Technological optimism isn't as pervasive as it was then, but neither is it dead. Goodland begins, as is common these days, by giving credit to the Brundtland Commision's Our Common Future. Input growth, as used by Goodland, has to do with our society's recent penchant to work through resources as fast as possible in an effort to maximize consumption for ever-growing markets. There is little disagreement that we have been wasteful in our use of natural resources. The disagreement, silly though it seems in retrospect, revolves around who is at fault.
Some economists blame failed markets, some blame failed government.
More and more, economists are blaming both. Qualitative development means improving quality of life while keeping the scale of the economy in harmony with the regenerative and assimilative capacities of global life support systems. Citing Herman Daly, Goodland says that in qualitative, sustainable development, production replaces depreciated assets, and births replace deaths, so that stocks of wealth and people are continually renewed and even improved. This new-found ecological systems approach, and the accompanying language that is evolving and infiltrating our lives in academic journals, in the media, in environmental policy debates, and so on will likely usher in New Economics to accompany New Forestry. Goodland, Daly, and a host of others are at the forefront of the movement.