Earth Policy News - "Plan B - Mobilization to Save Civilization"

Want to read Earth Policy Institute's book "Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization" - but just don't have time.

Here are the "cliff notes"

in the form of an excellent slide show on their website.

The Gospel of Consumption

Most of us are unaware that we are religious fundamentalists - market fundamentalists... in the "religion" of traditional economics. The values of the current economic system are rarely in question of us operating in the global economic system. Many of us rarely consider whether or not concepts of limitless growth, ruthless competition, more stuff and other "fundamentals" of today's business environment are even up for question.

And most of us don't think twice when we hear that, according to modern economic thinking, that our primarly role in society is limited to a role "consumers" - mere functionaries in vast economic machine for the "growth" and the accumulation of money. And to boot, when we hear the growth of the economy we may not consider what is growing, and at what cost. More? Always good? At what cost?

Hmmm... Did the Beatles really have it right? "Money Can't Buy You Love."

Whether we like it or not - most of us are programmed through a barrage of media to have the appetite of simply having more cool stuff over quality of life, whether it be time for self improvement, with friends, family, and other forms of "quality time." In other words, according to a recent article by Jeffrey Kaplan in Orion Magazine, to some extent you can't live in this civilization without being indoctrinated, or at least heavily saturated with the "Gospel of Consumption."

Kaplan speaks of the reality that technology and industry were created to provide for our basic human needs, and enjoyment of life - anyone remember "the pursuit of happiness"?

Once machines make enough stuff, turn them off, and go live - was the basic thought behind Kellog's 6 hour work day in the 20's...

Then something changed - the "marketplace" turned Kellog to pursue something else - Money. More work hours, to make more stuff, to make more money. Workers were shifted to an eight hour work day... and quality of life was reduced for the workers.

"As far back as 1835, Boston workingmen striking for shorter hours declared that they needed time away from work to be good citizens: 'We have rights, and we have duties to perform as American citizens and members of society.' As those workers well understood, any meaningful democracy requires citizens who are empowered to create and re-create their government, rather than a mass of marginalized voters who merely choose from what is offered by an “invisible” government. Citizenship requires a commitment of time and attention, a commitment people cannot make if they are lost to themselves in an ever-accelerating cycle of work and consumption."

"We can break that cycle by turning off our machines when they have created enough of what we need. Doing so will give us an opportunity to re-create the kind of healthy communities that were beginning to emerge with Kellogg’s six-hour day, communities in which human welfare is the overriding concern rather than subservience to machines and those who own them. We can create a society where people have time to play together as well as work together, time to act politically in their common interests, and time even to argue over what those common interests might be. That fertile mix of human relationships is necessary for healthy human societies, which in turn are necessary for sustaining a healthy planet."

"...Our modern predicament is a case in point. By 2005 per capita household spending (in inflation-adjusted dollars) was twelve times what it had been in 1929, while per capita spending for durable goods—the big stuff such as cars and appliances—was thirty-two times higher. Meanwhile, by 2000 the average married couple with children was working almost five hundred hours a year more than in 1979. And according to reports by the Federal Reserve Bank in 2004 and 2005, over 40 percent of American families spend more than they earn. The average household carries $18,654 in debt, not including home-mortgage debt, and the ratio of household debt to income is at record levels, having roughly doubled over the last two decades. We are quite literally working ourselves into a frenzy just so we can consume all that our machines can produce."

"Yet we could work and spend a lot less and still live quite comfortably. By 1991 the amount of goods and services produced for each hour of labor was double what it had been in 1948. By 2006 that figure had risen another 30 percent. In other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day—or 2.7 hours if we were willing to return to the 1948 level. We were already the richest country on the planet in 1948 and most of the world has not yet caught up to where we were then. "

"Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip."

Read the entire article here.

photo Orion Magazine taken by Photograph: Brian Ulrich

The Future of Money - a book for today written 8 years ago...

