Welcome to Green Economist
We are living through a collapse in the fundamental earth systems that our lives depend on. For green economists and campaigners, this isn’t news.
Climate Crisis is Here, Now!
I produced a free newssheet drawing attention
to the climate crisis to coincide with the realease of Oasis’s 1997 album ‘Be Here Now’ called ‘Climate Change is Here Now’.
Why have we been so unsuccessful over the past 40 years in stopping this ecological catastrophe? My answer is that we have under-estimated the forces ranged against us. We have spent too much time encouraging our neighbours to be better people and not enough challenging and confronting the tiny number of people who are profiting from the existing system—and seem prepared to do so even at the risk of total system collapse.
Over my first decade of campaigning it became clear to me that we were dealing with the symptoms of an environmental crisis that was actually being caused by our economic system. It seemed to me more efficient to look at how that economic system worked and how we might redesign it to fit comfortably within the planet we share.
This mission is about political economy.
The classical economists called themselves political economists because they recognised that politics and economics are inextricably linked and shifting economics from pseudo-science to social science is essential to building an economy that enables people and planet to flourish.
On this website I share some of what I’ve learned and also links to other work I find valuable in helping us bring about this paradigm shift.
A Green Economy
Three slogans can help to explain what green economics is all about. The first is ‘economics for a small planet’.
It reminds us that provisioning takes place within a limit system: something that economists have long denied but that nature is reminding us on an increasingly frequent basis. The second is ‘economics for people and planet’, underlining that we need a focus on social justice as well as ecological balance. And the third is ‘beyond supply and demand to meeting people’s needs’, a phrase which I used as the title of a book in 1999.