Last week, I got the joy of watching a dear friend defend his PhD dissertation. Now, like the mother of an honor’s student, I can proudly slap a bumper sticker on my van that reads, “My Old Roommate Is a Doctor of Philosophy in Ecological Economics.” You hear that? Doctor.
My friend is, of course, brilliant, but I must admit, his title is quite stupid. It’s not the Doctor part that bothers me; it’s the rest of it. A Doctor of Ecological Economics? That’s like being a Prince of Carbonized Carbon, a Prophet of Existential Existence. It’s like corn-on-the-cob. Mitch-all-together.
Economics is the study of how we use and distribute resources, how we turn those resources into goods and use those goods for services.