“We all need nourishment for our psyche. It is impossible to find such nourishment in urban tenements without a patch of green or a blossoming tree. We need a relationship with nature. I am just a culture-coolie myself, but I derive a great deal of pleasure from growing my own potatoes.” — Carl Jung If you don’t have a few fruit flies in your house, you may not be enjoying the harvest as much as you could. Life tries to abound around us as it has during all of human evolution. Only recently … [Read more...]
Clean energy won’t save us – only a new economic system can
Earlier this year media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the streets. In London, floods sent water pouring into the tube system right in the heart of Covent Garden. Roads in south-east London became rivers two meters deep.With such extreme events becoming more … [Read more...]
From Local Pants to Local Energy: The Case for Localizing Our Economies
(This article originally appeared on Truthout.org.)During a panel discussion this May on Community Choice Energy, a rapidly growing initiative in California and six other states that enables communities to seize control of local electricity services, I argued for the economic benefits of building out local, decentralized renewable energy assets such as rooftop and community solar arrays. I was followed by a panelist who chided my “misguided” belief in the virtue of locally-generated, clean … [Read more...]
How Globalization Divides Us: Perspectives on Brexit from a Dual Citizen
When I woke up on June 24th and checked the news, I cried. Along with millions of people around the world. I’m a diehard believer in independence, freedom, democracy, and strong local economies. For some, the Brexit result represented those things. If that had been the reality, I would’ve supported it too. But like every other choice offered in the global economy these days, Brexit was a false one. Getting out of Europe does nothing to address the real problems in UK society—or the world. We’re … [Read more...]
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 hierarchy of agreements, and at the top is the UN Charter: “in case of conflict between the provisions of the UN Charter and any other treaty, the Charter prevails.” In other words, trade treaties that lead to a violation of human rights — or … [Read more...]
Small Loans, Big Problems: The False Promise of Microfinance
Ever since Bill Clinton and the World Bank enthusiastically embraced the microfinance concept in the 1990s, we at Local Futures have been skeptical of its benefits, seeing it as part of a whole package of “market solutions” to our social and environmental crises that, in the long run, make things much worse. We have pointed out that these loans often target rural populations who were not previously in debt: they represent the long arm of capitalism reaching into remote rural areas, encouraging a … [Read more...]
Democrats & Republicans Uniting to Oppose Corporate Rule?!
There is a huge political divide between the Democrat Party’s leadership and its local voters. There is an equally huge political divide between the Republican Party’s leadership and its local voters. In a nutshell, the divide can be summed up like this. Voters from across the political spectrum oppose global corporate trade treaties like NAFTA and the current outrage called Trans-Pacific Partnership. Voters from across the political spectrum oppose bank bailouts using public funds. Voters from … [Read more...]