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Post by Admin on Nov 14, 2020 5:39:08 GMT
i think certain things are worth fighting for - the rule of law - democracy - the universal declaration of human rights - the global socialist / green movement. Secularism. Anti fascism. Campaigning for better mental health treatment. Integrated & comprehensive health & social care services. Comprehensive psychological / social / integral approaches to mental health i support it all & i think it's worth fighting for Even if i fail
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Post by Admin on Nov 17, 2020 22:45:25 GMT
Published on Tuesday, November 17, 2020 byCommon Dreams Greenpeace Releases Far-Reaching 'Just Recovery Agenda' to Tackle Interlocking Crises of Inequality, Racial Injustice, Covid-19, and Climate ChaosWe must "shift from an economy that is extractive and exploitative to one that regenerates and repairs," the new report says. byAndrea Germanos, staff writer www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/17/greenpeace-releases-far-reaching-just-recovery-agenda-tackle-interlocking-crisesThe "just, green, and peaceful future we deserve is possible and together we can build the power to manifest it." So declares Greenpeace USA's new "Just Recovery Agenda." Released Tuesday and packed with more than 100 sweeping policy recommendations for President-elect Joe Biden and members of the next U.S. Congress to embrace, the visionary document plots out a path for erecting new systems that no longer put corporate greed above the public and planet's well-being. "Going back to normal is not an option," the report bluntly states, because what "we knew as 'normal' was a crisis." The coronavirus crisis has thrown that truism into relief, says Greenpeace, but the worsening climate and ecological crises and deep inequality have long made the case for a bold transformation of the dominant economic system. With post-pandemic policies now being charting out—and a new presidential administration just months away—Greenpeace says it's crystal clear now is the time for pivotal change. "The policy choices we make in this disruptive moment will shape the path forward for millions of people—the Covid-19 crisis and clarion call for racial justice in 2020 must mark a turning point for federal policy-making," the report urges. Greenpeace USA campaigns director James Mumm put the new report in the context of former Biden's victory over President Donald Trump. "We the people have chosen Joe Biden, who will arrive in the White House with a forceful mandate to lead our recovery from Covid-19, address the climate crisis, advance racial justice, and build an economy that puts people first," Mumm said in a statement. "Over the past four years, we have cared for one another," he continued. "Now, we must come together to ensure that Joe Biden and the new Congress care for us, and to see that everyone—no matter their race or where they come from—has what they need to thrive." The report expands on what that means by pointing to "dignified work, healthcare, education, housing, clean air and water, healthy food, and more." In this new work, says Greenpeace, the world must "shift from an economy that is extractive and exploitative to one that regenerates and repairs." Centering all the prescriptions—which range from boosting voting rights to expanding renewable energy—are values of equity, community justice, freedom, compassion, and creativity. Actions demanded of federal lawmakers include establishing a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour; strengthening the National Environmental Policy Act; enacting and enforcing new antitrust standards to curb corporate power; "passing bold and just recovery legislation in line with the THRIVE Agenda to lay the groundwork for a Green New Deal and world beyond fossil fuels"; enacting the pro-democracy the For The People Act of 2019; banning permits for new or expansions of existing factory farms; "enacting The BREATHE Act to police brutality and racial injustice by investing in Black communities and re-imagining community safety"; and enacting a ban on deep sea mining. "As we look to recover from the interlocking crises we face as a nation," said Mumm, "it's time to use the tools and power of the federal government to solve problems rather than exacerbate them." "This moment calls us to be bold and advance solutions at the scale science and justice demand," he continued. "It calls us to be holistic and navigate out of multiple crises at once. And it calls us to be visionary in our pursuit to people—not corporations or wealthy elites—at the heart of governance and public life." Make no mistake—the "us" Mumm refers to really means all of us. "Telling our story will not be the job of a single, appointed messenger, be it a politician, celebrity, CEO, or activist," says the report. "That responsibility lies with everyone who believes in the vision of a better world." "Together we will build a movement broad, inclusive, and powerful enough to deliver the future our communities need and deserve," it states. "Together we will rewrite the rules of society."
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2020 19:59:57 GMT
A World Without Work?Contemporary automation discourse responds to a real, global trend: there are too few jobs for too many people. But it ignores the actual sources of this trend: deindustrialization, depressed investment, and ultra-wealthy elites who stand in the way of a post-scarcity society. Aaron Benanav ▪ Fall 2020 www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-world-without-workThe internet, smartphones, and social media have transformed the way we interact with each other and the world around us. What would happen if these digital technologies moved off the screen and further integrated themselves into the physical world? Advanced industrial robotics, self-driving cars and trucks, and intelligent cancer-screening machines presage a world of ease, but they also make us uneasy. After all, what would human beings do in a largely automated future? Would we be able to adapt our institutions to realize the dream of human freedom that a new age of intelligent machines might make possible? Or would that dream turn out to be a nightmare? The new automation discourse asks just these sorts of questions and arrives at a provocative conclusion: mass technological unemployment is coming, and it must be managed by the provision of universal basic income, since large sections of the population will lose access to the wages they need to live. Do the automation theorists have this story right? The resurgence of automation discourse today responds to a real, global trend: there are too few jobs for too many people. Chronic labor underdemand manifests itself in economic developments such as jobless recoveries, stagnant wages, and rampant job insecurity. It is also visible in the political phenomena that rising inequality catalyzes: populism, plutocracy, and the emergence of a sea-steading digital elite—more focused on escaping in rockets to Mars than on improving the lives of the digital peasantry who will be left behind on a burning planet. Pointing with one hand to the homeless and jobless masses of Oakland, California, and with the other to the robots staffing the Tesla production plant just a few miles away in Fremont, it is easy to believe that the automation theorists must be right. However, the explanation they offer—that runaway technological change is destroying jobs—is simply false. The Demand for Labor Is Permanently Depressed There is a persistent underdemand for labor in the United States and European Union, and even more so in countries such as South Africa, India, and Brazil, yet its cause is almost the opposite of the one identified by the automation theorists. In reality, rates of labor-productivity growth are slowing down, not speeding up. This phenomenon should have increased the demand for labor, except that the productivity slowdown was overshadowed by another trend: in a development analyzed by Marxist economist Robert Brenner under the title of the “long downturn”—and belatedly recognized by mainstream