by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: December 14, 2009

The United States needs an ecological economic Marshall Plan for the United States. Instead of propping up declining and moribund inefficient existing trans-national economic practices the U.S. Government should invest in renewable energy and a broadly thermodynamically conservative approach to economic activities. The effort in light of global warming and potentially devastating changes to the existing global climate ahead the need to reform and advance the national economic infrastructure is plain enough. The problem is that existing economic infrastructure is difficult to change. Because the U.S. Government has in recent years become co-opted by corporatism the nation has tended to be a drag on the effort for ecological economic transformation rather than a leader.

A good introductory ecological economics textbook was written by Herman Daly and Joshua Farley.

 http://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Economics-Applicati ons-Herman-Daly/dp/1559633123

 American procedures for a zero physical quantity growth and vast quality growth should be set in conformity to the ecological economic physics of that textbook son far as possible. Yet what particular ecological economic technologies are appropriate for a reformed economy the topic asks. The problem is not so much too little technology, but too much. There is a vast inventory of existing technology available to serve human needs. There is also a surplus of energy-yet the existing application of technology and economics is one of the most inefficient and badly designed systems possible.

 Adam Smith's invisible hand of individual self-direction of his own business and trade activities concatenated to best serve the composite social structure was never intended to remove democratic governance. In many areas individual efforts cannot create necessary services for large numbers of people such as in health care, military and ecological economic renewal. If a democracy is to exist these services must be provided by the government to the poor and those requiring them. Corporations implicitly cannot govern there own interests in taking profit from exploiting the environment rather than conserving it.

 The continent of Africa is a case in point. This is a land that requires ecological economic infrastructure provided by the global community as no African nation is individually capable of providing the necessary high tech physical infrastructure because of the costs. Of course in advanced societies

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