In the March 2014 issue of Environmental Practice, NAEP president Harold Draper lamented that “despite all that is being written in the scientific community, efforts to address the unfolding crisis are failing miserably.” He further points out the need to get businesses involved with their considerable leverage in society. The present essay suggests that the emerging discipline of ecological economics can serve as a bridge and a model giving common language to connect the scientific and business communities. Then the many and varied projects of the readers of Environmental Practice can be placed within the context of the economy. In this context, the business community can more easily appreciate and value just how important the environment and these projects are to the proper functioning of the economy. A particular point of emphasis will be on the efforts to rescue economics from the grip of maximizing return to shareholders and to make the case for the importance of physical place such as communities and bioregions, in the past referred to as the Commons.
Environmental Practice 16: 1–9 (2014)