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 Senior Lecturer in Social Economy at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC) and is the Green Party's Economics Spokesperson. She currently lives near Aberystwyth, Wales, and has three children, called Ralph, Joshua and Rosa.

Early life and education
Although born in Wales in 1963, 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 Senior Lecturer in Social Economy at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC) and a researcher for the Wales Institute for Research into Cooperatives. 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".

Her most recent work, Market, Schmarket: Building the Post-Capitalist Economy (released in 2006), focuses on anti-capitalist monetary reform and "proposes sustainable and humane alternatives" to what Cato perceives as the problems of globalised capitalism. Cato sees "the system of money creation as central to the problems of the globalised economy".

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".

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 Steering Committee of the No to the Euro Campaign against the single European currency, which she and the Green Party oppose on anti-globalization lines.