St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series - Richard Lewney 'The Economics of Getting to Net Zero'

Wed 11 March 2020

Ramsden Room

The past year has seen some striking examples of extreme climatic events of the kind that scientists expect to grow in frequency and severity as global temperatures increase. It has also seen a strengthening of political activism in the climate strike movement and a flurry of activity among financial institutions seeking to understand their exposure to physical and transition risks. Neoclassical economics recognises environmental degradation as a classic example of an externality and frames its response in terms of correcting that market failure, but the limitations of its marginal cost-benefit approach have been exposed in the climate change debate. This seminar explores the role that the key insights of Post-Keynesian and Schumpeterian economics (such as path dependence, radical uncertainty, heterogeneous actors, the role of money and finance, stock-flow consistency and endogenous technical change) are playing in forming an analysis of environmental policy that is better adapted to the challenge of tackling global warming. The seminar will discuss what a net zero energy system and economy might look like in 2050, the policies needed to get there, how to assess the economic impacts and what the key obstacles are that need to be overcome.