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Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice
The world as we know it needs a new economics. Climate change, financial crisis and out-of-control globalization - all the major problems facing the world have their root in the dominant economic system. The globalised marketplace is the prevailing force in our lives, undermining the real importance of our human communities and our planet. Green Economics argues that society should be embedded within the ecosystem, and that markets and economies are social structures that should respond to social and environmental priorities. This highly readable text provides an introduction to green economics including views on taxation, welfare, money, economic development and employment through the work of its inspirational figures including Schumacher, Robertson and Douthwaite. It also explores the contributions and insights of schools of thought critical of the dominant neo-classical economic paradigm, including ecofeminism, views from the global South, and the perspective of indigenous peoples. Examples of effective green policies that are already being implemented across the world are presented, as well as policy prescriptions for issues including climate change, localization, citizens' income, economic measurement, ecotaxes and trade.
- GenresEconomicsNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published December 16, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 8, 2010
"Green Economics" by Molly Scott-Cato is the most comprehensive introduction to this new branch of economics that I had the pleasure to read to date. Scott-Cato deals with all the different ideas and ideals that I came across in different books and puts them into perspective. While 'green economics' was merely more than a buzz-word to me before reading this book, now it is a clear concept.
"Green Economics" is not just a collection of articles on the same topic, but each chapter uses illustrations, tables and background information in boxes to help the reader understand the broader connections and examples of green policies' implementations.
Scott-Cato begins by giving a short introduction, answering the question that the title pretty much forces the reader to ask: 'green economics' ? The central difference between traditional economics and the new green branch is the role of so-called 'externalies' such as the environment and the domestic sphere. While these were considered to be outside the sphere of economicst by most economicists, green economicists state that there can be no economy without them and that they therefore are part of the economy. 'Green Economics' is stated to be the only serious alternative to neo-liberal capitalism that is not communism. It's goal is unlike neoliberal goals, because it does not focus on growth and even aims for the achievement of a 'steady-state' economy in which the focus lies on convivial human communities and relationships.
To gain a broader understanding of the subject, the reader is now confronted with the origins of green economics: Actually, the word 'economics' is green economics, because defined by Aristotle to be concernced with the domestic sphere and not have a focus on money and property - this would not be 'oikonomia' but 'chrematistics'. There are also some links to socialistic theories and thinkers such as Karl Marx or Peter Kropotkin. It is important to realize that 'green economics' also has spiritual relationships for instance to Buddhism or even Christian ideology. The discipline has gained a lot from the contributions of only a small number of people: James Robertson made a variety of contributions, Schumacher mainly dealt with scale ('small is beautiful') and Buddhist economics, Boulding invented the field of 'evolutionary economics', Georgescu-Roegen applied the second law of thermodynamics to economics, Henderson modelled the economy as a cake and showed that academic economics only dealt with one layer, Douthwaite criticized the concept of unlimited growth.
A central aspect of 'green economics' is the idea of learning from the south and challenging the academic discipline of economics that supposes everytthing and everybody on earth can be measured and therefore over-focusing on the quantative aspect of economics, forgetting the qualitative.
The chapter 'Economics and Identity' deals with the idea that really the economy is only a sub-sphere of the society, being a sub-sphere of the planet earth and therefore our environment - traditional economics didn't claim there was no relationship between these spherees but assumed that there would only be intersections. The consequence of this realization is that more of our lifes should take place outside of the markets, relationships substituting meaningless consumption. The feminist approach makes patriarchy responsible for the denial of men's origin (nature) and alienation from our physical selves. The politic ideas emerging from this ideology are best characterized by the idea of a steady-state economy with permaculture principles such as (localized) closed-loop economies.
The next chapter deals with 'Work', explaining that we will face a Green Industrial Revolution - making the shift to a sustainable future will involve a lot of labour input. There is dissence on how to approach the idea of work: The one side argues for self-reliant communities with a focus on self-provisioning and 'ownwork', rejecting the alienating principles of capitalistic work such as the division of labour. The other side is in favour of keeping a capitalistic system of work and making it more sustainable. Another idea of green economics is the reskilling of labour in order to make working more fullfilling for the workers. Green economics have also been inspired by medieval forms of trade and concepts such as the 'just price' and guilds.
