The ecological transition: From people to politics, and vice versa

There is needed to re-think and re-build production and consumption paradigms, so as to make income an effective mechanism to implement sustainability. Among the instruments suitable for measuring such a relationship, there are the Kuznets curve and the decoupling: the first investigates the consumption models and the connection that elapses between per capita income and pollution produced by residents. The hypothesis of the theory is that when the per capita income grows, the impact on the environment increases until it hits a peak, and then decreases drawing an "inverted Ushaped" curve. The decoupling, instead, handles the pro-duction model and has a broader sense, studying the existence of a system in which people’s wealth and life quality grow without producing further pressure on the environment: in other words, when the economic growth is not accompa-nied by a proportional increase in the waste production by firms. Technical progress has to conjugate enhancement of the wellbeing with the environmental protection. Whether consumption habits will be grounded on sustainability, produc-tions schemes will have to follow. Here lies the most profound meaning of eco-logical transition

Keywords: waste, wealth, perspectives, policy analysist

Jel codes: Q5, Q56, Q58, J18

Donato Berardi, Filippo Galimberti, Antonio Pergolizzi, Michele Tettamanzi, La transizione ecologica: dalle persone alle politiche e viceversa in "ECONOMIA PUBBLICA " 3/2021, pp 159-181, DOI: 10.3280/EP2021-003007