Doughnut Economics: The must-read book that redefines economics for a world in crisis

Samuelson deeply understood and relished this influence because he saw the college freshman’s mind as a blank slate. ‘I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws – or crafts its advanced treatises – so long as I can write its economics textbooks,’ he declared in later years, ‘The first lick is the privileged one, impinging on the beginner’s tabula rasa

That’s the essence of the fifth business response: be generous by creating an enterprise that is regenerative by design, giving back to the living systems of which we are a part. More than an action on a to-do checklist, it is a way of being in the world that embraces biosphere stewardship and recognises that we have a responsibility to leave the l

But in the context of today’s social and ecological crises, how can this single, narrow metric still command such international attention?

The shift to regenerative economic design can be monitored only if it is backed up by metrics that reflect its mission. Monetary metrics alone will inevitably fall far short of reflecting the value created in a regenerative economy: financial income is just one narrow slice of what an economy generates when its aim is to promote human prosperity in

Yes, some of these tax proposals sound unfeasible now, but so many once-unfeasible ideas – abolishing slavery, gaining the vote for women, ending apartheid, securing gay rights – turn out to be inevitable. In the century of the planetary household, global taxes will too.

‘What you call resources we call our relatives,’ he explained. ‘If you can think in terms of relationships, you are going to treat them better, aren’t you? … Get back to the relationship because that is your foundation for survival.’45

Given just how far out of balance we currently are – transgressing both sides of the Doughnut – the task of coming into balance is daunting. ‘We are the first generation to know that we’re undermining the ability of the Earth system to support human development,’ says Johan Rockström. ‘This is a profound new insight and it is potentially very, very

And the extreme concentration of income and wealth – in the hands both of billionaires and of corporate boards – rapidly turns

In their book The Gardens of Democracy, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that moving from ‘machinebrain’ to ‘gardenbrain’ thinking calls for a simultaneous shift away from believing that things will self-regulate to realising that things need stewarding. ‘To be a gardener is not to let nature take its course; it is to tend,’ they write, ‘Gardeners d