ABSTRACT

In the final years of this century’s first decade, global financial markets went into free-fall leading to the severest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Stern’s (2007) highly influential The Economics of Climate Change drew the world’s attention to the inadequacy of ‘unfettered’ markets to address the economic consequences of climate change from capitalism’s insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the attendant carbon emissions. The United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO 2011) has reported on the factors driving volatile food commodity market prices since 2003 and the implications for adequately feeding billions of people around the world. Energy prices, particularly for households, have escalated rapidly following the global liberalization of electricity markets leading to embedded energy impoverishment (Chester and Morris 2012).