Transition Towns and Participatory Economics Reclaiming the Crisis Transition Towns and Participatory Economics

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

Economic crisis causes decline in environmental concern In 2011, 37% thought many claims about environmental threats are exaggerated, compared with 24% in 2000 (British Social Attitudes Survey) A YouGov poll commissioned by EDF energy indicated that of 4,300 adults questioned during the week after the general election, interest in climate change fell from 80% of respondents in 2006, to 71% last year and now stands at only 62% (published in The Guardian)

Can we make the rich pay for their emissions? 'Mean average CO2 emissions are strongly correlated with income: households within the highest equivalised income decile have mean total CO2 emissions more than twice that of households within the lowest equivalised income decile. Emissions from private road travel and aviation account for a high proportion of this differential: aviation emissions of the highest income decile are more than six times that of the lowest income decile.'

What really happened?

What really happened

Is ‘peak money’ helpful? It links the exhaustion of a finite, natural resource with a socially determined tool It suggests a powerlessness in terms of taking control of money systems It supports the economist’s flaw of equating abstract with the real: undermines money as a ‘fictitious commodity’

Money: Unstable and Unsustainable

Resilience hierarchy Economics enables the extortion of resources from people and planet via a process of abstraction We need instead to engage in re-embedding Refocusing our attention on the least abstract: money → fossil fuels → land

Citizens’ Audit Committee The concept of ‘odious debt’ Transparency to facilitate a public debate Prioritise citizens and not the financiers Irish audit led to ‘zombie banks’ campaigns Show Debtocracy film

Who Owes Whom? UK Debt Management Office (2011), Quarterly Review, July-September

Where do we act? Lobbying? Pointless because of the finance coup Local action in communities? Move your money Reframing the debate?

Positive directions We predicted this and are prepared Local Liquidity: local currencies can be reframed as a means of injecting new liquidity into floundering local economies (paper from Green House) Transition to support Citizens’ Audit? Resilience hierarchy  Lobbying is pointless because of the finance coup

Find out more www.greeneconomist.org gaianeconomics.blogspot.com www.greenhousethinktank.org Green Economics (Earthscan, 2009) Environment and Economy (Routledge, 2011) The Bioregional Economy (Earthscan, 2012)