It is little wonder that Herman Daly’s recent death, on October 28, 2022, passed with little fanfare from the nation’s mass media, for he was a pioneer of “ecological economics” with principles that counter the mainstream economic paradigm of constant growth.

Daly was a promoter of the idea of a “steady-state economy,” which explained that infinite growth is not possible in a world of finite resources. Starting with his textbooks written in the 1970s, Daly taught that rather than being one of several factors in our economies (along with labor and capital), the natural world, with its complex systems and vast resources, is actually the foundation upon which our human-developed systems rest. And therefore, economics must be governed by the laws of nature and the biophysical limits of natural systems such as the climate system, biodiversity principles, and others.