Books like Ecological economics and the ecology of economics by Herman E. Daly

A landmark study that models the limits of Earth’s resources, warning that unchecked growth could trigger ecological and economic collapse within a century.

Herman Daly is probably the most prominent advocate of the need for a change in economic thinking in response to environmental crisis. an iconoclast economist who has worked as a renegade insider at the World Bank in recent years, Daly has argued for overturning some basic economic assumptions. He has a wide and growing reputation among environmentalists, both inside and outside the academy. Daly argues that if sustainable development means anything at this historical moment, it demands that we conceive of the economy as part of the ecosystem and, as a result, give up on the ideal of economic growth. We need a global understanding of developing welfare that does not entail expansion. These simple ideas turn out to be fundamentally radical concepts, and basic ideas about economic theory, poverty, trade, and population have to be discarded or rethought, as Daly shows in careful, accessible detail. These are questions with enormous practical consequences. Daly argues that there is a real fight to control the meaning of "sustainable development," and that conventional economists and development thinkers are trying to water down its meaning to further their own ends. Beyond Growth is an argument that will turn the debate around.

This is a book about human population growth, carrying capacities, delayed feedbacks, our environmental impacts, and the possibilities of overshoot and collapse. -- Excerpt: "Any population-economy-environment system that has feedback delays and slow physical responses, that has thresholds and erosive mechanisms, is literally unmanageable. No matter how brilliant its technologies, no matter how efficient its economy, no matter how wise its decision makers, it simply can't steer itself away from hazards unless it tests its limits very, very slowly."

When Herman Daley's Steady-State Economics was first published in 1977, he caused a sensation with this then-radical view that "enough is best." Today, his ideas are recognized as the key to sustainable development, and Steady-State Economics is universally acknowledged as the leading book on the economics of sustainability. The book is a controversial treatise on the economics of global sustainability, which explains how to integrate ecological and economic concerns. The text has been revised and updated since the first edition was published in 1977, in order to include new essays and to take account of recent developments.