FORUM 2009

Joan Martinez Alier

Development and Change, 2009, vol. 40, issue 6, 1099-1119

Abstract: type="main" xml:lang="en">

Economic growth is not compatible with environmental sustainability. The effort to push up the rate of growth by increasing obligations to repay financial debts is in direct conflict with the availability of exhaustible resources and with the capacity of waste sinks. The economic crisis of 2008–09 has resulted in a welcome change to the totally unsustainable trend of increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The Kyoto Protocal of 1997 was generous to the rich countries, giving them property rights on the carbon sinks and the atmosphere in exchange for the promise of a reduction of 5 per cent of their emissions relative to1990. This modest Kyoto objective will be fulfilled more easily because of the economic crisis. This shows that economic de-growth, leading to a steady state, is a plausible objective for the rich industrial economies. This would be supported by the environmental justice movements of the South, which are active in resource extraction conflicts.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2009.01618.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:devchg:v:40:y:2009:i:6:p:1099-1119

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0012-155X

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Development and Change from International Institute of Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().