Info, news & debate
Month: May 2020

Chris Cook’s tour of the oil markets: from Nixon to Trump
Today I’m talking with Chris Cook, who designed and built the Iranian Oil Bourse (see Wikipedia for a timeline of the events Chris describes), which could help move the world away from the petrodollar. We’ll be talking more about that later.

Blossom, blossom and more blossom!
Nick Mann of Habitat Aid charts a five month journey of beautiful blossom and how people and pollinators alike can benefit from its bounty.

Community wealth building & mutual credit: a match made in heaven?
This is the third in a series of articles about community wealth building and mutual credit, by Dave Darby and Dil Green of Lowimpact.org and the Open Credit Network.

Mutual credit – a lifeline for small businesses
This post follows on from yesterday’s, about community wealth building. Tomorrow, Dil Green explains how community wealth building and mutual credit could be a match made in heaven.

‘The Case for Community Wealth Building’: review
This is the first of three articles in three days about ‘community wealth building’ (CWB) and mutual credit. Today we’re explaining community wealth building, and reviewing a book: The Case for Community Wealth Building. Tomorrow we’ll blog about how mutual credit can help post-Covid communities, and on Monday, Dil Green continues the theme, explaining how …

The 12 principles of permaculture: a way forward
We share a guest post from Ethical.net, in which Elizabeth Waddington sets out the twelve principles of permaculture. There’s plenty more to it than gardening, we promise!

Interview with Brian Czech: the impossibility of a perpetually-growing economy
Today I’m talking with Brian Czech, the president of CASSE (Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy). He served in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1999-2017, and as a visiting professor of natural resource economics in Virginia Tech’s National Capitol Region. He is the author of Supply Shock, Shoveling Fuel for …

The upside of lockdown: WWOOFing in Shropshire
When the coronavirus crisis hit, Imogen Lacey was volunteering through WWOOF UK, living and working on a smallholding in exchange for accommodation, food and a wealth of learning opportunities. Here she shares her personal experiences of WWOOFing in Shropshire under lockdown.

Our policy on keeping animals & eating meat
Our topics include vegetarianism and veganism, but also keeping animals (for meat, dairy, eggs, honey, wool, leather, work etc); and also fishing and hunting animals in the wild. Is this incongruous? As a sustainability / new economy organisation, should we be promoting only veganism, rather than the keeping and/or eating of animals?

How to make your own sustainable cleaning products
Wondering how to make your own sustainable cleaning products? Our friends at Ethical.net are here to help, with useful tips galore and a recipe for homemade apple cider vinegar.

Naresh Giangrande, co-founder of Transition Network: the future for local economies, Part 1
This is part 1 of an interview with Naresh Giangrande, co-founder of Transition Totnes and the Transition Network. Part 2 is here.