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Post by Admin on Apr 25, 2021 15:49:36 GMT
“Today the complexity of our global civilization and the resulting problems cannot be managed by the political organization of a working class. Likewise, the compromises offered by variations of SOCIALISM represent patchwork solutions involving the tweaking of gears in a broken machine that requires an entire replacement. The problems today are technical and require the mobilization of scientists and engineers to provide technical solutions within a systems approach to manage the Earth’s resources with reference to its carrying capacity. This requires a global survey of resources, personnel, and needs.
“Karl Marx diagnosed many of the underlying problems of the free market and predicted the collapse of CAPITALISM by its own mechanisms in his articulation of the “internal contradictions of capitalism.” And he did envision a world free from oppressive structures. But Marx omitted innumerous logistical problems we would face as a planetary system and the systems approach required to manage the Earth and its resources for all inhabitants, both human and otherwise; that is, the need for a strategic management methodology for Earth that we call a Global RESOURCE BASED ECONOMY. “As exclaimed in The Communist Manifesto, the “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Knowing what we know now, we might rewrite this statement to state the underlying problem: the history of civilization has been the history of resource mismanagement under conditions of scarcity. All class struggle has been a symptom of this underlying condition and it is this root cause that The Venus Project addresses. Although Karl Marx did envision a vague picture of a communist society wherein money, private property, and social hierarchy was abolished, he couldn’t begin to imagine how to implement that at a technical level.
“In contrast to COMMUNISM, The Venus Project calls for the total redesign of cities (transportation, distribution, manufacturing, recycling, infrastructure) to produce abundance of goods and services. This is achieved through automation and optimized infrastructural efficiency. All basic social, personal, and ecological needs are accounted and provided for at the outset, according to the latest scientific assessment, and managed as a system via cybernetic feedback loops. Humanity’s scientific knowledge and means of production have evolved well beyond what is needed to make this a reality. But it begins with a test and a prototype, not a wish and a revolution.”
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Post by Admin on May 13, 2021 17:26:06 GMT
Free collaboration networks A Free Collaboration Network (FCN) is a network of people or organisations who provide free goods and services through volunteering and contributions. FCNs are considered to be vital stepping stones towards an open access economy as they help re-shape behaviour towards unconditional and implicit trading systems. FCNs are growing in number all around the world. This directory therefore only represents a small fraction of those that exist. If you know of any not listed here, we invite you to edit the page and add it. Also, if you can't find one that you can engage with, you can consider creating your own. There are many types, categorized here them by services they provide: openaccesseconomy.org/doku.php?id=free_collaboration_networks
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Post by Admin on Jul 6, 2021 20:56:57 GMT
"Hence so long as the people of the world are not demanding the universal implementation of Article 25 through the sharing of global resources, then so long will the drive for commercial profit continue to destroy our natural environment. And while the produce of the world is not shared, while food surpluses are left to rot while millions of people go hungry, while the human family continues to overlook the suffering of its poorest members, then it is inevitable that disequilibrium will be experienced in the planet’s eco-systems and weather patterns. Because you cannot deal with environmental problems without also dealing with the injustice of poverty, the injustice of human exploitation, the injustice of hoarding and not sharing the earth’s produce that belongs to us all. Is it therefore sufficient to bring awareness to the public about the climate crisis, without even mentioning the word ‘hunger’ or the lack of sharing in our world? Or is that the definition of our ignorance, considering that the planet’s health is getting worse and worse the more we try to tackle environmental problems while paying insufficient attention to widespread human deprivation? On solely moral grounds it is deplorable to believe we can tackle our environmental problems without also tackling global poverty, for there is no reason why we cannot save the hungry at the same time as we act to save our world. We now see many popular mobilisations to stop climate change or halt environmental destruction, but how often do we see coordinated worldwide actions that call for an immediate end to life-threatening conditions of hunger and poverty? Yet if we can organise ourselves globally to try and stop an illegal war, or else to raise awareness of an impending ecological catastrophe that most world leaders are seeming to ignore, then we can surely organise massive international protests that are united in the cause of implementing Article 25—and motivated by an attitude of ‘what about the others?’ Maybe we should sit back and ask ourselves why the climate issue has become so important in our households, whilst around 17 million people dying from poverty-related causes each year is of no real concern to our everyday lives. Is it more important for us to breathe clean air tomorrow than it is for the desperately poor person to eat a piece of bread today, notwithstanding that hunger was a daily reality for millions of people even before Greenpeace was born? We have maybe 10 or 15 years left to prevent catastrophic climate change, but how many years or even days remain for the destitute child who is slowly dying from malnutrition? These questions are raised in a spirit of protest from the present writer, who has never understood the answers and never will. The indignity of poverty has existed for much longer than our present-day problem of environmental pollution, but for some strange reason only the weather has found a voice in worldwide public demonstrations. As if the environment has been given a first class seat in global activism, whilst the poor do not even have a class to sit in. And the very poorest citizens themselves only rarely speak up about their plight, so conditioned are they—as always—to accept their fate or quietly die in abject poverty. This altogether leaves us with a disturbing realisation if we suppose that wealthy nations could succeed in restoring their local environment to a balanced state, despite the continuation of disastrous weather patterns in Africa, Asia or other regions with a high incidence of poverty. For would we then think about the others and impel our governments to help them, or would we continue with our insular, indifferent and complacent way of life that is currently the norm? The fact is that environmental issues are mainly about ourselves, our future and our own children’s lives, with far less consideration given for the kind of future that extremely poor children have in distant countries. We are educating our own children to think about the good of the environment, to recycle plastic and tins in a green box, but we have failed to teach them to think about the millions of other children who live in severe poverty overseas without even the privilege of eating a nutritious meal each day. When for every bottle that a child in an affluent nation recycles at home, possibly two children are at that moment dying from poverty-related causes somewhere else in the world. Of course, raising awareness about environmental issues is unquestionably crucial and laudable, for the planet is in a state of disrepair and an adequate response from humanity has hardly begun. But perhaps we should again pause for a moment to ask ourselves: do I care more about climate change than the reality of global hunger, simply because I am influenced by other followers of a fashionable cause? Indeed how many times did I recycle my household waste products in the past week, and how many times did I spare a thought for the literally hundreds of thousands of people who needlessly died as a result of poverty over the same time period? If you had spoken to any one of those fatally impoverished people about the state of the environment before they passed away, you can be sure they would have said in response: ‘I cannot think about the forests or CO2 emissions, I just want some food, clean water, healthcare, a sustainable livelihood and adequate housing!’ Again, let us not be mistaken for it is certainly the right thing to educate others about the environmental emergency, but we also have to ask ourselves what kind of education this is in a divided, anguished and morally reprehensible world. What kind of better life can we expect when commercialisation is taking over the agenda of every mainstream political party, when the unjust global economy is causing hardship and despair for countless families, when international tensions are leading to an epidemic of anxiety and depression, and when thousands of people are dying from poverty each day beneath the radar of public attention? Why do we want the environment to return to health at all, if the world continues along this same iniquitous course? We don’t even have reliable statistics for how many people are hungry or silently suffering in absolute poverty, although we have access to an endless stream of data about changing weather patterns and flows of greenhouse gases that may affect the affluent nations. Perhaps this is no surprise when any public discussions about the environment are considered to be principled and civilised, whereas barely a word is spoken in polite conversation about the tragedy of those who continue to die from poverty in the world’s darkest corners. Yet even now, in the midst of so much weather chaos and financial turmoil, it is still possible for nations to combine their efforts in feeding the hungry, healing the sick, caring for the dispossessed and at the same time preventing runaway climate change and repairing the environment. Doing so has always been possible, for as long as the problems have ever existed. The only way that governments can achieve this unparalleled objective today, however, is through the right politicians getting elected into office with the world’s people united behind them—and that is where the root of the problem lies as a result of our deeply ingrained apathy and complacency. When observing world problems from the most holistic and spiritual perspective, it may be said that the climate crisis is the result of human intelligence going in the wrong way due to our