On Elephants Not in the Room - The Paradox of Sustainability versus Economics, and A Case for Interdisciplinary System Economics

Abstract

This thesis is a theoretical examination of the problematic relationship between sustainability and the orthodoxy in economics disciplines and practice—characterized by neoclassical theories and assumptions. For this purpose, the use and history of sustainability is critically assessed, the three dimensional model rejected, and a meta-framework proposed instead, starting from ‘to sustain’; consisting by definition of both a normative and a scientific criterion, without a-priori filling in what ‘to sustain’. Sustainability is thus operationalized as certain ‘ends’ towards which certain economics are ‘means’—in this relation both sustainability and economics can be critically assessed as, respectively; ‘possible and desired ends’, and ‘possible means’ towards these ‘ends’. With this framework orthodox economics’ socio-political delineations of economy, with external environment(s) framings, are juxtaposed against the social and environmental relations that constitute the ‘anthropogenic economic activity’. What constitutes past productivity ‘growth’, or efficiency increases of anthropogenic activity within system Earth, are argued at length to pertain to social and environmental cost-shifting practices. In the context of a full(er) world system Earth; with a relatively diathermically closed thermodynamic workings; in state of ecological overshoot, and anthropogenic climate disruptions, the environmental shifting of costs are argued to be impossible thus leading by definition to accelerated system degradation—thus increasing socio-environmental costs—if the same empty-world economic logic remains the orthodoxy. The discussion concludes that the relationship between sustainability—in the proposed double-criterion model—and neoclassical orthodox economics is therefore contradictory; i.e. the latter amounting to ‘uneconomic economics’. Thus an interdisciplinary approach to economy is called for allow for more accurate accounting of socio-environmental costs and benefits in changing system Earth’s economy; a meta-framework of ‘system economics’ is cautiously proposed for this purpose, to be expanded upon through further research.