President Obama’s White House has proposed “bold” $10 per barrel tax on imports of oil. “The White House said that the tax would encourage a shift away from an oil-dependent transportation system and provide revenue that it would use to pay for much-needed infrastructure investment.” With a current price of $30-$40/bbl this represents a tax …
Continue reading “Obama proposes $10 per barrel oil tax — unlikely to happen”
Journalist Paul Mason, economics editor for Channel 4 News, argues that the neoliberal capitalist model “is broken” — has had its day, is systemically unsustainable — and can be replaced with a new model. His solution? Use technology to reduce the hours of work we all do, and “consign the coercive bullshit that takes place at the precarious end of …
Continue reading “Paul Mason argues that capitalism is failing”
The five ’emerging’ BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa account for a quarter of the world economy (24.5%). Their voting power at the IMF is only 10.3 percent. They have decided to stop waiting for the US Congress to ratify reforms to that voting structure. At their sixth summit recently they announced …
The President of Iceland says we are at an historic crossroads, where “we have to choose (whether we like it or not) what is more important: the interests of the financial markets, or the democratic will of the people.” (from 34-55 seconds)
So, the IPCC has concluded that averting climate change catastrophe is ’eminently affordable’. Of course it is — it always was. Quibbles about the ‘cost’ of averting climate change have always been spurious, partly because the cost of not taking action will always be greater (ie death), and partly because any ‘cost’ will always show …
Continue reading “IPCC and renewable energy — the view from Texas”
A recent article in the New York Times puts the cost of environmental degradation in China at about $230 billion in 2010. This is 3.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, three times the level in 2004. “This cuts to the heart of China’s economic challenge: how to transform from the explosive growth of the …
Continue reading “The two sides of change for a sustainable future”
In February this year, KPMG published a report identifying ten “sustainability megaforces that will affect every business over the next two decades.” They have identified ten good drivers of change. They just seem to have missed a trick when it comes to showing how these issues will have serious consequences for business leaders. Even inclusion of the …
In a recent interview with Newsweek, George Soros has said that he foresees “riots on the streets [in the USA] that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties.” This is not good news for US citizens, or business. People who are rioting do not make good customers, or employees. And …
We cannot continue to grow our economy forever. A physics professor at the University of California has used the laws of physics to write two blogs that explain why. Permabusiness takes this information and looks at what would come next — both for the financial system and the wider economy. Unexpectedly, we find stories in …
Lots of people talk about “thinking global, acting local”. This guy does a good job of putting it into practice. He paints a clear picture that runs from the strategic rise of China to the practical need for better education, less regulation, more environmental responsibility, and more socially-inclusive wealth creation.