https://www.brct.org.nz/CommentingController/rss/SiteTree/99 CommentingController/rss/SiteTree/99 https://www.brct.org.nz/cuppa-tea/pete-hodgson/democracy-and-climate-change/#comment-42 <p>Thank you Pete for this stimulating thought piece. It invokes conflicting emotions in me: anticipation and frustration. <br /> I&#039;m the manager of the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust (we publish this blog) and I know how much community can and does achieve when things work well. Intention, passion and collaboration are powerful levers for positive action. My personal journey in developing a passion for community can almost be summarised by a moment in 2003. We were living in France at the time, and in the magazine Télérama was a short article on &#039;décroissance&#039; (it translates directly as &#039;degrowth&#039; or better &#039;contraction economics&#039; but neither fully contains the power of the word, which describes the politics of enough). I read the article, and one thing that stood out for me was that décroissance is not about hair shirts at all. What the word, and the ideas behind it, does is free us from economic correctness. It marries well both the challenge we face of climate change, resource crunch and economic volitility, along with our very human capacity for creativity. In doing so it and opens up the potential (in a very positive way) to strive for solutions. That really got me buzzing then, and it hasn&#039;t stopped. Your highlighting of community reflects my reality but also encourages me to look forward towards things I feel confident are positively happening. But I also feel frustration. The reframing of economics seems to be taking such a long time. <br /> Even at the local level, while many people are paring back their consumption and need to earn to consume, others support searching for oil and gas off our outstanding Otago coast in our wild southern seas, to bring hinted at economic benefit. Growthism, as a faith, still has many many adherents. <br /> Economic growth needs to have strict conditions put on it. Like other religions, there should be separation of the Church and State. Growth in the green economy, for a limited period, say the next two decades, will help us fast-track away from unsustainable energy sources, strengthen the foundations of our local economy and give it a sound basis. But how would we achieve that? In your article you talk about Communism. Communism, or the command-control economy/society is unlikely to arrive in NZ (at least not willingly and not in the next decade), and so any transition in commerce, any transformation of the economy from its current focus on growth at all costs to green growth for a limited period, is likely to be a messy, contested affair. Just look at the French Revolution, which declared ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood)’ as the national motto, and created a strict separation of Church and State. The guillotine was employed in that transition. I&#039;m interested in what this looks like in our neck of the woods (pun intended) - we can&#039;t be the only people grappling with this...<br /> <br /> Good articles on the politics of enough:<br /> http://mondediplo.com/2004/11/14latouche<br /> http://quaker.org.nz/quaker-lecture<br /> </p> Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:41:21 +1300 Scott Willis https://www.brct.org.nz/cuppa-tea/pete-hodgson/democracy-and-climate-change/#comment-42 https://www.brct.org.nz/cuppa-tea/pete-hodgson/democracy-and-climate-change/#comment-28 <p>Well said Pete, However I believe that until the real cause, the endless pursuit of growth, has been addressed no remedy can succeed long-term. Anyway I fear the skids have been oiled, the process now inexorable, best build a boat. Cheers Doi</p> Wed, 16 Oct 2013 20:15:56 +1300 Just Doi https://www.brct.org.nz/cuppa-tea/pete-hodgson/democracy-and-climate-change/#comment-28