Anna Coote of the New Economics Foundation sets out the case for a new social settlement which recognises that society, environment and economy are intimately linked. She argues that the primary goal of policy should be sustainable social justice, meaning the fair and equitable distribution of social, environmental, economic and political resources between people, places and generations. Any meaningful radical green programme would therefore need to address such issues as how we shift investment and action upstream to prevent harm, instead of coping once harm has occurred; redistributing paid and unpaid time; and valuing the ‘core economy’ which consists of all the unpaid activities and relationships in everyday life, without which the formal economy would grind to a halt. It would also seek to build a fair, sufficient and sustainable social security system; to develop co-production as the standard way of getting things done; and to ‘future-proof’ policies to safeguard the interests of generations that come after us. Anna Coote puts forward a radical green agenda, based on newly published work from NEF, for a new settlement that can meet the challenges of the 21st century.

 

This lecture is part of a new annual series inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s radical lectures in Bristol in 1795. The 2015 series is run in association with Bristol Festival of Ideas, the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol and Bristol 2015. It is part of The Romantic Poets and Bristol programme, which celebrates the life of Thomas Chatterton, Hannah More, William Wordsworth, Coleridge and others in the city, and Bristol as the place where Romanticism was born with the first publication of the Lyrical Ballads. The programme focuses especially on nature and the emotions, place and the environment, and also looks at Bristol as a city for science, philosophy, ideas and political debate at the time of Coleridge and today. The 2015 theme is Radical Green. Future themes are: Utopias (2016); Revolution (2017) and Peace (2018).

 

Other events in the Coleridge Lectures series