"The New Protectionism [....] aims to protect the environment by reducing international trade and by reorienting and diversifying entire economies towards producing the most that they can locally or nationally, then looking to the regions that surrounds them, and only as a last option to global international trade. [....]
The world population is expected to double from today's 5.4 billion by the middle of the next century. The world is already brutally divided. Those one billion or so of us living in the affluent North live on the backs of the South's hidden labour and at the expense of the environment. Anyone's environmental degradation eventually affects everyone, which is why free market solutions ultimately do not work. They create problems for everyone but only benefit the minority and short term ends.
What is needed, then, is a vision which meets all the goals which qualify for a civilized society: a good quality of life for all, secure employment, minimal environmental damage, diverse regional economies, decent homes, food and social support for hard or unhealthy times. The market's only approach to these goals is to put a price on everything. Health and the environment become commodities like everything else, to be brought, sold, exchanged and bet on. [....] In contrast, the New Protectionism, with its emphasis on sustainable local and regional economies, is the route to a better, more equitable, more environmentally friendly future."
'The New Protectionism' by Tim Lang and Colin Hines .