Ecological Economics Education and Upcoming Presentations

What do introductory economics textbooks teach us about sustainability?

Almost 40% of North American university students take an introductory economics course. Tom Green is an ecological economist based in Vancouver, Canada who believes it is critically important to understand how universities are teaching the about relationships between the environment and economy in these courses.

Many universities have made commitments to integrate sustainability across the curriculum and to ensure they graduate ecologically responsible and literate citizens. Tom has been examining the leading economics textbooks to see how well they support these sustainability commitments. He found that the standard textbooks largely ignore or mischaracterize linkages between the environment and economy, and that they include little content that would help further student understanding of sustainability.

He found that the core theory in these textbooks presumed a world where ecosystem services will always be available to support economic activity and that higher levels of consumption are always better. They paid little attention to the consequences or limits of economic growth.

Tom's dissertation concluded that Economics 101 courses do not help universities meet their sustainability commitments and that change is unlikely to come from within economics departments, because most of the lecturers are committed to working within the mainstream economics paradigm.

Tom obtained his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 2012. At Quest University Canada he is a visiting faculty member, teaching Ecological Economics, Political Economy and Global Perspectives. Learn more about the results of Tom's research.

Upcoming Conferences: Local and National

We are pleased to be presenting at two conferences this month. We will be presenting on sustainability as a new paradigm for teacher preparation at the national conference of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE) in Florida.

We will also be a part of the youth track workshop series at Everybody Eats 2.0 Conference in Lansing, providing guidance and offering resources and techniques for incorporating food systems education into the classroom. This session will discuss lesson planning, the National Common Core Standards, and the use of school gardens as an educational tool.

February 18th, 2013

Hot off the press:

"Ecological Economics Education"

We're pleased to announce the publication of "Ecological Economics Education," a book chapter authored by Executive Director,

Susan Santone.

The chapter appears on the just-released Schooling for Sustainable Development in Canada and the United States, edited by Rosalyn McKeown and Victor Nolet, and published by Springer.

Santone's chapter introduces the fundamental principles of ecological economics by comparing it with those of "conventional" economics. The chapter explores both schools of thought in terms of goals, the relationship between the economy and the environment, and metrics of "success." Topics include macroeconomic frameworks, externalities, markets, and the motivations of economic "actors."

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