Author: Tim Jackson

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet

Prosperity is understood as a successful, flourishing or thriving condition: simply, a state in which things are going well for us. Every day the system in which we live tries to persuade us – via TV news, politicians’ speeches, corporate pronouncements, inducements to consume and so on – that our prosperity is intimately linked to whether or not gross national product is growing and whether stock markets are riding high. These are the two main measuring sticks for the version of capitalism on which most countries base their economies today.

Other ways of measuring prosperity, such as employment and savings, follow these two. If GNP – the total national output of goods and services – is in recession, then unemployment will rise, and that means growing numbers of unprosperous people without salaries. If stock markets are falling, that means falling pension values, and rising numbers of unprosperous people in retirement. So what’s not to like about growth?

Tim Jackson states the challenge starkly: “Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.” And that is the core mission of this perfectly timed book. Had he published it before the financial crisis, he would probably have been dismissed as another green idealist, at best. But in the wake of the crisis, more people are questioning the primacy of growth at all costs. President Sarkozy, the Nobel-prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz and elements of the Financial Times’s commentariat are among those now arguing that prosperity is possible without GNP growth, and indeed that prosperity will soon become impossible because of GNP growth. A new movement seems to be emerging, and this superbly written book should be the first stop for anyone wanting a manifesto.

Jackson, who is economics commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, skilfully makes the relevant economic arguments understandable to the lay reader. He is not slow to simplify where that is warranted: “The idea of a non-growing economy may be an anathema to an economist. But the idea of a continually growing economy is an anathema to an ecologist.”

This is the core of the debate. Endless growth is a ridiculous notion to the typical ecologist because we live on a planet with finite resources, the mining and use of some of which is undermining our planet’s life-support systems. But the typical economist believes we can “decouple” GNP growth from resource use through the increased efficiency that tends to be intrinsic to capitalism: that we can grow our economies and reverse environmental degradation too. Tesco, as it were, can keep building more stores for ever, provided they are increasingly resource-efficient.

Jackson argues compellingly that such “decoupling” is a myth. A key area of argument, as with so much else in the current world, involves climate change. If we keep growing GNP, Jackson explains, then we fail to cut greenhouse gases deeply. This means we stoke destruction of prosperity beyond the short-term horizons – “next quarter’s growth figures” and all the rest – on which we routinely put such emphasis today.

In terms of a worldview for the new decade and beyond, this could well be the most important book you will read. Who to believe if you don’t have time? Well, I invite you not to believe the profession that so thoroughly disgraced itself with its systemic acceptance of the case for complex derivatives as a prime example of increasing economic efficiency in the financial services industry. The economists, and their friends the bonus cultists, have taken us to the brink of a collapsed global economy with that little oversight.

The last chapter of the book looks at opportunities for achieving “a lasting prosperity”. They are many and varied, and most of them – unsurprisingly – start from the grassroots. High on the list is the need for us all to consume less “stuff” and to seek a type of prosperity outside the conventional trappings of affluence: within relationships, family, community and the meaning of our lives and vocations in a functional society that places value on the future.

Is that still capitalism? “Does it really matter?” Jackson asks. “Perhaps we could just paraphrase Star Trek’s Spock and agree that it’s capitalism, Jim. But not as we know it.” And for what it’s worth, as a creature of capitalism – a venture-capital-backed energy ¬industry boss, a private equity investor, and an Institute of Directors director of the month – I am convinced that capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity, killing our economies and threatening our children with an unlivable world. Tim Jackson has written the best book yet making this case, and showing the generalities of the escape route. The specifics, post-Copenhagen, are all down to us

Author: Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

The Spirit Level  : Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better 

reviewed by Lynsey Hanley, The Guardian

We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens’ incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks’ holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don’t soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why.

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet’s resources.

Wilkinson, a public health researcher of 30 years’ standing, has written numerous books and articles on the physical and mental effects of social differentiation. He and Pickett have compiled information from around 200 different sets of data, using reputable sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the US Census, to form a bank of evidence against inequality that is impossible to deny.

They use the information to create a series of scatter-graphs whose patterns look nearly identical, yet which document the prevalence of a vast range of social ills. On almost every index of quality of life, or wellness, or deprivation, there is a gradient showing a strong correlation between a country’s level of economic inequality and its social outcomes. Almost always, Japan and the Scandinavian countries are at the favourable “low” end, and almost always, the UK, the US and Portugal are at the unfavourable “high” end, with Canada, Australasia and continental European countries in between.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world’s richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence – murder, in particular – that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality – within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality. Although the UK fares badly when compared with most other OECD countries (and is the worst developed nation in which to be a child according to both Unicef and the Good Childhood Inquiry), its social problems are not as pronounced as in the US.

Rates of illness are lower for English people of all classes than for Americans, but working-age Swedish men fare better still. Diabetes affects twice as many American as English people, whether they have a high or a low level of education. Wherever you look, evidence favouring greater equality piles up. As the authors write, “the relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance”.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of reading this book is the revelation that the way we live in Britain is a serious danger to our mental health. Around a quarter of British people, and more than a quarter of Americans, experience mental problems in any given year, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Italy.

Wilkinson and Pickett’s description of unequal societies as “dysfunctional” suggests implicit criticism of the approach taken by Britain’s “happiness tsar” Richard Layard, who recommended that the poor mental health of many Britons be “fixed” or improved by making cognitive behavioural therapy more easily available. Consumerism, isolation, alienation, social estrangement and anxiety all follow from inequality, they argue, and so cannot rightly be made a matter of individual management.

There’s an almost pleading quality to some of Wilkinson and Pickett’s assertions, as though they feel they’ve spent their careers banging their heads against a brick wall. It’s impossible to overstate the implications of their thesis: that the societies of Britain and the US have institutionalised economic and social inequality to the extent that, at any one time, a quarter of their respective populations are mentally ill. What kind of “growth” is that, other than a malignant one?

One question that comes to mind is whether the world’s most equal developed nations, Japan and Sweden, make sufficient allowance for individuals to express themselves without being regarded as a threat to the health of the collective. Critics of the two societies would argue that both make it intensely difficult for individual citizens to protest against the conformity both produced by, and required to sustain, equality. The inclination to dismiss or neuter individuals’ complaints may, Wilkinson and Pickett suggest, go some way towards explaining the higher suicide rates in both countries compared with their more unequal counterparts. Those who feel wrong, or whose lives go wrong, may feel as though they really do have no one to blame but themselves.

What Japan and Sweden do show is that equality is a matter of political will. There are belated signs – shown in the recent establishment of a National Equalities Panel and in Trevor Phil lips’s public pronouncements on the central place of class in the landscape of British inequality – that Labour recognises that its relaxed attitude to people “getting filthy rich” has come back to bite it on the rear.

Twelve years in power is long enough to reverse all the trends towards greater social and economic stratification that have occurred since 1970; instead they have continued on their merry way towards segregation. Teenage pregnancy rates have begun to rise after a period of decline; there is a 30-year gap in male life expectancy between central Glasgow and parts of southern England; and child poverty won’t be halved by next year after all (though it wouldn’t make as much difference as making their parents more equal).

There are times when the book feels rather too overwhelmingly grim. Even if you allow for the fact that it was written before Barack Obama won the US presidency on a premise of trust and optimism, its opening pages are depressing enough to make you want to shut it fast: “We find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, driven to consume and with little or no community life.” Taking the statistics broadly, they may be correct, but many readers simply won’t feel like that.

However, the book does end on an optimistic note, with a transformative, rather than revolutionary, programme for making sick societies more healthy. A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued – such as low wages, low benefits and low public spending on education, for instance – will allow a flourishing of human potential.

There is a growing inventory of serious, compellingly argued books detailing the social destruction wrought by inequality. Wilkinson and Pickett have produced a companion to recent bestsellers such as Oliver James’s Affluenza and Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety . But The Spirit Level also contributes to a longer view, sitting alongside Richard Sennett’s 2003 book Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality , and the epidemiologist Michael Marmot’s Status Syndrome , from 2005.

Anyone who believes that society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read these books; they should start with The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we’re equal.

Hundreds of communities taking power into their own hands 

Hundreds of communities throughout Scotland are making the switch to clean, green renewable sources of heat and power, saving thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.   Since the Scottish Government launched the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) in April 2009 with £8M allocated for the first year, communities have been lining up to get help.  The scheme has been a great success so far and communities have been awarded grants towards installing renewable energy systems such as solar panels, wind turbines, wood-fired boilers and heat pumps,  in addition to improving their energy efficiency.  

As well as helping deliver the Scottish Government’s world-leading commitment to cut carbon emissions by 42% by 2020, thousands of people are benefitting from improved and warmer community buildings and more opportunities for local businesses specialising in the installation of renewable technologies.

Community Energy Scotland, the independent charity which runs the CARES scheme for the Scottish Government along with a separate scheme funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, is reporting that over 600 community renewable energy projects are currently being developed  across Scotland, from Galloway to North Yell in Shetland. 

CARES provides funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency measures in community facilities. Hundreds of community centres are now benefitting from the scheme, which in turn means warmer, more useable and ‘lower carbon’ facilities for community groups across Scotland. 

Lochdar Community Hall in South Uist now has two 6kW wind turbines to provide direct heat to the hall. According to Ian Macdonald, chairman, the installation has had a big impact on the local community – “This system has made a huge difference to the community hall which had in the past suffered from dampness.  As well as providing a constant warm temperature for visitors, usage of the hall has increased as word spread of this transformation.  We were pleased that we got CARES funding for the installation and that it now allows greater use by our local community”. 

Lister Housing Co-operative installed solar water heating into tenement flats in central Edinburgh, reducing tenants’ bills for hot water. Alistair Cant, director of the Co-operative said “The beauty of these systems is that once fitted, they will go on generating year on year with minimal maintenance. CARES funding has helped greatly to make this happen and taking our tenants out of fuel poverty is a real priority for us.” 

Jim Mather MSP, Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism is delighted with the progress under the scheme – and believes that it shows that renewable energy is leading to stronger and more resilient communities who are becoming much more informed about energy matters.

“The CARES scheme is unlocking real interest in Scottish communities who can see the potential for improving their facilities. Once people get going on a project, they typically then look for further opportunities to benefit their communities.  The Scottish Government raised its game by upping the funding for renewables with CARES significantly and I am delighted to see communities are putting it to good use.

Proposals are now coming forward from community groups for larger projects designed to bring in cash for community regeneration from the sale of renewable energy. I believe this trend will bring real local impact in ways that will benefit all in the community as we move to a low carbon future”.

 According to Community Energy Scotland there is a growing interest amongst community groups in going one step further from a project heating a community building to more complex projects such as developing a small hydro or wind turbine to bring an income. Nicholas Gubbins, Chief Executive of Community Energy Scotland, believes that CARES and the HIE scheme are having a ‘confidence-building’ effect – people are seeing that these project are possible –

“We’re currently advising 128 community groups on these larger projects, all seeking to bring revenue direct into their local community. Of the 20 projects which have already applied for planning, all 20 have successfully secured consent.  We are now working with the remaining groups to complete their planning applications.  

It’s extraordinary to see how groups strengthen as they take a project forward. I think people are really fired up by the promise of  generating and investing cash to benefit their community as a whole, reducing their carbon footprint, saving energy costs and saying ‘we did that’ …”

 Ann Kirkby from the Tiree Community Development Trust, who are just completing their single 900kW wind turbine project, shows exactly what this means. “The turbine stands as a remarkable statement of achievement and will help to turn around the fortunes of the island.  The turbine is expected to operate for more than 20 years, during which time it should earn in the region of £3.5 million net for the community.  Liz Lapsley, the Trust’s development officer, sees this to be the whole point of the project; “Once we have paid off the bank loan we will be earning over £250,000 a year for the community. We will set up a local grant scheme that can be used to invest in any social, cultural or economic good cause that the community wants to support.”    The project has also helped to kick start an interest in other renewable and energy saving projects, such as an electric community vehicle scheme currently being developed through Community Powerdown, a carbon-reduction initiative devised by Community Energy Scotland.

