Heat, Greed and Human Need: How can we make a socially just transition to a de-carbonised economy?

Seminar w Ian Gough
Thursday, 1 Nov 2018

Prof Ian Gough is Visiting Professor at the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion and an Associate at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, both at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Until summer 2009 Ian was Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath. Ian is a distinguished political economist who has made major contributions to the understanding of social policy in advanced capitalist societies. With the philosopher Len Doyal he wrote A Theory of Human Need(1991), an influential study of the nature and claims of meeting human needs and their distinction from human wants and preferences.

Ian’s latest book, and the focus for this CUSP/CES seminar, is Heat, Greed and Human Need: climate change capitalism and sustainable wellbeing (Edward Elgar, 2017). This acclaimed book offers a powerful analysis of the connections between climate change, economic growth and social policy. Combining ethics and human need theory with political economy and climate science, it offers a long-term, interdisciplinary analysis of the prospects for sustainable development and social justice. Looking beyond policies for ‘green growth’, Ian Gough envisages two further policy stages vital for rich countries: a progressive ‘recomposition’ of consumption, and a post-growth ceiling on demand. His analysis and proposals resonate strongly with the themes of CUSP’s research on the nature of sustainable prosperity, and with CES’s wider agenda of work on sustainability.