Pie in the sky without diamonds — or thumbs down on the present sad state of environmental economics

摘要

In the conclusion to their lengthy and excruciatingly forgettable survey, Maureen Cropper and Wallace Oates (1992) inform their readers that environmental economics has been a busy field over the past two decades. Busy yes, but productive no, and in what follows I will suggest that contrary to the opinion of the above authors, the "intellectual structure" of environmental economics has not been "broadened and strengthened" during the past decade or two. On the contrary, enor- mous amounts of time, money, and nervous energy have been squandered on work with considerably less than a minimum of scientific utility or relevance. Once again we have a classic example of (to use Satre's words) "a fire without a tomorrow", only this time it has its crackpot origins in the magic the word 'environment' engenders for the television audience.