Eco-capitalism, climate finance and carbon money

This is an event in the Economics Research Seminar series taking place at Leeds University Business School on 15 November 2018

Eco-Capitalism, Climate Finance and Carbon Money

You are invited to a seminar by Robert Guttmann from the University of Paris 13, on ‘Eco-capitalism, climate finance and carbon money’. All welcome! A light lunch will be provided for participants in the seminar.

Abstract

• Frames the problem of climate change in a new light and identifies the necessary elements of an effective climate mitigation strategy
• Addresses the challenge of how best to wed a profit-driven capitalist system to societally beneficial goals of sustainability
• Presents the constitutive elements of an ecologically oriented type of capitalism centred on the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda
• Encourages the construction of an ecologically oriented type of capitalism, and introduces a new type of money—carbon money—to incentivize the transition to a low-carbon economy

Our planet faces a systemic threat from climate change, which the world community of nations is ill-prepared to address, and this book argues that a new form of ecologically conscious capitalism is needed in order to tackle this serious and rising threat. While the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 has finally implemented a global climate policy regime, its modest means belie its ambitious goals. Our institutional financial organisations are not equipped to deal with the problems that any credible commitment to a low-carbon economy will have to confront. We will have to go beyond cap-and-trade schemes and limited carbon taxes to cut greenhouse gas emissions substantially in due time. This book offers a way forward towards that goal, with a conceptual framework that brings environmental preservation back into our macro-economic growth and forecasting models. This framework obliges firms to consider other goals beyond shareholder value maximisation, outlining the principal tenets of a climate-friendly finance and introducing a new type of money linked to climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

About the speaker

Robert Guttmann studied in Vienna (Austria) and the University of Wisconsin – Madison before obtaining his doctoral degree at the University of Greenwich when it was still known as Thames Polytechnic (1979). Today he is Augustus B Weller Professor of Economics at Hofstra University (New York) and also works as Professeur Associé at the Centre d’Économie Paris Nord (CEPN) of the Université Paris XIII in France. Professor Guttmann is a specialist in monetary theory who has focused in particular on financial instability. He integrates different heterodox traditions to shed light on the cyclical growth dynamic of the monetary production economy, using  Régulation Theory as a vector for his attempts at cross-fertilization. Among Professor Guttmann’s most important contributions are “Asset Bubbles, Debt Deflation, and Global Imbalances” (International Journal of Political Economy, 2009), “The Heterodox Notion of Structural Crisis” (Review of Keynesian Economics, 2015), as well as his books How Credit-Money Shapes the Economy: The United States in a Global System (M. E. Sharpe, 1994), Cybercash: The Coming Reign of Electronic Money (Palgrave Macmillan : 2003), Finance-Led Capitalism: Shadow Banking, Re-Regulation, and the Future of Global Markets (Palgrave Macmillan : 2016), and – most recently – a book on climate change entitled Eco-Capitalism: Carbon Money, Climate Finance and Sustainable Development (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is currently working on a new book about the evolving multi-polar international monetary system.