Scienze Umane e Sociali

MIM

Green Economy /Clean economy for reshaping society

Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview

Prof.ssa Carmen Pasca

Website: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jdh1/ESCP/

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Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview

• Introduction.• Recommended reading.• The structure of the course.• Definitions of key terms.• Some history.• The Future: what might it be? Four possible views.

1. Market liberals

2. Institutionalists

3. Bioenvironmentalists

4. Social greens

• We take these from the textbook but note that they are not necessarily distinct and watertight. Your opinion may be a mix of several of them.

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Reading

Paths to a Greener world, Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne, second edition, MIT Press 2010.

A recommended, but not obligatory, text.

We recommend this text because it is interdisciplinary and non-technical, reflecting the nature and teaching of the course.

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The structure of the course

Lecture 1: Introduction and overviewLecture 2: Environmental, ecological, social and political points of viewLecture 3: The economic point of viewLecture 4: Case studies

The assessment for this course is “50% class participation and group-work; 50% individual final exam”.

In Lecture 4, you will do the class participation and group-work part, by presenting case studies in four groups each of some three or four students, endogenously formed.Each group will have 30 minutes to present their case study and each presentation will be followed by a question, answer and discussion session.On the following slides are some suggestions as to how to find case studies, but you are free to choose your own. You should decide and tell us before the next lecture. Then you should start work preparing your presentation.

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Possible case studies

In the definitive text Environmental and Natural Resource Economics by Tom Tietenberg (right) and Lynn Lewis (Pearson 2012) there are lots of case studies, called by them ‘Examples’. Each of them has a brief description of the example (from which you can decide whether they are interesting or not) and there are usually references which you can follow up.Alternatively, you can go to Tietenberg’s site, from which you can get to his Sustainable Developments Case Studies page which provides a whole host of examples.We would suggest that you glance through these examples, select one (or one of your own) and get our approval.Then prepare a 30-minute presentation and be prepared for a question and answer session afterwards. These presentations are scheduled for the 11th of June 2013.

A sceptic about some green solutions is Bjorn Lomborg (‘Green cars have a dirty secret’). This could have been a case study!

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Brown Economy means that economic growth depends only on petrochemicals such as coal, petroleum and natural gas. In the process of this form of production, great amounts of carbon dioxide and soot are released into the atmosphere. The economic development depends on restricted resources, the environmental pollution is severe.

Green Economy indicates that people can achieve the highest economic production, together with a minimum of emissions as well as smaller consumption of resources and lower environmental costs, by which we can recycle the natural resources and ultimately realize a mode of economic development which can merge the economical with environmental and social benefits.  

Golden Economy, also known as Sunshine Economy, can be described as a kind of sustainable economy which chooses non-fossil energy (wind energy, solar energy, water, biomass energy, geothermal energy, marine energy etc.) as the basic energy supply.

Key Terms

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Sustainability and Globalisation

These issues are intimately tied to the idea of global sustainability, and to the question “Can the planet survive?”.Does it need to move from brown to green (and then possibly to golden)?Is global intervention of some kind necessary ...... or will it just happen endogenously?We shall discuss all this in this course.It is crucially concerned with sustainability.

It is also to do with globalisation.The world is shrinking and we are getting more inter-connected.World trade is growing rapidly and we are all becoming more and more dependent on each other.

Bur first some history to set things in perspective (after a cartoon).

Above is an interesting and perceptive image. What do you think it means?

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Sustainability

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Some history: World Population

This was drawn a few year’s ago – but makes the point. The world is growing rapidly

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Projections of future world population

Notice the different scenarios and assumptions. Look at the scale and where we are now.

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World GDP per head

Also income per head is growing rapidly.

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Differences in GDP per head

But there are big disparities between countries.

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Human Development Index

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices to rank countries into four tiers of human development. The darker blue the higher the level of development. Again big differences between countries.

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Life expectancy is growing too...

Note the different time scales.

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But differences across countries

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World Trade is growing rapidly

We are getting more interconnected and interdependent

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Now some of the bad news...

CO2 omissions since 1751

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By 2004 CFC production was so low that statistics stopped being collected.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances believed to be responsible for ozone depletion. The treaty was opened for signature on September 16, 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989, followed by a first meeting in Helsinki, May 1989. Since then, it has undergone seven revisions. It is believed that if the international agreement is adhered to, the ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050. Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international co-operation, with Kofi Annan quoted as saying that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol“. The two ozone treaties have been ratified by 197 states and the European Union making them the most widely ratified treaties in United Nations history.

Montreal Protocol and CFC output

But this picture shows that global co-operation works.

