The Earth Gets Left Off the Balance Sheet. Let’s Fix That

How to Save a Planet

Gimlet

Science, News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades politicians and other leaders have said that acting on climate change comes at too high a cost — to jobs, to business, to the economy. And they've used economics, the dismal science, to support their argument. But some climate activists have long said that those politicians have it all wrong. That there are no jobs on a dead planet. And increasingly, some economists agree. They say that if we're going to have any hope of addressing climate change we need to rethink our relationship to the economy - which is often how we measure a country's well being. And to that, we have to rethink economics. To understand their argument, we talk to Kate Raworth, an Oxford economist, and author of the book Doughnut Economics, about what economics gets right, what it gets wrong, what it needs to do differently to help sustain human life on this planet. And speak with Lead Councillor Susan Aitken, the head of Glasgow, Scotland's city government who is working to take the economic ideas that Kate Raworth has put forward to help her city transition to a healthier more sustainable future. Calls to Action Check out the Doughnut Economics Action Lab to learn more about the work that Kate Raworth and her colleagues are trying to accomplish, or even how to try to bring some of that doughnut economics thinking to your community. Read the study that found that wealthy countries drained poorer countries of their wealth. Learn more about how increasingly, at least some researchers think, We’re Talking About The Cost Of Climate Change All Wrong or by watching Kate Raworth's Ted Talk. Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram. This episode was produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis. Our reporters and producers are Rachel Waldholz, Anna Ladd and Hannah Chinn. Our supervising producer is Lauren Silverman with help from Katelyn Bogucki. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Our intern is Nicole Welch. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard and Lonnie Ro with original music by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, and Catherine Anderson. Our fact checker this episode is Claudia Geib. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to How to Save a Planet, I'm Alex Bloomberg, and this is the show where we talk
0:07.0	about what we need to do to address climate change and how we make those things happen.
0:20.6	So, there's a refrain you hear a lot in climate activism circles.
0:27.4	It's popped up on signs that climate protests, people say it in speeches.
0:31.3	There are no jobs on a dead planet.
0:35.3	Now, the refrain doesn't always use jobs. Sometimes there's no business on a dead planet,
0:39.2	or there's no economics on a dead planet, but the point's the same, no matter what the word.
0:43.6	Economic interests shouldn't come at the expense of a habitable planet.
0:48.4	And in fact, our economic interests depend on a habitable planet.
0:52.4	And what these slogans are trying to do is counteract a point that you hear a lot,
0:57.2	that acting on climate is just too expensive. You hear this point of view from lots of elected officials.
1:03.8	There's a much better way to address the environment than imposing these costs on the job creation.
1:09.2	Just think of what all happened to small businesses and manufacturers hit with the skyrocketing
1:14.1	energy bills. The Paris Accord was not designed to save the environment,
1:18.4	it was designed to kill the American economy.
1:21.2	It's a big green bomb that will blow a hole in our strong, healthy, and growing economy.
1:28.5	For years, this has been the framing. Climate action can only come as a trade-off
1:34.1	with economic prosperity. And this idea has kept many governments from taking the
1:39.2	kind of action on climate that we need. But people have also been pushing back against this idea,
1:45.2	saying if we truly want to tackle this problem, we need to stop thinking of the economy as
1:49.3	separate from the health of the planet. What we need instead is to start factoring a healthy
1:54.0	planet into the way we think about the economy. And our guest on today's program is an economist who
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