The Constant Economy

How to Create a Stable Society

Zac Goldsmith

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781848873964
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Accounting
• Index: Business

Since the industrial revolution, the economies of developed nations have grown at the expense of the natural world. But the earth's resources are finite, climate change threatens to dramatically transform how and where we live, and the global economic system is in disarray. One way or another we will have to change. The longer we delay, the more our societies will be at the mercy of events and the harsher the eventual adjustments. Fortunately, as this book shows, there is an alternative. Zac Goldsmith argues for the creation of what he calls a 'constant economy' - in which resources are valued not wasted, food is grown sustainably, and goods are built to last. The constant economy operates at the human scale, and above all it recognises nature's limits.

He shows that almost every action needed to support the environment is already being carried out somewhere in the world, by companies, communities and governments determined to blaze a trail. Where they have done the right thing, their customers and voters have rewarded them. Practical solutions exist, and they are brought together and set out in this ground-breaking book.

Index

action plan 21

Africa 72

Agent Orange 53

agriculture:

and biofuels 136–7;

contamination of water supplies 81;

external costs 81;

farm income 69;

global economy 92;

GM crops 73–6, 91;

industrialization of 71–3, 89;

international competition 85–6;

local 78;

productivity 72;

reform 89–91;

regulatory system 85–6, 90;

small scale 72;

standards 85–8, 90;

subsidies 80–2;

use of antibiotics 87–8, 91

airport expansion 129–33, 134

All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group 83

Alpine Initiative, the 44

Amazon basin, the 27, 174

Amazon Fund 177

American Chemistry Council 56

American Society for the Control of Cancer 66

Anderson, Ray 163–4

animal welfare 69, 86, 87–8, 91

animals, feminized 62

antibiotics, agricultural use 87–8, 91

Armstrong, Neil 186–7

Association of British Insurers 148

Atlantic Dawn (fishing vessel) 97–8

Atlantic Ocean 99

atrazine 62

Australia 70, 125, 153, 162–3

Austria 138

Automobile:

How the Car Changed Life (Brandon) 128

aviation emissions 170, 173, 181

Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire 148

Aylesbury, Young Offenders Institute 76–7

Ayling, Bob 132

Bali 172

ballot initiatives 45–6

Banik, Allen E. 64

Barnes referendum 37

Beckett, Margaret 68

Belgium 133, 162

Beve...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Step One Measuring What Matters
• Step Two Power to the People
• Step Three The Precautionary Principle
• Step Four Food Quality, Food Security
• Step Five Save Our Seas
• Step Six An Energy Revolution
• Step Seven Getting Around
• Step Eight Built to Last
• Step Nine A Zero Waste Economy
• Step Ten Playing Our Part
• Conclusion
• Sources and Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Index