A Genuine ‘Green’ Economy Must be Ecologically Sustainable and Socially Just

Abstract

The current global crises in the economic and financial system, climate change, other global environmental issues, peak oil and growing social inequity, indicate the need for radical changes in the economic system, in order to set it on the path towards ecologically sustainability and greater social justice. These changes would seek to create prosperity with greatly reduced throughput of energy and materials, reduced human appropriation of the land and of ecosystem productivity, and reduced human population. Drawing upon the I = PAT framework, that expresses environmental impact in terms of population, consumption per person and technological impact, and drawing upon ‘strong’ definitions of sustainable development, this chapter proposes radical policy changes to make the economy serve the people and the natural environment upon which we all depend.