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Herman Daly

Herman Daly (1938) is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States.

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He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America.

Before joining the World Bank, Daly was Alumni Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University. He is a co-founder and associate editor of the journal, Ecological Economics.

He is also a recipient of a Honorary Right Livelihood Award (the alternative Nobel Prize), the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Sophie Prize (Norway) and the Leontief Prize from the Global Development and Environment Institute.

He is widely credited with having originated the idea of uneconomic growth, though some credit this to Marilyn Waring who developed it more completely in her study of the UN System of National Accounts.

Quotes

“If you’ve eaten poison, you must get rid of the substances that are making you ill. Let us then, apply the stomach pump to the doctrines of economic growth that we have been forced-fed for decades.”

“We cannot have too many people alive simultaneously lest we destroy carrying capacity and thereby reduce the number of lives possible in all subsequent time periods.”

“Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by the economic physicians (pro-growth advocates) who attempt to treat the sickness with unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited production. We do not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage.”

“Current economic growth has uncoupled itself from the world and has become irrelevant. Worse, it has become a blind guide.”

Literature

Daly's interest in economic development, population, resources, ecological economics, and the environment has resulted in over a hundred articles as well as numerous books, including:

1977, Steady-State Economics
1989, For the Common Good, with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr.: This received the Grawemeyer Award for ideas for improving World Order.
1993, Valuing the Earth
1996, Beyond Growth
1999, Ecological Economics and the Ecology of Economics
2003, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications, with Joshua Farley: an economics textbook.
2007, The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth with Mark Anielski