Oldal 53 [53]
SCHOOLS OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT ON ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY 5]
economic growth is not possible (Szigeti 2022). Efforts have to be made to maintain
economic performance within Earth’s carrying capacity. Instead of economic growth,
people’s well-being should be enhanced; these are two different things (Easterlin
1974; Gébert 2022; Csutora 2022). The advocates of this school of thought consider
themselves prudent — or cautious — pessimists and propose to set as their goal
Boulding’s equilibrium’; they are critical about growth (including green growth),
and recommend a steady-state or degrowth economy (Harangozó et al. 2018).
On the whole, NEO is a practice-oriented school of thought, with short-term
ideas having a predominant role, while ECO lays the emphasis on harder and
larger-scale problems which require consideration from a long-term perspective.
NEO holds that pollution is an externality rooted in market failures, but it can
be optimized if the polluter (or the victim) pays the additional social costs. Risk
management is also an important aspect here. ECO regards pollution as a depletion
of resources. Therefore, it does not accept social optimization, but instead wishes
to make financial efforts to prevent pollution (see the principle of pollution
prevention pays, which is not unfamiliar to NEO either). ECO’s aim is not just
risk management, but the need to identify situations in which even the approximate
assessment of risks is impossible (uncertainty, post-normal science, wicked problems
— Ravetz 2004; Kerekes 2023).
Since NEO attempts to monetize the impacts of the economy on the
environment, it also indicates that it regards nature as part of the economy: a strictly
social entity (money) is extended to the natural environment. However, the
monetary valuation of environmental resources allows for those with zero monetary
value to acquire positive weight in analysis in order to avoid environmentally
erroneous decisions by economic decision-makers. The chief methods of valuation
include cost-benefit analysis, willingness to pay (WTP) for the conservation of
certain natural values, and willingness to accept (WTA) the loss of a natural value
(Marjainé Szerényi 2011). In defining the total economic value of a natural resource,
the aspect of future generations is also taken into account (optional value, existence
value). There are further methods of evaluation which share an attempt to define
the given natural factor’s value by means of social value judgment. According to
this, NEO’s evaluating method is ethically closed (Kelemen 2022).
Since ECO focuses on the whole biosphere, it grasps the relationship between
the economy and the natural environment in its natural terms, hence, instead of
valuation in monetary terms, it prefers energy and material flow analysis. Evaluation
does not depend on the preferences of society but on the real impact on the
environment and on the effects that disturbs interspecies relations. Of special
importance are system analyses, analyses of diverse social traps, and the assessment
of an areas carrying capacity (Kelemen — Pataki 2014). These are open methods
from an ethical point of view, as they take into consideration several types of non¬
human relations as well.
In sum, compared to NEO’s focus on technology, economic policy and
anthropocentric ethics, ECO expands all these branches with physics, ecology,
and often theology.
° Kenneth Boulding used the term “cowboy economy” to describe an economy of infinite natural
resources, and of “spaceship Earth” to describe a situation in which all of human needs are satisfied
by renewable resources (Boulding 1966).