"Basic Principles of Sustainable Development"

This paper explores what a critical commentary on micro principles texts might look like, examining what is to be critiqued and how to do it.sustainable development, economic theory, development, environment, development policy

10-05 "The Macroeconomics of Development without Throughput Growth"

Serious discussion has begun of policies to promote the goal of increasing well-being without material growth. Moving towards this goal requires a profound reorientation of macroeconomic theory. Importantly, the call by ecological economists to move away from traditional growth-oriented models comes at a moment when standard macroeconomics is in considerable turmoil. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 seriously undermined the basis for mainstream macroeconomics and brought renewed attention to various forms of Keynesian analysis and policy previously regarded as outdated. There is a close complementarity between new Keynesian and ecological perspectives. While older Keynesian analysis was oriented towards promoting growth, a true Keynesian analysis of the relationship between investment and consumption does not depend on a growth orientation. What this analysis has in common with an ecological perspective is the rejection of market optimality assumed in classical models. Moving away from the neoclassical goal of inter-temporal utility maximization allows for different, pluralistic economic goals: full employment, provision of basic needs, social and infrastructure investment, and income equity. These goals are compatible with environmental preservation and resource sustainability, whereas indefinite growth is not. But they require a revitalization of the sphere of social investment, seriously neglected (indeed often omitted completely) in standard models. Reintroducing this perspective allows the development of an economic theory suitable for the transition to a stable-population, low-carbon, resource-conserving global economy. The barriers to this transition are primarily political and institutional, not economic. Specifically, an eco-Keynesian perspective emphasizes new macroeconomic categories including: * human-capital-intensive services * investment in energy-conserving capital * investment in natural and human capital The expansion of these categories provides a basis for growth in wellbeing without growth in throughput, while preserving full employment and economic stability. This paper explores some of the implications of this altered macroeconomic perspective for development in both the global "North" and "South". It is suggested that the problems following the global financial crisis cannot be resolved by a return to traditional growth patterns, and will require large-scale practical policies based on eco-Keynesianism.

01-09 "Macroeconomic Policy and Sustainability"

The trend in mainstream economic thought about macroeconomic policy has been towards minimalism. In the optimistic Keynesian phase of the 1960's, it was assumed that both fiscal and monetary policy were effective tools for macroeconomic management. But the influence of monetarist and New Classical critiques has led to a gradual erosion of theoretical support for activist government policy. First fiscal policy fell by the wayside, perceived as too slow and possibly counterproductive in its impacts. Then New Classical and rational expectations critiques suggested that even monetary policy was ineffective. Thus the role of government policy has been reduced to a cautious effort not to make things worse B in effect a return to an economics of laissez-faire.

03-03 "Reconciling Growth and Environment"

Macroeconomic theory and policy are strongly based on the assumption that economic growth is a fundamental goal. The environmental realities of the twenty- first century compel a reassessment of macro theory in terms of the impact of current growth patterns on planetary ecosystems.This paper examines the macroeconomic impacts of growth in terms of several major areas of conflict between economic demands and ecosystem capacities:

A Bootstrapping Approach for Generating Maximally Path-Entangled Photon States

We propose a bootstrapping approach to generation of maximally path-entangled states of photons, so called ``NOON states''. Strong atom-light interaction of cavity QED can be employed to generate NOON states with about 100 photons; which can then be used to boost the existing experimental Kerr nonlinearities based on quantum coherence effects to facilitate NOON generation with arbitrarily large number of photons all within the current experimental state of the art technology. We also offer an alternative scheme that uses an atom-cavity dispersive interaction to obtain sufficiently high Kerr-nonlinearity necessary for arbitrary NOON generation

Temporal Integration of Seismic Traveltime Tomography

Time-lapse geophysical measurements and seismic imaging methods in particular are powerful techniques for monitoring changes in reservoir properties. Traditional time-lapse processing methods treat each dataset as an independent unit and estimate changes in reservoir state through differencing these separate inversions. We present a general least-squares approach to jointly inverting time-varying property models through use of spatio-temporal coupling operators. Originally developed within the medical imaging community, this extension of traditional Tikhonov regularization allows us to constrain the way in which models vary in time, thereby reducing artifacts observed in traditional time-lapse imaging formulations. The same methodology can also accommodate changes in experiment geometry as a function of time thus allowing inversion of incremental or incomplete surveys. In this case, temporal resolution is traded for improved spatial coverage at individual timesteps. We use seismic traveltime tomography as a model problem although almost any geophysical inversion task can be posed within this formalism. We apply the developed time-lapse inversion algorithm to a synthetic crosswell dataset designed to replicate a CO2 sequestration monitoring experiment

Extending CMIP5 projections of global mean temperature change and sea level rise due to the thermal expansion using a physically-based emulator

We present a physically-based emulator approach to extending 21st century CMIP5 model simulations of global mean surface temperature (GMST) and global thermal expansion (TE) to 2300. A two-layer energy balance model that has been tuned to emulate the CO2 response of individual CMIP5 models is combined with model-specific radiative forcings to generate an emulated ensemble to 2300 for RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Errors in the emulated time series are quantified using a subset of CMIP5 models with data available to 2300 and factored into the ensemble uncertainty. The resulting projections show good agreement with 21st century ensemble projections reported in IPCC AR5 and also compare favourably with individual CMIP5 model simulations post-2100. There is a tendency for the two-layer model simulations to overestimate both GMST rise and TE under RCP2.6, which is suggestive of a systematic error in the applied radiative forcings. Overall, the framework shows promise as a basis for extending process-based projections of global sea level rise beyond the 21st century time horizon that typifies CMIP5 simulations. The results also serve to illustrate the differing responses of GMST and Earth's energy imbalance (EEI) to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. GMST responds relatively quickly to changes in emissions, leading to a negative trend post-2100 for RCP2.6, although temperature remains substantially elevated compared to present day at 2300. In contrast, EEI remains positive under all RCPs, and results in ongoing sea level rise from TE