Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T02:05:13.371Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE ENVIRONMENTAL TURN IN NATURAL RESOURCE ECONOMICS: JOHN KRUTILLA AND “CONSERVATION RECONSIDERED”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2019

H. Spencer Banzhaf
H. Spencer Banzhaf*
Affiliation:
Professor, Dept. of Economics, Georgia State University, PO Box 3992, Atlanta, GA 30302. hsbanzhaf@gsu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Environmentalism in the United States historically has been divided into its utilitarian and preservationist impulses, represented by Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, respectively. Pinchot advocated conservation of natural resources to be used for human purposes; Muir advocated protection from humans, for nature’s own sake. In the first half of the twentieth century, natural resource economics was firmly in Pinchot’s side of that schism. That position began to change as the postwar environmental movement gained momentum. In particular, John Krutilla, an economist at Resources for the Future, pushed economics to the point that it could embrace Muir’s vision as well as Pinchot’s. Krutilla argued that if humans preferred a preserved state to a developed one, then such preferences were every bit as “economic.” Either way, there were opportunity costs and an economic choice to be made.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 27 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I thank Kerry Krutilla for very helpful discussions. I also thank Kerry Smith, Charlie Cicchetti, and Polly Cleveland for helpful comments, plus participants at the 2015 History of Economics Society meetings, the 2016 ASSA meetings, and seminars at Duke University, Resources for the Future, and Yale University. Finally, I thank Lynn Toscano at the SUNY Stony Brook University Libraries for assistance with the Environmental Defense Fund archives.

