Discussion Paper

Deficit easing – an alternative to severe austerity programmes in the eurozone

The EU's collective austerity programme will do little or nothing to save the problem countries - Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain - from default and the rescue fund set up by the IMF and the ECB will only buy time before they do so. Richard Douthwaite argues that a limited, targeted injection of non-debt-based euros could provide a neat and swift solution to a debt problem the whole eurozone shares.

A Green Job Guarantee For Ireland

What would happen if, instead of the European Central Bank providing liquidity to private banks in order to ward off financial collapse, it provided funding to mobilise a green workforce to tackle urgent environmental challenges? The salaries would effectively transfuse local economies and the scheme has precedence in the Common Agricutural Policy which already pays farmers to protect the environment. This Irish adaptation of the Job Guarantee developed by Modern Monetary theorists in the US is proposed by Emer O'Siochru in an article on the Smart Taxes Network website.

How are rising CO2 emissions linked to a rising world population?

Many discussions on sustainability rarely mention the world's growing population and whether current or projected future levels are – or can be made – compatible with living within the limits set by the Earth's regenerative capacity. David Knight's paper shows that the growing population is not incompatible with lower levels of energy use, but that the rising levels of consumption in rich countries and “emerging” ones like Brazil, India and China certainly are.

Can unpaid co-operation produce better products than the profit motive?

Wikipedia and the Linux computer operating system were both created by unpaid volunteers using the internet, and both are out-competing their commercially-produced rivals, such as the Encyclopaedia Brtiannica and Microsoft. Are they examples of a new type of economy which has a lot further to go? Michel Bauwens, the founder of the Peer-to-Peer Foundation (P2P) believes so.

The costs and benefits of moving out of beef and into biofuel

Most beef farmers in Ireland are losing money. In view of this, some policymakers and commentators think that it would be in the national interest to encourage a lot of them to give up their loss-making hobby and to switch to growing biofuels instead. The Carbon Cycles and Sinks Network is preparing a report which explores this idea and draws some unexpected conclusions, and comments are very welcome.