Herman E. Daly Quotes

#1. Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence.

Herman E. Daly

#2. There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation.

Herman E. Daly

#3. While the invisible hand looks after the private sector, the invisible foot kicks the public sector to pieces.

Herman E. Daly

#4. The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.

Herman E. Daly

#5. The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.

Herman E. Daly

#6. Nonrenewable resources should be exploited, but at a rate equal to the creation of renewable substitutes.

Herman E. Daly

#7. Environmental degradation is an iatrogenic disease induced by economic physicians who treat the basic malady of unlimited wants by prescribing unlimited growth ... Yet one certainly does not cure a treatment-induced disease by increasing the treatment dosage.

Herman E. Daly

#8. Growth chestnuts have to be placed on the unyielding anvil of biophysical realities and then crushed with the hammer of moral argument.

Herman E. Daly

#9. We need an economics fit for purpose in a finite and entropic world.

Herman E. Daly

#10. But the macro-economy is not the Whole. It too is a Part, a part of the larger natural economy, the ecosphere, and its growth does inflict opportunity costs on the finite Whole that must be counted.

Herman E. Daly

#11. Reproduction is more pleasurable than death.

Herman E. Daly

#12. The problem with the World Bank has to do with development - the spreading of Western over-consumption worldwide.

Herman E. Daly

#13. Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.

Herman E. Daly