Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This fundamental question is the one I ask myself in my research, as an ecological economist. What are the physical things (like energy, materials, infrastructure and so on) we need to live well? To answer it, we must understand what we truly need, and how satisfying our needs connects to well-being.
In The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can, Stan Cox has a message for all who were counting on the Green New Deal to help save us from ecological and economic collapse: this legislation will not go far enough. C
For some reason people and governments have chosen not to insure themselves (individually or collectively) against two catastrophes that have been much in the news lately: pandemics and large investment losses.
Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, over sixty years before the pandemic, Cuba laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad.
Though many of our ideas may seem “impossible” now, history shows us again and again that today’s “what ifs” can become tomorrow’s “what is” during a time of crisis – but only if we take them seriously enough and put in the work that’s necessary to bring them to fruition.
While climate change has dropped out of the news in our new corona-verse, in this column I argue that the COVID crisis is indeed a climate crisis, and that the United States needs a Green New Deal approach if we are to reopen our economy safely, without incurring waves of new COVID-19 infections that will force future lockdowns.
If you know something about Basic Income, you may be aware that one of the first proposals for a Basic Income came from Thomas Paine, hero of the American and French revolutions.
In covid-19, neoliberal capitalism has met a formidable foe. The pandemic has shown just how fragile and dysfunctional the market/state order — as a production apparatus, ideology, and culture — truly is. C
The etymology of “apocalypse” points to an “unveiling”, dropping illusion and finding revelation. As our global production systems and social institutions (eg. healthcare, education) are suddenly overwhelmed, their basic unsuitability is exposed.
It’s much easier to teach students how to shift curves, solve equations, and run regressions, than to carefully observe economic life and think deeply and critically about it. Students also tend to feel comfortable – and even feel powerful – when told “here, we are handing you the exact tools and models you need to use to understand how the economy works.”
We make decisions, not on known outcomes but on imagined projections standing on theories of how things work. These projections have an ethical range called the ‘planning horizon.’ The better we understand the world the broader the reach of our anticipations. Conscience serves to measure how well we encompass social effects.
This manifesto is an intervention by a Europe-wide group of academics – the foundational economy collective – who have for several years in books and articles argued that policy makers need to balance concern with jobs and wages with more attention to essential goods and services like housing, food, utility supply, health, education and care.
