If we want to prevent further environmental catastrophe, we need to change our economic model
Two accessible, easy-to-read, recent and indispensable articles by Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz help visualize the absolutely necessary change that the world we know has to experience.
The first, “After neoliberalism”, argues for the urgent redefinition of the failed neoliberal capitalist model, a fundamentalist approach to the free market whose commitment to unrestricted growth makes it the main culprit of our current problems, as well as providing clues about the future regulation of large corporations exercising omnipotent power over the markets. The indispensable tasks required to evolve toward a new economic model after the failure of neoliberal capitalism are: restoring the balance between markets, governments and civil society in order to solve the problems that the free market has not been able to solve by itself; redefining wealth creation to make it more dependent on scientific research and less on exploitation; and addressing the concentration of market power by breaking the link between economic power and political influence.
The second article, “The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response”, published last Tuesday in The Guardian, is a well-argued defense of the US Green New Deal I discussed not long ago, framing the…