economists as “secular stagnation”—economies have been growing at a progressively slower pace since the early 1970s. The cause? Decades of global industrial overcapacity killed the manufacturing growth engine, and no alternative to it has been found, least of all in the slow-growing, low-productivity activities that make up the bulk of the service sector. As economic growth decelerates, rates of job creation slow. Slowing growth, not technology-induced job destruction, has depressed the global demand for labor. If we widen our view from the automation theorists’ focus on shiny new automated factories and ping-pong-playing consumer robots, we can see a world of crumbling infrastructure, deindustrialized cities, harried nurses, and underpaid salespeople, as well as a massive stock of financialized capital with dwindling places to invest itself profitably. In an effort to revive increasingly stagnant economies, governments have spent almost half a century imposing punishing austerity on their populations, underfunding schools, hospitals, public transportation networks, and welfare programs. At the same time, governments, businesses, and households took on record quantities of debt, encouraged by ultra-low interest rates. These trends have left the world economy in a dire state as it faces one of its greatest challenges ever: the COVID-19 recession. Dilapidated healthcare systems have been overrun with patients, and schools have closed that were vital sources of basic nutrition for many children, and of much needed daytime child care for parents. Meanwhile, the economy is tanking. In spite of massive monetary and fiscal stimuli, weak economies are unlikely to bounce back quickly from the shock. With Low Rates of Investment, There Is Little Reason to Fear Automation It is for this reason that predictions of a coming wave of pandemic-induced automation ring so hollow. Although technological change was not itself the cause of job loss—at least this time around—automation theorists like Martin Ford and Carl Benedikt Frey argue that the spread of the pandemic will hasten the transition to a more automated future. Lost jobs will never return, they say, since cooking, cleaning, recycling, grocery-bagging, and caretaking robots, unlike their human counterparts, can neither catch COVID-19 nor transmit it to others. Here, automation theorists have mistaken the technical feasibility of widespread automation—itself more of a shaky hypothesis than a proven result—for its economic viability. Undeniably, some firms are investing in advanced robotics in response to COVID-19. Walmart has purchased self-driving, inventory-scanning, and aisle-cleaning robots for its U.S. stores. Expecting online ordering to continue to expand exponentially, some retail shops are testing out robotics-assisted micro-fulfillment centers to help pickers assemble orders more quickly. However, the use of these technologies will likely be an exception to the rule for the foreseeable future. With little reason to expect demand to rise strongly following a deep recession, few firms will undertake major new investments. Instead, firms will make do with the productive capacities they already possess: achieving cost savings by shedding labor and speeding up the pace of work for the remaining workers. That is precisely what firms did after the last recession. Too often, commentators simply assume that automation accelerated in the 2010s and base their predictions for the future on this false reckoning of the past. In reality, the demand could not be found to justify such investments. In the United States, the 2010s saw the lowest rates of capital accumulation and productivity growth in the postwar era. COVID-19 will only intensify these trends, leading to another round of jobless recoveries in the 2020s. Jobs Are Still Disappearing Even Without Automation Around the world, recessions associated with COVID-19 are leaving legacies of mass unemployment and underemployment from which it will be difficult to recover. The International Labour Organization estimates that in April, May, and June of 2020, 14 percent of work hours were lost worldwide, equivalent to 480 million full-time jobs out of a global labor force of 3.5 billion people. Long-unfolding transformations in the world of work amplified this pandemic shakeout. Over the past half century, service work has come to account for 70 to 80 percent of employment in high-income countries and 50 percent of employment worldwide. Recessions usually affect services least of all; unlike spending on consumer durables, such as cars and computers, spending on services usually remains buoyant during a downturn. As economist Gabriel Mathy argues, pandemic lockdowns had the opposite effect, hitting services hardest. As spending on services collapsed, and with it, the incomes of many workers, a decline in consumer demand reverberated through the economy with devastating consequences for workers worldwide. The destruction of work has been particularly bad for women, who are globally overrepresented in activities such as retail trade that the lockdowns affected most. Women are overrepresented among frontline healthcare workers, too, and they have undoubtedly been forced to undertake the majority of the increase in unpaid care work demanded by the pandemic—not only taking care of the sick and the dying, but also minding the more than 1 billion children who have been kept out of school since March. The transition to a majority service-work world amplified the pandemic’s destructive consequences. It will now slow the pace of recovery. As economist William Baumol explained in the 1960s, services are in large part a stagnant economic sector. Unlike manufacturing during its heyday, services generally do not exhibit dynamic patterns of expansion driven by high rates of labor productivity growth and falling prices. Instead, increases in the demand for services generally depend on spillover effects from productivity-enhancing innovations occurring in other economic sectors. There is a clear link between the global expansion of the stagnant services sector and the worsening stagnation of the wider economy. After the onset of deindustrialization—which began in the United States and the United Kingdom in the late 1960s and then came to affect much of the rest of the world in the following decades—no other sector has proven an adequate replacement. With the running down of the formerly robust industrial growth engine, the global economy has been left without a driver. Rising Underemployment Will Make Economic Inequality Worse Despite the weakening of the global economic-growth engine, workers will still have to find some way to earn wages in the pandemic (and post-pandemic) era. Over time, unemployment will therefore resolve into various forms of underemployment. In other words, workers will find that they have no choice but to take jobs offering lower-than-normal wages or worse-than-normal working conditions. Those who cannot find any work at all will set up shop in the informal sector or else drop out of the labor force entirely. As was the case following past recessions, the vast majority of the world’s underemployed workers will end up in low-wage service jobs. Services that see persistently low rates of labor-productivity growth and pay low wages have become the premier sites for job creation in stagnant economies. In those jobs, workers’ wages make up a relatively large share of the final price paid by consumers. That makes it possible for service-based firms to raise the demand for their products by holding down workers’ wages relative to whatever meager increases in labor productivity can be achieved in the wider economy. The small-scale family operations that comprise the world’s massive informal labor force use a similar strategy to compete with highly capitalized firms. They compress their own household wages as much as humanly possible. As underemployment rises, inequality must intensify. Masses of people can find work only as long as the growth of their incomes is suppressed relative to the average. As economists David Autor and Anna Salomons note, “Labor displacement need not imply