Tag: Social Benefits

EcoEconomics in a Nutshell

Our free market economy is nothing more than a huge auction called ‘Supply and Demand’, which – very efficiently – puts a price on on everything.

The problem is that it allows us to sell everything – the last drop of oil, the last tree, the last fish, the last of everything. It’s called growth – but it is, obviously, growth into oblivion – the exact opposite of EcoEconomics. It is a fatal flaw of our present economic system.

Or, as Greenpeace puts it: “When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can’t eat money…”

[…]

The eco-economic price for a natural resource is, therefore, the price you would have to pay if our planet were to release that resource only at a sustainable level.

Who can put a Price on the Environment?  … We all should.

Afterall if we end up decimating the planet’s EcoSystems —  trying to sell off their once abundant natural resources — We can’t eat the money … or gold either, can we?

Michael Moore’s new film puts spotlight on Petaluma company

By Jeremy Hay, Press Democrat

In “Capitalism: A Love Story,” which opens today around the country, Moore takes aim at what he characterizes as a capitalist culture run amok.

He holds up the bakery – with 117 employees and $24 million in annual revenues – as an example of a successful capitalist alternative, where workers are as powerful as executives, profits are shared equally and workers are valued for more than their labor.

“This could be potentially a new model,” said Cory Fisher, a field producer and researcher for Moore. “A way for workers to feel engaged and not marginalized, and that they have a stake in their future.”

[…]

“They stood out,” she said. “They’re successful, their workers are able to make a living wage, they seem empowered and happy and you just start to look around and wonder, “Why aren’t other companies doing this?”

Why aren’t other companies doing WHAT?

Starting their own, Employee Owned Business.

Within the space of six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy than all the people in the world consume in a year. The only question we have to answer is:

“How can this radiant energy be economically transformed into useful

energy and transported to consumers?”

The DESERTEC Concept provides a solution to this.

[…]

In order to meet today’s global power demand […] it would suffice to equip about 3/1000th of the world’s deserts (about 90,000 km2) with solar collectors of solar thermal power plants. About 20 m2 of desert would be enough to meet the individual power demand of one human being day and night — all this absolutely CO2 free.

[pg 6] Europe’s Desertec project Red Paper (pdf)

The Race is ON — to find the World’s Largest Solar Footprint!

Here are some of the contenders …

Large-scale photovoltaic power plants

Ranks 1 – 50