This is a study of integrated assessment modelling, a subject brought into prominence by the debate on climate change whose goal is sustainable development. A transdisciplinary approach is used, which encompasses the main issues in a changing global system and coverage of methodological principles.

Technological change plays a crucial role in realizing energy efficiency improvements and, therefore, in ameliorating the conflict between economic growth and environmental quality. However, the diffusion of new technologies can prove a costly and lengthy process, meaning that many firms do not invest in best-practice technologies. The author offers important new explanations for this energy-efficiency paradox.

Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development comprises a carefully chosen selection of some 25 articles, speeches, congressional testimonies, reviews, and critiques from the last ten years of Herman Daly's ever-illuminating work. This book seeks to identify the blind spots and errors in standard growth economics, alongside the corrections that ecological economics offers to better guide us toward a sustainable economy - one with deeper biophysical and ethical roots. Under the general heading of sustainability and ecological economics, many specific topics are here brought into relation...

Rutger Hoekstra examines the complex relationship between the monetary economy and the materials flows that are extracted and emitted by economic activities. These physical flows are responsible for many important environmental problems such as unsustainable resource depletion, waste production and climate change. This book discusses, applies and improves upon techniques which link the monetary and physical economies for environmental analyses. The book uses two sources of analysis: the physical input-output table (PIOT), a macro-economic account for the physical economy, recording material...

A number of tools for environmental analysis and decision support have been developed over time, including life-cycle assessment, substance-flow analysis, environmental impact and risk assessment. Many of these tools have different economic systems - a product, a regional substance-flow, a factory or emission pattern - as their object. This work aims to reconcile and unify the many different tools for environmental analysis and decision support into one meta-tool.

In this important book, Herman E. Daly lays bare the weaknesses of growth economics and explains why, in contrast, a steady-state economy is both necessary and desirable. Through the course of the book, Daly develops the basic concept and theory of a steady-state economy from the 1970s limits to growth debates. In doing so, he draws on work from the classical economists, through both conflicts and agreements with neo-classical and Keynesian economists, as well as recent debates on uneconomic growth.