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Sustainability economics: Where do we stand?

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  • Ayres, Robert U.

Abstract

Environmental economics, which is a branch of resource economics - the environment as a scarce resource - is essentially about market failures, the costs of pollution and pollution abatement, and the economics of regulation. Sustainability economics includes the problem of maintaining economic growth, while reducing pollution and/or its impacts, with special attention to the linked problems of energy supply (not to mention the supply other exhaustible resources), climate change and - most urgently - fossil fuel consumption. There is a need for integration of resource and environmental economics under a new rubric, sustainability economics.

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  • Ayres, Robert U., 2008. "Sustainability economics: Where do we stand?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 281-310, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:67:y:2008:i:2:p:281-310
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