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Blueprint for a Green Economy
This report has been prepared by the London Environmental Economics Centre (LEEC). LEEC is a joint venture, established in 1988, by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the department of Economics of University College London (UCL). Popularly known as The Pearce Report, this book is a report prepared for the Department of the Environment. It demonstrates the ways in which elements in our environment at present under threat from many forms of pollution can be costed. The book goes on to show ways in which governments are able, as a consequence of this analysis, to construct systems of taxation which would both reduce pollution by making it too costly and generate revenue for cleaning up much of the damage. The book ends with a series of skeleton programmes for progress.
- GenresEconomicsSustainability
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
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91 people want to read
About the author
David Pearce
45 books68 followersDavid Pearce is a British independent philosopher. He believes and promotes the idea that there exists a strong ethical imperative for humans to work towards the abolition of suffering in all sentient life. His book-length internet manifesto The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how technologies such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, pharmacology, and neurosurgery could potentially converge to eliminate all forms of unpleasant experience among human and nonhuman animals, replacing suffering with gradients of well-being, a project he refers to as "paradise engineering". A transhumanist and a vegan, Pearce believes that we (or future evolutions of humans) have a responsibility not only to avoid cruelty to animals within human society but also to redesign the global ecosystem so that animals do not suffer in the wild.
Pearce co-founded Humanity+, then known as the World Transhumanist Association, and is a prominent figure in the transhumanist movement, inspiring a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering and ending suffering.
Pearce is primarily known as the author of The Hedonistic Imperative, a 1995 book-length manifesto in which he theorized how to "eradicate suffering in all sentient life" through paradise engineering. In Pearce's view, suffering is not necessary for humans and only exists because humanity evolved through methods that emphasised survival, rather than happiness. He writes that mental suffering will someday be seen as a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was effectively eliminated with the advent of anaesthesia.
In his work, Pearce outlines how drugs and technologies, including genetic engineering and nanotechnology, could enable the end of suffering in all sentient life. In the short term, Pearce argues, well-being can be helped by designer drugs, especially since safer mood-brighteners are becoming more readily available. In the long-term, however, suffering could be abolished by genetic engineering through biotechnology.
In 1998, Pearce co-founded Humanity+, the international transhumanism association, with fellow philosopher Nick Bostrom, now the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. The association, then known as the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), is a nonprofit organisation that advocates transhumanism – an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Pearce's ideas have inspired a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering. Pearce is vegan, and the increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanist movement has been attributed to his influence.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pe...
http://www.bltc.com/
Pearce co-founded Humanity+, then known as the World Transhumanist Association, and is a prominent figure in the transhumanist movement, inspiring a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering and ending suffering.
Pearce is primarily known as the author of The Hedonistic Imperative, a 1995 book-length manifesto in which he theorized how to "eradicate suffering in all sentient life" through paradise engineering. In Pearce's view, suffering is not necessary for humans and only exists because humanity evolved through methods that emphasised survival, rather than happiness. He writes that mental suffering will someday be seen as a relic of the past, just as physical suffering during surgery was effectively eliminated with the advent of anaesthesia.
In his work, Pearce outlines how drugs and technologies, including genetic engineering and nanotechnology, could enable the end of suffering in all sentient life. In the short term, Pearce argues, well-being can be helped by designer drugs, especially since safer mood-brighteners are becoming more readily available. In the long-term, however, suffering could be abolished by genetic engineering through biotechnology.
In 1998, Pearce co-founded Humanity+, the international transhumanism association, with fellow philosopher Nick Bostrom, now the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. The association, then known as the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), is a nonprofit organisation that advocates transhumanism – an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
Pearce's ideas have inspired a strain of transhumanism based on paradise engineering. Pearce is vegan, and the increasing number of vegans and vegetarians in the transhumanist movement has been attributed to his influence.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pe...
http://www.bltc.com/
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 22, 2020
Great intro to environmental econ. Sad how relevant much of this remains 30 years on.
December 22, 2010
One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.
Blueprint for a Green Economy (also popularly known as The Pearce Report) was prepared by the London Environmental Economics Centre (LEEC) for the UK Department of the Environment. Given their mandate, the book is necessarily (and refreshingly) policy-focused, translating academic insights from the emerging discipline of environmental economics into accessible language and pratical recommendations.
Blueprint's most pervasive theme is that, in order to integrate the environment into economic decisions, the environment needs to be assigned economic values, and these need to be taken into account in economic policy planning. The authors argue that, even though it is not possible to put an exact value on the environment, it is necessarty to attempt this because it shows that environmental services are not free and it forces us to think in a rational manner about the gains and losses involved. If we don't value the environment, we could end up trading off financial capital gains with environmental capital losses.
Blueprint for a Green Economy (also popularly known as The Pearce Report) was prepared by the London Environmental Economics Centre (LEEC) for the UK Department of the Environment. Given their mandate, the book is necessarily (and refreshingly) policy-focused, translating academic insights from the emerging discipline of environmental economics into accessible language and pratical recommendations.
Blueprint's most pervasive theme is that, in order to integrate the environment into economic decisions, the environment needs to be assigned economic values, and these need to be taken into account in economic policy planning. The authors argue that, even though it is not possible to put an exact value on the environment, it is necessarty to attempt this because it shows that environmental services are not free and it forces us to think in a rational manner about the gains and losses involved. If we don't value the environment, we could end up trading off financial capital gains with environmental capital losses.
April 27, 2007
Environmental Economics
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews