The People’s State of the Nation

Jay OwenGlobal Citizen, Trendspotting

“Lots of good think here from a pioneer of sustainability, Gus Speth!  Read on.

Hazel Henderson, Editor “

The State of the Nation Is Not Sound

Next System Project co-chair Gus Speth begins his assessment of the “people’s state of the nation” with a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “If we could first know where we are… we could better judge what to do and how to do it.” The bullet points in this article about where America stands today compared to the rest of the world mark what should be at the center of America’s current political debates and define the need for a “determined and sustained policy response.”Read more…

Banking For the Many

A new report jointly commissioned in the United Kingdom by the Communications Workers Union and the Democracy Collaborative calls for a radical reformation of banking in the commonwealth, starting with the establishment of postal retail banking and culminating with the creation of a national investment bank to complement regional development banks. It also calls for stopping the reprivatization of the Royal Bank of Scotland so that the government retains the majority stake it claimed after the 2008 financial crash. Next System Project fellow Christine Berry, coauthor of the report with Laurie Macfarlane, writes in the Independent, “Taken together, these proposals would transform the UK banking landscape and end our dependence on a private oligopoly that has proved itself criminally irresponsible time and time again.”Read more…

THE NEXT SYSTEM PODCAST

Power Down the Fossil Fuel Machine

There’s a key detail yet to be spelled out in the Green New Deal: How exactly do we displace the behemoth that is the fossil fuel industry? To discuss how to contain and curtail the deleterious effects of this tremendously powerful industry, this edition of The Next System Podcast brings together three guests on the cutting edge of thought on this issue: journalist Kate Aronoff, Oil Change International’s Steve Kretzmann, and the Next System Project’s own Carla Skandier.Listen…