Cultivating hope and managing despair

Jun 08, 2011 No Comments by
from Fleeing Vesuvius. Psychologist John Sharry describes how societies are struggling to come to terms with the nature and extent of the changes facing them both now and in the future. Modern psychological models of motivation and change, and of how people deal with threat and loss, suggest strategies that can be used to help individuals change and to galvanise communities into collective action.
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Barcelona Degrowth Conference

Mar 02, 2010 No Comments by

Date and Time: 26th – 29th March 2010

Venue: University of Barcelona, Plaça Universitat, Barcelona, Spain

Details at http://www.degrowth.eu/v1/

Feasta members conducted three workshops at this conference. They were on non-debt money systems, on financing arrangements compatible with a static or shrinking economy, and on economic democracy. You can download the steering papers for their workshops by clicking on the underlined words. The slides Richard Douthwaite showed during his talk are here.…

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Democracy for an Ecological Age

Jul 20, 2009 No Comments by

by Mark Garavan

This paper adopts a solution-based approach to the challenge of imagining a new democratic model for Ireland. It proposes a form of governance based on existing institutional and legal possibilities.…

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Converging Crises, Policy Responses – Feasta seminar series

Jun 01, 2008 No Comments by

Converging Crises, Policy Responses – Feasta Seminar Series

Date and Time: 12 noon, 1 Friday followed by 4 Thursdays in June and July 2008
Venue: Irish Architectural Archive building, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2
This series of seminars was aimed primarily at policymakers, however Feasta members were most welcome too.

The five seminars are as follows:

The Future’s Not What it Used to Be, Friday 13th June
David Korowicz


Many of our civilisation’s key resources have become more tightly coupled and are under increasing strain. We look at the systemic interactions of energy, greenhouse gasses, food, and the macroeconomy; …

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Money, Democracy and Human Rights

Nov 26, 2006 No Comments by

Caroline Whyte
Date: November 23, 2006
Venue: Malmö Högskola, Malmö, Sweden
This seminar was part of the Swedish Human Rights Forum (MR-Dagarna), a two-day event which takes place every year at a different venue in Sweden. More information can be found on the forum website at www.mrdagarna.se.…

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The Ecology of Money

May 18, 2006 No Comments by

The Ecology of MoneyRead The Ecology of Money online

In The Ecology of Money, Richard Douthwaite argues that just as different insects and animals have different effects on human society and the natural world, money has different effects according to its origins and purposes. Was it created to make profits for a commercial bank, or issued by a government as a form of taxation? Or was it created by its users themselves purely to facilitate their trade? And was it made in the place where it is used, or did local people have to provide goods and services to outsiders to get enough of it to trade among themselves? The Briefing shows that it will be impossible to build a just and sustainable world, unless and until money creation is democratized. Richard says that it is potentially the most important thing he has written.

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Food security in an energy-scarce world: Conference Programme

Jun 01, 2005 No Comments by

PROGRAMME SUMMARY

Opening Lecture at the Davenport Hotel, Dublin (19:30 Wednesday, June 22nd)

An evening lecture by Richard Heinberg introduced ‘Peak Oil’ and the potential effects on societies, on economies and on the world’s food supply. This lecture was introduced by Richard Douthwaite and is open to a wider audience.

Three Day Conference at the Faculty of Agri-Food and the Environment, UCD

Session 1: Food Under Threat (Thursday Morning, June 23rd)

Session 2: Examining Our Food Supply Systems (Thursday Afternoon, June 23rd)

Session 3: Possible Solutions 1 (Friday Morning, June 24th)

Session 4: Possible Solutions 2 (Friday Afternoon, June 24th) …

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FEASTA course in Belfast

Feb 21, 2005 No Comments

Hosted at the Gibson Institute for Land, Food and Environment, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast

This was a course designed to explore the root causes of unsustainability: how our society and economy fails to think about and plan for its own long-term health and survival. The course fostered joined-up thinking in considering how to tackle the problems and frame potential solutions.

For instance, what is the link between global climate change, genetically modified foods and rising fuel prices?

The 10 sessions used Feasta’s ‘Community Learning Toolkit’, a CD ROM containing readings, videos and audio recordings that enable a …

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The Second Feasta Review

Nov 13, 2004 No Comments

The Celtic CancerGrowth: The Celtic Cancer, Why the global economy damages our health and society

Read this book online in its entirety

A new issue of the Feasta Review was published in November 2004. “The aim of the Review is to present in a permanent form some of the thinking that has been going on in the Feasta network since the previous one appeared” says John Jopling, who edited it with Richard Douthwaite. “It is three years since the last issue and there’s a lot to report.”

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Democracy and the EU

Aug 16, 2004 No Comments

by Deirdre de Burca (deburcad@gofree.indigo.ie), Green Party Councillor for County Wicklow.

This paper was presented at the Desmond Greaves Summer School on Sunday 29th August, 2004. Deirdre de Burca argues that “the creation of the European Union has generally been subject to the process of “collusive delegation” and….the democratic deficit experienced by its citizens has been largely designed into its architecture rather than being an unfortunate by-product of agreements reached by its well-meaning political leaders and officials.”

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The European Project: Dismantling Social Democracy, Globalising Neoliberalism

Apr 03, 2004 1 Comment

PDF version

by Andy Storey (Centre for Development Studies, UCD, andydsc@yahoo.co.uk)

Paper for presentation at the conference ‘Is Ireland a Democracy?’, Sociology Department, National University of Ireland Maynooth, 2nd/3rd April 2004.

Introduction

Pierre Defraigne, Deputy Director General for Trade at the European Commission, professes himself puzzled by Europeans’ attitudes towards the phenomenon of globalisation:

“Today, Europeans are ambivalent as regards globalisation. How is it that a people that ‘discovered the world’ at the time of the Renaissance and, for two or three centuries, colonised four continents, can fail to see the many benefits that the conquest of new …

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