Posts Tagged ‘trade agreements’
Connecting the Dots: Insane Trade and Climate Chaos
This blog is also available in Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Imagine a world where food routinely gets shipped thousands of miles away to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Imagine cows from Mexico being fed corn imported from the United States, then being exported to the…
Read MoreGrowthism: its ecological, economic and ethical limits
We have many problems – poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, climate change, financial instability, etc. – but only one solution for everything, namely economic growth. We believe that growth is the costless, win-win solution to all problems, or at least the necessary precondition for any solution. This is growthism. It now creates more problems than it…
Read MoreSaving Japan’s Seed Heritage from “Free Trade”
This blog is also available in Greek, Russian and Spanish. I recently had the opportunity to interview Masahiko Yamada, formerly Japan´s Minister of Agriculture and now one of the country´s foremost food sovereignty activists. We met at an international Economics of Happiness Conference in Prato, Italy, where Yamada delivered a keynote speech about the birth…
Read MoreTosepan: Resistance and Renewal in Mexico
This blog is also available in Russian and Spanish. Since the mid-1980s, Mexico has been a poster child for globalization. Through free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions, the country has been “liberalized” – opened up to unfettered corporate investment and imports – to an extent matched by few other countries.…
Read MoreUnlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment
This blog is also available in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Turkish. If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have…
Read MoreTo Leave or Remain: Dichotomy or Distraction?
Ever since the Brexit referendum was first announced, we have been bombarded by an array of starkly contradictory pronouncements – from the Leave camp’s now infamous claim that withdrawal from the EU would release £350 million a week for the NHS to the former Chancellor George Osborne’s assertion that Brexit would leave the UK “permanently…
Read MoreLocalization: a Strategic Alternative to Globalized Authoritarianism
This blog is also available in Chinese, Dutch, French, Greek, Italian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Turkish. For those who care about peace, equality and the future of the planet, the global political swing to the right over the past few years is deeply worrying. It has us asking ourselves, how did this happen? How did populism…
Read MoreOur 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 his car with a cracked windshield and badly dented doors and fenders. When he reached…
Read MoreWhy are my highly educated friends so ignorant about trade?
Trump is a catastrophe, but so was the TPP. Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I’ve found myself talking for the first time with a lot of my 20-something friends about trade agreements. My friends didn’t vote for Donald Trump. Most are from “liberal” parts of the US. They went to…
Read MoreWhy Global Capital Fears ‘Brexit’
A referendum in Britain will soon be held on the ‘Brexit’ question. While the leadership of the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ camps portray their positions as fundamentally different, neither side is challenging the stranglehold of corporations that run the global economy. Their econometric, growth-based arguments focus primarily on which alternative will enable Britain to cut a…
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