Getting a handle on the relationship between capitalism and ecological degradation

If we pay even the most casual attention to what is happening around us, we observe enormous ecological destruction. Recent events in the ‘100% pure’ ‘clean and green’ tourist paradise of Aotearoa New Zealand reveal industrial pollution dumped on marginalised urban communities, wetlands drained and forests logged to make way for dairy farming, rare species killed [...]

Can financial regime change deliver a more equitable world?

The New Zealand Herald has published a brief but fascinating analysis of the current economic crisis by Robert Wade, New Zealand born professor of political economy and development at the London School of Economics. In the article, Wade sketches the outlines of the crisis and examines its origins, and in so doing clearly identifies the [...]

“If it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad” – intrinsic values as drivers for social change and tools to escape consumerism

One of the debates that has regularly reared its head in the environmental movement is how best to achieve change to more environmentally friendly behaviour. Small specific steps often seem the most direct and effective way to achieve practical change now, and yet there is intuitively a disquieting gap between the scale of social change [...]

Should greens care about social justice issues? Lessons from social research

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has now contested four elections independently under the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. These elections have delivered votes of 5.2% (1999), 7.0% (2002), 5.3% (2005) and 6.7% (2008). The failure to even come close to the hoped-for 10% poll result at the last two elections has created a certain [...]

Escaping the growth imperative

A friend recently expressed to me one of the essential conundrums of contemporary  capitalist society: “I can see growth can’t continue, [because of the environmental impacts] but I can’t see how we can stop it without the whole system falling over like a stack of cards.”
One good answer can be found in the recent report [...]

Fiddling while the hydrocarbons burn

The National Government has shown a disdain for environmental concerns and sustainability initiatives (even when those initiatives save money and make good fiscal sense). In fact, they seem to be gleefully heading in the opposite direction -  favouring road-building and allowing the construction of a new gas-fired power-plant, while dithering and delaying about the ETS [...]