Feasible Alternatives to Green Growth
"Feasible alternatives to Green Growth" with Tiziano Distefano, Research Fellow, University of Pisa, Italy.
Climate change and increasing income inequality have emerged as twin threats to contemporary standards of living, peace, and democracy. Usually, these two problems are tackled separately in the policy agenda, but a new breed of radical proposals has been advanced to manage a fair low-carbon transition. Distefano will present a dynamic macro-simulation model developed to investigate the long-run effects of three such scenarios: Green Growth, Policies for Social Equity, and Degrowth.
The Green Growth scenario, based on technological progress and environmental policies, achieves a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at the cost of increasing income inequality and unemployment. The Policies for Social Equity scenario adds direct labor market interventions that result in an environmental performance similar to Green Growth, while improving social conditions at the cost of increasing public deficit. The Degrowth scenario further adds a reduction in consumption, and exports and achieves a greater reduction in emissions and inequality with higher public deficit, despite the introduction of a wealth tax. Distefano argues that new radical social policies can combine social prosperity and low-carbon emissions, and can also be economically and politically feasible.
Lunch will be provided. This event is co-hosted by MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and MIT Energy Initiative.
