Entrepreneurship – the narrative of creative destruction

In this chapter from Credo, Brian Davey argues that the role of the entrepreneur changes over time and that, at their most powerful, they seek to co-opt officials and politicians for their agendas. Management can be exercised through over centralised control freakery or via distributed decision-making systems. Many entrepreneurs and managers are psychopaths, and criminals are entrepreneurs too. In the modern world, control fraud i.e. looting your own company is not uncommon.

End of the “Oilocene”: The Demise of the Global Oil Industry and of the Global Economic System as we know it.

Tim Clarke draws on recent research on fossil fuel extraction to argue that the global oil industry in deep trouble. Since oil plays such a key role in the world economy, since 2008 any semblance of economic growth has been fuelled by astronomically greater quantities of debt . The challenge Ireland and other countries will soon face is managing a fast economic and energy contraction and implementing sustainability on a massive scale whilst maintaining social cohesion.

World Basic Income conference, Manchester, February 4 2017

The world’s first conference on world basic income will be held in Manchester (UK) on 4th February 2017. The event will explore a new practical solution to global inequality and poverty. Feasta’s Caroline Whyte, who is involved in the CapGlobalCarbon campaign, will be on a conference panel discussing practicalities.

The organisers write:

“To find out more about the proposal for worldwide basic income, please see WBI’s website at www.worldbasicincome.org.uk.

With speakers from a wide range of disciplines and organisations including The Guardian, BIEN, Share The World’s Resources, CapGlobalCarbon, Manchester Migrant Solidarity, national basic income movements, political parties and universities, the …

Carbon markets at the end of 2016 – what can we expect in the future?

Sadhbh O'Neill, who attended the COP-22 climate summit in Marrakesh, provides some thoughts on the limitations of carbon trading; not only does trading completely fail to address the ethics of climate change, but it fails in terms of climate policy too. Among her conclusions: "we need a whole-society, whole-industry mobilisation of effort (the kind of effort that reduces emissions rather than increasing them) and probably rationing of scarce non-renewable energy resources."