Transcript Diapositive 1

Scienze Umane e Sociali
MIM
Green Economy /Clean economy for
reshaping society
Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview
Prof.ssa Carmen Pasca
Website: http://wwwusers.york.ac.uk/~jdh1/ESCP/
Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview
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Introduction.
Recommended reading.
The structure of the course.
Definitions of key terms.
Some history.
The Future: what might it be? Four possible views.
Market liberals
Institutionalists
Bioenvironmentalists
Social greens
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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
A recommended, but not obligatory, text.
Paths to a Greener world, Jennifer Clapp and
Peter Dauvergne, second edition, MIT Press
2010.
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 overview
Lecture 2: Environmental, ecological, social and political points of view
Lecture 3: The economic point of view
Lecture 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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Key Terms
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.
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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.
Above is an
interesting
and
perceptive
image. What
do you think
it means?
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).
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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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Montreal Protocol and CFC output
But this picture shows that global co-operation works.
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.
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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Interlude
A simple game we will play.
A simple game to illustrate some of the issues involved.
You can find this at
http://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.
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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.
2.
3.
4.
Market liberals
Institutionalists
Bioenvironmentalists
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.
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Arrivederci
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Green Economy: Carmen Pasca
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