Economy

As Trump’s Iran war devours billions, a Connecticut town closes a public school and shuffles vulnerable kids to plug a budget gap. Drawing on Eisenhower’s warning about “guns” stealing from the hungry and cold, this piece discusses how runaway U.S. militarism quietly wrecks local lives and communities.

Modern corporations are legally and financially structured to prioritize profit over ecological stability. The result is a system that normalizes environmental destruction while diffusing responsibility across institutions and individuals.

The Transition Towns movement has helped popularize local resilience, but current movements stop short of the structural change required. In a world of overlapping crises, it calls for more radical forms of economic relocalization and material simplicity.

From low-carbon farming to community energy and Amazon restoration, Brazil’s cooperative sector is mobilizing millions to act on climate at a local level. The model highlights how existing co-op networks could be scaled to support a more just and resilient transition.

More than 50 countries are meeting in Colombia to explore how economies can move away from coal, oil and gas through “complementary” multilateral negotiations.

From engineered consumer addiction to environmental destruction, corporate harm is not a failure of the system but its logic. But because corporations exist by public charter, that logic can be rewritten through democratic oversight, time-limited licenses and rules that focus on risks to people and the planet.