Another central activity of ecological economists
was to elaborate on the core ideas and beliefs—
beyond the research generated in relation to the
controversies mentioned above. The most basic idea
concerns the embeddedness of the economy in nature
and the related idea that the human economy can be
said to take up more or less space in relation to the
closed system of the earth. The larger the scale of the
economy becomes, the greater the risk of destroying
the conditions for human life on earth in the long run.
Different research program deal with the scale
issue in different ways, as illustrated below by brief
summaries of the approaches to calculate in nature
followed by the ecological approach.