In ‘Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy’, Professor Dieter Helm provides an in-depth analysis of the sustainable economy.
Legacy addresses two critical questions:
- What would a sustainable economy look like?
- What would it take to live within our environmental means?
Among other questions, 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 resources/assets, and why we would have to save to invest.
The message is a tough one: we are currently far from meeting the conditions necessary for a sustainable economy, and there will be consequences if we do not address these issues.
It also proposes the specific actions that need to be taken in order to mend our ways and move towards a sustainable economy. Highlighting the feebleness of current approaches to net zero and biodiversity loss.
This includes implementing stronger measures to hold polluters accountable, increasing investment in natural resources and assets, and prioritising the needs of future generations.
Published November 2023, hardback/paperback.
This is an Open Access title. Now downloaded and/or sold 15,000 copies.
Order from Cambridge, Waterstones or Amazon.
Living beyond our means, not paying for the pollution we’re causing and allowing the great natural assets to deteriorate is unsustainable.
Online lecture series. Click on the links below to open the lecture and the slides.
Reviews
a powerful argument for valuing future generations which means saving and investing now so as to live sustainably.
– David Willetts, President of the Resolution Foundation and author of The Pinch
Legacy clearly and potently charts a course from dystopia to utopia. If you care about the fate of humanity, you should read this book and recommend it to others.
– Cameron Hepburn – Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford
Dieter Helm does not pull his punches in this forthright and powerful book. To avoid disaster, we must transform how we live. Above all, we must all pay for the maintenance of core natural assets, instead of living well off their destruction. This will demand radical changes in how we live our lives, individually and collectively. Some will assert that the revolution he seeks is impossible. Helm counters that it is inescapable.
– Martin Wolf, Financial Times
