Andrew Nikiforuk

Debt and the Transition economy

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As we navigate The Great Turning, we must create a safety net or “backup plan” as the conventional growth-dependent economic system falters and crumbles. Ideally, that safety net will integrate threads which become the foundation for the new economy — a post-carbon, post-petroleum, post-peak-everything, more socially just, necessarily degrowth economy.

Uneconomic growth deepens depression

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The US and Western Europe are in a recession threatening to become a depression as bad as that of the 1930s. Therefore we look to Keynesian policies as the cure, namely stimulate consumption and investment—that is, stimulate growth of the economy. It seemed to work in the past, so why not now? Should not ecological economics and steady-state ideas give way to Keynesian growth economics in view of the present crisis?

Review: “The Geography of Thought”

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It was suggested that I read this book because I was looking for a Western proclivity for apocalypse fever. My conclusion after reading it is that change is simply scarier for the Westerner, while in Asia, change is so much the expected norm that it is taken in stride. I would add that Americans tend to spin out their horror far into the future or, as one therapist I know puts it, to awful-ize a situation. Watching Bangkok friends and family face the recent flood crisis with a remarkable amount of equanimity confirmed this for me.

Our co-owned future

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The explosive force of Occupy Wall Street—and more than a thousand other local efforts—offers hope that a movement committed to long-term change might one day achieve a fundamental transformation of the American political-economic system. Quietly, a different kind of progressive change is emerging, one that involves a transformation in institutional structures and power, a process one could call “evolutionary reconstruction.”

Making local food our future: A community response to the global food system

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Attempts to find solutions to the problems we face in the current climate of economic uncertainty, energy insecurity and environmental concerns can seem overwhelming. One of the biggest challenges we face is that of food security – leading food producers have warned that unless the UK urgently develops a food strategy we will be left relying on imported food and without a sustainable future for British food production.

ODAC Newsletter – March 2

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Brent oil briefly touched $128/barrel on Thursday as pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme continued, the latest development being demands from Israel on the US to be more explicit in its threat of military action. The sharply rising prices are already impacting the weakened economies of Europe and the US making some wonder whether sanctions intended to hurt Iran could be backfiring…