We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, July 16, 2011

New Zealand: Greed is good, as long as it's green

Click here to access article by Sue Bradford from Pundit. 
Big business is driven by the imperative to maximise profits for its shareholders, which means continually pushing for more – more resource extraction, higher margins from those whose labour it uses and more pollution, all often just shifted from one part of the world to another.

No amount of "greening" of the nature of this growth takes away from the fundamental fact that this planet cannot sustain infinite growth.
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