Abstract
Ecological economics is enabling economic and environmental historians to enhance their understanding of economic growth, by placing it in a broader perspective of biophysical interactions between nature and society. In this chapter, several ongoing researches and historical debates are examined from this standpoint such as the missing role of energy carriers in GDP growth, the socio-metabolic profiles of past and present societies, the pre-industrial ‘Smithian’ responses to ‘Malthusian’ traps, the role of efficient land-use in breeding livestock to increase agricultural yields, the reasons why the Industrial Revolution began in a high wage and cheap energy economy, the first globalization as a socio-metabolic watershed, and the question of whether there was a general crisis of biomass energies at the coming of fossil fuels era. Research discussing long-term socio-metabolic transitions may contribute to our understanding of how economic growth actually occurred, and which ecological impacts affected the Earth’s life-support systems. Equally, these projects leave room for the institutional settings or ruling actors needed to explain why growth has happened and by whom. Far from naturalising history, the use of ecology in the explanation of human history historialises ecology.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Pasinetti (1981).
- 3.
Hodgson (2007).
- 4.
Ayres and Warr (2005).
- 5.
Ayres (2001).
- 6.
Lucas (2002).
- 7.
van Zanden (2009).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Ayres and Warr (2005).
- 13.
Allen (2009).
- 14.
Georgescu-Roegen (1976).
- 15.
Ayres and Warr (2005).
- 16.
Fischer-Kowalski et al. (2007).
- 17.
- 18.
Krausmann et al. (2008), pp. 187–188.
- 19.
Krausmann et al. (2008), p. 199.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Costanzaet al. (2007b), pp. 522–527.
- 23.
- 24.
Kander (2002).
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
Wrigley (2010).
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
Sieferle (2001).
- 33.
- 34.
- 35.
De Vries (2001).
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
Sieferle (2001).
- 39.
Van Zanden (1991).
- 40.
Koning (1994).
- 41.
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
- 45.
- 46.
Wrigley (1987).
- 47.
Warde (2007).
- 48.
Allen (2009).
- 49.
- 50.
- 51.
Crafts and Harley (1992).
- 52.
Krausmann et al. (2008).
- 53.
Omrod (2003).
- 54.
Hornborg et al. (2007).
- 55.
- 56.
Van Zanden (2009).
- 57.
Williamson (2006).
- 58.
Mc Neill (1982).
- 59.
- 60.
Guha and Martínez Alier (1997).
- 61.
Warde (2009).
- 62.
- 63.
Agnoletti (2006).
- 64.
- 65.
Krausmann (2013).
- 66.
Billen et al. (2009).
- 67.
- 68.
Grigg (1982).
- 69.
- 70.
Tello et al. (2012).
- 71.
Pyne (1997).
- 72.
Grove and Rackham (2001).
- 73.
Cussó et al. (2006a).
- 74.
Martínez Alier (1990).
- 75.
Cussó et al. (2006b).
- 76.
Goodman and Redclift (1991).
- 77.
Fischer-Kowalski and Amann (2001).
- 78.
Shiva and Gitanjali (2002).
- 79.
- 80.
Fischer-Kowalski et al. (2004).
- 81.
Warde (2006a), p. 284.
- 82.
Warde (2006a), p. 19.
- 83.
McNeill (2000).
- 84.
Shiel (1991).
- 85.
Shiel (2006).
- 86.
Boserup (1965).
- 87.
Lee ( 1986).
- 88.
Campbell and Overton (1991).
- 89.
- 90.
Allen (2008).
- 91.
Elvin (2009).
- 92.
- 93.
Cunfer (2004).
- 94.
Galloway et al. (2004).
- 95.
Tisdale and Nelson (1956).
- 96.
Marull et al. (2008).
- 97.
McNeill (2000).
- 98.
Sieferle (2001).
- 99.
- 100.
Krausmann ( 2001).
- 101.
Musel (2008).
- 102.
Haberl et al. (2001).
- 103.
Sieferle (2001).
- 104.
Allen (2009).
- 105.
Bravo (1993).
- 106.
Malanima (2001).
- 107.
Clément (2008).
- 108.
Grove and Rackham (2001).
- 109.
Sieferle (2001).
- 110.
Grove and Rackham (2001).
- 111.
Williams (2003).
- 112.
Malanima (2006), pp. 101–121.
- 113.
Malanima (2006), pp. 116–118.
- 114.
Warde (2006b), pp. 38–39.
- 115.
Guha (1991).
- 116.
Warde (2006b), p. 52.
- 117.
European Environment Agency (2006).
- 118.
Warde (2007).
- 119.
- 120.
Williams (2003).
- 121.
- 122.
North (1999).
- 123.
- 124.
Martínez Alier (1998).
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Acknowledgments
This essay has been written in the framework of the linked research projects on Sustainable farm systems: long-term socioecological metabolism in western agriculture funded by The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Spanish one HAR2012-38920-C02-02 directed by Enric Tello at the University of Barcelona. We thank Leah Temper for her careful revision of the English version.
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Glossary
- EROI
-
Energy returns on energy inputs
- MEFA
-
Material and Energy Flow Analysis
- HANPP
-
Human Appropriation of the ecological Net Primary Production
- EUROSTAT
-
The Statistical Office of the European Communities located in Luxembourg. Its main responsibilities are to provide statistical information to the institutions of the European Union (EU) and to promote the harmonisation of statistical methods across its member states
- Production function
-
It is a function that relates the output to the inputs or factors of production used in a production process. The Cobb-Douglass is the most standard in which the output (Y) is produced with two factors, labour (L) and capital (K), and the remaining growth share not explained by the variation of both is explained with the Total Factor Productivity (A). That is, \( Y = A L^{\beta } K^{ \propto } \) where \( \beta + \propto = 1 \) and account for the output elasticities of capital and labour, respectively
- TFP
-
The Total Factor Productivity measures the fraction of economic growth that cannot be explained by the contribution assigned to the increases in capital, labour and land. As it is commonly considered that it grasps the efficiency gains obtained through the combination of factors that participate in a production process taken together, and it is taken as a measure of an economy’s long-term technological change
- Exergy
-
The useful work actually performed by all energy converters which empower human labour and capital goods at its disposal
- IPCC
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Organization (UNO) created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The IPCC summarizes the technical, biophysical, socio-economical information to understanding and measure the risk of climate change
- LUCC
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Land-Use Land-Cover Change programme (http://www.geo.ucl.be/LUCC/lucc.html) examines the transformations undergone by Earth’s vegetal cover over the centuries, in order to identify the main driving forces behind global socio-environmental change, and also to assess its socio-ecological impact
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Tello-Aragay, E., Jover-Avellà, G. (2014). Economic History and the Environment: New Questions, Approaches and Methodologies. In: Agnoletti, M., Neri Serneri, S. (eds) The Basic Environmental History. Environmental History, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09180-8_2
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