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The planet’s economist: has Kate Raworth found a model for sustainable living?

Her hit book Doughnut Economics laid out a path to a greener, more equal society. But can she turn her ideas into meaningful change?

by Hettie O’Brien, Guardian, 8 June 23

The problem is that there are few templates for an economy that
radically shrinks the world’s carbon footprint without also shrinking our
quality of life. The economist Kate Raworth believes she has a solution.

It is possible, she argues, to design an economy that allows humans and the
environment to thrive. Doing so will mean rejecting much of what defined
20th-century economics. This is the essential premise of her only book,
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist,
which became a surprise hit when it was published in 2017.

The book, which
has been translated into 21 languages, brings to mind a charismatic
professor dispensing heterodox wisdom to a roomful of students. “Citizens
of 2050 are being taught an economic mindset that is rooted in the
textbooks of 1950, which in turn are rooted in the theories of 1850,”
Raworth writes.

By exposing the flaws in these old theories, such as the
idea that economic growth will massively reduce inequality, or that humans
are merely self-interested individuals, Raworth wants to show how our
thinking has been constrained by economic concepts that are fundamentally
unsuited to the great challenges of this century.

 Guardian 8th June 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/08/the-planets-economist-has-kate-raworth-found-a-model-for-sustainable-living

June 11, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs, resources - print