Green Economics

Ana Rusan traces some of the social and environmental consequences of New Deal America through the sociology of Allan Schnaiberg.

An exploration of the environmental dividend as a response to the mistrust of green taxation.

With growth-driven economies surpassing environmental limits, a job guarantee could offer a way to a sustainable economic system.

While providing valuable insights about the development of our economic system over time, Thomas Piketty’s work on capital suffers from a critical flaw: like so many economic frameworks, it ignores the limits of the finite resources of our planet – the fact that our ecological capital is rapidly running out. A new unit of measurement which takes this into account is urgently needed.

Everyone agrees that we are in the midst of a massive financial and economic crisis – but how can it be resolved? A new publication from Green House think tank, ‘The Post Growth Project’, sets out to critically examine why growth is regarded as so central to our economic system, and to challenge the assumption that it is ‘bad news’ when the economy doesn’t grow.

The welfare state is no longer affordable, we are told from all sides – neither in the Netherlands, nor in Europe as a whole. Cuts must be made in the social services, the argument runs, to rescue the economy. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Here is a green vision.

Italy may be in the news for its economic and political uncertainty, but beneath the radar many manufacturing companies are making the necessary conversion to a sustainable and ecological future.

The Green Industrial Revolution is clearly a positive and inspiring story, but there is room for doubting the ability of green technologies to stimulate a new wave of growth comparable to the industrial revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Greening industry is crucial to our ability to combat climate change and maintain a prosperous society. But to achieve this, we need a whole new relationship with the environment.