Paul Ekins

'Limits to growth' and 'sustainable development': grappling with ecological realities

Abstract The paper has three main sections. The first discusses the ‘limits to growth’ debate of the 1970s, identifying concern with three potential kinds of limits: ecological limits to the physical scale of economic activity, limits to the economic welfare to be derived from growth of economic activity, and social limits to economic growth. The second section explores the same issues through the sustainable development literature of the late 1980s and the 1990s to date. The principal change over the 20 years concerned, a period also framed by the Stockholm Environment Conference and UNCED, is far greater acceptance of the existence of threatening environmental damage and the need for active policy to address it. No consensus has yet emerged, however, on the relationship between economic growth and welfare or ecological or social sustainability. The third section indicates the scale of the task if global economic growth is to be reconciled with ecological sustainability, and advocates a strategy for sustainability that principally involves differentiating between North and South and forging new economic relations between them.

Trade, environment and development: the issues in perspective

Abstract This special issue on trade and the environment brings together a number of papers that are constructively critical of the conventional economic wisdom on the topic. We think that this criticism is warranted because of the decidely uncritical way in which ‘free trade’ has been advocated in much of the literature, and especially in policy. The papers analyse the validity of the underlying assumptions on which the conventional wisdom is based, and provide suggestions for ways to facilitate trade that is also adequately protective of the environment, sustainability, and other social values. In this introductory piece we discuss trade, the environment, and sustainability, summarizing arguments in the papers included in this issue, and adding a few additional points not covered by them.

The impact of carbon taxation on the UK economy

Abstract The paper explores the likely macroeconomic impact of imposing a carbon tax at levels sufficient to reduce CO 2 emissions significantly. Many studies have indicated the probablity of such a tax entailing substantial economic costs. However, such studies have not tended to take into account the possible positive effects of using carbon tax revenues to reduce distortionary taxes elsewhere in the economy or to offset competitiveness effects, or of the possibility that a carbon tax will stimulate innovation and efficiency in the energy sector, with positive economic results. The paper concludes that when these factors are given due weight imposing a carbon tax is more likely to entail economic benefit than cost.

The Implications of Environmental Sustainability for Economic Growth

This paper seeks to answer the question: does the achievement of environmental sustainability necessarily mean a reduction in rates of economic growth? If not, under what conditions can the two objectives be met simultaneously?

Sustainability: Concept, Implementation, Economic Implications

This paper defines environmental sustainability and draws attention to the aggregate unsustainability of current human lifestyles and economic activities. It lists a set of sustainability conditions which imply a fundamental transformation in patterns of production and consumption, and the ways in which government policies could help to bring this transformation about. The effects of such policies on macroeconomic quantities such as output, inflation, unemployment and the balance of payments are uncertain and depend to a large extent on whether new technologies or institutional arrangements will allow the transformation to be achieved at little or no net cost — a point of controversy between technological optimists and pessimists. Whether or not moves towards environmental sustainability will permit continuing economic growth, there is no likelihood of living standards collapsing under the challenge, but new approaches to unemployment will have to be developed. Finally, although economic growth may come a...