The Green Paradox of Thrift

The Green Paradox of Thrift

Using the Economic Crisis to Move Towards a Sustainable Economy

Molly Scott CatoProfessor of Strategy and

SustainabilityRoehampton Business School

The Last Great Depression

• Failure of aggregate demand

• Repayment of debts• Failure of lending and

borrowing• Recessionary spiral: ‘the

death spiral’

= wealth creation

= taxation

= private sector = public sector

= consumption

The Linear View

= wealth circulation

= wealth creation

= taxation

= private sector

= public sector

The Systems View

= third sector

= wealth circulation

= recirculation of taxed wealth

The view from No. 10

The full picture

CO2 emissions associated with UK consumption 1990 to 2009 (Defra)

The Myth of Decoupling:CO2 intensity of GDP across nations

Carbon Intensities Now and Required to Meet 450 ppm Target

Farewell to Thrift

• ‘the whole system of an increasing productivity, plus inflation, plus a rising standard of material living, plus high-pressure advertising and salesmanship, plus mass communications, plus cultural democracy and the creation of the mass mind, the mass man’

• J. B. Priestley, 1955

Growing Inequality

Climate change is a class issue

Find out more

www.greeneconomist.org

gaianeconomics.blogspot.com

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

The Bioregional Economy: Land, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness(Earthcan, 2012)