Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From a Transition perspective, a shortening of trade distances has to be a good thing, right? Bringing manufacturing back closer to where people live, thereby reducing carbon emissions, enabling more money to cycle within the national economy rather than globally? So far, so Transition… And yet.
My father likes to say that some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The same could be said of the neoliberals of the world, who–in case you missed my previous piece–are now transcendent in most policy circles across the world.
The ‘Great Acceleration’ of economic activity in the past 60 years has led to a series of interlocking crises. Here’s why a Great Deceleration is necessary for us “to live again with affection and beauty on this earth.”
During the early decades of the century, the market will lose its magic.
Trade is not only a response to market demand, it creates demand and therefore recreates the need for it; trade becomes its own justification.
Getting out of Europe does nothing to address the real problems in UK society—or the world.
Implicit in the rhetoric promoting globalization is the premise that the rest of the world should be brought up to the standard of living of the West, and America in particular.
Today, interlinked multinational banks and corporations constitute a de facto European government, determining economic activity through the ‘European market’….In other words, corporations run Europe.
We have been living in a world of rapid globalization, but this is not a condition that we can expect to continue indefinitely.
To understand the rise of religious fundamentalism and ethnic conflict we need to look at the deep impacts of the global consumer culture on living cultures across the planet. Doing so allows us to better understand ISIS and similar groups, and see a way forward that lessens violence on all sides.
A respected human-rights expert at the United Nations, Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, has joined the global movement opposing trade treaties like TPP and TTIP. And he has novel and powerful legal arguments.
Big business is the main destroyer of our environment. But companies—both small and big—may well also be the only entities powerful and creative enough to reverse this trend.
