The practical politics of doughnut economics and climate crisis

An attractive way to address both the climate crisis and the problem of global inequality is to tax rich countries, individuals and businesses, who are responsible for the greater part of carbon emissions, and redistribute the proceeds to create carbon-neutral infrastructure and address human needs through state action (see Raworth 2017 Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Penguin Random House; Gough 2017 Heat, Need and Human Greed, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.). However the dominant value framework in which ideas about wealth, need, and redistribution are embedded centres on deservingness. This largely justifies existing poverty and wealth-holdings, making redistribution within and beyond the rich countries of the global North hard to achieve. Two developments – the ‘deliberative wave’ of citizen participation in government, and the impact of crises in nurturing prosocial values – point to a rapid and sustained value shift. This paper reviews and analyses evidence to consider the practical politics of oughnut economics.