, in order to make their results comparable with the ones in the work by Piketty, that they correctly associate with the mainstream approach. But in the process, they get more than what they bargained for.

They follow up this by suggesting that their “approach is to establish a level of overall demand through an exogenous growth rate, g, and to generate the level of investment through an exogenous savings rate, s” (Ibid.), in other words, investment adjusts to savings, and it corresponds to the marginal productivity of capital in a well behaved production function with a negative correlation between intensity of use of the factor of production and its remuneration. Causality follows the traditional Say’s Law from savings to investment, which is exogenous, as in the Solow model. They do add stock-flow consistent macroeconomic accounts, which they do suggest follows Post Keynesian views, in particular the ones based on the work of Wynne Godley and Marc Lavoie. And they do allow for growth rates to vary exogenously, testing its effects on income distribution, in particular they conclude that “the impact of declining growth on capital's share of income depends crucially on the rate of return on capital which depends in turn on technological and institutional structure… with an elasticity of substitution between labour and capital less than one, and capital remunerated according to its marginal productivity, declining growth can perfectly well be associated with an increase in the share of income going to labour.”

In other words, the crucial parameter is the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. Note, that if the remuneration of capital is determined by the marginal productivity of capital, that means that in the case investment is below the savings rate that would lead to the full utilization of resources, then there are mechanisms that would guarantee that the system would move to the optimal level, with the principle of substitution playing a crucial role. They essentially have a model that is supply driven, in which the same natural rate of interest that is crucial for mainstream environmental economics rules the roost, and introduce imperfect substitutability to analyze the relation of growth and inequality [11].

There are two fundamental reasons why radical environmentalists are for degrowth. On the one hand, they believe that while decoupling of wellbeing from the material conditions of production is possible in some transcendental way, they are skeptical of decoupling of output and energy consumption can happen at a pace that is fast enough to avoid an environmental catastrophe. They tend to see decoupling as a myth (e.g. Jackson, 2009: 67-86). But more importantly they tend to suggest that technological progress is ultimately doomed as a result of the so-called rebound effect, or the Jevons’ Paradox. According to Jackson (2009: 95) this can be defined as the fact that “[m]oney saved through energy efficiency, for example, gets spent on other goods and services… [and] [t]hese goods themselves have energy costs that offset the savings made through efficiency, and sometimes wipe them out entirely (a situation described as ‘backfire’).”

The alternative to the degrowth literature has been associated to the Green New Deal (GND) movement, that emphasizes the need to promote a large infrastructure plan to promote greener technologies. In this view, technological progress is driven by demand according to the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law. Regulation might also play a significant role in forcing economic agents to adopt cleaner technologies. It is important to note that there is no evidence of sustained technological progress with limited output growth, let alone with negative growth. Productivity is not only pro-cyclical, but also structurally connected to growth. No growth in demand means limited incentives to productivity increases. In that sense, only with some economic growth there is a hope of getting cleaner technologies.

In this view, it is the kind of spending, and expansion of demand that matters, and there are some types of spending that would not only be more favorable to technological progress, but also, arguably, for ecological sustainability. Heterodox authors would also argue that degrowth also might lead to environmental degradation, since it is far from clear that a society with spiraling down output would manage resources efficiently. In this respect, Jackson (2009: 114) has acknowledged that “the argument for a substantial green stimulus remains strong… [and a] much higher level of investment is clearly essential if we are to have a chance of meeting climate change targets and protecting against energy scarcities.” However, green investment and stimulus that generates green jobs would go hand in hand with higher growth, since a well-known macroeconomic regularity, Okun’s Law, implies that unemployment goes down with higher levels of growth. In this respect, the criticism of the NGD within the environmental movement is not related to mainstream concerns with deficits and debt.

Perhaps, as problematic as the rejection of the positive feedback effects of growth on productivity growth, and the disregard for the negative impact that lower productivity would have on the environment, the worst problem for degrowth arguments is related to the size of the redistribution of income between developed and developing countries that would be required to make it feasible. As noted by Milanovic (2021):

“[o]nly 14% of the population in Western countries live at the level of income less than the global mean. This is probably the most important statistic that one should keep in mind. Degrowers thus need to convince 86% of the population living in rich countries that their incomes are too high and need to be reduced. They would have to preside over economic depressions for about a decade, and then let the new real income stay at that level indefinitely.”

This would be challenging also for many middle-income countries that still face significantly high levels of income inequality and would need to promote domestically significant redistribution in a context of a declining economy.