a decline in employment, hours, or wages,” but can hide itself in the relative immiseration of the working class, as “the wagebill—that is, the product of hours of work and wages per hour—rises less rapidly than does value-added.” Such immiseration has contributed to the 9 percentage-point shift from labor to capital incomes in the G20 countries over the past fifty years. Worldwide, the labor share of income fell by 5 percentage points between 1980 and the mid-2000s, as a growing portion of income growth was captured by wealthy asset holders. An Economy of Abundance Life in stagnant economies has come to be defined by intense employment insecurity—all the worse in recession years like 2020—which has been artfully represented in recent science-fiction dystopias like In Time, Children of Men, and Ready Player One, populated by a redundant humanity. Most people are scraping by, earning additional minutes of life one at a time, while the richest asset owners have amassed such large quantities of capital that they are endowed with the monetary equivalent of immortality. It is precisely for this reason that it is so important to reflect on today’s automation discourse—not only to combat its mistaken explanation for chronic labor underdemand, but also to inspire efforts to resolve the world’s chronic labor problems in a utopian direction. In a world reeling from a global pandemic, rising inequality, recalcitrant neoliberalism, resurgent ethnonationalism, and climate change, automation theorists have inspired people with a vision of a future in which humanity advances to the next stage in our history—whatever we might take that to mean—and technology helps to free us all to discover and follow our passions. As with many of the utopias of the past, these visions need to be freed from their authors’ technological and technocratic fantasies as to how constructive social change might take place. In fact, we can achieve the post-scarcity world the automation theorists evoke, even if the automation of production proves impossible. At stake is the question of what achieving an “economy of abundance” actually entails. According to the automation discourse, abundance is a technological threshold that we will one day cross with brilliant new technologies. We should understand abundance differently, not as a technical overcoming but as a social relationship we can put into practice without needing more technological breakthroughs, while remaining within the bounds of ecological sustainability. To live in a world of abundance means to live in a world where everyone is guaranteed access to housing, food, clothing, sanitation, water, energy, healthcare, education, child and elder care, and means of communication and transportation, without exception. The steadfast material security implied by such a principle is what allows people to ask “What am I going to do with the time of my life?” rather than “How am I going to keep on living?” Instead of waiting around for a technological fix, we can get to the world of abundance by cooperatively taking on the work that remains necessary for our lives and cannot be automated away. It is more urgent to do so now than at any time in the past. In the midst of the COVID-19 recession—and facing a much larger climate crisis in the years to come—we must inaugurate a post-scarcity world by providing every human being with access to the basic goods and services they need to make a life, regardless of their labor contributions. The Only Solution Is to Democratize Production Achieving this world of abundance will require that we radically reorganize production. Today, people have little say in how their work is done. Many show up to work each day only because they would starve if they didn’t. In a world where people’s needs were guaranteed to be met, work would have to be democratized. Sharing out the work to be done, while making allowances for aptitudes and abilities, would lessen the amount of necessary labor demanded of any individual, while ensuring that all had access to ample free time. W.E.B. Du Bois once estimated that, in the “future industrial democracy,” just “three to six hours” of necessary labor per day “would suffice,” leaving “abundant time for leisure, exercise, study, and avocations.” Instead of making some engage in “menial service” so that others might make art, he said, we would “all be artists and all serve.” This vision of post-scarcity was what “socialism” and “communism” meant before their later identification with Stalinist central planning and breakneck industrialization. The pathway to the post-scarcity society is currently blocked by a tiny class of ultra-wealthy individuals who monopolize decisions about investment and employment—and have little interest in democratizing the economy. For forty years, this tiny elite has used the threat of disinvestment from an already fragile economy to force political parties and trade unions to capitulate to their demands: for looser business regulations, laxer labor laws, slower-growing wages, and—in the midst of economic crises—private bailouts and public austerity. Insofar as sections of this wealthy elite, particularly in Silicon Valley, feign support for proposals like universal basic income, or UBI, it is only because UBI does not threaten elite control over the levers of investment and employment. For UBI to serve as a pathway to the post-scarcity economy, the automation theorists’ analysis would need to be correct: today’s low labor demand would have to originate in a rapid automation of production. Were that the case, the main issue society would confront would be one of reorganizing distribution, with rising economic inequality rectified by distributing more and more income as UBI payments. If instead labor underdemand is the result of global overcapacity and depressed investment, driving down rates of economic growth, then such a distributional struggle would quickly become a zero-sum conflict, blocking progress toward a freer future. Given the opposition of elites who retain the power to throw the economy into chaos by disinvestment, we will have to get to the economy of abundance through social movements and struggles that seek to transform production itself. Large numbers of people are already fighting the symptoms of a long-term decline in the demand for their labor, including rising inequality, employment insecurity, austerity measures, and police murders of poor and racialized communities. Over the past ten years, waves of strikes and demonstrations have unfolded across six continents: from China and Hong Kong to Iraq and Lebanon, from Argentina and Chile to France and Greece, and from Australia and Indonesia to the United States. Protests erupted again in 2019 and have recently resurged in 2020. We need to immerse ourselves in the movements born of these struggles, helping to drive them forward toward a better world—in which the infrastructures of capitalist societies are brought under collective control, work is reorganized and redistributed, scarcity is overcome through the free giving of goods and services, and our human capacities are correspondingly enlarged as new vistas of existential security and freedom open up. Only highly organized movements, cohering both internally and among each other, will be able to complete this historic task, the conquest of production, and to break through to a new synthesis of what it means to be a human being—to live in a world devoid of poverty and billionaires, of stateless refugees and detention camps, and of lives spent in drudgery, which hardly offer a moment to rest, let alone dream. If such movements fail, maybe the best we will get is a modest UBI—a proposal governments are now testing out as a possible response to the present recession. We should not be fighting for this limited goal, but rather to inaugurate a more sustainable, post-scarcity planet. Aaron Benanav is a researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin. This article has been adapted from his first book, Automation and the Future of Work, forthcoming from Verso Books in November 2020. He is writing a second book on the global history of unemployment.
