Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The true wealth of Appalachia isn’t underground, but within its people. Coalfield elevates the Appalachian values of “gumption, grit, and grace.” They’re the same qualities that allowed people to make a living in the mountains for generations.
The choice is that either we end up with unmanaged decline, which would be catastrophic, or a managed levelling out of our economies, shaped by a shift in social values and expectations.
We need to address the failures of capitalism and its ineffective forms head-on by creating decentralized and cooperative local economies, and emphasizing local production with local resources to meet local needs, and to build local wealth.
What a UBI offers is a form of protection that does not trap people either outside employment (thanks to its universality) or inside employment (thanks to its being obligation-free).
These are two very different books but with much in common. Both are concerned with how to respond to the climate and ecological emergency. Jonathan Neale’s (JN) focus is on the global level, while that of Mathew Lawrence and Laurie Laybourn-Langton (L&L-L) is primarily on the UK.
The feminist approach to climate justice therefore demands that governments, civil society, private sector, environmentalists should address the causes and effects of climate change, not as a single issue, but in recognition of the full spectrum of the numerous challenges that communities face
We have to assume that we have reached the century of limits, and the current model is no good for us. We have to plan and try to redistribute while reducing our impact.
Tim Jackson’s new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism (Polity Press, 2021), follows his ground-breaking Prosperity without Growth (2009, updated in 2017). Whilst the previous work reflected, partly, the austerity-driven answers to the Great Recession, Post Growth falls into a different world.
The site houses some 70 small businesses in what Southern Dallas County developer and human connector, Monte Anderson, calls “a collaborative village.” It’s a prime example of what’s known as incremental development.
Ecological economist Tim Jackson is one of the few serious scholars trying to imagine what a post-growth world might look like.
Scientific control leads to rigid dogma in academics; science should be open as an axiomatic condition. Pluralism helps to avoid theories unfit to their realms of use.
The Mandela Day has inspired me to reflect on two things: the importance of collective leadership and the need to heal from the traumas of our history.
