Professor Herman Daly’s plenary yesterday morning was actually a pre-recorded interview, with Daly Skyping in to a local NPR radio host and John Cobb. (“Local” in this context should be taken with a grain of salt — the radio studio was in Santa Monica which is an hour and a half away, provided the traffic is kind. The traffic is never kind. One of the things many people fail to realize about the greater Los Angeles area is that it is larger than some New England states.)

The basic ideas are ones that I need to explore in more detail: in describing their ideas as “ecological,” these economists are not simply referring to green-hippy “love your mother” mushiness. There is a concrete program involved that argues for a shift FROM growth TO development that is predicated on economic principles and not just “think happy thoughts.”Speaking of yesterday, I never did post this little note on the day of as is my normal plan. I was so bone-crushingly tired (between the whole “not sleeping for three days” thing, and the intense social interactions) that I couldn’t bring myself to type anything last night. Indeed, much as I wanted to catch the evening plenary of Sheri Liao and her environmentalism work in China, all I could manage was to crawl back to my motel room early. Even at that, it took me nearly 4 hours to decompress to the point where I could go to bed.

My presentations both went well, although I could scarcely speak after the 2nd, much longer one. There was good discussion at both, and I learned some important things that were new to me at my long session (authors and work I was not aware of.) (Speaking of tired, in conversation after that 2nd session, I had to keep asking people is I’d actually mentioned various ideas that were coming up, in the asides and remarks during my presentation, or not.)

Today is the last day of the conference, although there are multiple plans being made in all of the tracks on ways of continuing to move forward.