I have an article in tomorrow’s Australian on the frequent use of the term “sustainability” in the country’s election debate.
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25 Jul 2010I will be taking part in a debate on the “limits to growth in the 21st century” at the Green Phoenix Festival in Gibside, near Newcastle (in the north east of England), on Sunday 22 August. The other panellists will be Mike Childs, the head of climate at Friends of the Earth, and Phil O’Keefe, [...]
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24 Jul 2010I am writing this to lay claim to having coined the term “green tape” to mean the web of regulations that embody the principle of economic restraint. Notably this would include all regulations based on the notions of sustainability as well as the precautionary principle. I first used the term in print in today’s Guardian [...]
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6 Apr 2010One of the most negative intellectual developments in recent years is the emergence of “new economics”. Although there is no universally accepted definition of the genre it typically includes ideas which are sceptical towards economic growth, accept ecological constraints and are in favourable towards sustainability. For example, see this proposal for the establishment of a [...]
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27 Feb 2010Watch the latest items on the Worldbytes internet television channel including a report on how Mumbai is embracing consumerism, an item challenging sustainable development and a defence of the freedom to film in public.
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31 Jan 2010Anyone who still believes the global elite consists of fire-breathing market fundamentalists should look at the programme for this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. One of the main themes of this year’s event at the exclusive Swiss ski resort was sustainability with other sessions on business ethics, the economics of happiness, rethinking values and [...]
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15 Jan 2010After last week’s vilest ever television programme here is a contender for dumbest ever. Kevin McCloud, know in Britain for presenting television programmes on architecture, finds wisdom and happiness in Dharavi, the Mumbai slum reputed to be the largest in Asia. He argued in his Channel 4 documentary that despite the poverty he sees it [...]
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9 Dec 2009A paper by Ha-Joon Chang (PDF), a development economist at Cambridge University, makes a valuable point about the redefinition of development: “the currently dominant discourse on ‘development’ really lacks any real notion of development in the sense of transformation of productive capabilities and structure (and the accompanying social changes”. However, to my mind he still [...]
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21 Jun 2009An article by Madeleine Bunting on the Guardian website today alerted me to the existence of another bastion of growth scepticism in Britain. Evidently Surrey University has a Resolve programme, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council, whose aim is “to unravel the complex links between lifestyles, values and the environment”. It is designed [...]
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20 Jun 2009Many commentators, including many greens themselves and free market critics, are under the false impression that environmentalism is in some senses a left wing outlook. But this useful article by Geoffrey Lean in today’s Telegraph shows how mainstream conservatives have often backed environmentalist measures: • Angela Merkel, Germany’s conservative chancellor, was instrumental in passing the [...]
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