The author provides an introductory commentary on six divergent responses to the 2013 ‘Marglin Manifesto’, proposing basic principles that might guide the quest to combine ecological sustainability with equitably redistributive development.

Prof. Marglin argues for a new economics and a new conception of welfare as part of the move to a sustainable future. However, the typical criticisms of the treatment of welfare in economics appear wide of the mark, and there are good reasons to regard this treatment as accurate enough for the job at hand. The critics appear to miss how demanding the job of reshaping economics in their (implicit) desired image would be, and how unproductive it might turn out to be to insist on such a reshaping as a precursor to serious action.

The starting point for this article is the excellent article by Professor Marglin on the dangers of climate change. He outlines a broad remedial prescription, a new economics based on ecological concerns and a broadly based cultural revolution to change people’s thinking. We agree with Marglin that the prevailing neoclassical analysis is fundamentally flawed because inter alia it adheres to individuals’ independent (rather than inter-dependent) utility functions. It is argued that ultimately the problem of the ecosystem, and indeed violent threats of mass destruction that we constantly face cannot be solved without the insights that community and spiritual thinking bring us.

Although the issue of redistribution is glossed over by Marglin, there are three reasons why decarbonisation must be accompanied by a massive scaling up of redistribution from the global North to South if the agenda is to be founded on a social justice approach. First, constructing a capital infrastructure in the South in a manner that maximises the potential for decarbonisation would tend to be very import-intensive. Hence, it would require external financing or else risk running aground through balance of payment constraints. Second, there is already a tendency in the global economy of siphoning resources from South to North, in particular through the increasing control over flows of value and wealth by Northern corporations from their commanding positions within international networks. Southern productivity needs to be contextualised from this perspective given the risk that climate negotiations lock in the subordination of Southern countries within these global networks, rather than seeking ways for Southern producers to leverage more value for the output and carbon emissions they are already producing. Third, population and labour transitions in the South place relatively greater pressure than in the past on employment generation in tertiary (service) sectors, in which distributive and redistributive processes play essential roles in bolstering labour demand. The neglect of global redistribution could undermine the capacity of Southern countries to face these broader development challenges, which are already immense even in the absence of decarbonisation. A key question is how to organise global redistributive transfers in a manner that does not continue to subordinate Southern populations to Northern interests. The challenge for decarbonisation is the forging of a political will for redistribution that is motivated by climate change rather than geopolitics, and that respects national ownership and self-determination.

The current unsustainable growth of the world economy is largely a consequence of the crisis of social capital experienced by much of the world’s population. Declining social capital leads economies towards excessive growth, because people seek, in economic affluence, compensation for emotional distress and loss of resources caused by scarce social and affective relationships. To slow down economic growth requires an increase in social capital that is a fundamental contributor to happiness. From a wide range of possible approaches to increasing present happiness, this article suggests policies that would shift the economy to a more sustainable path. It focuses on a more politically sustainable set of proposals for a green ‘new deal’ than some of those currently under discussion.

In response to Stephen Marglin’s call for new economies, the article points to the strong and vibrant tradition of feminist scholarship inside and outside academe, which is exploring alternatives to capitalism. The article takes up the concepts of meshworks, politics of place, feminist political ecology and community economies. It argues that feminist approaches are contributing to a new analytic that goes beyond developmentalism and recognises the importance of building a new economics based on the many progressive alternatives that are being imagined and articulated in local economic practices.

The need for a new economy is great and the obstacles are many: growing inequalities within and between nations and regions, new complicity between corporations and non-democratic political regimes and failure of workers worldwide to make common cause. There are alternative models, indicating that a more egalitarian approach does not necessarily reduce living standards. Environmental degradation cannot be addressed by a technological fix: the threat to our long-term survival is pre-figured in the impact of climate change and corporate rapacity on the land and sea resources of the indigenous minorities who live as humanity has lived for most of its existence. A 10-point plan for a follow-up to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals is suggested, but it will work only if solidarity networks can be built across divides of ascribed race, religion and nominal income levels, to express the will of the people in place of the government representatives who are prepared to gamble the future of humanity for corporate profit and power.

We are now close to reaching what climate scientists advise is a ‘tipping point’ when the injuries we have visited on the planet will become self-reinforcing and produce an ecosystem that is alien to human life. The mal-distribution of consumption within and between nations is a major reason why there is little agreement on appropriate remedial action. Ensuring planetary survival while reducing inequity is made the more difficult, because the richest one-seventh of the world’s population has already reached consumption levels beyond the capacity of the planetary ecosystem to accommodate it.