Tag: Ecological Economics

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Regeneration as a New Economic Policy Paradigm

Regenerative Economy

tl;dr: Regeneration is a forward-looking paradigm focused on increasing  the evolutionary ability of social-ecological systems by including everyone and everything that matters for a viable society

In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day for North America came in March, for Europe mostly in May. The unsustainability of the dominant growth- and exploitation-oriented political-economic system is out in the open, for everyone to see. At the same time, we celebrate some anniversaries this year: 50 years of the first UN conference on the natural environment in Stockholm, 50 years since the publication of “Limits go Growth”, 35 years since the publication of “Our Common Future”, and 30 years since the Earth Summit in Rio.… Read more

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Underneath our skin: the new economy beyond growth

This is a very rough transcript of an interview done with Justin Ritchie and Seth Moser-Katz from the Extraenvironmentalist, a great “podcast, blog and video series that explores the mindset of an outsider looking in on Earth” – and a way of thinking as they proclaim. The original podcast from which this transcript has been produced (by myself, so all errors are exclusively my fault) can be found on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/extraenvironmentalist/episode-83-1-andr-reichel-are

 

André Reichel (AR): If we want to restrict global climate change to about 2C we need emissions reductions in the range of 8 to 10 % per year.… Read more

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IPAT and the End of Growth

In the early 1970s Ehrlich and Holdren devised a simple equation in dialogue with Commoner identifying three factors that created environmental impact. Thus, impact (I) was expressed as the product of (1) population, (P); (2) affluence (A); and (3) technology, (T):

I = P * A * T

Population is the number of people on the planet, affluence is measured in GDP per capita, and technology is environmental impact per GDP. When looking at the growth rates of each I, P, A, and T the formula changes towards this form:

dI = dP + dA + dT

In order to see how the impact changes from one year to the next one, you just have to sum up the changes in population increase, affluence, and technological progress.… Read more

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Green Growth?

I was just reading an article in the newly established Ecological Economics Review on economic growth, written by Peter A. Victor. In this article, Victor is revisiting Kenneth Boulding‘s remarks on the economy of the coming spaceship Earth, focusing on economic growth and environmental impact.

He defines the concept of green growth as an economic state in which the rate of reduction of environmental impact per unit GDP exceeds the rate of increase in GDP.… Read more