Julie Hudson and Paul Donovan, Food Policy and the Environmental Credit Crunch: From Soup to Nuts (Routledge 2013).

Publisher's Summary: The changing economic environment for the consumer that is emerging from the wreckage of the financial credit crunch plays directly into the importance of food spending. This is certainly true from the perspective of food prices in the short run, but also from the perspective of sustainability and reducing the impact of the environmental credit crunch. The economic changes we experience now have a bearing on our ability to manage the environmental credit crunch that looms. Food Policy and the Environmental Credit Crunch: From Soup to Nuts elaborates on the issues addressed in the authors’ first book, From Red to Green?,and asks whether the financial credit crunch could ameliorate or exacerbate the emergent environmental credit crunch. The conclusion drawn here is that a significant and positive difference could be made by changing some of the ways in which we procure, prepare, and consume our food. Written by an economist and an investment professional, this book addresses the economic and environmental implications of how we treat food. The book examines each aspect of the ‘food chain’, from agriculture, to production and processing, retail, preparation, consumption and waste.

Julie Hudson, '"If you want to be green hold your breath": Climate Change in British Theatre', NTQ 111, 2012.

Abstract: With a rich mix of theatrical material to bring to the table, the climate-change debate playing out in the public domain would seem well adapted to the stage, and has often been presented in docu-dramatic form, as in Al Gore's well-known film An Inconvenient Truth. But until relatively recently climate change and the science relating to it have been conspicuous by their absence from the stage. Early movers on the climate-change theatre scene included Caryl Churchill's 2006 climate-change libretto for the London Proms, We Turned on the Light, and John Godber's 2007 play Crown Prince. Since then, interest has steadily increased. In 2009 came Steve Waters's double bill The Contingency Plan (On the Beach and Resilience). This was quickly followed by Earthquakes in London by Mike Bartlett in 2010, and by three further plays in the spring of 2011: Greenland, the collaborative work of Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner, and Jack Thorne; The Heretic by Richard Bean; and Wastwater by Simon Stephens. In this article Julie Hudson focuses on three of these works to explore how the plays engage with the debate through the medium of climate-change science. As her article suggests, these British climate-change plays make an important and occasionally subversive contribution to the long-running discourse on the relationship between science, the ecosystem, and human beings. In performance, they succeed in turning a subject that has been overplayed for effect in the public domain into compelling theatre.

Julie Hudson, 'I Want to Ride My Bicycle!: Financing Sustainable Transport', in Energy, Transport, & the Environment, edited by Oliver Inderwildi & Sir David King (Springer, 2012), pp 599-631.

Abstract: A sustainable economy ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ [3] and a sustainable transport system should support this overall goal. The definition of sustainable finance applied in this chapter thus goes beyond the basic idea that financial institutions need to be robust enough to survive turbulent economic conditions. It also goes beyond the idea that government and private sector entities (represented in financial markets by instruments such as government bonds, corporate bonds and equities) must be sound enough to survive volatile markets. Sustainable finance is a broader concept, denoting financial institutions and structures in which being financially sound is necessary but ancillary to their broader goal of facilitating and supporting a sustainable economy, and within that, a sustainable transport system.

Paul Donovan and Julie Hudson, From Red to Green? How the Financial Credit Crunch Could Bankrupt the Environment (Earthscan, 2011).

Publisher's Summary: Written by an economist and an investment professional, this book addresses the twin crises that the world is facing in the form of a simultaneous financial and environmental credit crunch. Financially, consumers are less able to consume now, and pay later. Environmentally, we may have already reached our credit limit and the bill for past financial and environmental consumption is falling due. Whether the financial credit crunch constrains consumers in a way that will be environmentally supportive, naturally slowing the consumption of finite resources, or hinders any effective resolution of the environmental credit crunch is of crucial importance. Policy responses to the financial crisis are likely to be constrained by the political need to support the economic status quo, and when combined with a global reduction in available investment capital there are serious challenges ahead if the economic and environmental damage of the environmental credit crunch is to be minimised. This book asks whether financial crunch-induced changes in consumer behaviour will be enough to avoid, or reduce, the environmental crunch many believe is just round the corner. Donovan and Hudson combine their respective economic and environmental perspectives to address this key question, reviewing this 'tale of two crunches' from the perspective of different economic sectors. The answer to the conundrum this book poses may lie in the only unlimited resource on the planet - human ingenuity.

Julie Hudson, The Social Responsibility of the Investment Profession (Research Foundation of CFA Institute, August 2006).

Abstract: Socially responsible investment (SRI) is not limited to community investing and exclusion screening. It is, in fact, an investment approach driven by the values and beliefs of the investor. Four approaches to SRI considered in this work (exclusion, best in class, engagement, and advocacy) can be shown to relate to other investment frameworks widely used in finance. SRI concerns are relevant to any investor who does not subscribe to the concept of market, or economic, efficiency.