There’s an interesting excerpt here from the environmental documentary “Mother” on the under-recognised problems with economic growth, including the fact that sprawl always ends up costing a municipality more than it brings in. Also some great imagery of the craziness of mass industrialisation.…
growth
From our archives: why interest-free banking matters
Interest-free banking, such as that carried out by the JAK banks in Scandinavia, has been attracting considerable attention lately. But does it really matter whether a bank charges interest or not? After all, every bank has to charge for its services or it won't stay in business. This article by Richard Douthwaite and John Jopling from the second Feasta Review discusses the issue.
Notes from Nowhere: Fit the First
Patrick Noble provides a glimpse of how the future economy could look along with some unusual ideas about how we might get there. Might the transition to a community-focused, renewable-energy-based economy be "less the great revolt and more the return of ordinary lives"?
Press release: Feasta climate group response to the Working Group 3 contribution to the IPCC’s fifth assessment report
We find the latest IPCC report's emphasis on climate as a "global commons problem" helpful and constructive. However, the economy must break its dependency on GDP growth in order to achieve emissions reduction without economic collapse. Fortunately the potential exists for significant co-benefits from climate mitigation, including poverty alleviation and reduced inequality. Grassroots legal action could help give teeth to the international institutions needed for cooperation.
Anger & Complicity in a Time of Limits
In the second part of his interview with Alexander Ac, David Korowicz argues that the large-scale predicament and the emergent socio-economic stresses that we are beginning to experience has very little to with fraud, corruption and the greed of a tiny few. He believes it has a lot to do with our human civilization running into limits.
How to be Trapped
Our predicament and the tragedy of attempting change is: given time and resource constraints and the reality that we depend upon a de-localized networked system without central control, how do we change the system while ensuring we do not collapse its essential functions? By David Korowicz.