Green economicists are generally critical of the capitalist monetary system due to it being undemocratic, leading to inequality and putting unnecessary pressure on the planetary resources by the creation of money out of debt. The system of Bretton-Woods institutions is criticized for it's favouritism of western countries (that manage the money reserves and currencies used as reserves). There are several schemes for alternative currencies: there are currencies based on working time (and therefore equalling 1h of a lawyer's work with 1h of a gardener's work) and even currencies that make sure money not spend for an unreasonable amount of time loses its value.
The problem with green policies is that the very notion of changing our economy from the inside without major social and economical changes is regarded as unwanted 'ecological modernization' by most green economicists. This is the very reason most greens reject market mechanisms as a way to regulate the usage of resources. Instead of giving out CO2 shares to companies, greens would rather give every citizen a CO2 allowance. A very important point to understand is the greens' rejection of the GDP as a measure of the health of a society: It is deeply intertwined with a general rejection towards measuring everything. What's wrong with the GDP? Its exclusion of unpaid, mainly domestic work, its ignorance of inequality, its focus on movement and not reserves and the fact that a major environmental disaster would add to the GDP: A tanker sinking would create a lot of money movement in payments for the crew cleaning up etc. 'Herman Daly summed up his criticism by pointing out that if the whole of US virgin forests were cut down and turned into gambling chips, according to the GDP this would be an economic improvement' (p.116).
The focus in the topics of globalization and trade lies in the idea of 'trate subsidiarity', in which communities are self-reliant and do not rely on exports and imports for their primary needs. This would also greatly help many of the LEDCs that are struggling to fight poverty by export-led growth.
This idea of 'trade subsidiarity' is further explored in the next chapter. The central idea is the relocalization of the economy, focusing on sustainable self-reliant and even bioregional communities.
Greens support a variety of taxes such as a world-wide Tobin tax, an inheritance tax, higher income taxes and taxes on public goods whose value should be shared by all people such as land. There are already German and Scandinavian experiences with introducing such taxes, but still one needs to take into account the regressive nature of most environmental taxes - a citizen's income scheme would take care of that.
Regarding welfare systems, greens have a critical attitude to centralist systems and therefore states. Still they see the need for a monetary payment that allows a person to live (living is a human right) and favour the introduction of a Citizen's Income Scheme. Regarding land, for some the concept of 'owning land' is problematic in itself.
This book really encompasses everything important to green economicists and it is written in an easy-to-read, explaining style that actually makes for an enjoyable read. Although the subject matter could be considered dry, Scott-Cato makes this book an interesting read. In a nutshell: Go. Buy. Read. Apply!
"Green Economics" is not just a collection of articles on the same topic, but each chapter uses illustrations, tables and background information in boxes to help the reader understand the broader connections and examples of green policies' implementations.
Scott-Cato begins by giving a short introduction, answering the question that the title pretty much forces the reader to ask: 'green economics' ? The central difference between traditional economics and the new green branch is the role of so-called 'externalies' such as the environment and the domestic sphere. While these were considered to be outside the sphere of economicst by most economicists, green economicists state that there can be no economy without them and that they therefore are part of the economy. 'Green Economics' is stated to be the only serious alternative to neo-liberal capitalism that is not communism. It's goal is unlike neoliberal goals, because it does not focus on growth and even aims for the achievement of a 'steady-state' economy in which the focus lies on convivial human communities and relationships.
To gain a broader understanding of the subject, the reader is now confronted with the origins of green economics: Actually, the word 'economics' is green economics, because defined by Aristotle to be concernced with the domestic sphere and not have a focus on money and property - this would not be 'oikonomia' but 'chrematistics'. There are also some links to socialistic theories and thinkers such as Karl Marx or Peter Kropotkin. It is important to realize that 'green economics' also has spiritual relationships for instance to Buddhism or even Christian ideology. The discipline has gained a lot from the contributions of only a small number of people: James Robertson made a variety of contributions, Schumacher mainly dealt with scale ('small is beautiful') and Buddhist economics, Boulding invented the field of 'evolutionary economics', Georgescu-Roegen applied the second law of thermodynamics to economics, Henderson modelled the economy as a cake and showed that academic economics only dealt with one layer, Douthwaite criticized the concept of unlimited growth.
