From growth to green growth

Stéphane Hallegatte, Geoffrey Heal, Marianne Fay, David Tréguer, 24 March 2012

What can be done to combine the need for growth with environmental constraints? This column argues that what is needed is to reconcile developing countries’ urgent need for rapid growth and poverty alleviation with the need to avoid irreversible and costly environmental damage.

China grew at about 10% a year over the last 30 years, from a poor country to the world’s second-largest economy. Yet, the Chinese government is now reconsidering the strategy that permitted this economic miracle, in an effort to green its development process (World Bank and DRC 2012).

Topics: Development, Environment
Tags: biodiversity, Green growth, growth

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Green growth? Evidence from energy taxes in Europe

Richard S J Tol, Seán Lyons, 12 November 2011

Politicians around the world like to argue that ‘green growth’ will create jobs and stimulate innovation. This column examines the impact of energy taxes on business, with a dataset of 11 million European firms between 1996 and 2007. The results are mixed – it seems that dirty, smoke-filled growth may well be better for the firm’s workers and their customers.

Politicians around the world like to argue that climate policy will create jobs and stimulate innovation. Such a message is largely unsupported but more palatable than the typical result of academic research that shows that climate policy would increase the costs of energy and slow down economic growth (Clarke et al 2009).