Molly Scott CatoReader in Green Economics, Cardiff School of Management

Regeneration

A Green Approach to the Local Economy

Prosperity without Growth?

• Sustainable Development Commission suggested ‘flourishing within limits’

• So far there have been no attempts to categorise and measure different types of consumption and their social usefulness.

CO2 intensity of GDP across nations: 1980–2006

Carbon Intensities Now and Required to Meet 450 ppm Target

A Balanced Economy

What Mervyn King Said

• ‘Unemployment is up, businesses have closed, and the direct and indirect costs to the taxpayer have resulted in fiscal deficits in several countries of over 10% of GDP – the largest peacetime deficits ever.’

• ‘Of all the many ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today.’

• The lubrication of a fully functioning economy is the most basic role

• But it is incompatible with the role as a commodity in international speculation

Cautionary tale from Cleveland,

Ohio

• Because of local investment Cleveland was at the cutting-edge of technological developments in the 1920s

• Innovation networks broke down as a result of local investors sending their money to New York, where it fed the bubble that resulted in the Stock Market Crash

• They lost their money and the Cleveland local economy never recovered.

Globalisation: Turkeys voting for Christmas?

The global trade system is insecure

• A system of energy intensity

• Extended supply chains reduce resilience

• Weakening of community bonds

Where are the world’s ports?

Living experimentally

Ecological Enterprise Zones

• Green economy resources

• Supported by government grants to become hot-houses for the innovation of green technologies and sustainable lifestyles

• In return, they would be expected to achieve significant cuts in carbon emissions, resource usage, and levels of waste production

• Government should enable local authorities in such areas to experiment with policy tools, such as carbon taxation and import and export duties

• The aim would be for the EEZ to become a prototype of the self-reliant local economy that a green economy requires.

Find out more

www.greeneconomist.org

gaianeconomics.blogspot.com

Green Economics: AnIntroduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (Earthscan, 2009)

Environment and Economy(Routledge, 2011)