Subsidy reform is one of the biggest win–wins out there. To begin with, subsidies can go to environmental projects on farms (which would still be producing food), rather than be paid just by production volume or land area. Indeed, this seems only logical. But efforts to alter the subsidy system have been scrappy and piecemeal, with EU subsidies for

Any solution implies a complete transition of our behaviour, our technology, and the power structures that organize society. In the transition, we will see further segregation of winners from losers in a world already stratified by deep, unjust inequality. If we already struggle with generational issues like pensions and housing, we ain’t seen

We could be facing the existential collapse of everything we know, and yet no single person or organization is the culprit. Can we blame the fossil fuel companies? The super-rich? All of the consumers in ‘the West’? Or would it be better to blame the Chinese for building coal power plants on such a massive scale in the early 2000s? The Republicans

For large-scale change to be effective and rapid, the main social institutions have to move together: the legal system, the civil service, national and international banking institutions and local and national governments must all pull in the same direction. As recent years of insufficient policies attest, this won’t happen by top-down diktat

The incompatibility of flying with concern for the environment ultimately adds up to a market failure: we are not seeing or paying for the damage. Airlines don’t pay a single dollar in fuel tax. You pay more tax filling up a Fiat Punto than Ryanair does a 737. This will change eventually, with nine countries petitioning the EU to introduce a

Economist Mariana Mazzucato provides another good example in Apple’s iPhone, a product that almost entirely depends on technologies that were initially developed by the public sector (including GPS, touchscreens, the internet, etc.).94 The US government also shelters Apple from competition nationally and overseas. After all this, Apple is able to

What does a world without animal products look like? Land use for agriculture is cut by an incredible 75% – the area of the US, China, Europe and Australia combined.

GDP is calculated by summing all the money spent on final goods and services in an economy: all the televisions and gel pedicures, all foodstuffs and doorknobs, each grand piano and toilet brush; absolutely everything that can be bought on the formal market by consumers.10 The flaws in GDP are apparent in its definition: everything bought on the

Living successfully in a world of complex systems means… expanding the horizons of caring. No part of the human race is separate either from other human beings or the global ecosystem. It will not be possible in this integrated world… for the rich in Los Angeles to succeed if the poor in Los Angeles fail, or for Europe to succeed if Africa fails,