Herman Daly is professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. He worked for several years at
the World Bank. He is co-author of the influential For the Common Good, among other books.
Review
"Daly is turning economics inside out by putting the earth and its diminishing natural resources at the
center of the field . . . a kind of reverse Copernican revolution in economics."
--Utne Reader
Beacon Press Web Site, Aug., 2001
Summary
Named one of a hundred "visionaries who could change your life" by the Utne Reader, Herman Daly has
probably been the most prominent advocate of the need for a change in economic thinking in response to environmental
crisis. An iconoclast economis t who has worked as a renegade insider at the World Bank in recent years, Daly has
argued for overturning some basic economic assumptions. He has won a wide and growing reputation among a wide array
of environmentalists, inside and outside the academy.
In a book that will generate controversy, Daly turns his attention to the major environmental debate surrounding
"sustainable development." Daly argues that the idea of sustainable development--which has become a catchword
of environmentalism and international finance--is being used in ways that are vacuous, certainly wrong, and probably
dangerous. The necessary solutions turn out to be muc h more radical than people suppose.
This is a crucial updating of a major economist's work, and mandatory reading for people engaged in the debates
about the environment.