The economic downtime of 2008

The 2008 economic downturn provides policymakers with an opportunity to combine macroeconomic theory with environmental concerns. As a result, post-Keynesian thinkers such as Jackson (2009) and Demaria et al. (2013) identified flaws in the traditional economy that necessitate a new approach to economic thinking and practice. According to them, traditional macroeconomics used the basis of managing economies at the national level, therefore basic global concerns such as environmental challenges could not be tackled. Second, the macroeconomic model is based on the concept of GDP. Regrettably, GDP is a measure of formal economy activity rather than ecological macroeconomic concerns such as depleted resources. Finally, post economists argued that economic models formulated are formulated in economic terms such as demand and supply or price and quantities. These economic terms does overshadow flow of energy and material which is a concern for ecological macroeconomics Demaria 198).

Promoting a sustainable future

This prompted Antonio and Mazzanti (2017), to theorise the sustainable development paradigm (2009). However, this paradigm is in contrast with the degrowth paradigm; unlike sustainable development paradigm that development can be sustainable, degrowth paradigm argues that there is a contradiction between sustainability and economic growth. As such, pathways towards a sustainable future can only be found in a redistributive downscaling of the biophysical size of the global economy (Valerie 13). In this view, the traditional greener economy approaches can help us escape from the economy in the same was as argued in degrowth since instead of formulating economies in terms of price and quantities, traditional greener economy approaches accounts for ecological macroeconomics such as the flow of energy.

Works Cited

Antoniolia, Davide Mazzantib , Massimiliano. Towards a green economy through innovations: The role of trade union involvement. Ecological Economics 131 (2017) 286–299

Demaria, Federico, Schneider François, Sekulova Filka and Joan Martinez-Alier. What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement. Online

Valerie, Fournier. Escaping from the economy:The politics of degrowth. International journal of sociology and social policy. 28 (2008) 11-12