Green growth is essential to any stimulus
By Ban Ki-moon and Al Gore Economic stimulus is the order of the day. This is as it must be, as governments around the world struggle to jump-start the global economy. But even as leaders address the immediate need to stimulate the economy, so too must they act jointly to ensure that the new de...
The crisis can be an opportunity to rethink the global economy
Interview with Jacques Weber by Meriem Bouamrane With the financial and economic crisis tightening its grip around the world, many researchers, organizations and institutions are being galvanized into action. Terms like Green Deal or Global New Green Deal are circulating and, with natural resources becoming scarcer, there is talk of creating a tax system based...
Green Economy Initiative
Mobilizing and re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and ‘natural’ infrastructure such as forests and soils is the best bet for real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in the 21st century. On 22 October 2008, UNEP and leading economists launched the Green Economy Initiative (GEI) aimed at seizing...
A green economy is a healthy one
MPs highlight need for UK to work towards creating an ambitious climate change, and a modern and sustainable economy Sir, In 2009 we face two key challenges: economic recovery and climate change. We can and must tackle both together. The UK must move to a low-carbon economy: not just to secure an ambitious climate change...
Brief aan Balkenende
(published in NRC: 14/3/2009) – in Dutch Geachte minister-president Balkenende, De kredietcrisis leidt tot een noodzaak aan nieuwe investeringen, die een in het slop rakende economie van de ondergang moeten redden – daar bestaat momenteel veel consensus over. Echter, over waarin wij als samenleving moeten investeren is veel debat. Als vertegenwoordigers van de jongere generatie –...
Why Economists Are So Often Wrong
They simply don’t understand we have instincts that go beyond money. Things like coffee shops and conviviality. What is called “economics” is really psychology on steroids. It starts with a model of human nature and extrapolates an entire scenario for how the world works from that. The model is homo economicus,the myopic protoganist of the...
Climate & Energy / Developing Countries / Economic Development / Society / Sustainable Development / World
Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty
It a time of rising unemployment and economic insecurity, some argue that protecting the environment is a ‘luxury’; but a new report, Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty shows that tackling climate change actually offers a huge opportunity to boost the economy and tackle UK poverty at the same time. For example, government investment in home...
How our economy is killing the Earth
The graphs climbing across these pages (see graph in detail, or explore the data) are a stark reminder of the crisis facing our planet. Consumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more...
Actuality / Climate & Energy / Earth & Environment / Economic Development / Politics & International Relations / Sustainable Development / World
The Climate for Change
- by Al Gore Op-Ed Contributor Ny Times The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly...
Buy Nothin Day
What if we had everything and needed nothing else? Today (29th november: international) is Buy Nothing Day. Realizing that you actually have way too much stuff than needed to keep your life running… Watch the beautiful video here on the ‘good consumer’. (or read Benjamin Barber’s ‘Consumed’ bestseller – I’m not kidding, you HAVE to...
Climate & Energy / Earth & Environment / Economic Development / Politics & International Relations / Sustainable Development / World
We need a ‘Green New Deal’ to tackle ‘triple crunch’ of credit, oil price and climate crises
The world needs leaders with the vision to forge New Deal-type policies to confront the potentially disastrous combination of climate change, high inflation and economic slowdown, a British research group said. The recommendation is made in “A New Green Deal,” a report by the New Economics Foundation. It uses the convergence of the credit crisis,...
Going green is the largest economic opportunity of the 21st Century!
The best way to predict the future…is to invent it! The second best way is to finance it! Going green is the largest economic opportunity of the 21st Century! So make going green your next big thing! Those who were before us didn’t know about the problem! Those who come after are powerless to do...
