Molly Scott Cato

Sarah Margaret "Molly" Scott Cato (born 21 May 1963) is a British Green politician, economist and activist.

Molly Scott Cato was born on 21 May 1963 and was educated at Bath High School for Girls, before reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford.

After working for the Oxford University Press from 1987 to 1998, Scott Cato tutored at Aberystwyth University in 2000, then, from 2001 to 2012, was Senior lecturer and Reader in green economics at Cardiff Metropolitan University (known for most of that period as the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, or UWIC for short).

Scott Cato joined the UK Green Party in 1988, before it became three separate parties for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in 1990.

She has been Co-Chair of the Green Party Regional Council and served on the Green Party Executive as Campaigns Co-ordinator.

She wrote Seven Myths About Work as part of a Green Party campaign, Why Work?.

She speaks for the Green Party on finance and the EU.

She wrote Seven Myths About Work in 1996, updating it in 2002 under the title Arbeit Macht Frei and Other Lies about Work.

Scott Cato stood as the Green Party candidate for the Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency at the 1997 and 2005 general elections, coming sixth.

She co-edited Green Economics: Beyond Supply and Demand to Meeting People's Needs in 1999 with Miriam Kennet.

Her report, co-authored with Christopher Busby and Richard Bramhall, 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".

After working in the publishing industry, in 2001 she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University) with a thesis on employment policy in the South Wales Valleys, including research into the Tower Colliery workers' co-operative.

Her book, The Pit and the Pendulum, is based on this research.

She holds an MSc in advanced social research methods from the Open University.

In 2007 she was appointed Director of the Cardiff Institute for Co-operative Studies.

In 2009 she published Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice, where she 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".

She had stood for the European Parliament on the Green Party list for the South West region at the previous election in 2009; in 1999 and 2004 she had been on the Green Party list in Wales.

Her 2011 book Environment and Economy describes the main academic responses to the need to resolve the tension between economy and environment: environmental economics, ecological economics, green economics, and anti-capitalist economics.

It covers topics including an introduction to economic instruments such as taxes and regulation; pollution and resource depletion; growth; globalization vs. localization and climate change.

In May 2011, Scott Cato was elected to represent Valley Ward on Stroud District Council.

From 2012, until her election as an MEP, she was Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the University of Roehampton.

Scott Cato speaks for the Green Party on finance and the EU, and is known for her work in the field of co-operative studies.

She has published on green economics, localism and anti-capitalism, and has contributed to works on the risks of nuclear power, the use of which she strongly opposes.

In 2012 she became Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the University of Roehampton.

Scott Cato's academic work covers three main areas: firstly the green economy, that is, one which recognises planetary limits and achieves social justice; secondly the economics of co-operatives and social enterprises, and finally critical analysis of the existing monetary system, and alternatives which might replace it.

She has published widely on green economics, localism and anti-capitalism.

In May 2012, she became leader of the Green Group on the council and made an agreement with the Labour and Liberal Democrat groups to take overall control of the council, calling for "constructive co-operation" and rejecting the "tribalism of party politics" in favour of a "more inclusive" approach.

She said, "We believe that no one party has a monopoly on good ideas and we will seek co-operation to achieve advances of our policy platform on an issue-by-issue basis."

She became chairman of the council's Audit and Standards Committee in May 2013.

She served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England from 2014 to 2020.

At the council's AGM in June 2014, Scott Cato announced her resignation, to take effect from 1 July, the start of her mandate in the European Parliament.

In the May 2014 elections for the European Parliament, she was elected as an MEP in South West England for the Green Party, being the lead candidate on the party's list.

The Green Party's share of the vote in her region was, at 11.1%, the highest of any electoral region.

For 2017, Scott Cato was selected by the party to stand for the constituency which saw its greatest-swing result in 2015, Bristol West, where the party had been placed second – a seat with a high student and academic contingent to its electorate.

She was endorsed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

She finished in third place in the 2017 election, with the Green share of the vote dropping from 26.8% to 12.9%.

She came third, with 4,954 votes, 7.5% of the total and up 5.3% from 2017.

In the 2019 election, she stood in Stroud, with the Liberal Democrats standing down in the constituency and endorsing her as the Unite to Remain candidate.