Description

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Includes several new chapters and comprehensive updates addressing the implications of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), access to energy and social inequality, and climate science and planetary boundaries
Integrates energy and economics by combining natural and social sciences
Uses predictive tools and measures, such as EROI, to show how the economy is embedded in a biophysical world subject to scientific rules and constraints
Provides a fresh approach to economics for those wondering "What's next?" after the Great Recession and continued volatility in energy prices
Offers economic analysis from the real-world perspective of peak oil, high energy prices, the role of alternative energy sources, and potential environmental impacts of energy use such as climate change

About the Author

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Charles A.S. Hall is a Systems Ecologist who received his PhD under Howard T. Odum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Hall is the author or editor of seven books and more than 250 scholarly articles. He is best known for his development of the concept of EROI, or energy return on investment, which is an examination of how organisms, including humans, invest energy into obtaining additional energy to improve biotic or social fitness. He has applied these approaches to fish migrations, carbon balance, tropical land use change and the extraction of petroleum and other fuels in both natural and human-dominated ecosystems. Presently he is developing a new field, biophysical economics, as a supplement or alternative to conventional neoclassical economics, while applying systems and EROI thinking to a broad series of resource and economic issues. Kent A. Klitgaard is Professor of Economics and the Patti McGill Peterson Professor of Social Sciences at Wells Collegein Aurora, New York, where he has taught since 1991. Kent received his Bachelor's degree at San Diego State University and his Master's and PhD at the University of New Hampshire. At Wells, he teaches a diverse array of courses including the History of Economic Thought, Political Economy, Ecological Economics, The Economics of Energy, Technology and the Labor Process, and Microeconomic Theory, and is a co-founder of the Environmental Studies Program. Kent is active in the International Society for Ecological Economics, and is a founding member of the International Society for Biophysical Economics. Recently, his interests have turned towards the degrowth movement, and he has published multiple papers on the subject for Research and Degrowth.