A sensible economics or Green Economics" according to Victor Anderson" should include it should be understood as being run by human beings including looking after babies and children etc..

And dependent on the natural world which it cant exist without,

it should be largely concerned with the interactions between human eononomic activity and the natural world. It should include a psychological dimension as to whole cutures and what influence they have. What production, consumption and investment actually mean.

It needs an historial dimension as its is subject ot constant change.

And it cannot be value free.

It needs to include new indicators measuring its success or failure in achievement of meeting human needs, it needs environmental taxation and public spending needs to provide useful developments such as biodiversity conservation and bus services, employment must include protection for all kinds of workers and working style, and a change in decision making so that social justice and environmental considerations came into all public and private decision making.

Stakeholder considerations should be part of all business decisions and a change in trade - protecting exporters and importers who are weaker.

And it should contain an element of wealth distribution ,

Lastly each person should take responsibility to try to get at least one of these aspects integrated into the world economy.

We need localisation and a recognition of planetary limits

Concern with redefining what constitutes the good life

What are human needs

What makes for human happiness

A recognition that we are part of the natural world and deeply dependant on it.

In fact some of the features of a better economics are :-

Giving equal weight to the future- the opposite of discounting the future- and thus making nuclear power even less attractive as the costs of disposal escalate in future years.We should transfer resources forward to the future for the use of future people.stop our irrational discounting and our preference for ourselves over future generations.

Valuing other people's interests equally with our own- including people everywhere

Accepting that some things really are not for sale and so cannot be traded for money or increased production and may have infinite value- such as the climate- the sea- clean air, an endangered species.

The new reformed radical economics is now much more inclusive - including all earth processes and life and at its roots are issues of alternative indicators beyond GNP, what do we measure ,what do we count and what do we value and human behaviour is regarded as key to changes. Among them are the ecological footprint which is 0.47 by the average person in Mozambique and 9.7 hectacres by an Amercian and 2.3 hectacres by the average person overall.

A new disease was coined - that of Affluenza a contagious disease of spending too much.The good life and its meaning is the subject of much of the new ideas in economics, in Bogota the Mayor Enrique Penolosa says "that a city is successful not when it is rich but when its people are happy. In poor countries this means meeting basic needs, well being also includes, freedom, health, satisfying social relationships and a good life might minimise consumption. People who are happy feel they have control over their lives and fulfilling work.The real purpose of our economy is not material growth without end but a balanced fulfilling and sustainable life for all."in the World watch report for 2004.

Hogson says economics should be the study of social structures, and institutions governing the production and distribution and exchange of the requisites of human life..... Which would be a much wider subject than it is today. Marshall 1890.

It is no coincidence then that this year the World watch report named consumerism as the single most dangerous development for all of us on planet earth and its single most important aim this year is to curb this impulse and this economic aim- growth, desire for more and more goods - far more than is proper, far more than is wise.

According to Fritof Capra, social costs of economic activity have been excluded from the models as well as environmental costs. The true issues are politics and human values Capital has become global and labour local.. The social relationships have been transformed by capitalism.It is using innovation knowledge, and is structured round networks of capital flows. But capitalism has no conscience.

According to Maryland university study and its Insitute of Ecological Economics. Booming pharmaceutical industry products work 40$ billion annually, taxol used in treatments of overian cancer and breast cancer - digitalis is used in heart treatments

Wealth is defined in the dictionary as a word from middle English meaning- happy and prosperous and well being. We need to regain the happy and well being.

Networks of Capital flows have become global and labour remained largely local..

Capitalism has perhaps reached its limits with the WTO and the secret trade decision bodies that can now overrule states even as powerful as the US. They can overrule environmental and social laws of countries.

According to Colin Hines Global capitalism does not alleiviate poverty and social exclusion - its exacerbates it.Trickle down theory just does not work in practise.

The CEOs of large global corporations are encouraged to layoff regular staff and John Smith at General Motors laid off 82,000 workers and got a bonus of $2.55 m in 1997.!There is new so called 4th world moving in and out of paid jobs living an impoverished and homeless existence.

Feminist economics and Green Economics seek to increase the number of explanations that can count as economics, thus freeing economics from the straightjacket of constrained optimisation and formal mathematical modelling. It does this by recognising economics in a far richer and more visionary ways than the neoclassical paradigm allows" p.3

As such these issues are far more wide reaching than traditional economics preferences and assumptions, they need to put the cultural and societal back into our economic prescriptions, people matter now not formal mathematical modelling- or institutions, corporations, oil industries,

Miriam Kennet November 2004