Environment

The principal threat to economic stability currently is the overhang of debt, both private and public.

“We risk a global decoupling in which East and West face off in a cold war, and Africans are caught in the middle,” says Professor Carlos Lopes in an interview with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin

The 5th edition of the Law Economics Policy Conference (LEPC) is jointly organized by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, INET and FLAME University.

The current energy market structures, including the short-run-marginal-price-on-all nature of the current wholesale market, are not fit for a transition to a renewables-dominated system.

Moving away from fossil fuels, towards a system with a far greater contribution from variable renewables, means that the current system is not fit for purpose.

In a new book, Alligators in the Arctic and How To Avoid Them, Peter Dorman shows how flawed academic models, faulty assumptions and unrealistic schemes grossly underestimate what’s needed to stop catastrophic warming. He argues for a straightforward carbon emission budget – plus the active citizenship required to fight big businesses that want to keep doing business as usual. Lynn Parramore explores his findings and talks to the economist about the path forward.

Price inflation, marginal cost pricing, and principles for electricity market redesign in an era of low-carbon transition

Price Inflation, Marginal Cost Pricing, and Principles for Electricity Market Redesign in an Era of Low-Carbon Transition

Because global warming doesn’t take a holiday

Ruskin scholar Jeffrey Spear, author of “Dreams of an English Eden: Ruskin and his Tradition in Social Criticism,” discusses how the insights of a key 19th-century thinker can help us build a new paradigm for protecting the planet – and save us from ourselves.

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Central banks can encourage climate-friendly investments by offering financial institutions favorable haircuts on green collateral

Luohan Academy’s Director Chen Long discusses the academy’s latest report, on the benefits of creating a “digital circular economy,” which would go a long way towards reaching net zero carbon emissions and addressing the climate crisis. Report link: https://www.luohanacademy.com/insights/bc89734b94adf00c

Rob Johnson interviewed Columbia University historian Adam Tooze in early 2020 about his work on financial history and how it relates to the Green New Deal.

In a replay of INET Live’s webinar, following the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last December, Richard Kozul-Wright of UNCTAD, Patrick Bond of the University of Johannesburg, and author Maude Barlow discuss the disproportionate impact climate change has on the developing world and the ways to best address it.

Many studies of the effect of climate change on GDP seriously mislead the research community, policymakers, and the general public.

Some cautionary remarks

The 4th Law, Economics & Policy Conference (LEPC) is a virtual, multi-capsule conference series that aims to bring together legal, economic and public policy thinkers to consider a variety of real world issues in India in a holistic manner.

For several weeks, representatives of governments across the globe gathered in Glasgow to discuss plans for climate mitigation and adaptation. But the meetings were dominated by representatives of the world’s most advanced economies, often to the detriment of the places where the majority of the world’s population lives: the developing world.

Climate change is a collective problem that has largely been addressed through market-based solutions focused on individual actors. Economics has been a driving factor behind this market approach. The push for continued and perpetual economic growth is seen by many as incompatible with climate action. What is the role of economics in addressing the climate crisis? Can existing economic paradigms deliver an equitable low-carbon future?

Ambitious climate policy needs a broad-based organizing effort to combat the fossil fuel industry. As the climate movement moves towards embracing racial and economic justice as part of climate advocacy, what strategies and policies are needed to build a multi-racial, multi-class coalition? How can movements build the power needed to ensure the low-carbon transition is just?

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades about the severe global impact that rising temperatures will have on the environment, economies, and health outcomes, and ultimately humanity’s long-term survival. With disaster after disaster stacking up, the time for action is now.

The path to sustainable and just climate transition globally cannot happen without meaningful actions and cooperation between the US and China – the world’s largest economies and carbon emitters. What can we expect from US-China climate relations?

How do we pay for the vast transformation required? Who is responsible to whom, and how do we decide?

Can we realize the energy transition? What institutions might help us do so? What is the role of technology?

Please join us for networking before the start of each day.

Please join us for discussions at the end of each day.

