Economy
From ClimateNetworkWiki
The economy organizes the material relationship between human societies and their environment. People, firms, and other institutions, governments in particular, create the economy.
This Knowledge Base page is a hub for business and economic solutions to climate change.
Contents |
Business
Business is the perspective of the economy of the individual firm.
A popular term for the new economic order is the triple bottom line. Here the economic, environmental, and social realms of the business world are all given value, and decision-making is altered to reflect this. The lumber mill would put a negative value to the contaminated water, and negative value to perhaps a loss of species in the river, and when weighed against lumber profit would be enough to reconsider.
Regulatory entrepreneurship by environmental organizations: Environmental Defense, the World Wildlife Fund, Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. These have all found separate agreements with transnational corporations including DuPont, Shell, BP, Alcan, and IBM to name a few. (Lipschutz, 2005)
Green Business
- A primer on Natural Capitalism
- The Natural Step for businesses
- An Article on Ray Anderson of Interface in the New York Times: Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet
Green Business Clusters
Need to update this
Local Economic Trading Systems
These systems are designed to create a complimentary trading system that encourages the development of a local and sustainable economy. One area with high promise for university student communities are Use Communities. In Use Communities the gadgets (like screwdrivers) that are widely owned by rarely used are organized so that we need far fewer of them, but they are being used far more often.
Link:
- An excellent article on Use Communities
Carbon Offsets
- Plant a Tree, Belch a Cloud? - April 20th, 2007, the Globe and Mail
- Carbon Neutral is Hip - But is it Green? - April 19th, 2007 the New York Times
- our internal work on Offsetting
Climate Financing
Climate Financing is the term that we are developing to describe the variety of strategies for investing in climate impact reductions. Many strategies for reducing climate impacts require substantial up-front capital investment and are also net-benefits for the economy.
Here's a report by the International Energy Association on policies and practices for reducing the financial barriers to energy efficiency investments in home: Financing Energy Efficient Homes
Economics
Economics is a larger perspective of the economy, often from the perspective of government.
Stern Review on the economics of climate change
The UK government commissioned former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern, to examine the economics of climate change. Until Stern’s 700-page Stern Review on the economics of climate change[1] was released in October 2006, economic studies had generally concluded that the costs of taking action on global warming exceeded the benefits of avoiding climate change. Stern’s report rewrote the economic argument: he found that if the world failed to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the world faces economic disaster more costly then the combined economic cost of the great depression and both world wars. Stern also concluded that climate change “presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen." In other words, mainstream economics is of limited usefulness in analyzing and understanding climate change.
The contribution of economics to climate change
There is another side to the relationship between climate change and economics that is critical to solving the climate crisis. Mainstream economics, as currently taught in most introductory economics courses at North American universities, and as used in standard economic analysis, presents a very flawed conception of the economy that fails to properly model the relationship between the economy and the biosphere upon which it depends.
Each year, 1.5 million North American undergraduate students will take an introductory economics course that will teach them that selfishness is rational and that will portray the economy as existing apart from the environment. With rare exceptions, departments follow a neoclassical economics curriculum and research agenda. Neoclassical economics: • is largely silent with respect to ecological limits • is built upon flawed conceptions of human motivations and misconstrues the determinants of human wellbeing, and assumes that ever more consumption and economic growth is desirable (which leads to more CO2 emissions).
This training in economics will influence students’ perspectives on societal problems and the decisions they will make after graduation as they take up positions of influence, impeding individuals and society at large from making decisions that better address sustainability and human wellbeing imperatives.
Carbon Trading and Markets
These are created through voluntary associations and government regulations to provide a mechanism for the exchange of emissions permits. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is the first functioning emissions trading market.
Carbon Taxes
These are created through government regulation to increase the price of carbon.
The Stern Report has much to say on the economic solutions to climate crisis, especially chapter 14 and 15, which review carbon taxes and tradable quotas.
Ecological Economics and Policy
The Centre for Integral Economics develops policy tools for shifting local economies and research for understanding the economic relationships between people and places.
Purchasing
Purchasing Sometimes the best way to make is with your pocket book. This page looks at the power of purchasing
Investment
Investment This page will host information about how investment practices can be improved.