References

REFERENCES

Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). 1995. Membership Handbook. https://aere.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/handbook2016_000.pdf. Accessed 15 October 2018.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth J., and Fisher, Anthony C.. 1974. “Environmental Preservation, Uncertainty, and Irreversibility.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 88 (2): 312–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Backhouse, Roger E., and Medema, Steve G.. 2009. “Defining Economics: The Long Road to Acceptance of the Robbins Definition.” Economica 76: 805–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banzhaf, H. Spencer. 2009. “Objective or Multi-Objective? Two Historically Competing Visions for Benefit-Cost Analysis.” Land Economics 85 (1): 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banzhaf, H. Spencer. 2010. “Consumer Surplus with Apology: A Historical Perspective on Non-Market Valuation and Recreation Demand.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 2: 183–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banzhaf, H. Spencer. 2017. “Constructing Markets: Environmental Economics and the Contingent Valuation Controversy.” In Backhouse, Roger and Cherrier, Beatrice, eds., The Age of the Applied Economist: The Transformation of Economics since the 1970s. History of Political Economy 49 (Suppl.): 213–239.Google Scholar
Barnett, Harold J., and Morse, Chandler. 1963. Scarcity and Growth: The Economics of Natural Resource Availability. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Bateman, Ian J., et al. 2013. “Bringing Ecosystem Services into Economic Decision-Making: Land Use in the United Kingdom.” Science 341 (6141): 45–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, Richard C., et al. 2017. “Putting a Value on Injuries to Natural Assets: The BP Oil Spill.” Science 356 (6335): 253–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Karl Boyd. 2006. Public Power, Private Dams: The Hells Canyon High Dam Controversy. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Callicott, J. Baird. 1994. “A Brief History of American Conservation Philosophy.” In Covington, W. Wallace and Debano, Leonard F., eds., Sustainable Ecological Systems. Fort Collins, CO: Rocky Mountain Forest & Range Experiment Station, pp. 10–14.Google Scholar
Callicott, J. Baird. 1989. In Defense of the Land Ethic. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Callicott, J. Baird. 1999. Beyond the Land Ethic. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Cannan, Edwin. 1922. Wealth: A Brief Explanation of the Causes of Economic Welfare. Second edition. London: P.S. King & Son.Google Scholar
Cicchetti, Charles J., Fisher, Anthony C., and Smith, V. Kerry. 1976. “An Econometric Evaluation of a Generalized Consumer Surplus Measure: The Mineral King Controversy.” Econometrica 44: 1259–1276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicchetti, Charles J., and Smith, V. Kerry. 1973. “Congestion, Quality Deterioration, and Optimal Use: Wilderness Recreation in the Spanish Peaks Primitive Area.” Social Science Research 2: 15–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costanza, Robert, et al. 2014. “Changes in the Global Value of Ecosystem Services.” Global Environmental Change 26: 152–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daily, Gretchen, ed. 1997. Nature’s Services: Society’s Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
Ewert, Sara E. Dant. 2001. “Evolution of an Environmentalist: Senator Frank Church and the Hells Canyon Controversy.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring): 36–51.Google Scholar
Fisher, Anthony C., Krutilla, John V., and Cicchetti, Charles J.. 1972. “The Economics of Environmental Preservation: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis.” American Economic Review 62 (4): 605–619.Google Scholar
Fisher, Anthony C., Krutilla, John V., and Cicchetti, Charles J.. 1974. “The Economics of Environmental Preservation: Further Discussion.” American Economic Review 64 (6): 1030–1039.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Craufurd D. 1999. “The Economics of Art through Art Critics’ Eyes.” In De Marchi, Neil and Goodwin, Craufurd D. W., eds., Economic Engagement with Art. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 157–184.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Craufurd D. 2008. “Ecologist Meets Economics: Aldo Leopold, 1887–1948.” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 30 (4): 429–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hays, Samuel P. 1959. Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hays, Samuel P. 1982. “From Conservation to Environment: Environmental Politics in the United States since World War Two.” Environmental Review 6 (2): 14–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krutilla, John V. 1955. “Criteria for Evaluating Regional Development Programs.” American Economic Review Papers & Proceedings 45 (2): 120–132.Google Scholar
Krutilla, John V. 1962. “Welfare Aspects of Benefit-Cost Analysis.” Journal of Political Economy 69 (3): 226–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krutilla, John V. 1967a. “Conservation Reconsidered.” American Economic Review 57 (4): 777–786.Google Scholar
Krutilla, John V. 1967b. “Some Environmental Effects of Economic Development.” Daedalus 96 (4): 1058–1070.Google Scholar
Krutilla, John V. 1981. “Reflections of an Applied Welfare Economist.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 8: 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krutilla, John V., and Cicchetti, Charles J.. 1972. “Evaluating Benefits of Environmental Resources with Special Application to the Hells Canyon.” Natural Resource Journal 12: 1–28.Google Scholar
Krutilla, John V., and Eckstein, Otto. 1958. Multiple Purpose River Development: Studies in Applied Economic Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Krutilla, John V., and Fisher, Anthony C.. 1975. The Economics of Natural Environments: Studies in the Valuation of Commodity and Amenity Resources. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future.Google Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. 1933. “The Conservation Ethic.” Journal of Forestry 31: 634–643.Google Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. 1939. “A Biotic View of Land.” Journal of Forestry 37: 727–730.Google Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. [1949] 1987. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Qi Feng. 2014. “Aldo Leopold’s Unrealized Proposals to Rethink Economics.” Ecological Economics 108: 104–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alfred. [1920] 1946. The Principles of Economics. Eighth edition. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
McCauley, Douglas J. 2006. “Selling Out on Nature.” Nature 443 (7): 27–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, John M. 1997. “Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the Boundaries of Politics in American Thought.” Polity 30 (2): 267–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Char. 1992. “The Greening of Gifford Pinchot.” Environmental History Review 16 (3): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muir, John. [1875] 1980. “Wild Wool.” In Wilderness Essays. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, pp. 227–242.Google Scholar
Muir, John. [1901] 1980. “The Yellowstone National Park.” In Wilderness Essays. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, pp. 178–219.Google Scholar
Muir, John. [1912] 1989. The Yosemite. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.Google Scholar
Nash, Roderick. 1982. Wilderness and the American Mind. Third edition. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert H. 2010. The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America. University Park: Penn State Press.Google Scholar
Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey. Washington, DC: Island Press.Google Scholar
O’Neill, John. 1992. “The Varieties of Intrinsic Value.” The Monist 75 (2): 119–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinchot, Gifford. 1910. The Fight for Conservation. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Co.Google Scholar
Pinchot, Gifford. 1947. Breaking New Ground. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Co.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. 1995. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Lionel. 1935. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science. Second edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, Morgan M. 2006. “The Nature that Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24: 367–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schröter, Matthias, Zanden, Emma H., Oudenhoven, Alexander P. E., Remme, Roy P., Serna-Chavez, Hector M., Groot, Rudolf S., and Opdam, Paul. 2014. “Ecosystem Services as a Contested Concept: A Synthesis of Critique and Counter-Arguments.” Conservation Letters 7: 514–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, V. Kerry. 2004. “Krutilla’s Legacy: Twenty-First-Century Challenges for Environmental Economics.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 86 (5): 1167–1178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, V. Kerry. 2011. “Inventing Price Systems and Substitutes for Them.” History of Political Economy 43 (2): 347–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, V. Kerry. 2015. “Krutilla’s Conservation Reconsidered.” Mimeo.Google Scholar
Smout, T. Christopher. 2000. Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.Google Scholar
Weisbrod, Burton A. 1964. “Collective-Consumption Services of Individual-Consumption Goods.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 78 (3): 471–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolfe, Linnie Marsh. [1945] 2003. Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Worster, Donald. 1977. Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.Google Scholar