Has the financial system contributed to the climate crisis? Can it contribute to a green transition?

Please join us for networking before the start of each day.

Are existing institutions up to the task? Is the nation-state an obstacle, and if so how do we overcome it? What would alternatives look like, and how would we realize them?

What, if anything, can economics contribute to addressing the climate crisis? What role can or should markets and incentives play, and how?

Please join us for discussions at the end of each day.

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades about the severe global impact that rising temperatures will have on the environment, economies, health outcomes, and ultimately humanity’s long-term survival. Yet little has been done.

The work of feminist thinkers helps illuminate why billionaires seek to solve problems on Earth by blasting into space.

Getting the whole spectrum of governments, academia and civil society to track “natural capital” would help create shared efforts toward solving shared problems like the climate crisis.

A global carbon tax alone will not be enough to significantly reduce CO2 emissions

Lance Taylor’s New INET Paper

And electric vehicles don’t do a lot better

Wealthy predators are playing stock market games with companies needed to develop and produce clean technology

The IPCC was correct in emphasizing the need for early mitigation, but their analysis of possible growth trajectories appears to be faulty.

David Fenton, the founder of the progressive PR firm Fenton Communications, takes a close look at what needs to be done to improve how we talk about the climate emergency so that everyone listens and acts accordingly

Carbon pricing still has the potential to be a powerful tool contributing to emissions reductions, but it is clearly no panacea.

Carbon pricing still has the potential to be a powerful tool contributing to emissions reductions, but it is clearly no panacea.

Global carbon emissions could fall by an estimated 5.5% in 2020 as a result of declining industrial production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the change is not systemic these effects may be fleeting, and the changing climate could put hundreds of millions of lives, trillions of dollars of economic activity, and the world’s physical and natural capital at risk.

Please join us for a discussion with Geoff Mann, INET Senior Fellow and author of Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future, on how the coronavirus pandemic might (or might not) teach us to prepare for a life on an increasingly hot planet.

Economists have gone to great lengths to write humans out of economics, pushing self-interest and generally providing two choices—faith in markets or the state.

What ails the EU Green Deal is exactly what troubles the Union in general — an absence of social democracy at work

This paper considers the ambition, scale, substance and strategy of the European Union’s Green Deal

Freeing ourselves from reliance on fossil fuels is not only good for the planet and future generations. It also saves lives here and now, not just in the far future.

How models treat innovation may be just as important as their assumptions about climate damages

We conclude that representing dynamic realism in such models is as important as – and far more empirically tractable than – continued debate about the monetization of climate damages and ‘social cost of carbon’.

Inadequate demand and climate change require a global green new deal

By promoting unrealisitc models, economists have become part of problem rather than the solution

How free electricity could fight climate change and inequality

The Nobel laureate economist discusses how an activist government is needed to tackle problems like climate change

John Kenneth Galbraith noted in 1973 that establishment economics had become the “invaluable ally of those whose exercise of power depends on an acquiescent public.” If anything, economists’ embrace of that role has grown stronger since then.

Chaired by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, INET has assembled a global team of leaders and scholars calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

Wishful thinking and tinkering won’t cut it. Nothing short of a mass mobilization for deep de-carbonization across the global economy can avert the looming climate catastrophe.

Hope for mitigating climate catastrophe may not be lost, but the scale of political change needed is no cause for optimism

A response to economists who doubt our capacity to decarbonize while maintaining robust growth

Market tweaks and incentives won’t save us from climate catastrophe. Only radical policy change will.

The new IPCC Report is overly optimistic about global productivity growth and fossil fuel energy use. More dramatic, immediate action is needed

Wishful thinking and tinkering won’t cut it. Nothing short of a mass mobilization for deep de-carbonization across the global economy can avert the looming climate catastrophe.

A new report shows an economically viable path to net-zero CO2 emissions in key industries by 2060

The YSI Economics of Innovation, Economic Development and Africa Working Groups, in partnership with Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation and Competence Building Systems (GLOBELICS), Globelics Alumni, are organizing the 1st GLOBELICS Pre-Conference for Young Scholars entitled ‘Financing of Innovation and Infrastructure for Development’.

