Description:
Today's academic economists have, for the most part, withdrawn from "the parochial fray of local economic development policy" in pursuit analyzing broader national and international issues. Not so, says Thomas Michael Power, whose intent in his scholarly and deeply felt Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies is to address the fundamental errors and distractions inherent in folk economics. Power is uniquely suited to the task. A professor at the University of Montana, his is the perfect perch from which to regard the rapacious plunder of local and state economies by the mining and timber companies."A popular folk economics," Power writes, "teaches us that the extraction and processing of natural resources are the heart of economic development, that 'all wealth springs from the earth.'" Power argues against this conventional model of extractive-dependent communities. Such models play a role, he proves, in the decline and destabilization of local economies. To see landscape and its preservation not as an aesthetic whim but as an economic necessity is a brave and lonely stance, indeed. Economic health equals nothing less than "avoiding needless damage to the natural--and therefore human--environment." We recognize the battle lines, clearly drawn between the environmental and resource-industry sides. At stake: both the extinction of whole species and traditional ways of life that have supported families and communities for generations. "If we could lay to rest," Power argues, "the fear that environmental protection will cause the imminent economic collapse of communities, the acrimony would subside and it would be much easier to engage in civil discourse over the real choices communities face." With a persuasive overview and the use of powerful case studies on the impact of ranching, mining, and timber on the land, Thomas Power has himself extracted a clear definition of the real issues from the rubble of misguided passions, paranoia, and a divisive media.
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