New book by Professor Sir Dieter Helm - "Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy"

“Sustainable” and “sustainability” are mentioned in the news and on social media daily. But what would the sustainable economy look like? What would it take to truly live within our environmental means? 

Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy, a new book from New College Fellow, Dieter Helm, answers these questions, setting out his vision of the sustainable economy. It explains the key features of what it would take to properly maintain different types of capital, why polluters would have to pay, why the current generation would have to fund the necessary maintenance of our natural assets, and why we would have to save to invest. The message is a tough one: we are way off course in terms of meeting these conditions and we cannot escape the consequences. Moreover, it is the students of today who are inheriting this legacy and will be faced with dealing with its consequences.

This book explains what we would have to do to mend our ways. In doing so, it highlights the feebleness of current approaches to net zero and biodiversity loss as well as our great neglect of the core infrastructures, and why we are not meeting our duties to the next generation.

This title is Open Access and it will be published by Cambridge University Press in November 2023. An accompanying lecture series is available on Professor Helm's website.

Dieter Helm is Professor of Economics and Fellow at New College.