For much of human history, the human population was low; its ability to harvest or extract natural resources and harness energy was within the carrying capacity of the biosphere; and anthropogenic waste, both quantitatively and qualitatively, was within the capacity of ecosystem sinks to absorb. As human population has grown and technology has advanced, consumption of resources and production of waste have vastly exceeded sustainable levels and now threaten to overwhelm ecosystem functions. An economic system designed for a world of unlimited resources and unlimited sinks is no longer functional in a world of finite resources and overflowing sinks. Prize-winning economist and former Senior Environmental Economist at the World Bank Herman Daly (born 1938) has devoted much of his professional life to creating a new conceptual framework for understanding the implications of these changes. Daly coined the term "empty world" to mean our earlier, if erroneous, view of the human role in relation to the biosphere and its resources, and "full world" to describe the present reality.