 Externality or sustainability economics?Ecological Economics, 2010, vol. 69, issue 11, 2047-2052 Abstract: In an effort to develop "sustainability economics" Baumgärtner and Quaas (2010) neglect the central concept of environmental economics-"environmental externality". This note proposes a possible connection between the concepts of environmental externality and sustainability. In addition, attention is asked for other aspects of "sustainability economics", namely the distinction weak/strong sustainability, spatial sustainability and sustainable trade, distinctive sustainability policy, and the ideas of early "sustainability economists". I argue that both sustainability and externalities reflect a systems perspective and propose that effective sustainability solutions require that more attention is given to system feedbacks, notably other-regarding preferences and social interactions, and energy and environmental rebound. The case of climate change and policy is used to illustrate particular statements. As a conclusion, a list of 20 insights and suggestions for research is offered. Keywords: Climate; change; Dynamic; externalities; Rebound; Spatial; sustainability; Resilience; Steady-state; economy; Strong/weak; sustainability; Sustainability; policy; Systems; thinking (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:11:p:2047-2052 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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