The unfinished journey of ecological economics

The goal of the economists and ecologists who laid the conceptual foundations for ecological economics in the 1960s and 1970s was to create a scientifically informed discipline that could serve as the basis for coordinating economic activities in environmentally responsible ways. The aim of this article is to make a convincing case that the history of neoclassical economic theory provides a coherent basis for understanding why ecological economists must finish the journey begun by these economists and ecologists.