Issue 12 – Dec 2019

Articles

Trash can

Lagos’s garbage entrepreneurs are cleaning up. Adeyemi Adelekan explains. While growing up in a small suburban community in Lagos state, I was accustomed to hearing people with carts and sacks

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Pot look

Problems with pensions exhibit the same concerns that drive our inability to tackle the environmental crisis and other great societal issues. We need to recognise uncomfortable truths and meaningfully support

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Zero is circular

A circular economy is starting to roll towards zero carbon in Ireland. Geraldine Brennan writes. Since the 1970s global resource use has tripled, reaching some 92 billion tonnes in 2017,

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Why we should abandon GDP

Gross Domestic Product is the most popular and useless quantity in economics say Erald Kolasi and Blair Fix. For all that it purports to say, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fails

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Hidden in plain sight

Alan Freeman interprets the art of deft manipulation of fact used in painting an unrealistically assuring, yet remarkably convincing picture of international inequality. In his 1997 book, The Demon-Haunted World:

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A new steer

Spanish farms are revitalising their land on the hoof. Sacha Bernal Coates and Kerry Wolters explain how the herd instinct holds back the desert. Manuel’s ranch is an hour’s drive

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Saint Mark’s square roots

An excerpt from The Venetian Files – a novel by Izaias Almada and Matheus Graselli. September 12-14, 2008: New York City, USA Hank Paulson managed to get Alistair Darling on

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National interest

How might a National Investment Bank serve the real UK economy? Stephany Griffith-Jones and Natalya Naqvi explain. An election pledge by the Labour Party to create a National Investment Bank

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Climate short change

Global warming is happening but the planning to halt it doesn’t just happen. Charles Seaford asks who? And other questions. Well-informed people the world over knew, in 1933, that something

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The bigger picture

A million pounds can go a long way but sometimes it can be hard to know where to turn. Louise Tickle goes to Cumbria. Two women stand in the middle of

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The silence about violence

Susie Steed used to teach economics to undergraduates, but she can’t bear to any longer. She tells why. I’ve been trying to describe to people why I’m no longer teaching

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A politics of belonging

Seed-sharing commons help Indian women restore native crops while emancipating themselves from dependency on multinational corporations selling expensive, proprietary GMO seeds. The Commons as a set of responsibilities and entitlements:

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Interviews

Theoretically speaking

Randy Wray was one of the finalists for our #NotTheNobel prize in October and is one of the world’s leading advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). It might sound like

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Over tea

In a new series of interviews, we talk to Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji about economic innovations in Africa. In our first interview Mwangi talks about the Kenyan Tea Development Authority established

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Columns

Own back

“Each billionaire evidences our great success and failure.” Discuss. Extreme inequality doesn’t jive well with democracy, liberty and progress. Nor does revenge and retrospective action. Both extremes run the risk

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Chasing tales

Calls for a more circular economy – otherwise known as “closing the loop” – are now commonplace. We have got recycling, we try to reduce waste, and plastic packaging is

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Round for Dinner

My Christmas card from Esther and Abhijit Circular arguments ensue after a round of experiments. And Thomas’ culinary efforts return to the earth. I must admit that last week was

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Spin Offs

Tom Szaky started TerraCycle in high school to “end waste”. The company currently operates in 21 countries, working with some of the world’s largest retailers’ and manufacturers’ brands. In each

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Proper gander

Girls are low in numbers. Nigella Vigorosso-Heck demands a recount. Last month the Economist magazine published an article entitled Sample Bias. It argued that women – and particularly schoolgirls –

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