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This chapter explores the transformation of the 2008 financial crisis into a fiscal crisis and a welfare crisis. It provides an endogenous theoretical explanation of the crisis in terms of the collapse of neo-liberal inequality and debt-fuelled growth. The chapter then analyses the progress of this crisis in the UK — a major global player due to the City of London — in two stages: the impacts of financial bailouts, Keynesian measures and sharp recession on public finances; and the subsequent reactions as governments switched to fiscal tightening and welfare cuts. It concludes by sketching out an alternative framework for a sustainable and just economic and welfare system.
Climate change is both global in scope and unprecedented in scale and has been described by the UN as ‘the defining issue of our time’. There has been scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change for some time, with the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirming that it is ‘unequivocal’ that human activity has warmed the atmosphere, land and oceans. There is also substantial evidence surrounding the impacts of climate change, with evidence of it already ‘disrupting national economies and affecting lives’. Climate change threatens food, water and energy security and poses acute risks to lives and livelihoods through extreme weather events, especially heatwaves, droughts, cyclones and sea level rise.
