Analyzes the aspects of environmental protection and the use of resources within a planning model. Explaining concepts of thermodynamics, this book employs the relationships between entropy, energy necessary for the extraction of a resource and the concentration of resource to establish a connection between the economic system and the environment.

In today's world - despite the dramatic anthropogenic environmental changes - a proper understanding of the relationship between humanity and nature requires a certain detachment. The pressing problems in their whole extent will only be fully understood and solved with comprehensive and patient analysis. Accordingly, this book develops new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology, ecology, and the economy, integrated within a framework of a terminology specially devised by the authors. By illuminating the epistemological backgrounds of ecological-economic research, the authors lay...