Herman Edward Daly was born on July 21, 1938, and passed away on October 28, 2022. He was an American environmental and economic thinker who taught at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the United States. He is most well-known for working as a senior economist at the World Bank from 1988 to 1994. In 1996, he received the Right Livelihood Award for showing how to combine ethics, quality of life, environment, and community in ecological economics.
Life and work
Herbert Daly was born in Houston, Texas, in 1938. Before working at the World Bank, Daly was a research associate at Yale University and a professor of economics at Louisiana State University.
At the World Bank, Daly worked as a Senior Economist in the Environment Department. He helped create guidelines for policies that support sustainable development. During his time there, he worked on environmental projects in Latin America. Daly is known for his work on the idea of a steady-state economy. He was a co-founder and editor of the journal Ecological Economics.
In 1971, Daly was influenced by his professor, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and helped promote the idea that the Entropy Law views the economy as using up resources.
In 1989, Daly and John B. Cobb created the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), which they believed was a better way to measure progress than gross domestic product (GDP).
Daly received many honors, including the Honorary Right Livelihood Award, the Heineken Prize for Environmental Science, the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award, the Sophie Prize, the Leontief Prize, and was named "Man of the Year 2008" by Adbusters magazine. He is often credited with starting the idea of "uneconomic growth," though some say Marilyn Waring developed it further in her work on the UN System of National Accounts. In 2014, Daly received the Blue Planet Prize from the Asahi Glass Foundation. Daly died on October 28, 2022, at the age of 84.
Daly edited a book titled Toward a Steady-State Economy, first published in 1973. The book included writings by many important thinkers, such as:
– Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen on the Entropy Law and the Economic Process
– Preston Cloud on mineral resources
– Paul R. Ehrlich and John Holdren on population
– Leon R. Kass on bioethics
– Kenneth E. Boulding on the "Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth"
– Garrett Hardin’s 1968 article, "The Tragedy of the Commons"
– Daly on the steady-state economy
– Warren A. Johnson on guaranteed income as an environmental measure
– Richard England and Barry Bluestone on ecology and social conflict
– William Ophuls on political economy
– E. F. Schumacher on Small Is Beautiful
– Walter A. Weisskopf on economic growth versus balance
– Daly’s essay, "Electric power, employment, and economic growth: a case study in growthmania"
– Jørgen Randers and Donella Meadows on the environment’s carrying capacity
– John B. Cobb on "ecology, ethics, and theology"
– C.S. Lewis on The Abolition of Man
Daly died on October 28, 2022, at the age of 84.