Biophysical Economics for Policy and Teaching: Mexico as an Example

Many parts of the world are currently facing unprecedented social turmoil. Few understand that most of these “exploding” situations have a biophysical basis in patterns of consumption and the ratio of number of humans to resources available. Most “solutions” proposed are political oppression or, for the lucky, economic development, usually led by conventional economists. However, we believe that, for many regions, conventional economics, certainly alone and perhaps in their entirety, are not up to the job of addressing these crises. We propose a new discipline, Biophysical Economics, that addresses these lacunae and offers a good set of procedures for bringing much more natural science to the discipline of economics. This approach provides a stronger basis for training young people in both economics and heterodox political economy. We will need economists with this new training for a future that appears very different from today. This article outlines the rationales for further developing and teaching Biophysical Economics to demonstrate its utility and applies this economic lens to the economy of Mexico. We finish by providing an example of how a Biophysical Economics curriculum appropriate to analyzing and addressing the Mexican economic context might be developed and taught at the University of Guadalajara. This curriculum could also be adapted to other national, educational and institutional settings.