"If key principles are observed or key attitudes developed, many structural problems can work themselves out in practice" writes Anne Ryan in the third post of her Enough is Plenty blog series.
In this submission we argue that the EC's overall goals need to be re-examined if it is truly to eliminate greenhouse gases. The focus now needs to be on wellbeing, not on growth.
We argue that in order to achieve its new objectives, CAP policymakers need to collaborate with other high-level EU and global bodies so as to establish a core economic framework that would include Cap and Share, a basic income, land value tax, debt-free money issuance and reforms to the international trading organisations.
Instead of playing catch-up to other EU countries as is currently the case, we believe Ireland could leapfrog them and establish itself as a visionary leader by taking a global view of the climate challenge and incorporating action on climate with substantive action on inequality and poverty, significant improvements to the quality and freshness of food, and greater overall prosperity and stability in Ireland and elsewhere.
Patrick Noble suggests some ways in which "ordinary people may steer a course back into history and with luck – a course towards a newly egalitarian and convivial culture." In particular he focusses on basic income combined with a land value tax, as he believes these two initiatives could together "provide the simplest, most elegant regenerative tool for social justice."
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"?
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