CFC stands for ChloroFluoroCarbon

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The Global Footprint Network

“Today humanity uses the equivalent of 1.5 planets to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year. Moderate UN scenarios suggest that if current population and consumption trends continue, by the 2030s, we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us. And of course, we only have one.”This picture is a little difficult to understand but it is important to do so.

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Oil and gas are running out

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But solar power is filling the gap?

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Global warming

There are different views....

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So what?

There are different ways to interpret this and other evidence:

On the one hand, everything in the garden is rosy and the world can continue doing what it has been doing for years...

or...

things are dire and urgent action needs to be taken – the present situation is not sustainable.

We shall look at some views after an Interlude.

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A simple game we will play.

A simple game to illustrate some of the issues involved.You can find this athttp://people.virginia.edu/~cah2k/teaching.html at the point “Voluntary Provision....”and can read all about it later.Today we do not want to tell you what it is about. We want you to try and infer that and we will discuss it later. 13 of you will play the game and the others will help me.

We are now going to hand out the instructions for this simple game, We ask you to read these quietly and individually and not to talk to your fellow students during the game. We will answer any questions.

Interlude

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What do we learn from this?

Many individuals are driven purely by self-interest...... and do not care about the public good.

Can you think of examples from real life?!

Others are more concerned about others and the public good (though altruism, guilt and so-on....., and everyone becomes better off.

Can this be self-regulating or do governments have to intervene?

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Four possible analyses

We follow Clapp and Dauvergne’s categorisation:

1. Market liberals

2. Institutionalists

3. Bioenvironmentalists

4. Social greens

We will outline today these, rather polarised but nevertheless overlapping and intersecting, categories, and go into more depth in the other lectures.

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Market liberals

Essentially believe that the markets will naturally solve all the problems, and economic incentives are sufficient.Growth will naturally occur as humans pursue the profit motive.The search for the most efficient (and hence profitable) means of production will lead to better forms of production and to the invention of new technologies.This will particularly apply in alternative energy sources: as conventional carbon fuels diminish in supply and hence become more expensive, producers will turn to other sources, such as wind, sea and sun.Market liberals encourage globalisation as it leads to growth as well as global integration.Perhaps some markets need to be regulated and consumers and workers protected, but state intervention should be minimal.

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Institutionalists

While sharing many of the beliefs of market liberals, institutionalists see much more scope and necessity for institutions to intervene actively in markets.Institutions are needed to regulate markets, protecting workers and consumers and to help in the process of disseminating new technologies and in re-distributing resources to the poorer members of the world population.They therefore believe in the importance of world institutions, such as the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).They point to the success, for example, of the Montreal Protocol for eliminating CFCs.They also believe in helping the poor develop themselves, and not just giving them aid.

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Bioenvironmentalists

Are concerned about the physical limits of the earth to support life. They regard the planet as fragile and that there are limits to what the earth can support and produce.They regard output as finite, and the market liberals belief that output can be increased indefinitely as simply false.They conclude that positive steps should be taken to limit the growth of the population and hence of output. They regard consumption, and its expansion, as not being the appropriate targets for the world, but that account should be taken of the environment and for other indicators of a good ‘standard of living’.They want the world to take positive, and urgent, steps to stop the world destroying itself.

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Social greens

They are motivated by radical social and economic concerns, and regard environmental and social problems as inevitably linked.They are worried about important social problems, relating, for example, to the treatment of women and the poor and disadvantaged in society, and regard these as essential issues when designing global strategies. They are concerned about the treatment of workers and their exploitation by employers who are motivated by profits. In some senses they are old-fashioned Marxists.They do not like small communities destroyed in the interests of capitalism.They overlap with the Institutionalists in their concern for globalization, and identify that as a cause of many of the world’s problems, but differ from them in solutions.

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Conclusions

In a sense we have little to conclude from today’s lecture. We have put down some definitions, presented some facts and figures, and discussed possible interpretations of the present global situation and what could or should be done about it.We also had an interlude from which you may have learnt something about free-market, self-interested, solutions to one particular problem.

In the next lectures, we will explore more carefully the views of these four categories of analysis and present some case studies.In the meantime, you should consider where you stand on these issues.

In the next lecture we will have a discussion of one of the questions on the next slide. You might like to prepare for it.

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Questions you might like to think about

How is a green economy defined? How is a green economy measured? How does a green economy contribute to sustainable development? How does a green economy help eradicate poverty? How are the concepts of sustainable consumption and production and green economy related? How does a green economy support employment? How does a green economy protect and preserve biodiversity? What does the green economy offer for developing countries? Does a green economy lead to protectionism? What can governments do to enable a green economy?

These questions and some answers can be found at the UNEP site.

Arrivederci

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Green Economy: Carmen Pasca