Monday 2 June 2008


Framing strategies for thought and action linking 'economics' with 'ecologics'

A healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment
An unhealthy economy is unhealthy for the environment
The transformation of living nature into dead commodities
Is what is killing both.


A broader, global reorientation of the paradigm for achieving economic well-being and the common welfare is required which will break with the high-growth, high-consumption model in favour of a low-consumption, low-growth but advanced technology, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people's welfare, a better quality of life for all, greater democratic control of production and enhanced ecological equilibrium.

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Framing strategies for thought and action linking 'economics' with 'ecologics', contrasting the rightist agenda which claims that "Protecting the environment harms the economy" with the progressive (and indeed only rational) way forward which must be to be aware and act on the basis that "A healthy economy depends upon a healthy environment".

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There is room here for a stronger frame: An unhealthy economy is invariably also unhealthy for the environment:

The transformation of living nature into dead commodities.
·

Eg.... http://www.radicalleft.net/blog/_archives/2008/3/30/3610847.html

... The central problem, it is becoming increasingly clear, is a mode of production whose main dynamic is the transformation of living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process.


The driver of this process is consumption - or more appropriately overconsumption - and the motivation is profit or capital accumulation: capitalism, in short.

...

This leads us to the dilemma of the South: before the full extent of the ecological destabilisation brought about by capitalism, it was expected that the South would simply follow the "stages of growth" of the North. Now it is impossible to do so without bringing about ecological Armageddon.

...

These steps are important, but they should be seen as but the initial steps in a broader, global reorientation of the paradigm for achieving economic well-being.

While the adjustment will need to be much, much greater and faster in the North, the adjustment for the South will essentially be the same: a break with the high-growth, high-consumption model in favour of another model of achieving the common welfare.

...

Among other things, this will mean placing economic justice and equality at the centre of the new paradigm.

The transition must be one not only from a fossil-fuel based economy but also from an overconsumption-driven economy.

The end-goal must be adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people's welfare, a better quality of life for all, and greater democratic control of production.

/... http://www.radicalleft.net/blog/_archives/2008/3/30/3610847.html

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