Have your ever blanched when you've heard a captain of industry or a politician talk about how we need more "growth" -- knowing that there are already 6 billion people in the world and that if each of them has to be employed making more stuff for and ever growing population, we will run out of stuff to make and stuff to make stuff!   Well, if it does, then Herman Daly is the economist you have been looking for.  He gets it.  He knows that the economy is a system within a system, not a closed system unto itself.  In other words, our economy operates within the wider context of a the limited resources of our earth.  It never used to matter.  Not before the advent of the industrial revolution and the advent of modern medicine and public health systems.  Now it does matter.  Very much.  Daly is one of the few economists who is talking about the implications of a finite planet and the challenge we face of reinventing our economies to take this into account.  This really IS a life-changing book that I urge you to read.