The following entry is a cut and paste from a website that reviewed Bernard Lietaer's book which came out 8 years ago. As many are beginning to wake up to the reality that conventional economic theory is crumbling under the current crisis - and we just need to redesign our financial system from the bottom up.

Ideas expressed in the book - now out of print - are very timely and valuable fodder for the new economic paradigm emerging.

Of note that he uses the same phrase "global casino" as Hazel Henderson when referring to the global financial system.

It's time to create complimentary currencies everywhere - to support our collective well being.

"The Future of Money:
Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World


by Bernard Lietaer

The following bullets are reality-checks extracted from The Future of Money (published in January 2001, also available in German from http://www.futuremoney.de), illustrating the dramatic changes we face in the near future.


Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system. Unless some precautions are taken soon, there is at least a 50-50 chance that the next five to ten years will see a global money meltdown, the only plausible way for a global depression.
The Information Age has already spawned new kinds of currencies: frequent flyer miles are evolving toward a "corporate scrip" (a private currency issued by a corporation) for the traveling elite; a giant corporation you never heard of is issuing its own "Netmarket Cash" for Internet commerce; even Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, foresees "new private currency markets in the 21st century."
Exorbitant compensations are paid to the very few at the top: it started with movie stars and sports heroes, and has now spread to top lawyers, traders, doctors, and business leaders. In the 1960’s CEO’s salaries were only thirty times greater than those of the average worker, compared with two hundred times today. Is this the dawn of a society where "Winner-takes-all" or a short-term last gasp of the transition out of the Industrial Age?

1,900 local communities in the world, including over a hundred in the US, are now issuing their own currency, independently from the national money system. Some communities, like in Ithaca, New York, issue paper currency; others in Canada, Australia, the UK or France issue complementary electronic money.
The value of barter transactions — exchanges which do not use any money as medium of exchange - totaled almost $6.5 billion in 1994 in the US and Canada, and is increasing three times faster than normal exchanges. The magazine "Barter News" covers the industry’s development and now has 30,000 subscribers. It estimates the total barter worldwide at $650 billion in 1997, and growing at an annual rate of 15%.
All of the above is part of an irreversible process of change in our money system and our societies. We are now in a transition period, an interval of great risk but also of great opportunity. The risks are not only financial, some of the emerging money technologies could create a society more repressive than anyone of us thought possible. More importantly major opportunities are also becoming available: now more than ever it has become possible to address some of the most critical issues of our times, such as enabling more meaningful work, fostering cooperation and community, even realigning long-term sustainability with financial interests. None of this is theory, real-life implementations have pragmatically demonstrated such results. Combining these innovations can make available a world of Sustainable Abundance within one generation.

Specifically in Europe, the traditional ways to handle unemployment are increasingly failing. In areas with high unemployment, people have already demonstrated that living conditions can be significantly improved by creating their own complementary currencies instead of just relying on welfare. Surprisingly, it is in fact not the first time that such solutions have been successfully implemented in the Modern world. During the 1930’s many thousands of such initiatives were operational in the US, Canada, Western Europe and other areas affected by the Depression. Complementary currencies could become a key tool to buffer a region from the shocks caused by failures and crises in the official money system. Finally, this approach is a win/win for both locally owned businesses and society at large.

The degradation of the environment due to short-term financial priorities can similarly be addressed with pragmatic money innovations. Short-term thinking is shown not to be due to human nature, but to the prevailing money system. It is also possible to reverse this process, by using a currency designed specifically for multinational trade and contracts which would make long-term thinking a spontaneous process, focusing the attention on long-term sustainable solutions without the need for regulations or taxation. Historical precedents have proven such results, some of them lasting over several centuries."

Reforming the Global Casino - advice from an Economic Sage

Hazel Henderson has been a hero of mine since I saw her speak in 1989 at an environmental conference...

