Legacy
How to Build the Sustainable Economy

Legacy provides a comprehensive exposition of what it would mean to have a sustainable economy for current and future generations.

Dieter Helm (Author)

9781009449182, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 November 2023

266 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.4 kg

'Recommended.' M. Morgan-Davie, CHOICE

What would a sustainable economy look like? What would it take to live within our environmental means? Legacy answers these and other questions, setting out the key features of the sustainable economy. It explains what it would take to properly maintain different types of capital, why polluters would have to pay, why the current generation would have to fund the necessary maintenance of our natural assets, and why we would have to save to invest. The message is a tough one: we are way off course in terms of meeting these conditions and we cannot escape the consequences. This book explains what we would have to do to mend our ways. In doing so, it highlights the feebleness of current approaches to net zero and biodiversity loss as well as our great neglect of the core infrastructures, and why we are not meeting our duties to the next generation. This title is Open Access.

1. Introduction
2. The next generation
3. Taking precautions, building resilience
4. The capitals
5. Sustainable accounting and the balance sheet
6. Polluter pays
7. Public goods and zero marginal costs
8. Sustainable consumption, deficits and debt
9. Social justice
10. Delivering the system plans
11. A new constitution
12. Conclusions: it could go either way.

Subject Areas: Environmental economics [KCN]