Once completed, CARES projects approved so far this year will save around 2,370 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to the total emissions from 430 homes. 

For more information on CARES, visit http://www.communityenergyscotland.org.uk/cares.asp.  Individual householders can get help from the Energy Saving Scotland Scheme by visiting http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/scotland 

UP TO 30 community gardens are to be created at a city hospital, it has emerged.

NHS Lothian has set aside land at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Morningside to create the green spaces, which will be used by local people, community groups and patients.

It follows on from a commitment from the health board’s chairman Dr Charle s Winstanley last summer to turn vast amounts of unused land into community use.

The move has been welcomed by mental health charities, which believe that horticultural therapy is extremely useful when it comes to treating patients with mental health problems.

Dr Winstanley said: “NHS Lothian recognises the role gardens play in creating a pleasant environment for patients, their families, visitors and the staff in our hospitals.

“These community gardens are particularly special as they differ from allotments.

“They bring members of the local community and patients together as they work alongside each other to grow things.”

The health board has teamed up with the charity Cyrenians, who will oversee the creation and development of the gardens at the psychiatric hospital, on what is currently wasteland, with the help of some horticultural experts.

Plans for the area include fruit and vegetable growing spaces, herbs and flower cultivation, and the possibility of common areas of grass for use by all.

Previous horticultural projects at the hospital have been found to improve the wellbeing of patients, and have raised thousands of pounds for charity.

Members of Cyrenians will now liaise and consult with members of the local community, with the first of the gardens to be created later this year.

Des Ryan, chief executive of the organisation, said: “NHS Lothian has shown great vision in making this land available for the community gardens project.

“Turning the vision into reality is going to take a lot of hard graft and we’re looking to bring together a wide range of people from the local community.

“This is a great opportunity for local gardeners, community groups and businesses to get involved at an early stage in something new and exciting that promotes a better 21st-century way of life.

“We would also love to hear from people offering their time to help make it happen.”

Those successful in negotiating a plot will be given the gardens on a 12-month rolling contract.

Dr Winstanley has already said he would also look at land on other NHS Lothian sites, especially in areas awaiting development, such as the acres around the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

The establishment of the gardens will also go some way towards easing the city-wide shortage of allotment space. There are currently around 2,000 people in Edinburgh on the waiting list for a council allotment.

Rare eagle numbers begin to soar on the isle of Mull

Rare white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Mull successfully reared 10 chicks in the past year’s breeding season, conservationists have revealed.

The island is home to 10 pairs of the birds of prey, which became extinct in Britain in the early 1900s, but were reintroduced to Scotland in the 1970s, when birds were brought from Norway to start a new population.

Known as “flying barn doors” because of their size, they attract tourists and bring £2 million each year to the local economy.

Last year the birds, which colonised Mull in 1983 and raised their first successful fledglings in 1985, after being reintroduced to Rum 10 years earlier, produced 10 chicks from seven nests.

Across Scotland, a total of 46 pairs of white-tailed eagles, also known as sea eagles, successfully reared 36 chicks.

According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), the species had more than 200 breeding pairs in the UK in 1700, but had become extinct by early last century as a result of persecution, often by shepherds and gamekeepers.

An attempt to reintroduce them into Scotland in 1968 failed, but a second bid had better success. A more recent scheme has seen white-tailed eagles reintroduced to eastern Scotland.

However, the huge birds are not universally popular and proposals to bring them back to East Anglia provoked controversy.

White-tailed eagles eat a diet of fish, smaller sea birds, ducks and carrion, but, according to farmers, also target lambs.

On Mull, the presence of the birds brings thousands of “eco-tourists” and lovers of wildlife to the island.

The Mull Eagle Watch project attracts around 6000 visitors a year to its hide on Forestry Commission Scotland land at Loch Frisa. Half the money raised by the scheme goes back to the local com-munity, including sports clubs and youth groups, organisers said.