collective worshipping of profit, wealth and power, which has consequently led to a generalised indifference towards the environmental commons. But everyone plays a part in this adverse reality, which compels us all to acknowledge how we have become caught in the trap of environment breakdown due to our mutual complicity in the causes of this defining issue of our time. The trap is that we believe ‘there is little time left to save the planet’, while all along we contribute to the processes that are escalating the self-destruction of the natural world. Due to our inadequate modes of education and our consequent lack of self-knowledge, we do not know ourselves or the purpose of our lives, hence we are easily influenced by the desire to become ‘happy’ in a blinkered and egocentric manner through our identification with materiality. And the forces of commercialisation are superbly adept at exploiting our ignorance and conformity in order to make money in every direction, as exemplified in the grossest terms by the frenzy of overconsumption at Christmas or the mindless shopping on Black Friday sales. Through our psychological need for security and happiness we are all susceptible to the conditioning of our society that compels us to become a ‘somebody’ who is better than others, or otherwise indoctrinates us to aspire to live in luxury with large houses, profligate consumption habits and extravagant holidays. Can we follow how this translates into a global picture that is characterised by millions of business contracts and profit-seeking activities around the world, in conjunction with foreign policies based on aggressive competition for limited global resources, which overall has an ongoing and devastating impact on the environment? Individuals are educated to aspire to become a successful somebody, leading to self-interested attitudes and a certain indifference to others that is expressed on both national and international levels. And that accumulated self-interest is the pride and joy of multinational corporations, leading to mass patterns of over-consumption and the degradation of the natural environment. In the final analysis, it is neither governments nor corporations that are the driving factor behind the cutting of rainforests, the strip mining for valuable minerals, the non-stop digging for fossil fuels and so on. More exactly, it is the people within each nation that have been educated to desire the high-consumption lifestyle that brings about this necessitated destruction, regardless of its effects on the people of other nations where the destruction occurs. As we have noted elsewhere, the materialistic and self-seeking idea of the American Dream has now been exported to almost every country of the world, and it represents a form of social conditioning that is not only synonymous with commercialisation but also with environmental ruination.[x] Observing this complex mess in its totality that we are all responsible for perpetuating to a greater or lesser degree, the question of man’s culpability in causing global warming is a diversion to which we might as well reply: what does it matter anyway? Reflecting on how we participate in prolonging today’s climate crisis may also lead us to realise that a deeper cause of the problem originates in how we live together and interact within society. For we are born into a world where people are lacking in joy, are heavily conditioned and uncreative, are psychologically separated from one another in their relationships—all of which causes serious disequilibrium within the environment and atmosphere. Hence the prevalent motivation to become rich and successful in the midst of poverty and misery is also a cause of the disturbances that are felt within the elements of nature. This is an esoteric but essential insight to perceive if we want to understand why we can never heal the planet’s ecosystems unless we also resolve our social problems in all their dimensions. In other words, it is not just what man does that affects the environment, but also what he thinks and feels, as there is an intricate relationship between man’s thought and the natural world. If you go into the room of a depressive or drug addict and it negatively affects you on a subtle or emotional level, then it is surely possible that all the negative thoughts and emotions of people in their masses has a deleterious effect on nature and global climatic conditions. And what is the predominant tenor of the thoughts that man is producing right now? What else but the idolatry of profit, power and wealth, mixed with an endemic indifference to the welfare of others. Greed per se represents imbalance, and if we extrapolate all the avarice, selfishness and indifference that is expressed within individuals to an aggregate level, then we can surmise the effect it may have on the life around us, including weather patterns, sea levels, and the behaviour of plants and animals. So it is not only the worldly activities of multinational corporations that causes ecological destruction, but also the very thought and intention of corporate lobbying or pernicious deal-making by many millions of business executives. Similarly, a powerful government that sells armaments to other nations is not only responsible for perpetuating war and death in far-off regions, but also for spreading fear and depression in the consciousness of people throughout the world, which is ultimately reflected in disturbances within the planet’s atmosphere and ecosystems. Even the apartheid walls around