Biography

Michael is an economist and visiting professor in the School of Public Policy at University College London. From 2004–2007 he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers at the Treasury, and from 2007–2010 a special adviser to the prime minister, with responsibility for energy, environment and climate policy. From 2010–2015 he advised governments and others on international climate change policy in the run-up to the UN Climate Conference in Paris in December 2015. He was a founder and senior adviser to the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, for whose reports Better Growth, Better Climate (2014) and Seizing the Global Opportunity (2015) he was a lead author.

Michael is a former general secretary of the Fabian Society, an academic at Lancaster University and the LSE, and managing director of an employee-owned consultancy business. He has written widely on environmental economics and politics and social democratic thought. His books include The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future(Pluto Press, 1991), Greening the Millennium? The New Politics of the Environment (ed, Blackwell, 1997), The Politics of the Real World (Earthscan, 1996) and Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending (Fabian Society, 2000). His latest book Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (edited with Mariana Mazzucato) was published by Wiley Blackwell in August 2016.