The project, which has been going for 10 years, is run by a partnership involving the Forestry Commission Scotland, RSPB Scotland, Mull & Iona Community Trust, Scottish Natural Heritage and Strathclyde Police.

RSPB Scotland Mull officer Dave Sexton said: “White-tailed eagles are part of the landscape here and can bring significant economic benefits to rural communities – some £2m a year comes to Mull from visitors coming to see them.

“It’s wonderful that, through the eagle fund, the birds are giving back to local good causes. It’s an example that could be followed across Scotland and the UK.”

Scottish Environment Minister Roseanna Cunningham visited Mull yesterday to see the birds and to hand over the latest cash boost of £10,000 from the bird-watching scheme.

She said: “It is great news that these birds are thriving on Mull. What is also brilliant is that the local community is directly benefiting through green tourism.”

What is POWER2010?

Our democracy is in crisis. MPs fiddle while the planet burns. Our rights and freedoms are under attack. Bankers blow billions and the taxpayer foots the bill. We can’t go on like this.

We need a healthy democracy that works for all of us and not just a powerful few. POWER2010 exists to help create it. It gives you the chance to have your say on how our democracy works so that together we can change it for the better.

Do you want cleaner funding? Fairer voting? More accountability? You decide. Tell us your ideas for changing the way we run our country. Those with most support will become the POWER2010 Pledge and the focus for our national campaign at the next election.

POWER2010 is a unique campaign to give everyone the chance to have a say in how our democracy works for us.

What is different about POWER2010 is that you’re in the driving seat. We’re not asking you to back our goals. We’re asking you to help create them.

At the next election we will work to ensure every candidate commits to the reforms you most want to see as part of a nation-wide campaign to reinvigorate our democracy from the bottom up.

VOTE NOW http://www.power2010.org.uk/votes

Copenhagen failed to deliver – where does that leave us?

Copenhagen was a watershed event. Climate change has become, in many people’s minds, the central survival issue for our species, and the Copenhagen talks provided a pivotal moment for addressing that issue. The fact that the talks failed to produce a binding agreement is therefore of some significance.

The next opportunity to forge a binding global climate treaty will be the 2010 U.N. climate conference in Mexico City. Many see this as a chance to achieve what proved elusive in Copenhagen. But the same challenges will face leaders there. And if the global economy relapses in the meantime, national politicians may be even more reluctant to take bold action to limit fossil fuel consumption, as they’ll want to keep all their economic options open. Indeed, it seems likely that for the foreseeable future economic implosion will be sucking the air from any room in which heads of state are gathered.

So, international policies are needed if we are to deal with a potentially game-ending global issue like climate change, yet there is now convincing evidence that national and supra-national institutions are incapable of producing effective climate policies.

The same could be said for other crises mentioned above. It’s not enough that national governments can’t get together to solve climate change. They can’t solve economic meltdown, peak oil, water scarcity, soil erosion, or overpopulation either. Yes, there are individual nations like Tuvalu that can muster a decent policy on one issue or another. Denmark is probably the shining example among industrial nations: it has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent since 1990 while maintaining constant energy consumption and growing its GDP by more than 40 percent. But these are the rare exceptions, and apparently destined to stay that way. We have no global means of dealing with the toxic debt that is strangling the world economy. We have no agreements in place to prevent the death of the oceans. There is no global policy to avert economic impacts from fossil fuel depletion. There is no worldwide protocol to protect the precious layer of living topsoil that is all that separates us from famine. There is no effective global convention on fresh water conservation.

This is not to say there is nothing that can be done about these problems. In fact, there are organizations and communities in many nations doing path-breaking work to address each and every one of them. Some examples:
• Agronomists at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, led by Wes Jackson, have for years been patiently developing perennial grain crops capable of feeding billions without destroying topsoil.
• The city of Zurich has decided through popular vote to become a 2000-Watt society. This means cutting energy consumption from the current 6000 Watts per person to one-third that amount over the next three or four decades. This was evidently a response both to climate change and the problem of energy security.
• Here in Sonoma County, California, a Go Local Co-op has formed; it’s an extension of the national organization, Business Alliance for a Living Local Economy (BALLE). One of its projects is “Sustaining Capital”—a community cooperative capital formation model that, if successful and replicated widely, could end local economies’ dependence on Wall Street banks.
• At Sunga in Madhyapur Thimi, Nepal, a community-supported project has built a water treatment plant based on reed-bed constructed wetlands that also serves as the main source of irrigation for farmers in the region.

