Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In a grand experiment, California switched on a fleet of high-tech greenhouse gas removal machines last month. Funded by the state’s cap-and-trade program, they’re designed to reverse climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These wonderfully complex machines are more high-tech than anything humans have designed. They’re called plants.
A locally based vision of renewable energy generation could eliminate global or national-level domination of the energy infrastructure by a few large players, and thus the concentration of profits in the hands of a very few. It could also reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to very low levels, comparable to the emissions before the industrial revolution.
Our goal is not just to give women a job, we want to empower women, so that they may go out, be active. If women stay at home with nothing, their minds collapse. But if they go out, do something creative, meet people, their morale improves.
Steward-ownership is relatively new as a term, but the underlying concept is almost as old as limited liability corporations, the structure adopted by most modern companies. The original steward-ownership model was invented by Ernst Abbe, co-owner of the successful German optics manufacturing company ZEISS, founded in 1846.
In our report released today A Green Bank of England, we propose several policies and political reforms that would hardwire the Bank of England for climate sustainability.
So I’m in favor of all the above, there’s no one model to solve this problem, but altogether I think many pin pricks can draw blood, to use a violent metaphor which I don’t uphold strategically. The mosquitos can win.
Regenerative Development is a development paradigm designed to push beyond sustainability. While sustainability focuses on development today that protects the ability of future generations to develop, the priority of regenerative development is to apply holistic processes to create feedback loops between physical, natural, economic and social capital that are mutually supportive…
A native Argentinean, Daniela is an agronomist by profession and holds a MS in Natural Resource Management and Economics. With over 25 years of international experience in ranching, Holistic Management, and collaborative ecosystem restoration programs, Daniela cofounded the Savory Institute in 2009, and became its CEO in 2011.
So…what path to take? The old familiar mainstream, the marginal, or the radically new? Hell, I’m opting for all of the above. I think we need to revitalise the best of the old traditions of right and left, while bringing in the contributions of more marginal political positions from the past – and articulating them all afresh in the completely novel historical circumstances we face.
Life actively contributed to the creation and maintenance of conditions on Earth that are favourable for higher organisms. In the words of Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimcry Institute: “Life creates conditions conducive to life.” Over the course of the last forty years James Lovelock’s hypothesis has matured into a new field of scientific investigation that is referred to as Gaia theory or Earth Systems Science.
A wellbeing economy has the fundamental goal of achieving sustainable wellbeing with dignity and fairness for humans and the rest of nature. This is in stark contrast to current economies that are wedded to a very narrow vision of development—indiscriminate growth of GDP.
It is all too clear that our economy is precarious, economically, socially and ecologically. Steady State Manchester promotes the Viable Economy, which means greater resilience, localisation, and balance as economic activity is treated not an end in itself, but rather as a means to deliver a sufficiently prosperous future without continual “growth”.
