Time and the Generations

Reviews / Votes

With this wonderfully wide-ranging, brilliant, and generous book, Partha Dasgupta joins his admired mentor, Kenneth Arrow, in the elite band of economists who have appreciated and contributed to the philosophical underpinnings of their subject. The relationship goes both ways, for by bringing in an economist's sense of ecological and biological realities, he is able to modify and transcend the contributions of philosophers such as Mill, Sidgwick, Ramsey, Rawls, and Parfit. The result is an astonishing monument to a lifetime of hard thought about population, sustainability, savings, and human welfare. -- Simon Blackburn, Bertrand Russell Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge In recent decades, we've seen human impacts on the biosphere surge far beyond sustainable levels, raising deeply vexing questions about the path ahead. With intellectual elegance and insight, Dasgupta delves into the moral, economic, and environmental dimensions of global population and living standards. This rigorous book opens a normative approach to the fraught choices confronting all of us. -- Gretchen Daily, Bing Professor of Environmental Science, Stanford University What a book! Written with pellucid refinement and compelling responsibility, it incisively appraises humankind's numbers in tandem with assessments of ecology, time, personal decisions, and varied social and economic circumstances. Composed at the frontiers of norms and methods, philosophy and economics, demography and social analysis, Time and the Generations offers a systematic and bracing homage to heterodox reason in the spirit of Kenneth Arrow. -- Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University A brilliant and original analysis of the population-consumption-environment nexus that will determine the quality of human futures on this troubled planet. This book will set the standard with which future discussions on this vital subject are conducted. -- Peter H. Raven, president emeritus, Missouri Botanical Garden Time and the Generations is a fascinating and enlightening work. Partha Dasgupta and his interlocutors have created a captivating and challenging book. -- Menahem Yaari, S.A. Schonbrunn Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem [Dasgupta] uses unique and original analysis of the link between environment, population and material consumption. * Choice * An excellent work. * Quarterly Review of Biology *