Molly Scott Cato

Molly Scott Cato Ph.D. (born in 1963 in Wales) is green economist and prominent member of the Green Party of England and Wales. She is a Reader in Green Economics at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC) and is the Green Party's Economics Spokesperson. She currently lives in Stroud, and has three children.

Early life and education

Cato grew up in Bath before going to the University of Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), where her stated areas of interest included "the politics of Latin America and international politics". After working in the publishing industry, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth with a thesis on employment policy in the South Wales Valleys.

Academic career

Cato is currently a Reader in Green Economics at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC) and a researcher for Cardiff Institute for Co-operative Studies. She has published widely on green economics, localism and anti-capitalism. She wrote Seven Myths About Work in 1996 and co-edited Green Economics: Beyond Supply and Demand to Meeting People's Needs in 1999 with Miriam Kennett. Her report on the structure of government specialist science advice committees, I Don't Know Much About Science, apparently "influenced the structure of the government's new committee examining the effects of low-level radiation". Another report in 2002 for the Association of Green Councillors was titled Using Best Value to Encourage Green Procurement in Local Authorities. She is currently investigating "the impact of carbon dioxide emissions reduction on the national economies of rich and poor countries".

In her most recent work, Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (published by Earthscan in 2008), Cato argues that society should be embedded within the ecosystem, and that markets and economies are social structures that should respond to social and environmental priorities. She includes examples of effective green policies that are already being implemented across the world policy prescriptions for issues including climate change, localization, citizens' income, economic measurement, ecotaxes and trade.

In his review of the book in the Journal of Economic Geography Danny Dorling called it 'a serious book written by the grown-up version of the kinds of people who are currently invading airports, chaining themselves to those coal trucks on the way to power stations and populating climate camps.'

Cato also promotes her own website, Gaian Economics, which is a "group of independent researchers" focusing on green economics as well as "war, trade, work, progress, and ecofeminism", and her Gaian Economics blog,

Political career

Having joined the Green Party in 1988, Cato has stood as a candidate for the Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency at the 1997 and 2005 general elections. She has been Co-Chair of the Green Party Regional Council and served on the Green Party Executive as Campaigns Co-ordinator. Since 2001, she has been the party's Economics Spokesperson.

In addition to her party political activities, Cato is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Heterodox Economics [1] and of the UK Society for Co-operative Studies. [2] She is a member of the Advisory Group of the Equality Trust [3]

Community Involvement

Molly is now active in her home town of Stroud, where she is a Director of Transition Stroud, [4] which is part of the Transition Towns network. She also works with Stroud Commonwealth, [5] to help bring assets into community ownership, and is one of the founders of the Stroud Pound.

Bibliography

• 'Tales from the Riverbank', a green look at the future of banking published in [6] [7]
• Cato, M. S., Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice, 2009 ISBN 9781844075713
• Cato, M. S., Market, Schmarket: Building the Post-Capitalist Economy, 2006 ISBN 9781873797518
• Cato, M. S., The Pit and the Pendulum: A Co-operative Future for Work in the South Wales Valleys, 2004 ISBN 9780708318690
• Cato, M. S., Kennett, M. (eds.), Green Economics: Beyond Supply and Demand to Meeting People’s Needs, 1999 ISBN 1897761181
• Cato, M. S., Seven Myths About Work, 1996 ISBN 9781897761137

See also

• Green Party of England and Wales
• University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

External links

• Molly Scott Cato's Blog Gaian Economics
• Molly's column in The Ecologist