Warnings about ecological breakdown have become ubiquitous. Over the past few years, major newspapers, including the Guardian and the New York Times, have carried alarming stories on soil depletion, deforestation, and the collapse of fish stocks and insect populations. These crises are being driven by global economic growth, and its accompanying consumption, which is destroying the Earth’s biosphere and blowing past key planetary boundaries that scientists say must be respected to avoid … [Read more...]
Reading Tagore to Become Human
In 1922, Rabindranath Tagore published one of his most important works, the play Mukta-Dhara. The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one.A child of mysterious birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a young man, Abhijit continues to feel close to the falls. He eventually learns that he is not a prince by birth. He discovers a spiritual kinship with the falls. He goes and … [Read more...]
Local Finance Made Simple
The nature of money is to abstract value. That is its role. It stands in place of an actual good or service.If I fail to have the basket of potatoes you are seeking in exchange for the wool from your sheep, I can instead pay for the wool in dollars or BerkShares or Brixton Pounds— which then become an abstract representation of the wool. You can then exchange those $, B$, or B£ at a later time in the market for potatoes, or for any number of other products or services.This capacity for … [Read more...]
Farewell to Development: An interview with Arturo Escobar
Arturo Escobar is co-editor of The Post-Development Dictionary and author of Design for the Pluriverse. He was interviewed by Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute, sponsor of the Great Transition Initiative, where a slightly longer version of this interview first appeared. Alan White: You have argued that the conventional understanding of development in the Global North—individualism, competition, industrialism, market primacy—is at odds with the core tenets of … [Read more...]
Globalization’s Blowback
A recent study of air pollution in the western United States made a startling finding: despite a 50 percent drop over the past 25 years in US emissions of smog-producing chemicals like nitrogen oxides (NOx), smog actually increased during that period in the rural US West – even in such ‘pristine’ environments as Yellowstone National Park. Most of this increase was traced to “the influx of pollution from Asian countries, including China, North and South Korea, Japan, India, and other South Asian … [Read more...]