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Post by Admin on Nov 20, 2020 18:40:06 GMT
Keynes Called Him 'The Unduly Neglected Prophet'hive.blog/ocd/@earthcustodians/keynes-called-him-the-unduly-neglected-prophetWe mentioned Silvio Gesell a few times in our blogs already but this article with Keyne's statement is indeed very telling: the latter merely proves that the top central banks are perfectly aware of the trickery and the ensuing psychological ramifications. There are two major issues preventing money from serving humanity. The first one is the "subjectivity of value" which can only be stabilized by a monopoly (investing through currency buying). The 2nd one is "hoarding", which causes scarcity and disturbs the organic flow of money throughout the system, hence redirecting the velocity of money back to those in the know. Those who don't always lose. There isn't much to do because financial collusion is inherent to the framework itself. As soon as we believe that value is certified, we help fuel collusion. Assuming that free-markets can fix all doesn't take into account the inherent presence of collusion and this makes the top-down model inescapable. And of course, if nobody was hoarding it in order to eliminate the problem of scarcity, currencies - value - would end up falling apart. Unfortunately, there are no in-between solutions. Either money exists or it does not. The situation is spiritual in essence. This is the biggest spiritual battle ever in the entire Universe and which can only be won when (or if) 35% of the adult population starts screaming that "enough and enough". Another considerable argument in favor of a money-free framework is that money creates irreconcilable multiple layers of division among the people, simply because free-will will violate the Laws of Nature, as it cannot express itself positively when coerced. Conflicts are thus here to stay. The consensus that there exists some"necessary evil" is either generally the result of failing to see the big picture or the inability to access the appropriate data. Most people can see how the power elites operate but that very power game is repeated at all societal levels, and that makes it impossible to address the issue of power. This pervasive and misguided psychology is what holds us back from overcoming generational ego-driven pursuits at the expense of others. Poverty is structural violence, no doubt about it but inherent to any top-down system. The pyramid of power can be reversed nonetheless at the condition that each of us comes to terms with the reality that we do not take anything with us when we die. Soon banks are going to issue their own digital currencies and reshuffle the crypto games as they see fit. The fact is that the top-down system is the most nonsensical - and also harmful - model that civilizations have ever come up with. Why on earth would one support such a system when knowing that financial crises are inevitable, and pass on this burden to further generations? We can militate for usury-free currencies all we want and that would be much of the problem removed, yet the end of the monopoly would cause so many fluctuations that people would beg the "money managers" to come back. Gesell was almost there but missed a few pieces of the puzzle. We are definitely stuck for good unless we begin to adopt a very different mindset: competition has been detrimental to every civilization and we might have to learn this the very hard way.
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Post by Admin on Nov 23, 2020 18:48:55 GMT
docs.google.com/document/d/1LRYCZnp6WC2t6beWq0xeAuU8-1vCinWztsOPzWmoBdM/editThe Tao of an ACSThe TAO of the ACS (Abundance Centered Society) Aim: To become the core tenets of any Abundance Centered Society, be it an RBE (Resource Based Economy) or other similar socio-economic civilisations. This should consist of the fewest number of tenets whilst still providing the decision making process for the majority of morals, ethics and other such decisions and should generally apply to personal, community and civilisation-wide scales. An abundance-centered society is a post-scarcity and possibly post-monetary system which makes it very different from the current Capitalist mindset, which values things according to human labour, property rights and perceived scarcity. Currently the scarcer something is perceived to be, the more it costs. Due to the profit motive, Capitalism is an inherently scarcity-based system, as corporations and individuals will intentionally increase demand through things like advertising, whilst also increasing the perceived scarcity of a product. Little of which relates to either the actual value of a product or service, nor the almost always negative environmental effects. Capitalism is having major troubles dealing with the nearly zero marginal cost society we are developing, thanks to technologies such as the Internet and renewable energy we are starting to see major changes needed. At the same time the chronic effects of Capitalism is creating major environmental disasters, major income and other types of inequality leading to devastating human rights abuses and an ecosystem that's being pushed beyond its carrying capacity. A lot of this is also because our current cultural definition of success is based around acquiring money and power. Or more specifically financial and material wealth, power, control and/or fame. But what if we lived in a world where we valued contributions to humanity, the environment and the systems that support us? With the advent of new waves of innovation, including localised 3D printing and manufacturing, vertical farming, AI, drones, IoT, Blockchain and more, we are going to see an increasing rise in the amount of abundance in the world. However, we have the wrong system to deal with it. We need a new way of dealing with resource distribution: one that revolves around abundance and sustainability.
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Post by Admin on Dec 5, 2020 22:10:11 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 24, 2020 0:29:04 GMT
"Consider for a moment what our planet is and what it might be. At present, for most, there is toil and hunger, constant danger, more hatred than love. There could be a happy world, where co-operation was more in evidence than competition, and monotonous work is done by machines, where what is lovely in nature is not destroyed to make room for hideous machines whose sole business is to kill, and where to promote joy is more respected than to produce mountains of corpses. Do not say this is impossible: it is not. It waits only for men to desire it more than the infliction of torture. There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere."
— Bertrand Russell, Last Essay: “1967”
This is the last paragraph of Bertrand Russell's last manuscript. Untitled, it was annotated “1967” by Russell, at the age of 95, two or three years before he died. Ray Monk published it first in The Independent of London on the 25th anniversary of the Russell Archives. The essay's politics are uncannily prescient.
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Post by Admin on Dec 27, 2020 20:36:48 GMT
ESSAY The Serviceberry An Economy of Abundanceemergencemagazine.org/story/the-serviceberry/by Robin Wall Kimmerer As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange? The cool breath of evening slips off the wooded hills, displacing the heat of the day, and with it come the birds, as eager for the cool as I am. They arrive in a flock of calls that sound like laughter, and I have to laugh back with the same delight. They are all around me, Cedar Waxwings and Catbirds and a flash of Bluebird iridescence. I have never felt such a kinship to my namesake, Robin, as in this moment when we are both stuffing our mouths with berries and chortling with happiness. The bushes are laden with fat clusters of red, blue, and wine purple, in every stage of ripeness, so many you can pick them by the handful. I’m glad I have a pail and wonder if the birds will be able to fly with their bellies as full as mine. This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are—along with the sun and the air and the birds and the rain, gathering in the towers of cumulonimbi. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full. Part of my delight comes from their unexpected presence. The local native Serviceberries, Amelanchier arborea, have small, hard fruits, which tend toward dryness, and only once in a while is there a tree with sweet offerings. The bounty in my bucket is a western species—A. alnifolium, known as Saskatoons—planted by my farmer neighbor, and this is their first bearing year, which they do with an enthusiasm that matches my own. Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum, Sarvis, Serviceberry—these are among the many names for Amelanchier. Ethnobotanists know that the more names a plant has, the greater its cultural importance. The tree is beloved for its fruits, for medicinal use, and for the early froth of flowers that whiten woodland edges at the first hint of spring. Serviceberry is known as a calendar plant, so faithful is it to seasonal weather patterns. Its bloom is a sign that the ground has thawed and that the shad are running upstream—or at least it was back in the day, when rivers were clear and free enough to support their spawning. The derivation of the name “Service” from its relative Sorbus (also in the Rose Family) notwithstanding, the plant does provide myriad goods and services. Not only to humans but to many other citizens. It is a preferred browse of Deer and Moose, a vital source of early pollen for newly emerging insects, and host to a suite of butterfly larvae—like Tiger Swallowtails, Viceroys, Admirals, and Hairstreaks—and berry-feasting birds who rely on those calories in breeding season. In Potawatomi, it is called Bozakmin, which is a superlative: the best of the berries. I agree with my ancestors on the rightness of that name. Imagine a fruit that tastes like a Blueberry crossed with the satisfying heft of an Apple, a touch of rosewater and a miniscule crunch of almond-flavored seeds. They taste like nothing a grocery store has to offer: wild, complex with a chemistry that your body recognizes as the real food it’s been waiting for. For me, the most important part of the word Bozakmin is “min,” the root for “berry.” It appears in our Potawatomi words for Blueberry, Strawberry, Raspberry, even Apple, Maize, and Wild Rice. The revelation in that word is a treasure for me, because it is also the root word for “gift.” In naming the plants who shower us with goodness, we recognize that these are gifts from our plant relatives, manifestations of their generosity, care, and creativity. When we speak of these not as things or products or commodities, but as gifts, the whole relationship changes. I can’t help but gaze at them, cupped like jewels in my hand, and breathe out my gratitude. In the presence of such gifts, gratitude is the intuitive first response. The gratitude flows toward our plant elders and radiates to the rain, to the sunshine, to the improbability of bushes spangled with morsels of sweetness in a world that can be bitter. Gratitude is so much more than a polite thank you. It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver. If our first response is gratitude, then our second is reciprocity: to give a gift in return. What could I give these plants in return for their generosity? It could be a direct response, like weeding or water or a song of thanks that sends appreciation out on the wind. Or indirect, like donating to my local land trust so that more habitat for the gift givers will be saved, or making art that invites others into the web of reciprocity. Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. I accept the gift from the bush and then spread that gift with a dish of berries to my neighbor, who makes a pie to share with his friend, who feels so wealthy in food and friendship that he volunteers at the food pantry. You know how it goes. To name the world as gift is to feel one’s membership in the web of reciprocity. It makes you happy—and it makes you accountable. Conceiving of something as a gift changes your relationship to it in a profound way, even though the physical makeup of the “thing” has not changed. A wooly knit hat that you purchase at the store will keep you warm regardless of its origin, but if it was hand knit by your favorite auntie, then you are in relationship to that “thing” in a very different way: you are responsible for it, and your gratitude has motive force in the world. You’re likely to take much better care of the gift hat than the commodity hat, because it is knit of relationships. This is the power of gift thinking. I imagine if we acknowledged that everything we consume is the gift of Mother Earth, we would take better care of what we are given. Mistreating a gift has emotional and ethical gravity as well as ecological resonance. How we think ripples out to how we behave. If we view these berries, or that coal or forest, as an object, as property, it can be exploited as a commodity in a market economy. We know the consequences of that. Why then have we permitted the dominance of economic systems that commoditize everything? That create scarcity instead of abundance, that promote accumulation rather than sharing? We’ve surrendered our values to an economic system that actively harms what we love. I’m wondering how we fix that. And I’m not alone. Because I’m a botanist, my fluency in the lexicon of berries may not easily extend to economics, so I wanted to revisit the conventional meaning of economics to compare it to my understanding of the gift economy of nature. What is economics for anyway? It turns out that answer depends a lot on who you ask. On their website, the American Economic Association says, “It’s the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives.” My son-in-law teaches high school economics, and the first principle his students learn is that economics is about decision-making in the face of scarcity. Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. With scarcity as the main principle, the mindset that follows is based on commodification of goods and services. I’m way past high school, but I’m not sure I grasp that thinking, so I fill a bowl with fresh Serviceberries for my friend and colleague, Dr. Valerie Luzadis. She is an appreciator of earthly gifts and a professor and past president of the US Society for Ecological Economics. Ecological economics is a growing economic theory that expands the conventional definition by working to integrate Earth’s natural systems and human values. But it has not been standard practice to include these foundational elements—they are usually left out of the equation. Valerie prefers the definition that “economics is how we organize ourselves to sustain life and enhance its quality. It’s a way of considering how we provide for ourselves.” The words ecology and economy come from the same root, the Greek oikos, meaning “home” or “household”: i.e., the systems of relationship, the goods and services that keep us alive. The system of market economies that we’re given as a default is hardly the only model out there. Anthropologists have observed and shared multiple cultural frameworks, colored by very different worldviews on “how we provide for ourselves,” including gift economies. As the berries plunk into my bucket, I’m thinking about what I’ll do with them all. I’ll drop some off for friends and neighbors, and I’ll certainly fill the freezer for Juneberry muffins in February. This “problem” of managing decisions about abundance reminds me of a report that linguist Daniel Everett wrote as he was learning from a hunter-gatherer community in the Brazilian rainforest. A hunter had brought home a sizable kill, far too much to be eaten by his family. The researcher asked how he would store the excess. Smoking and drying technologies were well known; storing was possible. The hunter was puzzled by the question—store the meat? Why would he do that? Instead, he sent out an invitation to a feast, and soon the neighboring families were gathered around his fire, until every last morsel was consumed. This seemed like maladaptive behavior to the anthropologist, who asked again: given the uncertainty of meat in the forest, why didn’t he store the meat for himself, which is what the economic system of his home culture would predict. “Store my meat? I store my meat in the belly of my brother,” replied the hunter. I feel a great debt to this unnamed teacher for these words. There beats the heart of gift economies, an antecedent alternative to market economies, another way of “organizing ourselves to sustain life.” In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds which enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual. Anthropologists characterize gift economies as systems of exchange in which goods and services circulate without explicit expectations of direct compensation. Those who have give to those who don’t, so that everyone in the system has what they need. It is not regulated from above, but derives from a collective sense of equity and accountability in response to the gifts of the Earth. In his book Sacred Economics, Charles Eisenstein states: “Gifts cement the mystical realization of participation in something greater than oneself which, yet, is not separate from oneself. The axioms of rational self-interest change because the self has expanded to include something of the other.” If the community is flourishing, then all within it will partake of the same abundance—or shortage—that nature provides. The currency of exchange is gratitude and relationship rather than money. It includes a system of social and moral agreements for indirect reciprocity. So, the hunter who shared the feast with you could well anticipate that you would share from a full fishnet or offer your labor in repairing a boat. The natural world itself is understood as a gift and not as private property, as such there are ethical constraints on the accumulation of abundance that is not yours. Well known examples of gift economies include potlatches or the Kula ring cycle, in which gifts circulate in the group, solidifying bonds of relationship and redistributing wealth. The question of abundance highlights the striking difference between the market economies which have come to dominate the globe and the ancient gift economies which preceded them. There are many examples of functioning gift economies—most in small societies of close relations, where community well-being is recognized as the “unit” of success—where the interest of “we” exceeds that of “I.” In this time when the economies have grown so large and impersonal that they extinguish rather than nurture community well-being, perhaps we should consider other ways to organize the exchange of goods and services which constitute an economy. In a market economy, where the underlying principles are scarcity and maximizing return on investment, the meat is private property, accumulated for the well-being of the hunter or exchanged for currency. The greatest status and success comes from possession. Food security is assured by private accumulation. In contrast, gift economies arise from the abundance of gifts from the Earth, which are owned by no one and therefore shared. Sharing engenders relationships of good will and bonds that ensure you will be invited to the feast when your neighbor is fortunate. Security is ensured by the nurturing of bonds of reciprocity. You can store meat in your own pantry or in the belly of your brother. Both have the result of keeping hunger at bay but with very different consequences for the people and for the land which provided that sustenance. I haven’t studied economics in decades, but as a plant ecologist, I’ve spent a lifetime asking the plants for their guidance on any number of issues; so I wondered what the Serviceberries had to say about the systems which create and distribute goods and services. What is their economic system? How do they respond to the issues of abundance and scarcity? Has their evolutionary process shaped them to be hoarders or sharers? Let’s ask the Saskatoons. These ten-foot-tall trees are the producers in this economy. Using the free raw materials of light, water, and air, they transmute these gifts into leaves and flowers and fruits. They store some energy as sugars in the making of their own bodies, but much of it is shared. Some of the abundance of spring rain and sun manifests in the form of flowers, which offer a feast for insects when it’s cold and rainy. The insects return the favor by carrying pollen. Food is rarely in short supply for Saskatoons, but mobility is rare. Movement is a gift of the pollinators, but the energy needed to support buzzing around is scarce. So they create a relationship of exchange that benefits both. Rest in Link.