Finally, the degrowth literature also skews the issue of the role of the international financial system, something that was central in the Keynesian tradition, and its impact on the economies of developing countries that face an external constraint. In many peripheral countries, dependence on exports of commodities, in many cases mineral nonrenewable resources, and in other cases agricultural goods that promote the use of scarce land, and have a significant effect on the ecosystem, is the only source of the international reserve currency central for basic imports. A significant reduction of growth associated to a decrease in production and exports of commodities would be associated, as it has historically been the case, with an external financial crisis, which normally translates into recession, inflation, lower wages, and worsening inequality. Hardly the situation in which wellbeing of the population would improve.

Finally, there is a naïveté that is also part of the problem with the degrowth arguments. It seems that for some radical environmentalists economics is mainstream neoclassical economics, and, the rejection of neoliberal growth policies is also the rejection of growth. That growth might not be associated to the pro-market policies suggested in neoclassical theory, in fact it might often be the result of limiting the power of markets, and that it might require to direct material resources towards alternative goals is not even seriously considered. Social issues, associated to the material well-being of humans, are relegated to a secondary plane. Here the radical environmental movement’s skepticism about science and technological change goes against the generally positive view that heterodox economists have about the possibilities of progress.

In this regard, the notion that the complexity associated with the effects of technological change and the unintended consequences of human action might make things worse bears a resemblance with the neoliberal arguments for the need of laissez-faire. Free market ideas resulted from the idea that government interventions would make things worse, in the same sense that human intervention would have unintended environmental consequence and lead to a deepening of the crisis. Getting the government off markets and humans off nature, back to its pristine condition.

Heterodox or not

The mainstream or neoclassical approach to environmental economics emphasizes the notion that imperfections, including the constraints imposed by the nature, add restrictions to the efficient allocation of resources. Ecological economics, centered around the notion that human activity cannot be seen outside of nature and it is bound by the laws of thermodynamics, reaches radically different views. In extremis, the radical environmental view goes againts capitalism (markets), but also economic growth and development [12].

The neoclassical view centers its treatment of the extraction of nonrenewable resources and the harvesting of renewable resources on the notion that rational economic agents make intertemporal choices in order to maximize profits, and that in the presence of imperfections, be that lack of information, incomplete markets, ill-defined property rights, or the existence of externalities, there is some space for regulatory action by the government. The key variable is the intertemporal discount rate, which can be equated to the natural interest rate in economies with free, perfectly competitive markets. Ecological economics, in common with some heterodox economists, is critical of the notion of an all-knowing, rational economic agent, and skeptical about both the idea that profit maximization and that economic, or material well-being, linked to consumption, should be the ultimate goal of the economic system.

On the other hand, a good part of Ecological economics accepts the notion of an intertemporal discount rate, including some notions about the marginal productivity of capital and the neoclassical theory of distribution, which preclude a more powerful critique of the mainstream’s views on economic sustainability. Heterodox economics shares many characteristics with critical ecological economics, but for the most part heterodox authors are less keen on degrowth and more willing to accept the possibilities of sustainable development associated with technological progress. Many would support a Green New Deal as the main policy proposal for avoiding the worst consequences of human activity.

Notes:

[1] The throughput is the flow of natural resources – raw materials and energy – from the ecosystem into the economy and back into the environment as waste.

[2] It is well known that old classical political economy or surplus approach authors dealt with exhaustible resources when discussing land and rent. The so-called Ricardian theory of rent, developed by West and Malthus, had important implications for income distribution, as it is well known. Their approach differed from the neoclassical or marginalist analysis. In classical political economy, the nature of rent was highly dependent on the historical contingencies and institutional arrangements that made one social group or class able to obtain greater bargaining power. One important conclusion from their approach was that ownership and taxation of natural resources was crucial to determine which groups won or lost with the continuous use of exhaustible resources. Nationalization of natural resources not only might provide a situation in which the benefits and costs of extraction are shared more equitably, but also furnish the funds for the investment needed to promote alternative technologies. For a modern view of the surplus approach related to environmental issues see Parinello (2001).

[3] Ostrom (1990) argued, contrary to conventional wisdom, that the commons could be well managed under certain circumstances. For her, the tragedy occurred when external groups that had interests not directly related to the preservation of the commons exerted their political power. In that view, government intervention might be problematic, since bureaucracies might not have the preservation of commons as their main goal. For a critique of Ostrom’s approach see Block and Jankovic (2016: 290-291) that argue that her views sometimes lend “support to Hayekian … philosophy of using local and tacit, spontaneous-order knowledge for social cooperation and coordination, instead of one-size-fits-all government-imposed solutions.”

[4] Daly (1973: 6-7) is very clear that environmental economists within the mainstream do not acknowledge the seminal contributions of Boulding and Georgescu-Roegen, and that his work, inspired by both, should be seen as Kuhnian paradigmatic shift. this would make Ecological economics more akin to an alternative school of thought, like the heterodox groups that emerged in the 1970s, than a subfield of mainstream economics. That does not imply that Ecological economists are free of marginalist concepts, and that divisions within the new paradigm might exist. On the development of Ecological economics see Martínez-Alier and Muradian (2015).

[5] Nordhaus essentially tried to minimize the fears of catastrophic global warming, and arguably there is a pattern in his work, including the DICE model developed by him and his more recent comments on the prominent Stern Review has provided support for reduced action on climate change, for some critics. While the work by Martin Weizmann can be seen as critical of Nordhaus’ approach, and more favorable to stronger action on climate change, it also remains firmly based in the mainstream, neoclassical approach. For a critique of the conventional model from a Post Keynesian perspective see Keen (2020).

[6] They say that it is clear that “there is a confluence of ideas between Georgescu’s degrowth, Daly’s steady-state… and the new ecological macroeconomics without growth which is presented” by them (Martínez-Alier and Muradian, 2015: 7).

[7] This anti-humanism and the neo-Malthusian concern with excessive population, that might be seen as the anthropocentrism of conventional views, has actually encountered some support in mainstream circles, with, for example, Dasgupta (2019: 109), who argues that the optimal global population should be about 1.8 billion, which was “the global population circa 1925.”

[8] For example, Geoffrey Heal’s Green Golden Rule is based on such an approach, a variation of the Golden Rule within the neoclassical growth model that, instead of assuming profit maximization, presupposes that maximization of well-being for the current generation must occur without diminishing the capacity of future generations to benefit from those resources. Intergenerational fairness is brought into play, besides the question of sustainability and conservation.

[9] Perhaps the central difference between the models is that in the Neo-Kaleckian version investment is to some extent autonomous, while supermultiplier models, sometimes referred to as Sraffian as developed by Bortis (1997) and Serrano (1995), imply that investment is derived demand, and that capacity adjusts to demand. Kaldorian models with an emphasis on the external constraint, use a supermultiplier, and add the notion that technological progress is demand driven too, something referred to as the Kaldor-Verdoorn Law in the literature. In this view, some heterodox authors would be closer to what Costanza (1989) referred to as technological optimists. This does not imply the sort of optimism of the conventional mainstream model, that suggests that exogenous technical progress, or investment in education (human capital), in endogenous models, will solve the problems. It is simply the notion that if technological progress is part of the solution, this can only happen in an environment with expanding demand.

[10] As noted by Woodhouse (2018: 285) “[e]specially when expressed by radicals, environmental holism imagined the combination of consumerism, individualism, and liberal humanism as a near universal problem that led to the privileging of people and their interests over biodiversity and intact ecosystems.” For Jackson (2009), the decoupling of wellbeing from material conditions is connected to Amartya Sen’s notion of capabilities and the idea that these can flourish within the ecological limits of the planet with considerably less consumption. The argument boils down to the notion that growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) does not bring freedom, since “prosperity is the ability to participate freely in the life of society” (Ibid.: 36). In his most recent work, Jackson suggests that the activities that would lead to greater wellbeing are like a virtuous flow, and that they are centered on: “physical sports, craft and creative activities, social interactions, romantic relationships and contemplative practices like meditation. All of these activities have low environmental impacts” (Jackson, 2021: 104). One cannot but feel somewhat underwhelmed by the proposal for post growth, and it is not a surprise that Milanovic (2021) has referred to it as magical thinking.

[11] Post Keynesians have tried to incorporate environmental issues in their growth models, and some have done it within a truly demand driven framework as in Fontana and Sawyer (2016). In their model, growth depends on investment, and they ultimately see the environment as a supply side limit. It is worth noticing that Fontana and Sawyer seem to be more reasonably discussing lower rates of growth, but not a degrowth situation.

[12] The notion that growth is not equivalent to development is a well-known platitude. Whether one can have development without economic growth is a question that radical environmentalists have not discussed well enough.

References:

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Nordhaus, W. 1977. “Economic Growth and Climate: The Carbon Dioxide Problem,” American Economic Review, 67: 341–346.

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