Environmental Crises: Past, Present and Future
نویسنده
چکیده
Environmental crises are distinguished by rapid and largely unexpected changes in environmental quality that are di¢ cult if not impossible to reverse. Examples would be major extinctions and signi cant degradations of an ecosystem. I argue there are three preconditions for crisis: failures in governance, an ecological system exhibiting a tipping point, and an economy/environment interaction with positive feedbacks. I develop a simple model to illustrate how a crisis may arise, and draw on our knowledge of past and present crises to highlight the mechanisms involved. I then speculate as to whether climate change is indeed a crisis in the making. 1 I am grateful for excellent research assistance from Jevan Cherniwchan and Juan Moreno Cruz. I received helpful comments from too many colleagues to thank, as well as seminar participants at the University of Basel, the 2009 Canadian Economics Association Meeting in Toronto, and the 2009 European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Conference in Amsterdam. A version of this paper will appear as the Innis Lecture in the November 2009 issue of the Canadian Journal of Economics. I am also a¢ liated with the NBER. Funding for this research was provided by the SSHRC. Email: [email protected]. Phone: 403-220-8912
منابع مشابه
The Workers ’ Compensation System : An Analysis Of Past , Present and Potential Future Crises
متن کامل
مطالعهی تطبیقی رابطهی انسان و محیط زیست در تفکر توسعهی پایدار و تفکر اسلامی
Environmental crises are one of the major challenges that human community is facing. Different schools have expressed different solutions to solve these crises, for example: Conservationism, Preservationism, Social Ecology, Animal Rights, Land Ethic, Ecofeminism, Stwardship, Sustainable Development etc. Sustainable development is a recent solution of human society proposed in response to inappr...
متن کاملClimate Change Modeling and Drought Detection of Lake Neor by Approaching to Past, Present, and Future
این مقاله فاقد چکیده میباشد.
متن کاملMizaj past, present and future
Temperament (Mizaj), as an individual factor, has great importance in traditional medicine and its use in diagnosis and treatment of diseases, as well as the individual lifestyle is very common. Since medicine moves toward Personalized Medicine, the root of individual differences will find its position in different aspects of medicine in early future. In traditional medicine, temperament is ...
متن کاملTeachers’ Professional Competencies: Past, Present, and Future
Teachers’ Professional Competencies: Past, Present, and Future M. Rezaai, Ph.D.* The purpose of this paper is to review the expected professional competencies throughout the history of teacher training in Iran. As such it covers both the past, covering the period from teacher training inception in 1918 to the Islamic revolution in 1979; and the present, since the revolution. Of course t...
متن کامل