What is a Green Economy

[foodchain]

What kind of business models or practices do you think would favor environmentally safe behavior from a capitalist viewpoint? Currently I view environmentally safe products of business at a disadvantage simply from higher costs and less availability overall. I don’t see how the current model of our economy as I see it changing from this. I mean the SUV only stated to diminish in sales because of fuel prices, but its not extinct. How can a “free” economy sustain any lasting or positive changes to be environmentally sound globally and locally?

 

I raise this question because I think ultimately past making huge leaps in alternative fuels that can be expended without bound or impact are very small if they even exist and would require change on every level down to individual households overall, such as some perfect solar array system like generator that could actually stand in for the prime fuel source for national or global communities, not happening tomorrow. This I could only think comes to mean efficiency has to become more and more of a concern as population grows. So how can a free market system actually exist if it has to operate on ever more burdening efficiency rules for instance? How would this relate to employment and type of work?

 

I see this question as nothing close to mentioned to often by anything really. Simply put what would a environmentally sound economy even look like. I don’t think it has to be a biodome type event, but the environment does exist in real life.

[Rev Blair]

It sounds really simple, and I know it isn't.

 

A green economy puts a monetary value on environmental damage though, and increases the price of that damage slowly and predictably over time.

 

We've been subsidizing polluters since the nineteenth century by paying to clean up or simply living with the messes they make. They make a profit off of us, then we pay to clean up after them.

 

If we stop doing that, if we tell them they have to pay to clean up their own mess, including real jail for CEOs and other corporate robber barons, it will change the economy.

 

That will create an impetus for them to create green business.

 

We also have to get away from consumerism. It really didn't exist, except arguably among the idle rich, before WWII. People bought what they needed, and didn't buy what they didn't need. We've been convinced to base our economy on waste. That's not an economy, it's just stupid.

 

Reduce and reuse first, then recycle. Nothing changes your personal economy like buying old stuff and fixing it, or using it in another way.