Title:
SUSTAINABILITY THOUGHT 166: HOW DO CONJUNCTURAL PARADIGM FRAMEWORK SHIFTS WORK? THE CASE OF THE SHIFT FROM TRADITIONAL MARKET PRICE LED FRAMEWORK TO THE GREEN MARKET PRICE LED FRAMEWORK

Authors:
Lucio Muñoz*

Abstract:
Since the traditional market price does not account for the environmental cost of productions associated with economic activity it will lead in the long term to severe environmental distortions, which is the reason why the 1987 World Commission on Environment and development found and reported in “Our Common Future” that the business as usual model in place since 1776 was leading to deep unsustainability issues including environmental unsustainability; and that this needed to change. In other words, the Commission found that traditional market thinking and pricing had led to among other things to environmental problems, a finding that is consistent with the thought that price distortion in environmental terms should be expected to lead to extreme environmental overshoot in the long term. Since the green market price accounts for the environmental cost of production associated with economic activity as well as its economic costs it will lead in the long term to no environmental problems or lead to a move away from environmental problems depending on whether green market pricing is at work from the beginning when markets are set up or whether green market pricing comes from correcting environmentally distorted traditional market prices. In other words, no price distortion in environmental terms should be expected to lead to no environmental problems or to lead away from environmental problems as environmental cost responsibility would lead to no environmental overshoot as the system would be then working within or tending towards the carrying capacity of the environment, all depending on when environmental cost responsibility in the green market begins. As indicated above, distorted traditional markets lead to environmental problems; and green markets avoid or lead us away from environmental problems; and there is a need to express in simple terms how these ideas can be linked through paradigm shift thinking applied to shifting frameworks. In other words, the ideas of avoiding environmental problems or of moving away from environmental problems can be looked at from the point of view of shifting system stability frameworks like the shift from the most distorted traditional market price led system stability framework to the green market price led framework or from the lowest cost traditional market price led framework to the lowest environmental cost green market price led system stability framework. And this raises relevant questions like how do conjunctural paradigm frameworks shifts work? What are the main implications of doing this? Among the goals of this paper is to provide answers to the questions listed above.