A detailed description of how corporations can ameliorate the growing global environmental crises. Piasecki provides a wealth of information for thoughtful corporate managers and questioning investors. The history of financial movements and corporate evolution alone is worth the read. Even better, Piasecki offers substantive arguments based on real world examples of how multi-national corporations, many larger than most national economies, can create the technologies and corporate culture to provide for a sustainable global future. Using case studies of companies like HP, Toyota, Whirlpool and many others, Piasecki explains the “S Frontier” of severity, swiftness and Social Response Capitalism that can propel a company to doing good AND turning a profit because limited resources dictate creative solutions and shareholder advocacy demands corporate social responsibility.

Bruce Piasecki is a member of the Ethical Markets Advisory Board.

– Rosalinda Sanquiche, Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media

A brilliant, esoteric novel with deep wisdom and full of purposeful, impeccable research on the state of human affairs on this planet.  This book will become a classic as well as providing a socially and spiritually therapeutic vision for our future.   — Hazel Henderson, ed.

One of the most important books of the past two decades. This is the first, most comprehensive study of the social costs of the loss of the manufacturing sector to the US economy since the process of globalization went into high gear in the mid 1980s. The deregulation, “free trade,” open borders and privatization policies pursued by President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher in the UK led to today’s global financial casino and all the woes it helped cause in the series of financial crises culminating in the Wall Street debacle of 2008. Hidden and overlooked by obsolete statistics in the US government, the lobbying of global corporations and their “free trade” economists is the tragedy of this unnecessary loss of domestic production. This hollowing out of the USA and the resulting loss of millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico, India and other low-wage countries is documented in painful, shocking detail.

For 20 years, I have pointed to reasons the USA has experienced “jobless growth” – rooted in the abstractions of macroeconomics theories and methods. The faith in “free trade” has prevented government agencies from making use of futurists’ broader forecasting and planning methods used by most global corporations. Their economic advisors’ market fundamentalism warned against “industrial policy” except for that covertly practiced by the Department of Defense and activities in the name of “national security.” Thus, the “hollowing out” of US manufacturing has continued for two decades at the behest of global corporations and their investment bankers. President Bush I famously held that it did not matter whether the US manufactured computer chips or potato chips, while President Bush II’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Gregory Mankiw, maintained that outsourcing was good for American workers who could take their severance pay and 401Ks and become day traders on the stock markets.

Add to these idiocies the stout denials by economists that increasing capital-intensive technological change, automating manufacturing and services would create the structural unemployment we see today. Conventional measures of output per capita masked this technological unemployment as beneficial “increases in productivity” for decades, as we have pointed out for years on the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators (www.calvert-henderson.com). Unfortunately, Obama administration economic advisors are mostly steeped in conventional theories and models which continue to serve Wall Street and corporate interests at the expense of workers and individuals (see the excellent reports at www.prospect.org).
– Hazel Henderson

Hazel Henderson contributed a chapter on social enterprise to Earth Capitalism, a part of the Initiative for Creating a New Civilization sponsored by the Goi Peace Foundation, reviewed here by Kosmos.

You can download the book’s table of contents, foreword, preface, and introduction at http://www.utzverlag.de/buecher/40917dbl.pdf.

This report from Ethical Corporation provides specific guidance on incorporating corporate responsibility at all levels within a corporation, whether it be procurement, human resources, communications and marketing, finance and accounting, or facilities, logistics and operations.  The report includes findings from in-depth interviews with senior managers in companies across many sectors, allowing for strong case studies demonstrating the principles advocated.  Though addressed to experienced CR and sustainability professionals, the substantive information provided in the “stand-alone department guides” makes this as good a tool for veteran CR managers as for managers newly tasked to take corporate responsibility from theory to practice.

Rosalinda Sanquiche, Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media

Click here to download a summary.  Purchase the report at: www.ethicalcorp.com/csr.

100% Renewable: Energy Autonomy in Action, Peter Droege, Earthscan 2009
By far the most visionary and practical guide for the global transition from fossil and nuclear power to the information-rich green economies of the Solar Age.  Exciting examples of innovations in cities, towns, villages and rural communities from all over the world.  Amply pictured and demonstrated, the authors show that we humans can meet all our needs and shift to sustainable lifestyles and higher quality of life based on 100% renewable energy.  These reports and studies support the Climate Prosperity Alliance and the Climate Solutions 2 computer model we advocate:  $1 trillion invested in solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency and sustainable agriculture – mostly in developing countries – every year until 2020 can assure this shift to the Solar Age.  $10 trillion is less than the trillions used to bail out Wall Street and other banks and only represents 10% of the world’s institutional and pension fund assets of $120 trillion. (more…)

Energy, Environment and Development, Jose Goldemberg and Oswaldo Lucon, Earthscan 2010
By far the most comprehensive global overview of the inter-relationships between energy, environment and human development.  Replete with key data, charts and diagrams.  This volume integrates past and current debates on energy vis-à-vis income levels, technological choices, potentials for developing countries to “leapfrog” obsolete models of industrialism, the need to correct GDP and economic models, the hidden costs of energy, pollution, deforestation and the relevance of population and lifestyles.  A tour de force – including a timeline of human use of energy from 5000 BC and the discovery of fire through to the climate change debates of 2009.  – Hazel Henderson, December 2009

The Genius of Money, John Bloom, Steiner Books 2009
Among the spate of new books explaining money, including Tom Greco’s The End of Money and Jordan Macleod’s New Currency, John Bloom’s The Genius of Money explores money’s symbolic role in the human psyche as a projection of our inner states of consciousness.  Published by SteinerBooks, an offshoot of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, this book is elegantly produced with relevant illustrations of works of art over history, marred only by its inexcusable lack of an index.
It is not surprising that John Bloom, a lawyer with the Rudolf Steiner Foundation and RSF Finance, who has spent much of his professional career with the outward manifestations of money and monetary institutions, foundations, venture investing, grant-making and how these uses of money shape our communities, turns inward in this book.  (more…)