the West Bank and Gaza have a tremendously negative effect on the elements of nature, and ramify the psychological depression, anguish and hatred that is raging in our divided world. If there is a divine evolutionary plan for humanity, then such a wall represents its polar opposite and should be regarded as one of the ugliest monuments built in the late twentieth-century. For man is Life and every atom within the universe is inextricably connected, which is a basic postulate that has profound implications for societal arrangements and human relationships once we thoroughly apprehend and accept its validity. Until then, we are all someway to blame for the continuation of both our social and environmental crises, and we are only truly united in terms of our ignorance or indifference to the links between these associated problems. Just as the transnational corporate entity is indifferent to the destruction it perpetrates on nature, we too are collectively indifferent to the millions of people who are at risk of dying as a result of hunger and other poverty-related causes. If the big corporation effectively abhors nature for the sake of profit, we effectively abhor our poorest brothers and sisters for the sake of pursuing our private happiness and comfort. Hence we are all the same in terms of our self-centredness, blindness, arrogance, ignorance and indifference. Yet for so long have we ignored the problem of man-made hunger and poverty, that now poverty is coming back to haunt us through social turmoil and disasters in the environment—because everything that happens on this earth is spiritually interrelated. Have you noticed how the climate has suddenly deteriorated over the past few decades since commercialisation entered our veins, and humanity started consuming resources more fiercely than ever before? Have you noticed how rapidly the streets are becoming more crowded, how homelessness and poverty is getting worse by the day, how we are becoming more and more confused and exhausted from all the suffering, pain, and moral depravity of our world? And have you observed how this dysfunctional system that we mutually sustain has now developed a clever mechanism that reproduces itself, forcing us to remain caught in its divisive processes even if we don’t want to be part of it anymore? Then know the truth that climate change is a reflection of the disorder that can be openly witnessed in our dysfunctional society today, born out of all the sorrow, injustice, greed, inequality, and most of all the indifference that is endemic on this planet. Reverse all of that and you will have a healthy environment, for as long as you shall live and beyond. For to be indifferent to hunger and poverty is to deny yourself those God-given moments of freedom where you gaze up at a deep blue sky in complete inner silence, where the climate is still dignified with its four seasons, and where the sea in its love never says no to the rivers of the world who want to enter its womb. Heralding Article 25: A people's strategy for world transformation Mohammed Sofiane Mesbahi 30 July 2015 www.sharing.org/information-centre/reports/heralding-article-25-peoples-strategy-world-transformation
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Post by Admin on Jul 7, 2021 17:06:02 GMT
With the technological knowledge we have today, could we create all we need to live on the planet and eliminate scarcity and live in a world beyond poverty, war and politics? Sue Everatt is a thinker and a part of the The Venus Project – an organization built around a new concept of money-free resource-based economy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9hvV03t9q4MORE About This New Vision For Humanity: www.resourcebasedeconomy.org/#ResourceBasedEconomy #TheVenusProject Let's redesign society! | Sue Everatt | TEDxLundUniversity www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9hvV03t9q4
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Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2021 17:04:27 GMT
What would the perfect society look like? Peace and harmony. No crime. No war. No disease. The city of Venerable seems to be just such a utopia. But how was this idyllic existence achieved. And will it last? www.samuelfreedman-author.com/
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Post by Admin on Aug 4, 2021 18:51:45 GMT
Responding with love to a civilization in crisis What if our efforts to create a more just and caring world weren’t separated from our efforts to adapt to near-term social collapse? www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/responding-love-civilization-crisis/On average civilizations have lasted about 336 years. Most of us are aware that modern civilization has become deeply unsustainable, but many do not realize that we are heading toward civilizational collapse. Today’s civilization is increasingly complex, while social inequalities are deepening, our environmental impact is growing, and the climate is changing. When all four of these indicators rise together, the likelihood of collapse is greater. The collapse of modern civilization marks a decisive moment in human history. What we face is a turning point between two futures: The Great Transition and the Great Unraveling. The Great Transition describes a future in which society is comprehensively reorganized to sustain itself in dynamic equilibrium with the Earth’s systems. Humans have never before sustainably organized a global society at such a high level of complexity, but for the first time in history it may be possible to live in a globally interconnected, technologically advanced, sustainable civilization - what some call an ecological civilization. On the other hand, perhaps we lack the collective capacity or will to transform in time to avert collapse. Rather than shepherding the Great Transition, we could experience the Great Unraveling instead. The explosive growth of modern civilization was a historical event predicated on the exploitation of cheap energy reserves buried beneath the Earth’s surface. Now, society’s population and complexity have grown beyond our capacity to sustain them via the continued use of fossil fuels. Without sustainable alternatives to the global order, the Great Unraveling will become a reality. Current commitments to reduce carbon emissions are estimated to result in a 3-4 degree temperature increase in this century. Experts say that this is incompatible with an organized global community. The ensuing collapse of global systems would be utterly devastating. Some of us would survive, but we would live in a world beset by social breakdown and conflict in which deeply unequal societies competed for resources. Both these visions are clear and prescient. Both hold a certain truth, and in some ways, the Great Transition and the Great Unraveling are already happening. This world is dying, and the world that replaces it could be both more beautiful and more chaotic. Some people accept the inevitability of collapse and work toward deep adaptation; others accept the possibility of nonlinear social change and work toward deep transformation. But it’s naïve to think that only one of these approaches is correct. Too often, efforts are divided between those who focus on transforming civilization and those who focus on building resilience. Some people focus on systems change but don’t consider transformation deeply enough, while others adapt to social and ecological breakdown but don’t offer any civilizational alternatives. But what if our efforts to create a more just and caring world weren’t separated from our efforts to adapt to near-term social collapse? What if we accepted the breadth and depth of the transformation required and acknowledged that even if we fail in some measure, we could still transform in ways that serve everyone amidst the chaos? That is our proposal: to acknowledge both realities and help people to stay in touch with the suffering of the Great Unraveling, while remaining committed to helping all of us carry on - not only to survive, but also to imagine and co-create something better in the form of the Great Transition. How could this be accomplished? Many if not all of our current social and ecological crises require both an ability to adapt and an ability to create. We need to support ourselves and our communities to respond to collapse with spiritual integrity and a positive vision, and we need an integrated approach that prepares activists, researchers and organizers to maintain hope while probing the depths of suffering - and transforming it. We see this as the heart of spiritual activism, propelled by helping people to reclaim their sense of relationality, develop their capacities for holding complexity, learn how to heal injustice and harm, dream of a better world, and act to bring it about. Often, responses to collapse are fractured along single issues, narrow theories of change, disciplinary boundaries, national borders, and in some cases identity politics. This fracturing reveals a deeper problem: a crisis of perception about the nature of human beings and our relationship to each other and the world. Today’s culturally dominant worldview is based on a fundamental dualism and an atomistic view of life that privileges individualism and independence over interdependence. This view of separateness or otherness has affected the ways we relate to each other and to the non-human world. It allows one seemingly arbitrary category to be culturally valued over another: male over female, mind over body, reason over emotion, the universal over the particular, human beings over nature, ‘civilized’ over ‘primitive’. Historically, this has led to the worst forms of injustice, including sexism, racism, colonialism and ecocide. And it has enabled crises of oppression, exploitation, extractivism, and the devaluing of life in general. Positively addressing the collapse of modern civilization thus calls for a shift away from a worldview based on separation and dualism to an ecological systems view based on interconnections. The systems view provides our current best understanding of nature, but practicing it requires not just intellectual engagement or reflection but fundamentally changing the way we experience and relate to the world. This not only calls for a shift in consciousness, but also a new way of understanding how transformation happens. The truth is, we need new cultures of practice that integrate personal and social transformation without maintaining a false divide between the inner and outer, as if they represented two totally different spheres. The systems view allows us to become more aware of the non-separation between these spheres, and the necessity to build care-based systems and structures that enhance the quality of our relationships to each other, to non-humans, and to the life cycles of nature. Rather than addressing the symptoms of our crises, the systems view also calls us to address their underlying causes, and to see patterns in and across different perspectives. Social and ecological crises