Guy Routh suggested that orthodox neoclassical economics ignores facts and studies purely imaginary facts, becomes a matter of faith and immune to criticism.

Technology Displaced by Financial Innovation, Peter Lang, Second Edition. The Book Review Essay by Peter Senker summarised here was published in Prometheus in 2021/2022 This book is based on the assumption that during the twentieth century, and especially after the end of World War II, there has been a fundamental shift in the focus of..

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate Naomi Klein is concerned with anthropogenic climate change which she had denied for a long time. She is pessimistic about the future: “We know that if we continue on our current path of allowing (carbon dioxide) emissions to rise year after year, climate change will change..

A New Approach to Economics, Innovation and the Environment, Anthem Press, 2015. Fücks states that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community agrees that “Global CO2 emissions must be halved by the middle of the century in order to stabilise the earth’s climate2. He considers that, even if it is too late to limit the..

Joanna Blythman,  Swallow This: Serving up the food industry’s darkest secrets: Published by Fourth Estate, London, 2015 The companies which dominate the packaged food industry are typical of companies which control an increasing proportion of the world’s economic output: their principal motivation is to increase the profits which accrue to their shareholders. This book provides..

A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming, by Hans-Werner Sinn, published by MIT Press, 2012. Professor Sinn’s  green paradox is based on the assumption  that “green” measures  will encourage producers of fossil fuels  to extract their products from the ground earlier rather than later. Announcing a future reduction in the demand for fossil fuels speeds up global..

Earth Grab considers  how global capitalism’s deployment of technology  is liable to lead to disaster  for the planet and  most  of those who live on it. It groups  approaches to the deployment of technology into three: 1. “Geopiracy”. This  relates to geo-engineering. Definitions are contested, but the following extracts from  the work of reputable organisations such as the..

The Net Delusion provides extensive evidence to refute the myth of technological determinism – specifically the myth that technology can solve enormous political problems.The myth that the internet will liberate the world is typical of the dreams of utopia that have accompanied the initial diffusion of many radical technologies over the past 150 years. The..

Tim Wu: The Master Switch Wu believes that we need to understand the past if we are to anticipate  the future.  He is surely right to claim that to understand how the use of current information technologies is likely to develop – in particular, the internet. It is necessary to understand the historical patterns of development..

Foresight: the future of food and farming: Final project report, by Government Office for Science, London, 2011, 208 pp. This report provides evidence that the world agricultural and food production and distribution system is dysfunctional, in terms of both its failure to provide and distribute the food necessary for keeping the world’s population healthy, and of minimizing..