Author archive: Steven Gorelick

Steven Gorelick is the Managing Programs Director of Local Futures. He is the author of Small is Beautiful, Big is Subsidized, co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home, and co-director of The Economics of Happiness. His writings have been published in The Ecologist and Resurgence magazines.

Not on the agenda in Glasgow: real climate action

What can we expect to come out of the Glasgow COP meetings? If the pattern established by previous COPs is repeated, not much. Dire statistics will be cited, pleas for action will be heard, earnest pronouncements will be made, non-binding […]

Thinking Outside the Grid

Thirty years ago, a friend of mine published a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth. It described the huge environmental benefits that would result if everyone made some simple adjustments to their way of […]

Technology and Its Discontents

Tucked within the pages of the January issue of the Agriview, a monthly farm publication published by the State of Vermont, was a short survey from the Department of Public Service (DPS). Described as an aid to the Department in […]

Our Obsolescent Economy

A friend of mine from India tells a story about driving an old Volkswagen beetle from California to Virginia during his first year in the United States. In a freak ice storm in Texas he skidded off the road, leaving […]

The Sharing Economy: It Takes More Than A Smartphone

I ran into my friend Rick the other day in a small town near our homes in northern Vermont. He was just coming out of the bookstore, holding a pink plastic bag that, I would soon learn, contained a dozen […]

Globalization and the American Dream

This blog is also available in Spanish. “… America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being – confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented – is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, […]

Changing Everything

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, […]

Branding Tradition: A Bittersweet Tale of Corporate Capitalism

It’s almost sugaring time here in Vermont. On our homestead we tap about 25 trees, boil down the sap on the kitchen cookstove, and – in a good year – end up with 4 or 5 gallons of maple syrup. […]

Current Trade Treaties: “a revolution against law”

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. In international law, de Zayas says, there is a […]

Resisting the Technocratic Paradigm

Ever since the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, people in our circles have been waxing rhapsodic about its message: finally, a powerful global figure is explicitly calling for fundamental structural change. Unfortunately, the media has pigeon-holed the encyclical […]