The People's Economics

It will take time to get to the new 'growth engine' suggested in 'The Economic Growth Engine', but this book shows that we can bridge the gap by improving energy efficiency, so that economic growth can continue as usual.

This book shows how GDP growth correlates with energy use. and arguesthat renewables aren't replacing fossil fuels at the rate that would be required, but it does suggest the possibility of a different 'growth engine'

I felt that Lomborg's books deserved a book length reply, where the author could develop the arguments fully. Unfortunately I felt that Friel's book relied too much on arguments from authority

Bjorn Lomborg's claim that environmental worries are overly alarmist.

There was a claim that growing pressure on resources would push the price of raw materials sky-high. In this book we hear how Julian Simon, bet Paul Ehrlich that over a decade the price of raw materials would actually decrease in real terms. Simon won the bet.

This book argued that without drastic change we'd all be starving by the year 2000. But we're still here, and in fact many people have escaped hunger.

The first edition started with the prediction: The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate This pred...

Polanyi read much of the work of earlier economists, and so his book provides many useful insights into economic history. I can't help feeling though that in the end he is pushing for a return to a feudal economy.

William Godwin's very wordy tome, in which he argued, in a very repetitive way, that we needed to get rid of the hierarchical nature of society,

Price looked forward to an age of plenty, but this seemed to be a more religious view of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.