Many people have enquired, since environmental problems came to the fore, why economics does not deal with estimation of the optimal scale of the economy, though the limits to the Earth's material resources mean the size of its economy cannot increase indefinitely. The ecological school of economics have sought a requisite scientific basis for such measurement in the second law of thermodynamics (the entropy law). The study concludes first that economics takes cognizance of many scientific constraints during its investigations - though these conclusions are not emphatic - and secondly that the desirable aggregate measures of economic activity (if there should exist such an optimum, which is not dealt with here) can certainly not be proved through the second law of thermodynamics
Strongly different approaches to sustainability appear side by side in economics. The differences, the study argues, are not worth examining in terms of strong and weak dimensions of sustainability, as often occurs in professional debate. The distinction has much more to do with two clear schools of thought on the relation between nature and the economy - neo-classical environmental economics resting on welfare foundations, and ecological economics - though the dividing line is not always a sharp one. It is concluded that ecological economics makes cogent criticisms of the sustainability-related views and methods of environmental economics, often offering methodologically clear solutions as an alternative to these.
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