A central aspect of 'green economics' is the idea of learning from the south and challenging the academic discipline of economics that supposes everytthing and everybody on earth can be measured and therefore over-focusing on the quantative aspect of economics, forgetting the qualitative.
The chapter 'Economics and Identity' deals with the idea that really the economy is only a sub-sphere of the society, being a sub-sphere of the planet earth and therefore our environment - traditional economics didn't claim there was no relationship between these spherees but assumed that there would only be intersections. The consequence of this realization is that more of our lifes should take place outside of the markets, relationships substituting meaningless consumption. The feminist approach makes patriarchy responsible for the denial of men's origin (nature) and alienation from our physical selves. The politic ideas emerging from this ideology are best characterized by the idea of a steady-state economy with permaculture principles such as (localized) closed-loop economies.
The next chapter deals with 'Work', explaining that we will face a Green Industrial Revolution - making the shift to a sustainable future will involve a lot of labour input. There is dissence on how to approach the idea of work: The one side argues for self-reliant communities with a focus on self-provisioning and 'ownwork', rejecting the alienating principles of capitalistic work such as the division of labour. The other side is in favour of keeping a capitalistic system of work and making it more sustainable. Another idea of green economics is the reskilling of labour in order to make working more fullfilling for the workers. Green economics have also been inspired by medieval forms of trade and concepts such as the 'just price' and guilds.
Green economicists are generally critical of the capitalist monetary system due to it being undemocratic, leading to inequality and putting unnecessary pressure on the planetary resources by the creation of money out of debt. The system of Bretton-Woods institutions is criticized for it's favouritism of western countries (that manage the money reserves and currencies used as reserves). There are several schemes for alternative currencies: there are currencies based on working time (and therefore equalling 1h of a lawyer's work with 1h of a gardener's work) and even currencies that make sure money not spend for an unreasonable amount of time loses its value.
The problem with green policies is that the very notion of changing our economy from the inside without major social and economical changes is regarded as unwanted 'ecological modernization' by most green economicists. This is the very reason most greens reject market mechanisms as a way to regulate the usage of resources. Instead of giving out CO2 shares to companies, greens would rather give every citizen a CO2 allowance. A very important point to understand is the greens' rejection of the GDP as a measure of the health of a society: It is deeply intertwined with a general rejection towards measuring everything. What's wrong with the GDP? Its exclusion of unpaid, mainly domestic work, its ignorance of inequality, its focus on movement and not reserves and the fact that a major environmental disaster would add to the GDP: A tanker sinking would create a lot of money movement in payments for the crew cleaning up etc. 'Herman Daly summed up his criticism by pointing out that if the whole of US virgin forests were cut down and turned into gambling chips, according to the GDP this would be an economic improvement' (p.116).
The focus in the topics of globalization and trade lies in the idea of 'trate subsidiarity', in which communities are self-reliant and do not rely on exports and imports for their primary needs. This would also greatly help many of the LEDCs that are struggling to fight poverty by export-led growth.
This idea of 'trade subsidiarity' is further explored in the next chapter. The central idea is the relocalization of the economy, focusing on sustainable self-reliant and even bioregional communities.
Greens support a variety of taxes such as a world-wide Tobin tax, an inheritance tax, higher income taxes and taxes on public goods whose value should be shared by all people such as land. There are already German and Scandinavian experiences with introducing such taxes, but still one needs to take into account the regressive nature of most environmental taxes - a citizen's income scheme would take care of that.
Regarding welfare systems, greens have a critical attitude to centralist systems and therefore states. Still they see the need for a monetary payment that allows a person to live (living is a human right) and favour the introduction of a Citizen's Income Scheme. Regarding land, for some the concept of 'owning land' is problematic in itself.
This book really encompasses everything important to green economicists and it is written in an easy-to-read, explaining style that actually makes for an enjoyable read. Although the subject matter could be considered dry, Scott-Cato makes this book an interesting read. In a nutshell: Go. Buy. Read. Apply!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2026
Given me a lot to think about
April 1, 2012
An excellent 1-volume introduction. As such it doesn't go into a great deal of depth, but the further reading section makes up for that. Particularly helpful explanations of tax models.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews