'Cowboy Economics' versus 'Spaceship Ecology' : Constructing a Sustainable Environmental Ethic

In order to improve and protect the environment while keeping in mind economic realities that constrain action it is essential to devise an ethical approach amenable to both economics and environmental ethics. This paper endeavors to provide a framework for achieving such a compromise by: (1) Defining critical tenets of neoclassical economics and deep ecology; (2) Reframing the policy problem; (3) Reviewing the weaknesses of regulative, normative, and cognitive institutionalist perspectives on economics and the environment; and (4) Suggesting a normative analytical framework that allows for a dialogue between economics and environmental ethics. I conclude that a more sustainable environmental ethic which promotes both efficiency and justice should be based on three principles: regulation, education, and participation