She recently released a piece on the current financial crisis entitled "MORE ADVICE FOR SUMMITEERS ON REFORMING THE GLOBAL CASINO" in which she underscores the core of the problem: the flaws in the fractional reserve banking system upon which our entire financial system is built...

I excerpt here-
"The 800-pound elephant still not acknowledged is the need for monetary reform of fractional reserve banking itself, which allows banks to create most of a nation’s money-supply as debt – out of thin air. Restoring the right of democratic nations to coin their currency directly (as required in the US Constitution) is now essential, particularly in the USA where debt is now crushing every sector and the Federal Reserve along with the Treasury are now printing money in clear sight of taxpayers. In Britain, there are many such proposals for reforming the Bank of England, including those of the New Economics Foundation, banking experts James Robertson and those of Canada's Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (www.comer.com). The American Monetary Institute has introduced a bill in the US Congress to achieve the gradual change needed in our banking system (www.monetary.org).

The market-fundamentalists abetted by the economics profession and the Bank of Sweden have waged a 30 year campaign to portray economics as a science. They succeeded in persuading the Nobel Committee to set up a $1 million prize in the 1960s with the late Milton Friedman of the laissez-faire Chicago School as its early recipient. This so-called Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel is now being criticized by many, including Nobel's heir, lawyer Peter Nobel, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan (2007), myself and many mathematicians including Ralph Abraham, Benoit Mandelbrot and other scientists. Too many of these subsequent Bank of Sweden "Nobel Memorial" prizes have been awarded to laissez-faire economists, particularly those whose research purported to prove (using specious mathematics) why central banks must be free of all political control – even by the most democratically elected governments. Today we see central bankers out of control, printing money, awarding favored treatment to large banks, reckless insurance companies like AIG, and claiming the privilege of secrecy. The US Federal Reserve Board even refused Freedom of Information requests by Bloomberg, Fox News and other media with questions as to which companies have been so favored and by how much. Now that the US Treasury is at last disclosing where the first $350 billion of TARP funds went, perhaps the Fed will follow suit.

More fundamentally, the failures of global monetary systems are rooted in the expansion of human knowledge and innovation as we transition from the early fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the cleaner technologies of the information-rich Solar Age (see figure 2). Just as the gold standard failed to provide enough “bandwidth” for all the growth, innovation and new communication and transactions of the Industrial Age, so today’s money circuits cannot provide enough bandwidth for the greatly expanded communications and trading of today’s growing Information economy (see figure 3)."

Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy

Just got this from EnlightenNext Magazine - hilarious, and true... worth the 5 minutes.

"In a recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, stand-up comedian Louis C.K. offered a poignant and hilarious wake-up call when he pointed out one of the tremendous ironies of our time: the fact that, in the midst of the most highly evolved and technologically sophisticated civilization in human history, we still often overlook our incredible privilege and manage to feel strangely blasé about it all..."

The world's rich pouring money into "green" deals

Many of the global wealthiest people are making investments into industries and causes considered green. The Times posted a list of some of the largest investments in green done by mega wealthy along with associated article.

They're pouring money into the usual suspects like wind power, renewable fuel, renewable energy, solar power, electric cars, packaging, etc.

Yet I'm particularly delighted by funds flowing into some notable categories oft underlooked by the typical VC and Wall Street mindset which are very encouraging developments:

Hansjörg Wyss Switzerland £6bn Open spaces conservation
Dennis Washington USA £2.7bn Conservation
Alicia and Tannetta Fentener van Vlissingen Holland £2.4bn Conservation
David Rockefeller USA £ 1.7bn Sustainable agriculture
Nicky Oppenheimer S Africa £1.5bn Wildlife conservation
Ted Turner USA £1.2bn Wildlife conservation
Morris Kahn Israel £350m Environmental protection
Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, £1.8bn in biodiversity
Felix Dennis,UK £500 Tree planting

Go here for the entire list and get all the details on the players and their investments...