are interrelated phenomena that share some of the same roots. Addressing our civilizational crisis requires us to see the intersectionality of multiple problems. The refugee crisis, for example, is a problem generated in part by climate change, insofar as drought decreases crop yields, increases unemployment, and exacerbates social instability and conflict leading to large-scale migrations. Solving the refugee crisis can’t therefore happen by building walls, but must instead be addressed through a whole systems approach. After understanding the deeper causes of suffering there must also be a process of healing to reclaim and restore relationships. Nature exists across a continuum of relationships, such that the way we maltreat each other is reflected in the way we maltreat nonhumans. Once we move beyond denial that climate change is an existential threat, we must consider its root causes and begin to heal them. In part, this entails healing the trauma caused by exploitative systems like capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. It includes demanding reparations for the victims of slavery and colonialism. And it entails building regenerative systems which protect the rights of nature and respect the intrinsic value and sanctity of all life. As we begin to heal, we can move from a reactive to a responsive stance and consider what else might be possible. What might it look and feel like to embrace an ethos of thriving rather than just surviving? Accepting the magnitude of today’s crises and the likelihood of modern civilization’s collapse offers us fresh new ways to envision a more beautiful world. What is the most beautifully alive world our caring hearts can envision? Dominant narratives in the mainstream media emphasize adapting to post-apocalyptic realities, as seen in films like Mad Max and Snowpiercer. Alternatively, speculative fiction genres like afrofuturism, indigenous futurism, and solarpunk offer positive visions of sustainable futures based on minoritarian cultural assumptions, values, and traditions. Of course, these visions are constrained not just by the limits of our imagination but by current realities, possibilities and opportunities for change. Many best practices and solutions exist to create the world we want, but it is difficult to identify the constraints and conditions supporting strategic and effective action. The field of transition design offers integrative ways to align visions with processes for designing sustainable societies. Transition discourses on post-development, eco-socialism, social anarchism, degrowth, the commons, transition towns, and ecovillages describe some ways to design sustainable social systems. There are many ways for each of us to contribute to the Great Transition. The good news is we are not the first to think this way. Many other teachers, activists, lineages, cultures and traditions have called us back into right relationship with each other and the world. It is our job to put the pieces together and build coalitions that put everyone’s unique skills and capacities to work. None of us have all the answers, but collectively we can support each other’s learning journeys, connect, and build capacity for both the Great Transition and the Great Unraveling. This way we face both realities with our strongest capacities while supporting the best features of the Great Transition. Zack Walsh and Brooke Lavelle’s new online course on EcoJustice: Securing Our Future is now open for registration. It is a collaboration between the A Mindset for the Anthropocene Project at the IASS, Potsdam and the Courage of Care Coalition. On August 13-16 2019 there will also be a retreat on socially-engaged contemplation for sustainability at the Ratna Ling center to further develop these ideas in collaboration with contemplative scholar-practitioners, social activists, and environmental scientists.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2021 9:49:14 GMT
Earth Constitution Institute The World Needs a Constitution Humanity needs a plan for global unity in an age of worldwide challenges such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the rise of potentially dangerous new technologies. We must come together to protect our planet and the human rights of every person. The Earth Constitution Institute (ECI) offers a detailed plan for the Federation of Earth. earthconstitution.world/
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Post by Admin on Nov 2, 2021 18:16:11 GMT
From the bowels of the earth to the sky: Rethinking civilization growth A revolution of the mind must occur in order for humanity to succeed on a finite planet. bigthink.com/the-present/sustainability-rethinking-civilization-growth/#Echobox=1635569508Rarely, if ever, do we stop to think about how remarkable certain everyday comforts are: to flick an electric switch and have light inundate a dark room; to turn on a faucet and have drinking water; to take a hot shower; to live in a home that is cool in hot days and warm in cool days; to step into a metal box and move wherever we want; to go to a store and buy food; to talk to someone across the world; to dump dirty clothes into a machine and have it wash it all. The list is endless. Now, go back 150 years to 1871. Life was completely different. Energy was scarce; animals pulled plows and carriages; steam engines were beginning to flourish; technology was very primitive compared to today; medicine had yet to understand disease and sterilization. There were no telephones. Cars and