Authors
Sándor Kerekes, Zsuzsanna Marjainé Szerényi
Description
Teaching at a university having age-long traditions is very illustrious; it is even more illustrious to be concerned with a discipline having roots that date back to the dawn of culture. Choosing a discipline, however, that is currently evolving also has some payoffs. In the latter case you grow old with your area of expertise, you do not have to dig deep into works on the history of science as you can find almost all the important details on your office shelf. Basically, having decided to work within environmental economics, a branch of environmental science, this happened to me. I had the privilege of meeting professors Antony Fisher, David Pearce, Tom Titenberg and Robert Costanza in person, who have written the fundamental books of our profession since the early 70’s. The environmental movement itself is not that much older either; probably the publishing of ‘The Silent Spring’by Rachel Carlson in 1962 should be taken as its beginning. The outstanding researcher and publicist died two years later, but her influential masterpiece has been with us since then. Fifty years have passed and such jubilees may present us good opportunities to make a short inventory of everything that has been achieved so far, or to list the goals we failed to meet. Many justifiably accuse environmentalists that they are constantly alarming people, with a kind of end-of-the-world feeling. According to stubborn facts, humanity has been far over the boundaries of the carrying capacity of planet Earth; therefore our consumption is at the expenses of future generations. In addition, more than three million people live in hunger, out of which at least one billion are not able to satisfy …