When it comes to conserving Earth’s natural environment, our markets are badly broken. For our planet’s future – and for our future prosperity – we must fix them.
What’s going on? Are we simply in the midst of another gut-churning fluctuation of a world economy that’s prone to intermittent volatility but that always seems to find its footing? Or are we glimpsing a deeper emergency, one that goes to the heart of modern global capitalism?
Late last week the world’s central banks acted to head off panic among investors and lenders by pumping nearly a third of a trillion dollars of cash into the world’s financial markets. Something is clearly amiss.
Having to search farther and longer for our resources isn’t the only new hurdle we face. Climate change could also constrain growth. A steady stream of evidence now indicates that the planet is warming quickly and that the economic impact on agriculture, our built environment, ecosystems and human health could, in time, be very large.
Review of Branko Milanovic’s”Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton: 2005)”
The Robert J. Pelosky, Jr. Distinguished Speaker Series, The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
There’s a whiff of desperation in the air. By this point in the world’s business cycle, the American economy that powerhouse of global capitalism – was supposed to be rebounding sharply, and stock markets everywhere were again going to be making everyone rich. Instead, things have gone haywire: the US may be tipping into another recession; four years of growth has evaporated from North American markets; and economies around the world are in trouble.
In the last century, our population on this planet has quadrupled, and most of us now live in cities. At the same time, new technologies – from antibiotics to jet planes to the internet – have vastly extended our power as individuals, groups, and societies.
Edward Barbier and Thomas Homer-Dixon | Endogenous growth models have revived the debate over the role of technological innovation in economic growth and development. The consensus view is that institutional and policy failures prevent poor countries from generating or using new technological ideas to reap greater economic opportunities. However, this view omits the important contribution of natural-resource degradation and depletion to institutional instability
with Robin Bienenstock | The current crisis in international markets highlights inadequacies in the way economists and other analysts think about the global economy.
