300187 VO Principles of Ecological Economics (2009W)

"In order to prevent injustice we have to learn to see the world with the eyes of a criminal." - this drastic statement would rather fit to a lecture of criminology but still it holds some truth to describe the relation between Economics and Ecology. Often from the point of view of an Ecologist human acting seems to have become a "crime" and injustice towards nature and a feeling of powerlessness and non-understanding comes up.
The aim of this lecture will be to fight this feeling of powerlessness and non-understanding (which will be the aim of the elective "Environmental Economics" in cooperation with the Vienna University of Economics in general). We will learn to look at the world out of the eyes of Economists and will realize that there is no such thing as "the economy" but rather the conglomerate of millions of human acts. We will see that these acts are from their own logic neither criminal nor absurd but follow clear goals and rational patterns. Moreover we will discover how these single acts come together and form socio-economic constructs like - markets, money, world trade, Microsoft or the overuse of the common property resource fish. We will do this in a positive scientific way without looking only on one side. The lecture will of course be also open to students of any other faculty and does not require the follow-up courses of the rest of the elective.The goal of the lecture will be to achieve basic knowledge in economics so that students will be able to follow the specialized courses in environmental economics and ecological economics later on. As a pleasant side effect the student will not only be able to read the business and economics pages of the Econ. and the Finan. Times but will even love to do so.
The didactic concept of the lecture will be of a very interactive kind - i.e. the character of the lecture will be rather a reading course where the single lectures will be used to intensively discuss subjects and rather learn from each other.