FEASTA

Broken promises and naive expectations -- that's how many people at the McPlanet Conference held recently in Berlin clearly felt about the last two decades of environmental policies as the 20th anniversary of the Rio Earth summit approaches -- with the UN intending to organise another conference in Rio to mark the event.

Mainstream economists may tell you that currency is neutral -- it's just a means to the end of exchange. But I am afraid mainstream economics is a busted pseudo-science. Debt-based currency issuance means that fiat currencies are far from neutral in their effects. In the Feasta Currency Group's opinion, no currency is neutral.

"As empires rise and fall and powerful nations grow and then contract, the farmers, the yeomen, the small landholders, the shopkeepers, and the local manufacturers keep on going. [...] as often as not, they are sources of technological and cultural innovation and, from a sustainability perspective, they innovate largely in direct connection with the land and with each other."

I have tried to write this article many times in the past three to four years. I have changed dramatically in that time, from a full-on, full-time city activist to a rural -- well, I don’t know what to call myself now but whatever I am becoming, I feel way more grounded and as if I’m making a real difference, finally, without running away to the hills. In considering the mess of the world, I find it easiest to write about my personal journey, not because I want to talk about myself but because I find the personal easier for people to relate to and because it gives context to my points of view.

Atamai Village is an attempt to respond intelligently to the risks and opportunities outlined in other chapters of this book. Atamai villagers hope that the evolving responses in their settlement, in whole or in part, will be useful for many others, including those in urban areas. The response needs to take into account the need to mitigate climate change and adapt to low or zero fossil fuel use, the constraints of sea-level rise over the next century, the need to step outside, as much as possible, the mainstream financial system and the importance of a local steady-state economy within the biophysical limits of the region.

Nitrogen is necessary for life on earth to continue and the nitrogen cycle is one of the most important nutrient cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. Everything that lives needs nitrogen; it is required for the manufacture of complex molecules such as chlorophyll, proteins and DNA, and also for the production of enzymes necessary for growth, reproduction and other vital functions. However, when present in excess, nitrogen poses risks both to the environment and human health.

At a time when entire peoples — and species — have lost their homes to flooding, deforestation, war, agribusiness and other forms of hatred and greed, when health has been lost to the increasing toxicity and the decreasing nutritional quality of food, it may be that we no longer have time to indulge in the moral miasma of an urgent need to create a more positive future. Our only time is now, a now that holds the whole complexities of hope and suffering, joy and negativity.

This book by Ross Jackson, published in March 2012 by Green Books, asks a good question: what can we do about the fact that we live in an unacceptably unjust and hopelessly unsustainable world? We know there are many useful things that can be done at home or locally, and by corporations or governments. Lots of examples were suggested by contributors to Fleeing Vesuvius. The trouble is that not nearly enough individuals, local communities, corporations or governments do these things. To reverse current trends the system as a whole has to change. But how? It’s such a huge question that few, if any, other writers have tackled it head on, which is what this book does.

Before industrialisation, economy mainly referred to local economy and household economy, based on cooperative and competitive processes. How can we shift from today's centralised and global economy to a resilient local economy?

Reading The Affluent Society is a revitalising and empowering shot in the arm for anyone questioning in any way what JK calls the "conventional wisdom". The book, first written in 1958 and then reissued as a new edition in 1998 is an astonishing tour de force, debunking and deconstructing the tenets of the "central tradition" of economics.