Cardiff Philosophy Cafe, July 2012: The Green Paradox of Thrift
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Source data for individual nations taken from EIA 2008, Table H1GCO2, ‘World Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Combustion and Flaring of Fossil Fuels per Thousand Dollars of Gross Domestic Product Using Market Exchange Rates.’ World carbon intensity is calculated using total emissions data in Table H1CO2 in the EIA database and world GDP data (at constant 2000 prices, market exchange rates) taken from IMF (2008) data available online at: www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2008/02/weodata/index.aspx
'Mean average CO2 emissions are strongly correlated with income: households within the highest equivalised income decile have mean total CO2 emissions more than twice that of households within the lowest equivalised income decile. Emissions from private road travel and aviation account for a high proportion of this differential: aviation emissions of the highest income decile are more than six times that of the lowest income decile.'
The Green Paradox of Thrift Using the Economic Crisis to Move Towards a Sustainable Economy Molly Scott Cato Professor of Strategy and Sustainability Roehampton Business School
The Last Great Depression Failure of aggregate demand Repayment of debts Failure of lending and borrowing Recessionary spiral: ‘the death spiral’
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: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (Earthscan, 2009) The Bioregional Economy: Land, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (Earthcan, 2012)
Summary: Slides from Professor Molly Scott Cato's talk at CPC on 17 July 2012. During the Great Depression, the economist John Maynard Keynes articulated the paradox of thrift: that people’s inclination when encountering hard times to spend less and save more can be disastrous for the economy overall, by stalling rather than stimulating growth. The Chancellor George Osborne – substituting austerity for thrift – now appears to be falling victim to the same paradox on a national scale, pushing us further into recession. But, if we consider the pressures that economic growth exert on the environment, should we be attempting to restart the growth engine anyway? Should we welcome the end of growth? If so, how can we minimise the social impact of recession? And are there opportunities we can exploit to move towards a more sustainable and equitable society?
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