The Opportunity

It is sometimes suggested that the USA is one of the places in the world least susceptible to a new economics. This is very far from being the case. The United States is a hugely energetic society, with a widespread sense of possibility, which explains why – as well as becoming a global symbol for some failing economic assumptions – it is also in the forefront of the alternative:

· For the first time in decades, thanks to the rise of the local food movement, the number of farms in the US is now rising.

· There is now $2.7 trillion invested in socially responsible investment in the US, more than ten per cent of the total investment portfolio.

· The fair trade vegetable produce sold in the US tripled between 2007 and 2008; fair trade coffee is rising at about five per cent a year.

· There are now 11,000 worker-owned companies in the US.

· Nearly 400,000 households across the US have shares in community-supported farms and community supported agriculture projects.

· The USA leads the world in the development of innovative local currencies to boost local production and employment, from BerkShares to Ithaca Hours.

· The financial services team at Business for Social Responsibility doubled their workload last year as corporate America seeks innovative new ways of providing banking services to poorer people.

· Renewable energy use increased by seven per cent from 2007 to 2008, and wind energy use tripled in the past five years.

· There are 58 official Transition Towns across the USA.

There are certainly fearsome trends in the other direction, towards monoculture and local economic corrosion. But there is a new searching for practical solutions, and the people and organizations behind all these trends, and all those in mainstream organizations – business and government – who are searching for new ways forward, are united by their need for a new economic language, a new set of economic theories, and above all a new economic narrative that can pull all this together and make it mainstream. That is where the New Economics Institute, with their London partners the New Economics Foundation, have their opportunity for change.