Herman Daly is a provocation to conventional economists.

He questions welfare gains from free trade (with mobile capital).

He considers further growth in industrialized countries to be unnecessary and ecologically dangerous.

The economy is a sub-sphere of ecology and not the other way around.

Philip Krohn

Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".

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He became one of the founders of ecological economics and questioned the principles of economics so fundamentally that the discipline largely excluded him.

He can claim to be one of the first to think through the consequences of global ecological crises such as climate change.

For five and a half decades, the Texas economist has worked persistently on issues, has presented the consequences of the first two laws of thermodynamics for economic development more consistently and understandably than others and has refined his vision of a "steady state economy", i.e. an economy with sustainable consumption and constant Population.

He became the inspiration for the Club of Rome

By the early 1970s, he had progressed to the point where he became an inspirer of the widely acclaimed Club of Rome study on the Limits to Growth.

And as a World Bank economist, he has also thought through the practical implications of his thinking.

The Canadian professor of environmental studies Peter Victor has now presented the first scientific biography of Daly in English.

Anyone who reads them will perhaps ask why this is only happening now, since Daly, at the age of 84, has not yet stopped publishing, but has reduced it.

On the 280 pages of this individual history of ideas, it becomes clear with what passion, coherence and tenacity – and against what resistance – he pursued his ideas.

Comments by younger researchers, which the biographer collected via a questionnaire, make it clear for the first time what an enormous influence he has on today's science.

As a child, Herman Daly contracted polio, which left him unable to use his left arm.

Raised in a religious household in Houston, he studied as a young researcher in Latin America, where he also began the relationship he had in the United States with his Brazilian wife Marcia, with whom he has two children.

Physical foundations and ethical foundations

Daly describes his life's work as anchoring economics in its physical and ethical foundations.

In Nashville he meets the Romanian mathematician and economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who explains to him the limitations of economic expansion through the entropy law, which states that energy is "depreciated" over time.

The relationship between the two remained tenuous until Georgescu-Roegen's death in 1994.

The elder describes Daly as the only student, but repeatedly asserts contradictions that could have been cleared up with more precise reading.

Daly got his ideas about the biosphere as the overarching system of the economy and population limitation from him.

Daly has created an awareness that economic policy instruments in a (materially and in terms of people) full world (“Full World”) differ from those in an empty world (“Empty World”).

Fishing, hunting, industrial production - all of this takes on a completely different meaning in a crowded world.

The Great Effects of the Entropy Law

With every economic conversion process - this is a consequence of the entropy law - the potential for further activities is reduced, recycling is only possible to a limited extent.

Economic activity can be judged by looking at people's ultimate goals.

This is where the ethical and physical foundations of his theory come together.

Neoclassical economists, on the other hand, claimed that steadily higher consumption opportunities increased well-being.

Daly assumes a more complex value system according to which individuals act.

He copied his innovation of a "steady state" without further population growth and with decreasing throughput of matter and energy from the liberal John Stuart Mill.

Even if degrowth or eco-activists have tried to co-opt Daly, this deep anchoring in liberal ideas is his great strength.

His critique of the neoclassical is based on the inner science.

Nobel Memorial Prize winners such as Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Solow had a hard time with his argument that technical progress would be limited because it would not be possible to create wealth without a material basis.

So far there has been no overview of Daly's work

Since the mid-1960s, Daly has published extensively and meddled on issues closely related to the ecological crisis.

Despite his enthusiasm for opinions, he has also dealt with controversial fields such as migration and world trade without a hitch.

However, despite popular scientific works such as “Beyond Growth”, a systematic review of his theoretical models has so far been lacking.

Victor's biography competently and instructively fills this gap.

"There is no better example of how scientific discourse should be shaped than Herman Daly," eco-economist Robert Costanza replied to the author in the questionnaire.

"He refuses to give up economics -- to think about society in an economic way," comments best-selling author Tim Jackson.

"He applies ruthless severity and points to solutions." Daly's theses will remain important when it comes to solutions to the climate crisis.

Peter A Victor: Herman Daly's Economics for a Full World.

His Life and Ideas.

Routledge, Abingdon 2021, 320 pages, 43 euros.