Breve exposición de las contribuciones de Georgescu Roegen a la economía ecológica y un comentario crítico

Abstract

Georgescu Roegen is known like the father of the modern ecological economics. He made a critique to the neoclassical theory considering the economic implications of the thermodynamic laws. The author proved the invalidity of an important neoclassical assumption called perfect substitutability of factors. The Weak Sustainability criterion is based on that assumption. The GR’s contributions to the ecological economics debate are very useful. However, his explanation about the main cause of the environmental problems is incomplete. He suggested the human trend to increase the individual consumption of exosomatic goods as the source of the problem. This document retakes the GR’s critique to the standard economic theory, but mainly develops a Marxian critique about the autor’s view of the social causes of the environmental disaster. The analytical effort presented here follows the multidisciplinary, methodological pluralism and historical opening criterions of the ecological economics. Key words: economy, ecological, production, sustainability, consumption, individualism.