A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
www.brucenixon.com
Chapter 9 – Transforming the system to create a sustainable and just global
economy: A Steady-State economy; A Green New Deal; Contraction and
Convergence; Fee and Dividend; Global governance: global institutions and fair
global trade March 2009
“The part played by orthodox economists, whose common sense has been insufficient to check their faulty
logic, has been disastrous to the latest act.” J. M. Keynes (1936)
At the beginning of the 21 st Century, human beings face two fundamental challenges. We need to:
Reduce our consumption to a sustainable level. The Earth is finite. There is a limit to what it can
provide. At the moment we are consuming more than the planet can provide and our numbers are
increasing. We are consuming nature’s capital instead of living off what it can create from it.
Distribute the resources of the world fairly. The North has been taking far more than its fair share
for centuries. It’s both a pragmatic and a moral issue. Can we live easily with ourselves if we do not
do the right thing or use our ignorance as an excuse?
Our guiding principles should be:
Don’t:
use natural resources faster than they can be replenished by nature
deposit wastes faster than they can be absorbed
release or bury anything toxic
The crisis requires international government action on the scale of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal to
turn-round the 1930’s Great Depression or the UK coalition government’s strategy to enrol the whole UK
population and its manufacturing resources in a national war effort at the beginning of WW2. Significantly
there was rationing. In 1940, UK factories rapidly converted to producing aircraft, tanks, munitions and
other products needed by a nation at war. Women were mobilised to work in these factories. 80,000
women joined the Land Army. There was the “Dig for victory” campaign, encouraging to people grow their
own food in their “Victory Gardens”, garden squares and parks in London were turned over to food
production. 6,900 pig clubs were formed and potato peelings were regularly collected to feed pigs. When
USA joined in, it produced Liberty Ships at an astonishing rate. All these determined actions demonstrate
what we can rapidly do in a crisis. They are models for today. When human beings realise their backs are
against the wall, all their creativity and genius come into play.
“The West should have a war on global warming rather than a war on terror.”
Stephen Hawking on ITV News, 17-1-2007
Here I summarise four paradigm shifts:
1. A Steady-State Economy
2. A Green New Deal
3. Contraction and Convergence - Fee and Dividend
4. Global governance: global institutions and fair global trade.
Part 1- Steady-State Economics
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