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Post by Admin on Dec 31, 2020 3:36:28 GMT
'Dark Souls' Is A Game About Living Under Capitalism In 2020If we truly are living in the end-times, From Software's bleak fantasy world should inspire us to transcend our grim reality and forge a new path. www.vice.com/en/article/y3gz9m/dark-souls-is-a-game-about-living-under-capitalism-in-2020To live in the year 2020 is to be filled with the sense that the world as we know it is coming to an end. It’s hard to pinpoint just one piece of evidence, but take your pick—an imminent climate collapse heralded by apocalyptic storms and wildfires; a rampant global pandemic; the descent of nations around the world into authoritarian fascism; failing institutions unable to contain the viral spread of disinformation. It’s not the dystopia we’ve been taught to expect. Instead of giant meteors, zombie plagues, and other numbingly cliché scenarios, ours is a harrowing reality of slow-burning crisis-upon-crisis that has never been adequately captured in speculative fiction and pop culture. As far as I’m concerned, there’s one game that comes close to evoking the vibe of our end-times, and that’s the bleak, decaying world of Dark Souls. For a game with lots of exploration and very little dialogue, the lore of the Souls series is astoundingly deep. Using environmental storytelling that rewards patient and perceptive players, Hidetaka Miyazaki’s trilogy is a profound exploration of human nature, fate, and how those with power can distort our perceptions of the world. In my reading, it’s also a parable about the end of capitalism—and what lies beyond it. Just bear with me, okay? In each installment of the Dark Souls series, you play a nameless Undead hero cursed with the unsavory task of reigniting the flame that gave birth to civilization as we know it. Long ago, the gods found this flame and used its power to create the current age. But now the flame is dying, and it’s your job to rekindle it. Or not. This all sounds pretty simple, but like in most of Miyazaki’s works, the truth is far more interesting and sinister. The first time I played through the original Dark Souls, the choice seemed obvious: link the fire, save the world. The “Good” ending, or so I thought. We are meant to believe that the flame is necessary for humankind’s survival, and that without it the world would be lost in darkness. The gods certainly want you to believe this, and many characters who act as their proxies throughout the game beseech you to link the fire and restore the world to its former glory. Throughout the series, there are hints that something isn’t right. There is something unnatural—and unsustainable—about this holy flame and your fated quest to restore it. If you choose to link the flame at the end of the first game, the screen fills with a dramatic explosion as the engine of the world is reignited and a new cycle of civilization begins. If you choose this option at the end of Dark Souls 3, the flame barely grows to consume your character—a pitiful shade of the gods’ former power, having grown weak from repeating this process over untold millennia. The game’s prelude deceptively foreshadows this inevitability: “Soon the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain.” The more one explores the lore of the Souls series, the more you begin to question who ultimately benefits from reigniting the flame, and whether this spooky Age of Dark is really all that bad. It’s very clear from the outset that the character is compelled to bear this burden. The Darksign, a black circle surrounded by a ring of fire, brands the bodies of those cursed with Undeath, doomed to suffer and die again and again. Even further, you come to learn that humans in fact originated from the Dark—the “Dark Soul” of the series’ namesake. But that true nature was hidden from humans, and they were bound by the Undead Curse to continually—and unnaturally—restore the gods’ fading power. It feels like a crushing satire of our reality, with working people struggling through countless boom-and-bust cycles, each time expected to bear the brunt of the latest crisis so that a wealthy owner class can sustain its own power. COVID-19 has put this arbitrary cruelty in plain view for all to see, but it's hardly the first time. Workers in the US were asked to endure economic hardship as banks were bailed out during the 2008 financial crisis, which was caused by Wall Street speculators crashing the housing market with junk bonds. Before that, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 90s had already set the working class back decades while the rich and powerful further expanded their wealth. In the ensuing decades, productivity soared while wages remained stagnant. Until recently, the Souls games’ themes of sacrifice would have been more metaphorical than literal, but reality has overtaken allegory. Millions of low-paid service workers were forced to return to work during the peak of a pandemic with little protection or reassurance, once again sacrificing their well-being to the altar of capital so that the Dow can go up a few points. In the midst of a public health crisis, our government tells us that universal healthcare is impossible while creating trillions of dollars out of thin air to bail out Wall Street. Millions of workers—disproportionately people of color—continue to lose their jobs and face mass-evictions as the world richest billionaires exploit the pandemic to grow even more astronomically wealthy. And yet, the working class is expected to labor on all the same, creating wealth and shareholder value for a system that ultimately doesn’t serve them. Even as the world crumbles around us, we are asked to prolong the existence of a system from which we’ll never truly benefit. Even with this grim reality laid bare, we are constantly told there is no other way, that better things aren’t possible. Presidential candidate Joe Biden promises salvation from the nightmare of Trump, but nevertheless reassures the rich and powerful that “nothing would fundamentally change.” Abolitionist demands to defund the police and redirect resources to healthcare, education, and social programs have been widely dismissed by pundits and politicians, despite generations of Black scholarship on the subject. The entire 2020 election season feels like the end of another cycle in the Age of Fire. Even as the world crumbles around us, we are once again being asked to prolong the existence of a system from which we’ll never truly benefit. But Dark Souls is not a pessimistic game. If anything, it’s a game about transcendence—overcoming seemingly impossible odds in pursuit of a world beyond our current misery. In what is undoubtedly the most interesting of the possible endings in Dark Souls 3, the player uses the power of the dying First Flame not to restore the Age of Fire, but to begin an entirely new one. Unlike the alternative “dark” endings, where you either let the Flame die out or take its power for yourself, the rest of the world be damned, this ending suggests that the player has claimed it in service to their Undead kindred. Your character rises as a “Lord of Hollows,” allowing humanity to finally free itself from the power of the gods and define its own future. As Yuria of Londor, the character who nudges you toward this ending, puts it: “The Age of Fire was founded by the old gods, sustained by the linking of the