| There are several points of disagreement between traditional economists, and ecologists and ecological economists, concerning the basic relationship between natural capital and manmade capital. One aspect of the disagreement concerns the importance of natural capital in production, and broader well-being. These competing views bear heavily on scholars' understanding of the role of natural capital in sustainable development; on the potential for overshoot and collapse due to nonsustainable use of natural capital; on the implications of particular development hypotheses; and on the means of controlling or regulating resource use and waste to achieve sustainability. This dissertation seeks to explain these disagreements and promote mutual understanding.; The dissertation argues that there is an inverted-U relationship between time and space scales of natural- and manmade capital aggregation and substitutability. Data to support this hypothesis are draw in part from studies of substitution among aggregated capital, labor, energy, and materials in production, as proxies for manmade capital, labor, and natural capital. The studies indicate that at a national level of aggregation, there is generally substitutability among those capital compartments, with complementarity between capital and energy.; The dissertation employs simulation modeling to examine basic relationships among variables in ecological-economic systems. Model runs reveal that incorrect choice of development indicators may lead to overshoot and collapse. Temporary drops in productivity may turn an investment trend into a long-term mining trend. Labor-led investment in natural capital may die off as the opportunity cost of one's time rises with income. Shifting demographic variables due to disease may reduce availability of monetary capital and increase perceived risk to investment. Increased technological efficiency may turn a nonsustainable mining trend into a weak sustainability trend, or, under some circumstances, a strong sustainability trend. Formulation experiments indicate sensitivity to changes in specification. Ecological tax reform is advanced as a means to reduce the depreciation of natural capital, spur the development of human capital, and spur the development of appropriate types of technology, and avoid certain overshoot-and-collapse scenarios of the simulation models. |
