Transcript ppt, 5552 K - Green Economist

Regeneration
How Green Economics Could
Transform Wales
Molly Scott Cato
Reader in Green Economics, Cardiff School of Management
Nature is not a place to visit, it is home
Gary Snyder
Four Questions
• Is energy efficiency
enough?
• What is the role of land
in a sustainable
economy?
• What is the role of
money in a sustainable
economy?
• Should we create jobs
or livelihoods?
Prosperity without Growth?
• Sustainable
Development
Commission suggested
‘flourishing within
limits’
• So far there have been
no attempts to
categorise and measure
different types of
consumption and their
social usefulness.
CO2 intensity of GDP across nations:
1980–2006
Carbon Intensities Now and Required
to Meet 450 ppm Target
Who gains the benefit from land?
• Henry George,
Progress and Poverty,
1880
• The ‘single tax’
• Site-value tax or Land
Value Tax
• At present we are
effectively renting
land and labour
overseas to provide
for our needs
Structure of Land Value Tax
• Land Value Tax is levied
on the annual rental
value of each parcel of
land
• Based on unimproved
value, so not a tax on
capital
• Need a baseline survey of
the values of certain
types of land and survey
of land holding
Canons of good taxation practice
• Cheap to collect
• Difficult to evade
• Should fall lightly on production—sales and
employment taxes discourage economic
activity
– Discourages speculative land holding, e.g.
Olympic site in Stratford
– Encourages active use of land
Reasons for taxing land
• It is fixed
• The proceeds of the
most valuable resource
should be shared
• It leads to efficient use
of land and means it is
not left ‘idle’
 Reduce the concentration of land ownership
 Can work with planning system to influence land use
How might this work as policy?
• Could be a change to
council taxes and
local business rates
• Could be used as a
planning windfall tax
• In conjunction with
planning policy to
build a sustainable,
self-reliant economy
One Planet Development
• TAN 6: Welsh planning policy for the
countryside
• ‘Development that through its low impact
either enhances or does not significantly
diminish environmental quality’
• OPDs should, ‘over a reasonable length of
time (no more than five years) provide for the
minimum needs of the inhabitants’ in terms of
income, food, energy and waste assmiliation’
Land reform and food production
• ‘A large majority of studies show that
smallholders in developing areas produce
more per hectare than big farmers.
• The land reforms of the 1950s in Japan,
Taiwan and South Korea were followed by
rapid growth in farm output. So were land
reforms in West Bengal, India, in 1969-84
• Professor Michael Lipton, ‘Smallholders can
spearhead growth’, FT, 20 April 2010
Land Reform in Scotland
• ‘A comprehensive economic evaluation of the
possible impact of moving to a land value
taxation basis’
• Recommendation of the Land Reform Policy
Group, 1999
• Glasgow is considering replacing Council Tax
with a Land Value Tax
What Mervyn King Said
• ‘Of all the many ways of organising banking, the
worst is the one we have today.’
• ‘Unemployment is up,
businesses have closed, and
the direct and indirect costs to
the taxpayer have resulted in
fiscal deficits in several
countries of over 10% of GDP –
the largest peacetime deficits
ever.’
Projected borrowing(PSNB), 17 Dec. 2009
Projected borrowing(PSNB), 21 April 2010
And what he didn’t say



97% of money is created as debt by banks:
95% of money transactions have no contact with real
goods
Allows people to make a claim on future value
• The lubrication of a fully functioning economy
is the most basic role
• But it is incompatible with the role as a
commodity in international speculation
The Crises are the Same Crisis
Sustainability requires
equality
Sustainability requires
financial stability, because
debt-free money forces
economic growth
Debt requires inequality,
because of interest
transferring money from
poor to rich
A Balanced Economy
Odious Debt and Audit Committees
• Invented by the US in the 19th century to reject
Spanish debts when it conquered Cuba
• Justification to reject Iraq's debts after the 2003
invasion
• In 2005 in Ecuador President Correa invented
the idea of the national Audit Committee: 80%
of loans rejected
• Greece and Ireland now have Audit Committees
• http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/debtocracy/
The global trade system is insecure
• A system of energy
intensity
• Extended supply
chains reduce
resilience
• Weakening of
community bonds
Where are the world’s ports?
Challenging our preconceptions
• ‘the origins of the
cataclysm lay in the
utopian endeavor of
economic liberalism to
set up a self-regulating
market system’
• ‘previously to our time
no economy has ever
existed that, even in
principle, was
controlled by markets’
Welfare and community
• Side by side with family
housekeeping, there have been
three principles of production
and distribution:
 Reciprocity
 Redistribution
 Market
• Prior to the market revolution,
humanity’s economic relations
were subordinate to the social.
Now economic relations are
now generally superior to social
ones.
Important changes in welfare
• Citizenship becomes the basis of entitlement
• The individual would be the tax/benefits unit
• The Citizen’s Income would not be withdrawn as
earnings and other income rises
• The availability-for-work rule would be
abolished
• Access to a Citizen’s Income would be easy and
unconditional
Citizens’ Income
• Automatic payments depending on need
• Tax-free and without means
• Income tax and employees’ national insurance
contributions would be merged into a new
income tax
• The tax-free allowance would balance out the
Citizens’ Income for higher earners
Schumacher Centenary
• ‘it is inherent in the
methodology of
economics to ignore
man’s dependence on
the natural world’.
• E. F. Schumacher
Find out more
www.greeneconomist.org
gaianeconomics.blogspot.com
Green Economics: An
Introduction to Theory, Policy
and Practice (Earthscan, 2009)
Environment and Economy
(Routledge, 2011)