“As our global economic and ecological crises converge, neither neoliberalism nor Keynesianism can cure what ails us.” (Source: Foreign Policy in Focus)

Excellent analysis of the flawed remedies for the twin economy-ecology crises by Walden Bello in Foreign Policy in Focus.

“To analysts like Richard Heinberg, the intersection of the financial collapse, economic stagnation, global warming, the steady depletion of fossil fuel reserves, and agriculture reaching its limits is a fatal one. It represents a far more profound crisis than a temporary setback on the road to growth. It portends not simply the end of a paradigm of global growth driven by the demand of the center economies. It means the “end of growth” as we know it. It is, in short, the Malthusian trap, though Heinberg understandably avoids using the term.

The gyrations of the finance economy, he says, do not simply stem from the dynamics of capital accumulation but from an all-encompassing ecological disequilibrium. “Until now the dynamism of growth has enabled us to stay ahead of accumulating environmental costs,” he writes. But “as growth ends, the environmental bills for the last two centuries of manic expansion may come due just as our bank account empties."

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