The politics of the steady state*

Environmental Accounting: Pollution Permits or Selling the Environment

“…First , nature has been defined as an objective barrier to production and limits to growth do exist (Taylor , 1978) . Second , nature has been defined as inherently abundant , which means that there exists no environmental crisis (see Simon , 1994) .…”

A Common Pitch and The Management of Corporate Relations: Interpretation, Ethics and Managerialism

“…5 Underlying this management argument lies a series of environmental issues concerned with limits to growth and how they will be managed. To move towards what Taylor (1978) calls a ''steady state society'', economic systems will have to recognise and operate within these limits. 6 Townley et al (2003, p. 2) have explored the logic of modern management, noting that this is a discourse that harkens back to the Enlightenment discourse of rationalisation as the pursuit of reason in human affairs.…”

“…This is because the latter treat the former using precise and scientific techniques, which are more appropriate for the natural sciences. The interpretative perspective, as adapted in this management paper, has also been used to examine the dangers of instrumental political perspectives, which have neglected the social consequences of unlimited economic growth (Taylor, 1978). This approach, it is worth noting, animates broader political attempts to escape the problems of environmental harm and cultural conflict that have engulfed the procedural and bureaucratic politics of today.…”

Paradigm Change in Political Science

“…The most striking feature of the discussion so far has been the appearance of a sharp conflict between those (such as Ophuls [1977] in political science and Heilbroner [1975] in economics) who argue that the new &dquo;ecological scarcity&dquo; presents challenges so novel, complex, and esoteric that only increasingly &dquo;authoritarian&dquo; governments will be able to cope with them, and those who advocate and/ or foresee a more decentralized and participatory society organized around local ecological conditions, or who at least reject the case for authoritarianism (Stillman, 1974;Orr and Hill, 1978;Taylor, 1976;Kraft, 1978;Holsworth, 1979;Leeson, 1979).…”