airplanes were not invented yet. Light bulbs were still a laboratory curiosity. People drank crude oil as medicine. The first gasoline-fueled combustion engine car was still five years away, invented by Carl Benz, in Germany. The world population was about 900 million. The pros and cons of technological progress But look at us now! Fossil fuels transformed the world. Technology transformed the world. Life expectancy in the U.S. went from 39.4 years to 78.8 years. The world population grew to 7.8 billion, and well over 200,000 cars are built per day. It’s an amazing story of success for our species. And of catastrophic environmental devastation. Even if technological innovation has its roots in basic research, the driver for the transition from the lab to the marketplace is money. Growth is measured by sales, and sales generate profit. In the past 150 years, the gross domestic product per capita in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (known collectively as Western Offshoots) grew from $4,647 to $53,757 (corrected for inflation and measured in international 2011 prices). What feeds these fat pockets? Fossil fuels, deforestation, mining, the depletion of the oceans, industrialized agriculture. The obvious truth is becoming clearer to a growing number of people: we live on a finite planet, with finite resources, and with a finite capability of cleaning the mess we make. The time of treating the oceans and the rivers as giant sewage dumps, the atmosphere as an endless sponge for noxious fumes, and the forests as inconvenient obstacles to be removed for expansive cattle grazing and agriculture is over. I’m glad to be alive to witness our reinvention. The essential question, then, is what can be done? Is it possible to maintain the current growth rate based on a profoundly different worldview, one where the fuel that feeds growth is not unchecked environmental destruction but a symbiotic relationship between our species and the planet we inhabit? Can the economy adapt to a new worldview before we inflict even more irreversible damage to the planet? The first point to keep in mind is that we are not separate from the environmental devastation we perpetrate. If the environment goes, we go. We need clean air, clean water, and clean energy to survive. The more of us there are, the more urgent this obvious fact becomes. The inventiveness and resourcefulness that we have traditionally applied to industrial and warfare innovation must now be applied to our own survival on this planet. We need to reinvent how we relate to the world. We must move from the plundering mindset that sucked our prosperity from the bowels of the Earth to one that collects the energy that the skies serve us. A revolution of the mind This change in mindset represents a reversal from an aggressive relation to the environment — the metallic machines that dig holes to suck fossil fuels from the underground — to one that embraces what is already here: the sun, the wind, and the carbon-fixing capabilities of forestlands across the world. Last week, President Biden convened 40 world leaders to discuss our collective energy future. The current administration clearly represents the new mindset. We must change the way we think about economic profit being averse to renewable energy. The old worldview, based on the past 150 years of the industrial growth motto — that is, let’s consume the bowels of the Earth to get rich — is dead. It’s unviable. It’s unsustainable. It’s self-destructive. It’s immoral. The changes to come will be as world-changing as the ones that exploded during the early 20th century with rampant industrialization: An economy based on the passive extraction of renewable energy from the skies; vast reforestation programs for carbon fixing; a complete overhaul of the auto industry toward electric and hydrogen-cell vehicles; a retraining of the workforce to adapt to the growing automation of production and to the need for versatility in the marketplace due to the new jobs of the digital age; a redesign of school curricula to retell the story of our relation to the environment to raise awareness among younger generations; and an emergent new ethics of life that embraces the planet and all living creatures we share it with as partners and not targets. A decade or so ago, these views would be dismissed as utopic or at least naïve. But not anymore. The new worldview is taking root, and foolish is the country that won’t embrace it quickly. I’m glad to be alive to witness our reinvention.
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Post by Admin on Nov 4, 2021 9:58:44 GMT
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Post by Admin on Nov 5, 2021 19:17:51 GMT
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Post by Admin on Nov 25, 2021 17:21:46 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2021 8:08:05 GMT
Organomics: Year Zero Posted byWalktheHorizonMarch 1, 2021Posted inEconomics, EditorialTags:Capitalism, Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Economics, Infrastructure, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, Organomics, Politics, Progressive, RBE, Resource Based Economy, Socialism, UBI, Universal Basic Income joshuastelling.com/organomics-year-zero
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Post by Admin on Dec 21, 2021 20:26:38 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2021 22:28:34 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 27, 2021 15:50:55 GMT
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