Tag: economic growth

Trapped by Finance Capital: Business as Usual While Planet Burns Part III: Creative Destruction

November 14, 2015

Humanity must minimize the chaos of a catastrophic convergence of accelerating climate destabilization, growing poverty and food shortages, armed conflict, and massive migrations around the world. Otherwise, while the old plutocratic order will be destroyed, nothing viable will emerge to replace it. A new form of “creative destruction” must occur for human survival. A new … More Trapped by Finance Capital: Business as Usual While Planet Burns Part III: Creative Destruction

Overcoming Ideology: New Actions and New Ideas

April 1, 2015

Efforts to find a viable path to mitigating climate chaos and forging an ecologically viable economy are just not moving fast enough. They seem bogged down in struggles over old ideas and inadequate actions. Even some of the most esteemed liberal economists who are not on the corporate bandwagon have failed to escape this trap. … More Overcoming Ideology: New Actions and New Ideas

Predators Like Us

March 13, 2015

Leave it to a practicing member of an indigenous culture to “say it like it is,” in the most direct way imaginable. I had watched a very interesting episode of “Nature” on PBS (January 28, 2015), about the incursion of killer whales into the Arctic seas. It got me thinking of the predatory practices of … More Predators Like Us

The Militarised “Big-Data” Threat to Non-Violent Civil Action

October 15, 2014

The stories just keep coming. The NSA and the big corporations have been sweeping up massive amounts of data on all Americans. And of course, most others in the world who are “connected” in some way are being spied upon too. We cannot fail to notice that widespread surveillance has become routine practice in diverse … More The Militarised “Big-Data” Threat to Non-Violent Civil Action

Is Development Anything Other Than Growth?

October 4, 2014

We often speak of development and growth as the same thing. But what do they really mean? Development seems to imply some form of improvement over prior conditions. Growth plainly refers to something getting bigger. Then there is “progress,” or, improvement over prior conditions. In the U.S. corporate-dominated culture, “development” is almost universally measured by … More Is Development Anything Other Than Growth?

Two Kinds of Development

June 8, 2014

When we think of “development,” it is usually about economic development of the so-called “developing nations,” that is, nations whose economies have not caught up with the “advanced” industrial nations of North America and Europe. Without question, the most advanced technology and its application to the full range of industrial processes, from extraction to product … More Two Kinds of Development

Collapse: Converging Crises and the American Oligarchs

April 26, 2014

Two new studies now being reported converge in frightening ways with the most recent data on climate disruption. Their results reflect the growing likelihood that the converging crises of economy, social justice, and ecology will lead to the collapse of civilization and even the sixth mass extinction. (Kolbert, 2014) First, Gillens and Page (2014) studied … More Collapse: Converging Crises and the American Oligarchs

Tipping points need Paradigm Shifts: Paradigm Shifts are Tipping Points

March 16, 2014

If you are familiar with the history of science you have probably heard of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  In it, Thomas Kuhn describes how science progresses not by gradual evolution but by revolutionary transitions or “paradigm shifts” between “normal science” and new models of reality.  Normal science chips away at small areas of ignorance … More Tipping points need Paradigm Shifts: Paradigm Shifts are Tipping Points

What It Will Take: Living in a World We Made But Never Expected to See, Part I

January 8, 2014

For most of us the world we see around us is “normal.”  We see little difference between the natural, social, and economic worlds – they are mostly one experience.  We are born into cities, suburbs, small towns, and (rarely anymore) farms.  We see history through the limited scope of textbooks once read as required and … More What It Will Take: Living in a World We Made But Never Expected to See, Part I