Political Economy of the Environment : An Interdisciplinary Approach

ISBN-13: 9780415437530 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 268 str.

Simon Dietz;Jonathan Michie;Christine Oughton

Opis

This book is the culmination of several years work by a group of academics, policy-makers and other professionals looking to understand how alternative economic thinking -- and indeed thinking from quite different social-scientific disciplines -- could enhance the mainstream economic approach to environmental and natural-resource problems. Of the editors, Dietz comes from the mainstream economics tradition, while Michie and Oughton draw explicitly on institutional and evolutionary economics. The various authors represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches. This book draws on the strengths of each and all of these approaches to analyse environmental issues and what can be done to tackle these through corporate and public policy. This book makes the case for an inter-disciplinary approach. Two themes which emerge repeatedly throughout the book are the need for an interdisciplinary theory of technological change, and the need for a similarly interdisciplinary approach to the study of human behaviour and how it influences both production and consumption choices. The two themes are of course related. Resolving environmental questions requires an understanding of their nature, of their causes and, to the extent that they are anthropogenic, of how to change human behaviour. These fundamental issues are the focus of the four chapters that form Part 1 of this volume. The remainder of the volume develops them in more detail.

Climate change and environmental policy in general was one of the key issues discussed at the historic G8 summit in Gleneagles in the summer of 2005. This book draws together a team of political economists and environmentalists to assess the big picture and eschews "number-crunching" cost-benefit analysis to develop a more holistic approach, designed to take into account the point of view of all people and not just a select few.

Spis treści

1. Environmental Challenges of the 21^st Century and the Need for Interdisciplinary Political Economy Simon Dietz, Jonathan Michie and Christine Oughton  Part 1: Foundations  2. Climate Change: Lessons for Our Future from the Distant Past David F. Hendry  3. Managerial, Institutional and Evolutionary Approaches to Environmental Economics: Theoretical and Policy Implications Jonathan Michie and Christine Oughton  4. Behavioural Economics: Seven Key Principles for Environmental Policy Emma Dawnay and Hetan Shah  5. The Whole Systems Approach in Ecological Economics Terry Barker  Part 2: Innovation   6. Systems of Innovation: National, Regional and Technological Innovation Systems Timothy Foxon  7. Policy Support for Environmental Innovation Timothy Foxon  8. A Paradigm Shift in Economics: Endogenous Technological Change in Economic Models of Climate Change Policy Jonathan Köhler  9. Modeling Biased Technical Change: Implications for Climate Policy Carlo Carraro, Enrica de Cian and Lea Nicita  Part 3: Sustainability  10. Confronting Consumption: Challenges for Economics and for Policy Tim Jackson  11. Social and Psychological Drivers of Energy Consumption Behaviour and Energy Transitions Lorraine Whitmarsh  12. Management of North Sea Fisheries Prashant Vaze