These are just a few items out of hundreds, maybe thousands that could be cited. But, in aggregate, are they enough? Obviously not—even in the estimation of the folks who are doing this admirable work. Some problems are more easily tackled at the local level than others (local efforts can help maintain biodiversity, but without international agreements it’s not obvious how the oceans could be rescued). And many local success stories actually depend on global systems of finance and provisioning (for example, the Nepalese water treatment plant mentioned above was built with financial support from the United Nations Human Settlements Program, U.N.-Habitat’s Water for Asian Cities Program, the Asian Development Bank, and Water Aid, and received technical support from the Environment and Public Health Organization).

Discouraging? Of course. But absent global agreements, local efforts are what we’ve got, and we will simply have to make the most of them that we can.

Meanwhile, given the amount of carbon emissions already in the atmosphere, climate impacts are in store no matter what happens at the U.N. negotiations in Mexico City. Something similar could be said with regard to all the other problems mentioned: even if strong policies could somehow be forged tomorrow, serious challenges will arise in the years ahead with regard to water, food, energy, and the economy.

If such impacts are unquestionably coming, then we should be doing something to prepare. Since we don’t know exactly what the impacts will be, or when or where they will land, the most sensible strategy is simply to build resilience throughout the system. Resilience implies dispersed control points and dispersed inventories, and hence regional self-sufficiency—the opposite of economic efficiency, the central rationale for globalization—and so it needs to be organized primarily at the local level.

To summarize: three factors—the need for resilience, the lack of effective policy at national and global levels, and the tendency of the best responses to emerge regionally and at a small scale—argue for dealing with the crushing crises of the new century locally, even though there is still undeniable need for larger-scale, global solutions.
Does this mean we should give up even trying to work at the national and global levels? Each person will have to make up her or his own mind on that one. To my thinking, Copenhagen is something of a last straw. I have no interest in trying to discourage anyone from undertaking national or global activism. Indeed, there is a danger in taking attention away from national and international affairs: policy could get hijacked not just by parties even less competent than those currently in command, but by ones that are just plain evil. Nevertheless, this writer is finally convinced that, with whatever energies for positive change may be available to us, we are likely to accomplish the most by working locally and on a small scale, while sharing information about successes and failures as widely as possible.

A final note: As 2010 begins we are about to enter the second decade of the 21st century. Historians often remark that the character of a new century doesn’t make itself apparent until its second decade (think World War I). Perhaps peak oil, the global financial crash, and the failure of Copenhagen are the signal events that will propel us into the Century of Decline. If these events are indeed indicative, it will be a century of economic contraction rather than growth; a century less about warnings of environmental constraints and consequences than about the fulfillment of past warnings; and a century of local action rather than grand global schemes.

I suspect that things are going to be noticeably different from now on.

For the full article click here http://postcarbon.webvanta.com/article/54564-the-meaning-of-copenhagen

Vote for change
What began as a letter to The Observer in May has snowballed into a campaign that is making inroads at No 10, filling conference halls and reaching out to supporters across the country.

The campaign rests on the assumption that politics is just too important to be left to the politicians. Voters need a choice on the future of our politics and their parliament. And that means a referendum on a new electoral system that really empowers voters. We hope you’ll join us.
 
