This paper presents the concept of ecological economics (which is based on the premise that every economic activity has an associated throughput of matter and energy) and the authors argue that municipalities may be in a position to require all publically funded facilities to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors and initiatives.
If we accept the premise that there are limits to growth, it follows that controls and management of growth should follow. There are two ways to address this: “environmental economics” and “ecological economics.”
Environmental economists are concerned with internalizing externalities and promoting human capital growth as a means to combat natural resource depletion. That is, environmental economists promote market solutions for environmental problems.
The alternative angle, argued by ecological economists, is a steady-state economy, defined as: "an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels of low rates of maintenance 'throughput', that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy from the first stage of production (depletion of low-entropy materials from the environment) to the last stage of consumption (pollution of the environment with high-entropy wastes and exotic materials)".
CITE: McLeod, C. M., & Holden, J. T. (2017). Ecological economics and sport stadium public financing. William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, 41(3), 581–603.
