I’ve just finished reading Supply Shock by Brian Czech and I’m going to give you a summary of what I’ve learned. Basically after reading Enough is Enough by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill (see this post) I was desperate to get my hands on another book that would flesh out the steady state concept even more. … Continue reading
This is another post along the post-growth vein, please read We’ve had Enough Growth for some background on this. Subject for this evening: business models. We’re used to two major business models in the West today: corporations and private companies. Corporations are legally obliged to maximise profit margins for shareholders above all other concerns. Shareholders … Continue reading
Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way our society will be able to become both sustainable and equitable, providing a good quality of life for ourselves while allowing other species to flourish, is if we abandon economic growth and consciously transition to a postgrowth society. I realise that’s a tall order, but … Continue reading
Hello lovely readers! I’m sorry to admit I’ve been neglecting my blog slightly these last few weeks, and I’ve only just noticed why. It’s my summer holiday from university and I’m back in my hometown for a couple of months, visiting my family and my old friends. I realised today that the reason I haven’t … Continue reading
Enough Is Enough (2013) is an astounding book by Rob Dietz and Dan O’Neill, subtitled “Building a sustainable economy in a world of finite resources”. I read it in three days, tossing my novel away with my exam revision. It’s possibly the best book I’ve ever read in my life; it’s only real competition is … Continue reading
con·sum·er·ism Noun: Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. – Definition from Wikipedia Consumerism wouldn’t be a problem if we had an infinitely large planet with an infinite amount of natural resources. The catch is that this is pure fantasy and in reality our planet … Continue reading
So we have this situation where the whole world is run on the assumption that economic growth is the major goal and all other aims like human happiness, humans having enough to eat and rare species being allowed to exist, that sort of thing, are secondary to that. We have this situation where we have … Continue reading
I’ve been giving some serious thought to what kind of economy/society we could have to replace our current model of waste and exploitation that will soon be breaking down. (Please see earlier posts about why and how. In this post I want to focus on what could be next). I think what we should have … Continue reading
Lets talk about growth and improvement. As I outlined in this post, sooner or later (and most likely sooner) the world economy is going to have to stop growing. At the moment our progress is pretty much entirely measured by economic growth… But as they say, you can’t stop progress! And I’m not suggesting for … Continue reading
I’ve just finished reading The Great Disruption by Paul Gilding. I finished it in half a week, not being able to do much else until I’d absorbed every page. It was fantastic. Kind of like a slap in the face, a call to arms and a breath of fresh air all at once. Okay, now … Continue reading
People like shifting blame. There’s a famous psychological study that suggests that the more people witness a victim in distress, the less likely any one onlooker is to do anything. This is because everyone’s thinking ‘’someone else will do something’’. Hmm… Dangerous. A similar thing happens on a much broader scale with all sorts of … Continue reading
As I’ve been reading about the Sustainable Development Conference outlined in my last post, I’ve been thinking that it seems almost too good to be true. I’ve read the Zero Draft document, and a report entitled Green Economies to Green Societies, plus information provided on the official website. They talk of creating green, equitable and … Continue reading
This June, there will be a United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil. Also going by the names of “Rio+20” and “Earth Summit 2012”, this will undoubtedly be a great milestone, an example of history unfolding around us as we speak. We can only hope it will have a more impressive outcome than the 2009 Copenhagen … Continue reading
Today I watched this video of a guy called Nic Marks, from the New Economics Foundation giving a talk about what he terms the “Happy Planet Index”. It’s a way of measuring a nation’s progress, as an alternative to GDP. I think it’s a brilliant idea because GDP doesn’t necessarily reflect a nation’s level of happiness… Of … Continue reading
I think a major problem with our current global economic system is that we have confused money with wealth. This is something that came up in The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy and I think it couldn’t be more true. Allow me to quote: They have failed to follow the fundamental truth that money is not … Continue reading
Earth Baby 