• Helena Kennedy, QC
• Philip Pullman, author
• Damon Albarn, musician
• Stephen Fry, broadcaster
• John Sauven, Greenpeace
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• Matthew Taylor*, RSA
• Susie Orbach, author and psychologist
• Jonathan Pryce, actor
• Caroline Lucas, Leader Green Party
• Brian Eno,musician
• Neal Lawson, Compass
• Colin Hines, Green New Deal
• Ken Ritchie, Electoral Reform Society
• Hari Kunzru, author
• Mark Thomas, comedian
• Oona King, ex Labour MP
• Michael Brown, journalist and ex Tory MP
• Pam Giddy, Power Inquiry
• Salma Yaqoob, Leader Respect
• Wes Streeting, NUS
• Gordon Roddick
• Lisa Appignanesi, Chair of PEN
• Prof James Forrester
• Carmen Callil, author and publisher
• Sunder Katwala*, Fabians
• Billy Bragg, musician
• Sam Tarry, Chair Young Labour
• Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy
• Prof David Marquand
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• Prof Richard Sennett
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• Anthony Barnett, openDemocracy
• Richard Grayson, Social Liberal Forum
• John Harris, journalist
• Pete Myers, enoughsenough.org
• Steve Richards, journalist
• Tony Robinson, actor
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SNP and Tories battle it out over BIG future

A POLITICAL spat has broken out between the SNP and Conservative Party over the future of the Big Lottery Fund.

The SNP has accused the Conservative Party of attacking the public sector through plans to stop the Big Lottery Fund from distributing cash to organisations not operating in the voluntary or community sector (YCS).

However, the Conservative Party claims it aims to ensure that lottery cash does not subsidise services that should be paid for through public funding.

Conservative frontbench spokesperson, Jeremy Hunt MP, stated recently: ” …one of the first things a Conservative Government will do will be to restore the Lottery to its original four good causes. The Big Lottery Fund will – explicitly – only fund projects in the voluntary and community sectors.”

Last year in Scotland, the Big Lottery Fund spent £4.l8m on 509 non-YCS projects, including 490 awards to schools in Scotland, through its small grant schemes.

The SNP’s Pete Wishart said the money has been used to help initiatives from sensory gardens for severely disabled children to training for those with autism to educational support for pre-school children.

Examples of larger awards included £285,000 granted to a Renfrewshire project helping the long term unemployed back into work and £88,000 to help addicts in North Ayrshire move on from their addictions.

Wishart, the SNP spokesperson for culture, media and sport, said: “David Cameron’s plans would strike at the heart of the important work these organisations are doing for people in Scotland.

“What the Conservatives are trying to package nicely as “restoring funding” will actually mean funding cuts for these good causes.

“The great irony is that the Tories claim they want a lottery independent of the government but one of the first things they plan to do if they get into Downing Street is dictate to the Big Lottery Fund what they can and can’t support.”

The Conservative Party is due to reveal its full proposals for the National Lottery in the coming months, however Scottish Conservatives education spokeswoman Liz Smith, who has been involved in the process, told TFN that the party intends to increase lottery funding to culture, sport and heritage.

She said there are no current plans to reduce funding to the Big Lottery Fund, but indicated the party will be examining its current high administration costs.

“The thing that is particularly bad is that a lot of smaller charities keep their administration costs way down to four or five per cent, but then you’ve got the Big Lottery up at 11 per cent,” she said.

“The key thing though is that the voluntary and community sectors are often those that know their communities best. That is where the real hard work is going on about what is the right thing to do. I don’t think we want a system that is too governed by the pet policies of any government, whether it be Labour or the Conservatives. I think it’s better if that’s kept out of politics.”

The Big Lottery Fund Scotland spokesperson however said: “The Big Lottery Fund was recently praised by The National Audit Office as an organisation from which others could learn and whose administration costs compare favourably with public sector funders and with other funders in the voluntary sector. In the last year our administration costs were 8.6 per cent.”

John Downie, director of public affairs at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, said: “On the face of it, we welcome the move by the Conservatives, as we’ve long argued that 100 per cent of the Big Lottery Fund’s cash should go to the voluntary sector.

“What we need to be careful of, however, is that the amount of money available to our sector through the Big Lottery Fund is not cut or diverted.

“Liz Smith’s comment that more lottery funding would be made available for culture, heritage and sport can only mean that money would be taken away from Big – a move which we could not support.”