1 Greening economic theory: Heterodox possibilities Lynne Chester and Joy Paton Department of Political Economy, The University of Sydney Email: lynne.chester@sydney.edu.au; joy.paton@sydney.edu.au Abstract: As the debate about the environment has intensified, post-Keynesians, régulationists and Polanyians have been relatively silent compared to neoclassical environmental economics which is the dominant ‘policy voice’. Yet these traditions may offer insights into contemporary environmental problems and their management that could mount a challenge to the embedded character of market-based policy ‘solutions’. Collectively, these three traditions have plenty to say about growth, institutions, the role of prices and markets, events being path dependent and uncertainty. They treat time as historical, are sceptical of the positive/normative distinction, and consider economic issues to be subordinated to politics. These concepts would seem very pertinent to understanding the economic-environment interaction. Thus, their collective environment-deficit-syndrome is surprising. This paper seeks to determine the contribution these three traditions could make to environmental discourse by exploring the conceptions of nature underpinning each methodological approach, and compares the ability of their key conceptual tools to explain the economic-environment relation. It is argued that, despite areas of commonality, the post-Keynesians share a relatively closer relationship to neoclassical environmental economics than the régulationist and Polanyian approaches. These two ‘institutionalist’ perspectives provide more cogent analytical frameworks to explain the character of the contemporary environmental challenge, the responses of capitalism to environmental issues and the challenge to accumulation posed by ‘sustainable development’. Keywords: accumulation, capitalism, environment, Polanyi, Post-Keynesian, régulation theory JEL codes: B50, B52, Q50