ABSTRACT
This chapter will critically discuss how universal basic income might help to tackle environmental issues, by helping to maintain ecological sustainability. Against the backdrop of the Anthropocene, this chapter explores how a universal basic income could help create sustainable consumption, by changing the consumerist mind-set linked to consumption and growth, as well as changing relationships to work. This chapter makes a case for creating a prosperous society without the need for continuous economic growth, and shows that it is possible to address involuntary unemployment without increases in productivity necessarily corresponding to growth in production. The chapter also examines the use of eco-taxes as one way of changing environmental behaviours, used to create a resource to help fund universal basic income. It also discusses some of the politics of the green agenda, examining how universal basic income and environmental issues link together in contemporary politics in Europe and other parts of the world.
