Green Options

Community Supported Agriculture is a form of farming which encourages the active participation of a farm’s surrounding community in the production of its food.

The scheme works by signing up people to receive locally produced food and veg one year at a time. How much they pay for this food depends upon the amount of time they commit to working on the farm: the more time they commit, they cheaper the food.

This [...]

As the G20 leaders gather in Washington for what has been dubbed “Bretton Woods II”, here’s a brief list of the economic opportunities they need to discuss:

The World’s population is estimated at 6.7 billion:

of this, 15% live in slums and are permanently hungry
yet the USA, the EU, the UK, Russia, China, India and Brazil have all reported bumper harvests this year

The World’s GDP is estimated at $55.5tr per annum:

of this 85% is consumed by 20% of the population
while 45% of the population live on around $900 per annum

and 0.0001% of the population have a combined wealth of over $10tr

In the USA, in the ten years to 2006:

employment stayed at around 72%
while average earnings rose 45% from $37,000 to $54,000
and the average real income of the poorest 20% of households fell

In other words, the global economy is fixed in a spiral where prosperity is hoarded by those who already have and isn’t shared with those who already have not. Social mobility is non-existent.

Gazing into the future of a carbon market, two things seem certain: a fundamental change to the economy and sweeping land reforms.
There are two well known and highly charged sayings about land:
—–agriculture is the foundation of economic growth
—–all land use is inherently political
The fast approaching world of a carbon market could see how we use land becoming the most important issue in stopping climate change becoming a disaster for mankind.

An introduction to the Steady State Economy. Should this be the way globalisation goes? Read the article then add your thoughts below.

Previous posts in the “New Economic Architecture Required” series have looked at Wealth & Value, Money & Debt and Growth & Competition.

What these very brief analyses have shown is that we, the human race, are living beyond our means.

A Steady State Economy may be a way of bringing our consumption back into line, eliminating boom and bust in the process.

This article is part of EcoWorldly’s week-long spotlight on Politicians You Can Believe In. To read more, subscribe to our RSS feed, or view our posts about politics.

Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, has had a colourful professional life.

Always a social radical, he pushed the boundaries of London politics as leader of the Greater London Council in the early 1980s. By constantly attacking the Thatcher government’s policies he ensured unemployment, race issues and nuclear disarmament remained high on the news agenda.

After a hiatus as a Member of Parliament he returned to the tiller as Mayor of London in 2000 and surprised many by his comparatively moderate stance on many issues.

However, he had lost none of his radicalism and he quickly set about pushing the boundaries once more, but this time in a green direction. Here are five of his world leading initiatives, which politicians of all hues ought to take notice of.

With a New Economy starting to emerge, how should we measure it’s strength? Using the old fashioned Gross Domestic Product, or the more holistic Genuine Progress Indicator?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

A businessman is showing a potential investor around his factory. The investor is very impressed and likes the businessman’s figures. These show that the factory produces $5.2m worth of goods.

“And what about your expenditure?” he asks the businessman. The businessman looks back at him blankly. “You know: raw materials; transport costs; staff wages; loan repayments…..”

The business man starts to dribble from the corner of his mouth. In the end the investor storms off muttering darkly about how the gene pool needs to be reduced.

Let’s face it, business growth is all about one thing: getting more money out of consumers’ pockets and into company coffers. Why do it, otherwise?
And often growth goes hand in hand with competition as companies scrabble to increase their share of a finite market.

Trouble is, anti-trust legislation introduces a certain ceiling beyond which a business may not grow within a sector.

So to keep on taking money from consumers, a business has [...]

I have an issue. A problem, a concern. A nag. It’s an itch, and I just gotta scratch it.

It’s this. America, the UK and Iceland have all been bailed out by the taxpayer. You see it and you hear it: “Taxpayer to pump billions of squidoos into financial system” etc.

Except it’s a bald and blatent lie. The USA’s bailout was $700bn. The UK’s bailout has been estimated at $400bn. Iceland is more tame, at about $5.4bn.

Whenever you take out a loan the temptation is to imagine a big mountain of money in a secure vault somewhere.
Your friendly bank manager, a nice affable chap, is on hand doling out credit to any soul who can jump through his hoops.
This is miles, no decades, away from the truth. Here’s how debt works today ….

So the Labour Party conference is over for another year and Gordon Brown has survived the attempts to remove him from office. How he managed this is a matter of exceptional luck, not political skill.

As the knives slide back into their sheaths wise old heads know this feat of double handed trickery cannot be repeated again. It’s only a matter of time, the mutterers continue to mutter.

However one rumour needs to be squashed right away: the one that this unrest is all about personality, not policy. Conference showed quite clearly that there are policy differences between Brown and his party, and their colour is Green.