fire. But the gods are no more, and the all-powerful fire deserveth a new heir. Our Lord of Hollows it shall be, who weareth the true face of mankind.” Like the world of Dark Souls, we're all living in the Cool Zone—that period of history where anything seems possible, for better or worse. And if Dark Souls teaches us anything about 2020, it’s that we can no longer afford to simply follow the path laid by those who hold power over us. As governments and institutions continue to fail the most vulnerable among us, the ability to self-organize has taken on a new, critical importance. This self-determination has caused a surge of interest in mutual aid—efforts that have been practiced by anarchists, indigenous people, and marginalized communities for generations. As the COVID-19 crisis took hold, communities took matters into their own hands, distributing food, supplies, medical care, cash bail, and more directly to those most impacted. Rather than wait in vain for the government to help, these volunteer efforts give us a glimpse into a world beyond capitalism, where we define our own fate and keep each other safe, rather than repeat the cycles of the past. Miyazaki's world may seem bleak and unforgiving, but it actually challenges us to believe in the possibility of transformation. The eerie grimness of Dark Souls feels authentic to crises like these. Breaking these cycles, opposing fate, means taking a frightening leap into the unknown. That's a scary proposition for many people, especially those who live in some measure of comfort. Like the cursed humans of Dark Souls, we've been told there is no alternative to the current system, but the truth is that we simply haven't been allowed to imagine it. To paraphrase Ursula K. LeGuin, the power of capitalism seems inescapable, but so did the divine right of kings. In 2020, that's exactly the message we need: a call to recognize the truth of our collective power, and work together to bring about the world we deserve.
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Post by Admin on Jan 1, 2021 20:22:51 GMT
Our current economic and monetary systems are structurally dysfunctional and at best serve a few (for a while) while more and more people share less and less. Under no circumstances will they deliver a healthy, meaningful and happy life for all. On a crowded planet with failing ecosystems we have to learn that out-competing others while destroying the planetary life-support systems is not an evolutionary success strategy. Win-lose games in the long run turn into lose-lose games. Yet there is another way! We can transform our global economy to play a subsidiary and collaborative function as we embark on strengthening resilient regional and local economies as the foundations of thriving, diverse, regenerative cultures. We need to urgently break out of the vicious circle of bad economic design decisions — they reinforce a perspective of scarcity, separation and competition that drives ecological and social degradation. Human beings designed this system and human beings can redesign it to serve people and planet. Nothing about our current economic system — apart from the biophysical reality that you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet — is inevitable or unchangeable. Neo-liberal economics is a dangerous ideology that seems to produce mass delusion and collective suicidal tendencies oblivious to the biophysical reality and socio-ecological context. Unlike biology and ecology, economics is not a science. We created our current economic system and we can redesign it, based on ecological insights, biophysical limits, and social values. A thriving economy will serve our common purpose: promoting the health and wellbeing of humanity and the community of life. To redesign economics from the ground up challenges us to design new monetary systems, trade policies and financial institutions, as well as scale-linked local living economies and regionally focused circular biomaterials economies. The role of the global economy should be subsidiary supporting global collaboration and resource- and information- sharing. ... Regenerative Economies for Regenerative Culturesdesignforsustainability.medium.com/regenerative-economies-for-regenerative-cultures-e3b248ffc281
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Post by Admin on Jan 2, 2021 13:17:53 GMT
Join us on demonstrations for Article 25STWR 24 April 2018 www.sharing.org/information-centre/news/join-us-demonstrations-article-25Join STWR on demonstrations for Article 25 (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. Article 25 is one of the 30 articles of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”. Still today, millions of people subsist without adequate means for survival. Around 46,000 people die every day from easily preventable and poverty-related causes, while global humanitarian needs have never been higher since the end of the Second World War. Even in the wealthiest nations, we are witnessing a dramatic rise in levels of hunger, deprivation, social exclusion and economic inequality. Yet there is enough food and resources in the world for everyone to enjoy a dignified and fulfilling life, with the basics guaranteed. Just the amount spent on the world’s military exceeds the annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity. A tiny percentage of global GDP could end the scourge of extreme poverty, if every nation cooperated to share the world’s resources under the auspices of the United Nations. This will never happen unless unprecedented numbers of people unite behind a single, overarching demand for governments to implement Article 25 as an effective international law. It will require continuous, peaceful demonstrations on behalf of the least advantaged members of the human family, wherever they may live—both in our countries and far abroad. The time has come to forge a huge united public voice, one that has the potential to reorder global priorities and empower the United Nations to truly represent “we the people” of the world. Join us under the banner of Article 25 In the UK, our campaign group Share The World’s Resources (STWR) is participating in demonstrations for economic and social justice by highlighting the cause of Article 25. Please join us by attending national events that relate to the fundamental rights for adequate food, housing, healthcare and social security for all. This might include, for example, anti-austerity marches, calls for diverting military budgets to social needs, demonstrations for the right to housing and universal healthcare, or mobilisations on behalf of free public education, a living wage, decent work, and so on. For those who live in other countries, you can also participate in relevant demonstrations under the banner of Article 25, or organise your own protest activities and awareness-raising events. We are still at the early stages of growing a global movement that upholds the basic rights of every human being to an adequate standard of living—so please get in touch and let us know your plans. Let’s unite and together organise a historic mass movement for Article 25 beyond borders! To learn more about our vision of worldwide demonstrations around the fundamental rights of Article 25, you can read our flagship publication: “Heralding Article 25: A people’s strategy for world transformation.” Read the book for free online, or purchase a copy from our online shop.
