The Politics of Economics - 15 May 2018 - Politics of the Green Economy

John O'Neill (Manchester) James Vause (UNEP-WCMC) Bhaskar Vira (Cambridge) Abstract How should economics be used to inform the solutions to some of our most pressing global challenges like climate change? Some scholars argue that environmental problems are first and foremost ethical problems. Others argue that the scale of environmental problems (global and inter-generational) is much too large for the tools used by economists. Nonetheless, the economy is intimately connected to environmental degradation and economics as a discipline is widely used to design solutions. Economics is and has always been a contested discipline. In light of this, how should it be used to best inform environmental governance? Can economics provide objective inputs into the environmental debate? If so, what do such inputs look like? How does economics shape our understanding of environmental problems and of possible solutions? This panel will discuss these and other questions relating to the use of economics in environmental governance. John O’Neill is professor of Political Economy at the University of Manchester. John's research lies in political economy and philosophy, philosophy and environmental policy, political theory, ethics, and the philosophy of science. He has been involved in a number of UK and European projects on environmental policy. James Vause is the lead economist at the UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCWC). Previously, James worked in the UK Government Economics Service and he has many years of experience applying environmental economics to a range of policy areas. Bhaskar Vira is professor of Political Economy at Cambridge and director of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute. Trained as an economist, Bhaskar’s research is concerned with the often-hidden costs of environmental and developmental processes, and the need for scholarship to draw attention to the distributional consequences of public