Natural Resource Economics: The Upsetting Discipline

My discussion of the topic I have chosen will be more a personal testimony than an intellectual performance. I trust, of course, that my testimony will contain intellectual nourishment. It would be out of place before an august assembly of intellectuals like this if it didn't. But its intellectuality may be somewhat hidden because it will not be couched in intellectually brilliant analytics nor in soaring conceptual hyperbole. But I take comfort in Adam Smith's oft-quoted remark about the "invisible hand" and hope that the intellectuality in my personal testimony may lead you, as by an invisible hand, to new insights into your unconscious biases, hence recognition of what may be restraining unconscious assumptions in your conceptions of society and the world. I hope the result may be that you will then play leading roles in what I shall argue are imperative changes in our economic view. of man and his world if we are to help our society to avoid the apocalypse.