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2021 0:42:11 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2021 17:09:35 GMT
~ How We Demonize Others ~
"For well over 2000 years a competitive “dog-eat-dog” mindset has dominated the world’s most powerful human civilizations. The goals of our leaders (as well as most members) have been to conquer, defeat or control whatever (and whomever) we can. Those who thought differently were quickly pushed to the side, silenced, enslaved, ignored or demonized.
Look closely at the challenges humanity has been struggling with. What is the root cause of the environmental destruction, the poverty and inequality, crime, racism, terrorism, economic instability, mindless consumerism, endless wars and skyrocketing military spending?
These problems exist because the most powerful human cultures and civilizations have propagated a world view that presents life as a never-ending war between opposing forces- a struggle between good and evil, man and nature, friend and enemy, “us” vs. “them.”
It’s almost as if the human family has been living under a spell, brain-washed and hypnotized to live in fear, to close our hearts to greater generosity, joy, wisdom, creativity, cooperation, peace and compassion.."
Perpetual Curse of the Warrior Mindset
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2021 17:37:34 GMT
A new economic model for the 21st century promises to radically transform how we manage our land, food, industrial systems and cities – could it be part of the answer to overcoming the climate crisis? www.theguardian.com/journey-towards-a-plastic-free-future/2020/dec/01/climate-neutral-inclusive-and-aligned-with-nature-explaining-the-circular-bioeconomyWe all know recycling isn’t enough. Tackling the overlapping environmental emergencies we currently face requires a more fundamental shift than what we do with products and packaging once they’ve reached end-of-life. To really have an impact, we also need to consider the start of a product’s life and ensure that what we consume is derived from renewable materials. Arguably, this is the only way to create a true circular economy, the goal of which is to keep resources in use for as long as possible, and waste nothing. It’s a goal that preoccupies Riikka Paarma, director of circular economy at renewable materials company Stora Enso. “The fact that we need to tackle this linear economic issue and move to a circular world has come as a sort of revelation to wider society over the last 10 years or so.” Stora Enso is in the business of trees – planting, harvesting and turning them into all manner of products, from wooden elements to food packaging to material used for insulation. Wood is, if sustainable forestry methods are observed, renewable and, one could argue, inherently part of a circular economy. Of all the materials collected for recycling across the EU, paper and card has the highest recycling rate, at just under 86%. In addition, wood-based materials generally don’t pose as much of a threat to the natural world as single-use plastics. “Packaging materials made directly from straw or wood fibres disintegrate much more easily and do not produce the same problems when lost in nature,” says Lars Ottosen, professor of biotechnology and head of the department of engineering at Aarhus University in Denmark. So, from a sustainability point of view, wood looks pretty good. But things are a bit more complicated, particularly if you’re making decisions for your business about what’s best for people and the planet, as well as your bottom line. The concept of a circular bioeconomy stands slightly apart from the larger umbrella concept of a circular economy. According to the European commission, a bioeconomy is the “production of renewable biological resources and the conversion of these resources and waste streams into value added products such as food, feed, bio-based products and bioenergy”. Now add in the concept of circularity. Not only should these bio-based products and energy be renewable and natural, they should ideally not become waste, but rather be repurposed or recycled, able to biodegrade or otherwise be utilised for as long as possible. Ultimately, a circular bioeconomy runs on the principle of using renewable resources to power society and industry, as well as the use of renewable materials to create the products needed by businesses and consumers. The concept of the circular bioeconomy might sound newfangled and niche, but it’s actually an ancient idea, and there are big names behind it. The Prince of Wales recently established the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance (pdf), which aims to raise awareness of, and investment in, the circular bioeconomy, as well as making the case for the sustainable management of forests. Stora Enso, as a purveyor of wood products (which are bio-based products), fits neatly into the sector. According to Paarma, Stora Enso has always been a part of the circular bioeconomy, but it was so self-evident as to not be discussed explicitly. “One key aspect in sustainable forest management is that we ensure that forest always regenerates after harvesting, which makes it a regenerative resource. And that is kind of the underlying factor of the whole bioeconomy and the starting point, but at the same time, it makes us naturally circular,” she says. But circularity is about more than just replacing fossil-based materials with renewable ones. Recycling obviously has a key role to play in any circular economy, even if it isn’t enough by itself. Bear in mind, however, that there’s a difference between the words “recyclable” and “recycling”: the difference between potential and actuality. After all, for anything to be truly recyclable, it must actually get recycled. Businesses must also make sure they’ve thought about total lifecycle when procuring products for use in their supply chains. This includes not only investigating whether a product or packaging is recyclable, but also how it was designed. “[It’s important] you are not just designing for one product and one end use, but really thinking about it as part of a system,” says Paarma. “We have now established a set of circular design principles at Stora Enso, which we are currently implementing in our product management and innovation processes, to tackle the question of how we think big, how we think in a systems-level manner.” The business is also starting to look at reuse. “Reusable packaging is super interesting and something we are actively looking into – what it means for us, and what sort of business models and partners we’ll need for that,” she says. As a business decision-maker, the choices around sustainable packaging and procurement can seem overwhelming. Opting for wood-based packaging over another material, or adopting an entirely different business model such as reuse, requires careful consideration. Nevertheless, from a consumer-demand point of view, the desire for alternatives to plastic is significant. A survey of 7,000 consumers from across Europe found that if offered the same product in card-based or plastic packaging, 92% would choose the plastic-free option. Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to sustainability strategies. But with some reports estimating that the circular bioeconomy will present a $7.7tn opportunity for business by 2030, the concept seems worth investigating.
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2021 4:54:52 GMT
wellbeingeconomy.org/citizensWEAll Citizens is a brand new online community, providing ways for you to Connect, Collaborate and Do. A WEAll Citizen is an individual who agrees that our economic system is not working fairly for everyone and that we need to put people in front of profit. WEAll are in this together. We value togetherness over agreement and believe that if we are going to create global system change, we need to be collaborative and action-oriented. If you’re an organisation or group looking for an ethical, virtual space to organise and connect with others, WEAll Citizens might provide the answer! Click here to download our Citizens partnership offer and here to check out WEAll Citizens for yourself.
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