Young Scholars based in Africa are invited to convene in Harare, Zimbabwe. The event serves to strengthen the African network of new economic thinkers pursuing a new economic paradigm. Attendees will be able to attend the annual conference of the Zimbabwe Historical Association in the same trip.

The Latin America Working Group and the Keynesian Economic Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) of the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) are hosting the workshop “Technology, Globalization and the Environment: Latin American Development in the XXI Century” to be held at the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) in Santiago de Chile on the 23-24 July 2018.

Economist James K. Boyce argues that the distribution of carbon tax revenue is just as important as the price itself

For the BRICS countries to not just grow their economies but also raise the standard of living of their people, inclusive growth that prioritizes poverty reduction is a must

The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—play a crucial and growing role in the world economy. Sanjay Reddy kicks off our series exploring shifting social and economic dynamics within these countries, and what they mean for the global economy.    

In the face of  laissez-faire capitalism at home and resurgent nationalism across the globe, INET offers an innovative look at the causes of—and solutions for—the problems that ail a fissuring world economy.

China is now the world’s largest greenhouse-gas emitter, accounting for over 25% of the global total. But the country has also demonstrated a growing understanding that a truly green economy promises to improve quality of life and create enormous opportunities for technological and political leadership.

The World Economic Roundtable seeks to help the business, investment, and policy communities understand ongoing changes in the world economy and to promote a discussion of ideas that can advance the goal of a widely shared global prosperity.

Two years after the 2015 Paris Agreement, where we stand today is better than you may think 

A discussion with Michael Grubb, INET Grantee and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College of London.

The Implications of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative for China and the World Economy

The path to holding fossil fuel producers accountable for climate change & climate damages 

Climate Change and Denial

What economics can – and can’t – tell us about climate change 

What Do Citations Actually Measure in Economics and How Should Economic Journals and Department Review Committees Use This Data? 

Joseph Stiglitz, Michael Spence and a global team of leading thinkers are calling for new thinking & new rules for the world economy

INET gathered hundreds of new economic thinkers in Edinburgh to discuss the past, present, and future of the economics profession.

The Festival for New Economic Thinking is a collaborative initiative of several organizations, and aims to bring together those who seek to improve how economics is taught, studied and practiced. 

Faced with rapid cost reductions for clean electricity generation, some commentators suggest that we no longer need the Paris agreement or other policy interventions, because technology alone can solve all problems.

Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord sets the US economy back

YSI Working Groups are cooperating with Dimensions of Poverty conference

Ocean expert Peter Neill says the watery depths hold solutions to earth’s most pressing challenges

A discussion featuring Kenneth Smith, Head of the Trade and NAFTA Office of the Ministry of the Economy of Mexico, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of Pelosky Global Strategies.

The energy transition is happening. But the pace of change depends on a range of technical, business, and societal factors.

Eurocentric modernism has unhinged us from our human nature, argues Rajani Kanth in his new book

A reference guide to all Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) community presentations at the Eastern Economic Association’s (EEA) 2017 annual meeting

The practical question in Washington today is not whether regulations will go, but whether anything will replace them

Smick argues that distortions of capitalism have fed populist rebellion, and that reviving a capitalism that offers opportunity for average people to increase their earnings is an urgent priority if America’s political economy is to be stabilized.

Notes from the Institute’s Director of Research on some significant papers and contributions produced in 2016 under the INET rubric 

In the 40th anniversary year of John Kenneth Galbraith’s Age of Uncertainty, the 1970s look remarkably stable in comparison with today’s turbulent world 

The YSI Working Group on Economic Development, the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre (GPERC) of the University of Greenwich, and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) would like to invite you to a talk by Professor Tim Jackson. 

A conversation with Isaac Stone Fish, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society’s Center for U.S. – China Relations and Asia Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine.