Geertz (1973) has proposed to study science through the work its practitioners do: “If you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at its theories or its findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at
what the practitioners of it do.” (p. 5) Sustainability economics is a field in development. Since practitioners' results of the proposed sustainability economics are not available yet, we have to content ourselves with an analysis of the discipline's theoretical underpinnings, proposed in the discussion. The aim of this article is thus to provide a thick description (see Geertz, 1973) of the rhetoric (see McCloskey, 1998) of sustainability economics.