Monetary Reform to facilitate Transition to Steady State Economy

Good comment from Jason Dow on the Post Carbon Institute blog: "The issues as I see it is the macro economic model that the energy system supports is based on constant growth in consumption. It is the primary headwind slowing transition for this model to keep the lights on and to keep people employed must pay their bills from their revenues. So today we have technology capable of reducing consumption yet still not capable of completely taking over. This brings me to my point, when we look at the systemic factors blocking the transition one of the primary pillars is growth, and one of the primary drivers of growth is the way money comes into existence as debt so logically if we can transform money to debt free money,( the government creates credit and spends this into the economy) this has the potential to act as a pressure valve over time to absorb some of the rougher edges of transitioning off consumption based economics towards a steady state economic paradigm where progress is measured by a multitude of factors and not just the gross volume of money changes hands across the economy. So if we want this energy revolution, we will need to revolutionize how money comes into existence that will enable the policies to absorb as much of the shock of the transition as possible for people will not tolerate being thrown into poverty, or mass chaos, we will need a mechanism that allows us to transition from a consumptive based system to a cradle to cradle circular economic system and money will play a fundamental role."

The Five Stages Of Grief In Reverse

Joe Romm has a good post about how the five stages of grief are reversed for people who care about climate change. The typical five stages are: 1. Denial 2. Anger 3. Bargaining 4. Depression 5. Acceptance But actually, climate science activists (a.k.a. climate hawks) experience THE FIVE STAGES IN REVERSE. Climate hawks begin with accepting the science. What else can one do? Science is the reason so many of us survived childbirth and childhood, science has fed the world, science is the reason computers and the blogosphere exist at all. And yes, science gave us our fossil-fueled wealth. I’m a scientist by training, but I just don’t see how anyone can pick and choose what science you’re going to believe and what not. The scientific method may not be always be perfect in single studies — since it is used by imperfect humans — but it is the best thing we have for objectively determining what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. It is testable and self-correcting, unlike all other approaches. Once climate hawks accept the science, many quite naturally get depressed. The situation is beyond dire, and we aren’t doing bloody much about it, in large part because of the successful efforts of the deniers and delayers. Climate science offers a very grim prognosis if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. After depression comes a serious effort at bargaining. Climate hawks try to figure out what they can do to stop the catastrophe. Taking actions and making bargains at a personal level and a political level — depending on their level of activism. Then comes anger. Once you’ve been at this for a while, you get very very frustrated by how little is happening — by the status quo media, the many anti-science politicians, and especially the deniers, the professional disinformers. Finally, you end up in a kind of denial. It just becomes impossible to believe that the human race is going to be so stupid. Indeed, my rational side finds it hard to believe that we’re going to avoid catastrophic global warming... -end of excerpt- Please note that I appreciate this article by reposting it, and I am trying to be nice to Joe Romm, even though he was not nice to Theda Skocpol. OK, let's be serious, he was a jerk. Oops, I forgot, I was trying be nice, sorry.