From NewScientist: ” IT’S 2020, and we are a decade into a huge experiment in which we are trying to convert our country to a sustainable or “steady-state” economy. We have two guiding principles: we don’t use natural resources faster than they can be replenished by the planet, and we don’t deposit wastes faster than they can be absorbed. In our society, scientists set the rules. They work out what levels of consumption and emission are sustainable – and if they’re not sure they work out a cautious estimate. Then it’s up to the economists to work out how to achieve those limits, and how to encourage innovation so we extract as much as possible from every scrap of natural resource we use.
“They are using two main mechanisms for doing this. The first is a cap-and-trade system, under which companies can buy and sell emissions permits. This is working well for reducing carbon emissions, for example. The second is to change what we tax. We are gradually abolishing income tax (a very popular decision!) to encourage people to add as much value as possible to the resources they work with. Instead we are taxing resources at the point at which they are removed from the biosphere: oil as it is pumped from the ground, for example, or fish as they are scooped from the sea. This raises the price of those resources, and encourages people to use them sparingly. All that excess supermarket packaging disappeared overnight.” Special Report: Life in a Land Without Growth