Ecological economics

What Hacker News says

1. jointpdfJul 2020
   The first sentence of the link I posted accounts for opportunity cost: “An optimal decision is a decision that leads to at least as good a known or expected outcome as all other available decision options.”

   And there is much, much more than opportunity cost that makes decision theory difficult. However, the basic definition of expected value (e.g. both risk and reward)—and decision making on the basis of it (e.g. cost-benefit analysis)—is so universally useful that I believe every living creature relies on this concept in some way or another (even if things are decided for them via evolutionary fitness—which we probably shouldn’t let happen to us as a civilization).

   As for your question, I reject the premise that there exists a binary choice between “focus all the effort on...reducing CO2 right now” vs. having “enough money and tech to mitigate the downsides” (an idea I’d also reject as frankly absurd—how will money and tech address a 50% species extinction rate?). Speaking of which, there are many classes of things that defy the concept of market value or utility—like the existence of species—which is where this framework can fall down. We can’t recognize their value as infinite without reaching absurdities (like I dunno, destroying everything else in the universe to preserve toucans or something). But preserving the future inhabitability of the planet for humans and other living beings is clearly of such high aggregate value that it is rational to devote significant effort towards mitigation (beginning with the actions that have the highest benefit/cost ratio).

   By the way, I highly recommend the book “Beyond Growth” by Herman Daly as an introduction to ecological economics and the failure of GDP as a measure of progress.

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2. washedupApr 2014
   No model is perfect. If it is a better model than the current one (which is the argument), it should be used as a replacement. Economic systems came from biological systems. As a result, they share some fundamental characteristics and the "false analogy" carries significant weight.

   I suggest you read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics

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