Facing the crisis: Rethinking economics for the age of environmental breakdown

Article

Damaging human impacts on the environment go beyond climate breakdown to encompass most other natural systems, from soil to biodiversity. The current economic model in countries around the world drives this breakdown, and many of its underpinning assumptions, policies and narratives act as barriers to change.

A new model is needed to rapidly create societies that are more sustainable, just and prepared: bringing human activity to within environmentally sustainable limits while narrowing inequality, improving quality of life, and becoming better prepared for the accelerating consequences of environmental breakdown.

This is the first in a series of six short discussion papers that seeks to inform debate about the relationship between policy, politics and environmental breakdown, supporting education in economic, social and political sciences. This paper explores the role of social and economic systems – and the ideas, policies and narratives that underpin them – in driving dangerous environmental change. It discusses how these systems should change in order to improve the response to environmental breakdown.

This discussion paper series is part of a major IPPR research programme – Responding to environmental breakdown– that seeks to understand how to realise a more sustainable, just and prepared society in response to environmental breakdown.

Related items

  1. A helping hand for the helpers - a plan to recognise Scotland's unpaid carers

    A Minimum Income Guarantee pilot would empower carers to chart their own course and get back some independence from a state which has become overly dependent on their unpaid labour and goodwill to function. 

  2. Strategic planning for green prosperity

    Land is a finite resource, and the demands made of it have only increased over time.

  3. The new politics of AI: Why fast technological change requires bold policy targets

    The upcoming AI Action Summit in Paris is an opportunity to show how we can harness artificial intelligence (AI) as a force for societal, economic, and environmental good.