Editorial: progress in Green Economics: ontology, concepts and ...

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228 M. Kennet We must join up our thinking and consider all the factors. This is the exact opposite of current thinking in mainstream economics practice where awkward elements are factored out and dismissed as ‘externalities’. As already mentioned, to reduce inequality and injustice and to promote equity are important ways to provide social and environmental justice at the same time. To be an environmentalist or a green without considering social justice as well, will not achieve this. For example, the education of women reduces the birth rate, which in turn reduces population, which in turn reduces pressure on ecological resources. In less developed countries, the exploitation of people in poorly paid farm labour and in sweatshops, exploiting crops and resources such as water, to supply goods to the global supply chain, entails environmental degradation and even desertification. The over-use of water to grow salads for developed countries’ supermarkets, for example, reduces equity of access to local resources for local people. The global extension of multiple retailers’ supply chains through off-shoring, near-shoring and host country subcontracting increases product miles travelled, thus increasing the carbon footprint. In the long run, the whole of humanity and the planet loose out. 2.2 Green Economics explores evolving realities The green economics philosophy approach requires that our economics models reflect real complexity. Current world trade systems require us develop better tools for analysis. Simplistic common economic assessment tools such as comparative advantage or cost benefit analysis do not provide a complete picture of today’s increasingly complex intra-industry and intra-firm trade, which is currently estimated at 40% of all goods exchanged, (Ietto-Gilies, 2006). The ‘truth’ or the wise choice or ‘answer’ insofar as it exists, is often hidden, unclear, multi layered and multi faceted. We have begun to model this with such tools as Geographical Information Systems and climate modelling, and so we can no longer afford a simplistic economics path, which ‘factors out the facts’. We cannot possibly hope to understand or explain all the complexities of reality, but economics must accept that they exist and we must begin to factor many of them in. 2.3 Community and responsibility: positions in Green Economics One of the distinguishing aspects of the green position according to Salleh (1997, p.4) is that “Greens assume that since environmental damage impacts on people universally, it is to everyone’s advantage to solve it. No particular grouping is seen to be better placed than any other to save the earth from human excess”. This is in contrast to the socialist position, which argues that damage is caused by capitalists and capitalism and also to Porritt (1984, p.116) who proposed that middle class entrepreneurs would ultimately become the agents of change, and to Dobson (2000) who suggested that conditions, not simply people themselves, must change. The dilemma is not ‘do we save the planet by coercion?’ so that people and planet have a better bundle of resources and are enhanced, but rather “do we go much further with our decision making and investigate the consequences of our actions and choices?” Just as there is no place called ‘away’ as in ‘throw it away’, there is similarly no activity without consequences and we need to understand and to factor consequences into our concepts of reality and into our explanations.
Editorial 229 Jacobs (1991, p.x) distinguished between people who are greens and people who are environmentalists. He suggests that ‘green’ denotes: “a person whose commitment to the environment, (human kind’s spiritual home, not simply a source of wealth) is part of a broader ideology which places emphasis on humankind’s relationship with the rest of the natural world, and who seeks a society based on non-materialist, decentralist, and cooperative values.” Dryzek (1997) provides a fascinating analysis of the spectrum of green positions, from those who believe the market will adjust price mechanisms to provide the solutions, those who believe in administrative and regulatory solutions, those who believe in eco modernisation (Barry, 2007), those who believe in the human capability for problem solving and lifestyle greens; and green activists. Dryzek (1997) identifies Green Radicals, who are divided into Green Romantics and Green Rationalists. Green Romantics reject much of the enlightenment and see salvation within individual consciousness raising, and include deep ecologists, bio-regionalists and some anti-globalisation activists. These are contrasted with Green Rationalists, including animal rights activists, who largely embrace much of the enlightenment agenda of equity, reason, rights, science and progress but they all reject industrialism, as currently constructed although changes within industrialism are advocated by Hawken et al. (2005) and by Korhonen and Strachan (2004) through industrial ecology. Other environmentalists argue for a market based solution (Anderson and Leal, 2005) or solutions based on incentives, such as price or technology or sustainable development (Redclift, 1987; Schmeidheiny, 1992). They seek transformation and a compatibility between business as usual and ecological improvements. Ecological modernisers also seek compatibility between economic growth and the imperative to protect environmental quality, perhaps through environmentally friendly products for example (Barry, 2005, p.304). Pigou (1920) suggested that market failures actually caused environmental degradation and that the political processes could correct the problem. Countries such as Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have pursued strategies towards environmental excellence in industrial products, (Dryzek, 1997, p.137). Green economics position along this spectrum seems likely to be in the radical Green Rationalists area but with strong influences from the Green Romantics. 2.4 Existing definitions and descriptions of green economics Bateman (1997, p.37) describes the green economy as “an extension of the conventional economic approach to encompass, among others, distributional equity, and environmental quality objectives”. He suggests that this could involve: • “the rejection of unlimited demands and wants by rational economic man (homo economicus), the archetypal selfish (greedy) inhabitant of the unfettered market economy and in favour of a more collective economy based on people’s needs”. • “an economy that is capable of replicating itself on a sustainable basis” • evolution over time to decouple the growth in economic output (activity) from the environmental impacts • the use of technical changes to be more efficient • freezing or reduction of the levels of rates of change in the economy and population.
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