The magazine on peak oil and the Transition movement
Connecting the dots between the cost of energy and such traditional measures of the economy as GDP, jobs, and the health of the US dollar, along with re-localization.
Consider the following statistics: in 2010 the Girl Scouts of America generated $760 million in cookie sales. That same year Wal-Mart topped the list of philanthropic companies by donating $288 million to charities. As impressive as these results are, non-profits with earned income streams and for-profits with a charitable bent aren’t enough to solve the world’s most pressing social and environmental problems. At Rudolf Steiner Foundation (RSF), we see that social enterprise — … [Read more...]
The United States was once considered a rich country. We accumulated much abundance throughout most of the twentieth century, as we were a very productive country whose wealth, to a great extent, derived from manufacturing. Our companies invented and produced many of the things we needed and much of what the rest of the world needed. American-owned corporations manufacture less and less each year and import more and more. Once great manufacturers have become mere suppliers of products and … [Read more...]
In the 14th century, wealthy business men in Italy would set up benches in the piazza, covered in green cloths called banca to conduct financial business. From this humble beginning, banking as we know it today, got its start. Since then, banks have grown into complex, often international, institutions that offer what may be a confusing array of products, services and financial instruments. Once seen as the Main Street backbone of American communities, banks today are now often lumped … [Read more...]
For months now our stocks have gone up and down due to various concerns, but none more recurrent than concerns about the financial crisis in Greece. Morning after morning, New York City based casino capitalists trade with Greece and the latest rumors from Western Europe on their minds. What will affluent Germany do to bail out the collapsing, debt-ridden country of Greece? Will France go along with those plans? Will the massive injection of liquidity by the European Central Bank help the … [Read more...]
It was only a matter of time after we started eating local food and Buying Local from main street stores that we'd start hearing about local money. It started with local currencies in such places as inflation-wracked Argentina and the wealthy Berkshires of western Massachusetts. These experiments in modern complementary currency spawned dozens of scrips around the world from Britain to India to Japan backed by the full faith and credit not of lofty central banks like the Federal Reserve, but … [Read more...]
Can we still expect to see sustained economic recoveries when oil, the world’s principal source of energy, is trading in triple digit range? As I argued several years ago in my book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, triple digit oil prices will redefine our notion of an economic recovery because as soon as the global economy picks up, oil prices will quickly soar to levels that challenge growth. Last year was a case in point. In the second full year of recovery from … [Read more...]
"We found the way a child nags isn't always the same," says Lucy Hughes, then-director of strategy and insight for Initiative Media. "There's one of two ways that they nag— either with persistence or with importance." Persistent nagging is "really whiny," according to Hughes. "'Mommy, I really, really want the Barbie Dream House, wah, wah, wah, wah...'" Important nagging by contrast is more reasoned: "'Mommy, I need the Barbie Dream House so barbie and Ken can live together and have … [Read more...]
Like Rick Perry and FOX News we're not afraid to use the word Christmas when we talk about December 25th and the season beginning with Advent and ending with Epiphany. Since both the publisher and the editor of this magazine are Christians who celebrate both the sacred and the secular aspects of Christmas, it's only natural that they'd comfortably use the term Christmas, and the phrase, "Merry Christmas" in many instances during the holiday season. Where we differ But unlike Rick Perry and … [Read more...]
The problem with most people is that they're uninformed -- or just complacent. They think the economy's got to pick up, that Obama or somebody will figure out how to create jobs and that the energy industry will find some technological solution to replace cheap fossil fuels and to stop global warming. Transition Voice readers know better. Some of our readers think it's too late for industrial society to save itself. They worry that the next banking crisis or oil crash could bring down the … [Read more...]
For many of us, the first snow is on the ground, night skies are star-studded and a holiday spirit is in the air. Holidays, as much fun as they are, tend to bring out some of our most entrenched bad habits. The holidays shouldn't be a burden on the environment, but they are. Most Americans, for example, produce about 25 percent more trash during the holidays (from Thanksgiving to New Year’s) resulting in around 25 million extra tons of waste. There has to be a better way to … [Read more...]
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