You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘local’ tag.
This post comes from Green America’s latest newspaper editorial, a shortened version of an earlier article in which they outline 7 fixes for the economy.
Solutions from the Green Economy
January 15, 2008
Everyone now understands that the economy is broken.
While many name the mortgage and credit-default-swap crises as culprits, they are only the most recent indicators of an economy with fatal design flaws. Our economy has long been based on what economist Herman Daly calls “uneconomic growth” where increases in the GDP come at an expense in resources and well-being that is worth more than the goods and services provided. When GNP growth exacerbates social and environmental problems—from sweatshop labor to manufacturing toxic chemicals—every dollar of GNP growth reduces well-being for people and the planet, and we’re all worse off.
Our fatally flawed economy creates economic injustice, poverty, and environmental crises. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can create a green economy: one that serves people and the planet and offers antidotes to the current breakdown.
Here are six green-economy solutions to today’s economic mess.
1. Green Energy—Green Jobs
A crucial starting place to rejuvenate our economy is to focus on energy. It’s time to call in the superheroes of the green energy revolution—energy efficiency, solar and wind power, and plug-in hybrids—and put their synergies to work with rapid, large-scale deployment. This is a powerful way to jumpstart the economy, spur job creation (with jobs that can’t be outsourced), declare energy independence, and claim victory over the climate crisis.
2. Clean Energy Victory Bonds
How are we going to pay for this green energy revolution? We at Green America propose Clean Energy Victory Bonds. Modeled after victory bonds in World War II, Americans would buy these bonds from the federal government to invest in large-scale deployment of green energy projects, with particular emphasis in low-income communities hardest hit by the broken economy. These would be long-term bonds, paying an annual interest rate, based in part on the energy and energy savings that the bonds generate. During WWII, 85 million Americans bought over $185 billion in bonds—that would be almost $2 trillion in today’s dollars.
3. Reduce, Reuse, Rethink
Living lightly on the Earth, saving resources and money, and sharing (jobs, property, ideas, and opportunities) are crucial principles for restructuring our economy. This economic breakdown is, in part, due to living beyond our means—as a nation and as individuals. With the enormous national and consumer debt weighing us down, we won’t be able to spend our way out of this economic problem. Ultimately, we need an economy that’s not dependent on unsustainable growth and consumerism. So it’s time to rethink our over-consumptive lifestyles, and turn to the principles of elegant simplicity, such as planting gardens, conserving energy, and working cooperatively with our neighbors to share resources and build resilient communities.
4. Go Green and Local
When we do buy, it is essential that those purchases benefit the green and local economy—so that every dollar helps solve social and environmental problems, not create them. Our spending choices matter. We can support our local communities by moving dollars away from conventional agribusiness and big-box stores and toward supporting local workers, businesses, and organic farmers.
5. Community Investing
All over the country, community investing banks, credit unions, and loan funds that serve hard-hit communities are strong, while the biggest banks required bailouts. The basic principles of community investing keep such institutions strong: Lenders and borrowers know each other. Lenders invest in the success of their borrowers—with training and technical assistance along with loans. And the people who provide the capital to the lenders expect reasonable, not speculative, returns. If all banks followed these principles, the economy wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in today.
6. Shareowner Activism
When you own stock, you have the right and responsibility to advise management to clean up its act. Had GM listened to shareholders warning that relying on SUVs would be its downfall, it would have invested in greener technologies, and would not have needed a bailout. Had CitiGroup listened to its shareowners, it would have avoided the faulty mortgage practices that brought it to its knees. Engaged shareholders are key to reforming conventional companies for the transition to this new economy – the green economy that we are building together.
It’s time to move from greed to green.
–Alisa Gravitz
This is a wonderful project, and one that I would love to join at some point:
http://www.serveyourcountryfood.net/ via http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009025.html
Next month, one of my sisters is participating as a vendor at the first annual DIY Street Fair in Ferndale, MI. If you’re in the Detroit area September 20th or 21st, I encourage you to visit the “Elbe Everyday” stand, where you’ll be able to purchase hand-made and wonderfully-designed aprons and more.
As big-box retailers continue to expand and in some cases cannibalize on other sources of household goods, it’s wonderful to see the continuation of the localized and community-focused craft fair. Community craft fairs are in abundance this time of year, and are both a great place to purchase unique, handmade items, and a wonderful environment of creativity and inspiration for your own DIY projects.
As well as offering an alternative to mass-produced and location-insensitive merchandise, items at craft fairs are often locally-sourced, well-built and contain no packaging waste, purchases support talented community members so as to sustain one’s local economy, and the atmosphere is simply a great backdrop for spending time with friends and family on a warm, late-summer afternoon.
Much like getting fresh foods from a farmer’s market opens doors of communication and begins to blur the lines between creator and consumer, attending a craft-fair provides a rare opportunity to chat with the person or people who made a particular item. Striking up a conversation and developing a relationship with these creative community members allows for the opportunity to perhaps learn how to go about a new DIY project and become a more self-reliant person, or to share thoughts on common passions and perhaps launch a new community organization committed to knitting blankets so people can turn down their thermostats in the winter, or sewing reusable shopping bags for the local co-op, for example.
So please share some of your favorite craft fairs in the comments, then head out to your local craft fair with re-useable shopping bag and refillable water bottle in hand (or get these essential items at the craft fair if you don’t already have them), and be ready for a great experience with numerous benefits to both the community and the earth.
A friend pointed me to an interesting article earlier this week from the New York Times entitled A Locally Grown Diet with Fuss but No Muss. I wanted to cover this article more in-depth than just a link in my Friday News Roundup, and after reading through some of the comments from No Impact Man’s post about the article, I had even more to say about the topic of the “lazy locavore.” I encourage you to check out the article first, then come back to read my thoughts. I’m sure others will have more to say, so please add to the conversation in the comments.
—
While the article points to a rise in the demand for local, organic food – a shift that many see as incredibly important in reducing our negative impact on the planet, getting healthier and fresher food to our tables, and spurring local economies – my worries about the “lazy locavore’s” means of participating in a localized food-system are manifold:
(1) that having a third-party work one’s private land does nothing to engage the land-owner in a relationship with the land through which he or she might learn more about the fragility of the earth and how to take care of it;
(2) that while the Modern Era marked a time of specialization, calling for different tradespeople to attend to different tasks, this system has shown itself to be largely unsustainable and a Postmodern Era ought call for more self-reliant or cooperative living in which people grow their own food or have access to land on which individuals have a hand at growing publicly-available local food;
(3) that while I applaud those who are helping build the service economy, a focus on the service described in the article increases the supply of local food only to those who can afford it; focus should be put instead on services that can increase the supply of local food for all;
(4) that while it could perhaps be said that the system in which the “lazy locavore” takes part is a stepping-stone to a more thoughtful system, I think it more likely that it is a means of taking part in a movement without actually taking action to progress that movement, making it, perhaps, malproductive.
Again, I realize there is so much more to be said about this topic, so please leave your comments below.
