Economics for a Healthy Planet

About the Book

Scientists have told us we are destroying the planet. Most of us get it, we have even declared a climate change emergency. So why aren’t we treating it like an emergency? As long as we strive to grow our economies, we will consume more man-made goods that damage the planet and take our lives further away from nature. Economic growth over the past century is unprecedented, but the majority of the increased prosperity has been enjoyed by a tiny minority of billionaires, while most of us feel far from wealthy. We are trapped in vicious circles, where the more we grow our economies, the more we need to earn and spend to take part in modern society. With the tipping point for irreversible damage from climate change only 10 years away, we cannot simply rely on individuals to do their bit, we also need top-down policies to change collective behaviours. This book proposes economic policies which access the vast profits of multinationals and billionaires to share the wealth with the many, not the few, break the vicious circles of economic growth and instead harness virtuous circles of nature, in a way that is accessible to those outside the technical world of economics.

About the Author

Iain graduated from heriot-Watt university with a first-class honours degree in Accountancy & Finance in 1992, before qualifying as a management accountant and then spending most of his career working in the Investment Banking industry. Since then, after seeing the detrimental impact of capitalist-driven economic growth on the planet, he has radically changed his viewpoint on economic policy. He has always been interested in environmental issues, and runs his local Greenpeace group in his hometown Plymouth, where he spent much of his childhood. He is married with two teenage daughters who share his passion for nature and the environment.