Guiding our communities from oil dependency to local resilience
 
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Economy working group

Ideas for the Economy working group are being explored by several different local pods.

 
 
Events
  • In Mar Vista, Culver City, and Palms, check the events calendar of "Our Time Bank"
  • In Westchester, del Rey, and Inglewood, the Environmental Change-Makers are exploring these ideas.
    • Resources from the October 2010 "What We Can Do about the Financial Crisis" event ... handout, slides, audio (coming soon)
 
 
ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS

HANDS-ON PROJECTS

LEARN MORE

  • "Prosperity without Growth?  The Transition to a Sustainable Economy" by Tim Jackson, Sustainable Development Commission (UK) Executive Summary & Report (pdf) and book
    • "The clearest message from the financial crisis of 2008 is that our current model of economic success is fundamentally flawed.  For the advanced economies of the Western world, prosperity without growth is no longer a utopian dream, it is a financial and ecological necessity."
  • The Bridge at the End of the World, by James Gustave Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Sutides at Yale University and environmental advisor to two U.S. presidents
    • develop alternatives to existing policies, [and] keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
  • "Shifting Direction: From Global Dependence to Local Interdependence," by Helena Norberg-Hodge, found in The Case Against the Global Economy, Jerry Mander, ed.  Also available as a single article through ISEC.
    • "It is precisely because there are so many people that we must abandon the globalized economic model, which can only feed, house, and clothe a small minority.  It is becoming essential to support knowledge systems and economic models that are based on an intimate understanding of diverse regions and their unique climates, soils, and resources."
  • Genuine Progress Indicator
  • The Sharing Solution, by Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow
  • Small is Beautiful, by E.M. Schumacher (we recommend the 25th anniversary edition)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
More coming soon ... check back with us!
 
 

 

 
  Participate  
 

Join in the process, join in the fun!

 
     
  Working groups are one of the 12 Ingredients of the Transition process.  Designed to "tap into the collective genius of the community," they are tasked with looking at the local area to try to determine the best ways of building community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint. Eventually, the conclusions reached by the Working Group becomes part of theTransition initiative's Energy Descent Action Plan.  
     
     
  ECONOMY
RESOURCES
 
 

As you reorient your career, or as you consider alternative directions for your small business, we want you to succeed. At events of Transition Los Angeles, we offer straight talk about the state of the economy and where it is likely to head in the next few years. Our understanding of where the economy is headed and WHY are derived from materials such as the following:

  • "Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil"  Nicole Foss (aka Stoneleigh) gave a talk at the 2010 Transition Conference in the UK.  The audio and many similar slides are linked from this blog entry.
    • "Those 'green shoots of recovery'?  Those would be gangrene!" -- Stoneleigh
  • "What We Can Do about the Financial Crisis" video of Joanne Poyourow's 10/28/10 talk which explains the interconnected nature of the financial crisis, peak oil, climate change, and biocapacity -- together with local economic solutions.  (video online soon after event)
  • "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" by Jerry Mander found on page 9 of this pdf
    • "The scale of denial is breathtaking." --Jerry Mander
  • "What if the Economy Doesn't Recover?" by Richard Heinberg.  An excellent article explaining why we are looking at Life Beyond Growth
    • "Understandably, everyone wants it to get “back to normal.” But here’s a disturbing thought: What if that is not possible? What if the goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten, the game changed?"
  • "Depression 2.0" term used by the World Economic Forum at Davos, Jan 2009
  • "Economic Crisis" summary by Transition US