Green economics is an approach to economics in which the economy is considered to be a component of and dependent upon the natural world within which it resides and of which is it considered a part. It also takes the widest possible view of stakeholders of a transaction to include impacts, to nature, non human species, the planet, earth sciences, the biosphere. An, holistic approach to the subject is typical, such that economic ideas incorporate learning from other disciplines in a true transdisciplinary fashion, and important theories from feminist economics,post modernism, critical theory, ecology, international relations and peace, deep ecology, animal rights, social and environmental justice and the anti- globalisation in some cases and eco efficiency and participation in others as well as some localisation theories. Green Economics is different from but builds on some aspects of environmental economics and ecological economics.

Green Economics is based on three axioms:

1. It is impossible to expand forever into a finite space.
2. It is impossible to take forever from a finite resource.
3. Everything on the surface of Earth is interconnected.

What defines green economists most clearly is the emphasis on the ecosystem as the right starting point for economics. This is in direct opposition to the neo-classical approach, which classifies the ecosystem as an "externality".

Subsidiary characteristics of green economics may include rejection of all analyses of factors of production or means of production that fail to clearly and fundamentally distinguish between living (nature, persons) and non-living (financial, social, instructional, infrastructural) roles in a productive process. Some have detailed critiques of "Fordism" (after Henry Ford) and "productivism", as best developed by Alain Lipietz of the French Greens.

All green economists regard "economic growth" as a delusion, since it contradicts the first Axiom (above). Growthism is an ideology, which disrupts and destroys growth in the life support capacity of the natural ecosystem: air and water filtering, food production, fiber growth. Green economists often characterize their work as "social ecology" and some may employ the Marxist analysis of means of production.