This is a definitive guide from a widely-acknowledged expert.  Any company with green ambitions can learn the kind of rethinking, retooling, and rebranding to help assure long-term, sustainable success.  — Hazel Henderson

Voluntary Simplicity, Duane Elgin, Harper 1981, 2010
A welcome new edition of Duane Elgin’s classic, first published in 1981.  This book opened the public debate about simpler living and the joys of enough.  We are proud that Duane Elgin is on our Advisory Board at Ethical Markets.  – Hazel Henderson

Powering the Green Economy by Miguel Mendonça, David Jacobs and Benjamin Sovacool, Earthscan 2010

Indispensible guidebook to all the public, private and civic methods of shifting our energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power toward solar, wind, energy efficiency and more sustainable communities! Here is all you will ever need to know about feed-in tariffs and all the other viable ways to introduce such new policies and initiatives in your town, state, as well as nationally. Belongs on the shelf of every green activist and decision maker in the USA and Europe particularly. – Hazel Henderson

Creating Waldens by Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson and Daisaku Ikeda

Take a vacation with this enchanting book!  Immerse yourself in nature from Thoreau’s Walden Pond to the awesome stretches of the North American continent of the 1800s in its pristine beauty.  I joined this conversation among three friends and scholars of the poetry and lives of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and was transported to their world and times.  I learned how these three poets spoke to me and my life in ways I had not fully appreciated: my odyssey of self-directed learning, my love of writing, reading and collecting books, my social activism and my rebellion against conventional economics!  These deep, personal conversations between Daisaku Ikeda, who has inspired me greatly, and Joel Myerson and Ronald Bosco enriched my understanding about the history of my beloved adopted country.  (more…)

Keynes: The Return of the Master by Robert Skidelsky (PublicAffairs 2009) and The Keynes Solution by Paul Davison (Palgrave Macmillan 2009)

These two new books re-introduce John Maynard Keynes to current policy makers dealing with the failure of de-regulated financial markets. They also introduce Keynes to a new generation and provide excellent background information on how Keynes’ legacy is being re-applied in today’s fiscal and monetary policies, stimulus plans and debates at the G-20 on how to reform global finance (see my own proposals at www.ethicalmarkets.com).

Both Skidelsky and Davidson offer similar and excellent policy advice based on Keynes’ concepts and proposals. (more…)

Climate Policy – Linking Emissions Trading Schemes, Volume 9 issue 4 2009, guest editor Andreas Tuerk, Earthscan 2009

A very narrow view of emissions trading schemes and the “efficiency” of global inter-linkages. This study completely ignores the more efficient tool of taxing carbon, other pollutants and waste while lifting tax burdens from incomes and payrolls. Apparently, the new opportunities for economists in carbon markets which banks see as their next big profit center overwhelms their interest in other ways of moving societies from the Fossil Age to the Solar Age. Thus, the entire focus of the report is inside the box of assumptions that cap and trade schemes are the best way to reduce greenhouse gasses and stabilize the planet’s climate. (more…)

bazaars, conversations and freedom: for a market culture beyond greed and fear by Rajni Bakshi, Penguin Books 2009

Indian economist Rajni Bakshi has elegantly woven all the threads in the ongoing saga of the human family’s search for better ways of living on Earth. In this brilliant, engaging and readable book, Bakshi emerges as a pre-eminent global systems thinker. I recall the time Bakshi visited me and our wide-ranging discussions on everything from what was wrong with economics and how to reform this too-influential profession to examining the potentials of humans to evolve into more caring, cooperative behavior and develop more ecologically-aware, harmonious societies. This book is destined to become a classic with the kind of perennial wisdom and relevance of E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. Here are the fundamental underpinnings of sustainability and shaping a good life for all on our small planet. – Hazel Henderson, Dec. 2009

The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncey, New Society Publishers, 2009

A wonderfully clear guide to simplify the issues of global warming and climate change so that anyone can get involved, doing what they can where they are.  Dauncey’s 101 solutions – which people can take at every level from personal to global – provide both the needed information and the inspiration.  — Hazel Henderson

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization by Lester Brown, Norton, 2009

Lester Brown’s incomparable knowledge shows how humanity can make the necessary transition from the Fossil Fuel Era to the Solar Age. Updated and more practical than ever, Plan B 4.0 is must reading! We are proud that Lester Brown is on our Advisory Board. — Hazel Henderson

Up From Wall Street: The Responsible Investment Alternative by Thomas Croft, Cosimo Inc., 2009

Simply the most useful guide to pension funds and institutional investing.  Practical advice for trustees and SRI investors on how to deal with arrogant portfolio managers and consultants and further action steps toward reforms.  Absolutely a must read for all interested in investing for a better world.   — Hazel Henderson

Odyssey of a Practical Visionary is the story of Belden Paulson, whose life has been dedicated to building a better world politically and economically. This book is a fascinating and compelling memoir of unique experiences and brave experiments—pointing the way to a better future for the human family.

The Constant Economy by Zac Goldsmith, Atlantic Books, 2009

Sensible policy proposals for Britain from the editor of the influential magazine The Ecologist. Highly-recommended for Brits and everyone concerned with building a sustainable future on Earth. – Hazel Henderson

Freedom From Want by Ian Smillie, Kumarian Press, 2009

The almost overlooked story of BRAC, the other much larger microfinance NGO in Bangladesh. The growth of BRAC and its beneficial influence in so many areas of Bangladeshi society is awe-inspiring and profoundly hopeful. Must reading! — Hazel Henderson