In 1976 the economist Fritz Schumacher spoke at Findhorn in Northern Scotland in an address as relevant today as it was then.  Historically, he noted, we are at the end of three distinct eras -- first a Descartian informed world view which valued what was known through the senses above spiritual knowledge and encouraged an accumulation of things as a path to happiness; second a sociological system shaped by the industrial revolution's division of labor which led to the degradation...

 In June of this year, James Gustave Speth addressed a group of foundation professionals on the topic of "Towards a New Consciousness in America: the Role of Grantmakers."  He invited those in attendance to help him change America's mind.  By which he meant changing long held beliefs and habits that prevent us from conducting our economic lives in a way that supports both people and the environment.

As former Dean of Yale School of Forestry, former...

The men and women of the United States were once builders of boats, weavers of fabric, turners of pots, crafters of furniture, keepers of bees, operators of mills, welders of steel, creators of new technologies, and in general makers of the goods used in America.  Entranced by the doctrine of efficiency of scale, bulging corporations merged, closed plants, moved production outside the U.S., and effected a loss of regional manufacturing skills. 

We have skipped a generation...

The economist, Fritz Schumacher, author of "Small is Beautiful," commented that if everyone were for "small," he'd be for "big."  It was not just to be contrarian.  It was a question of balance.  Our global economy has grown so big, our production processes so divided and so distant from the places where the goods are actually consumed, that in balance it is necessary to re-emphasize the small and local.

For the past thirty years, the E. F...

In its report "The Great Transition" our London partners the New Economics Foundation (neweconomics.org) sketch an outline of how to reach what E. F. Schumacher would have called an "economy of permanence." 

The sections of the report include: The Great Revaluing, the Great Redistribution, the Great Rebalancing, the Great Localization, the Great Reskilling, the Great Economic Irrigation, and the Great Interdependence. We will focus on each element separately...

Local currencies are designed to encourage trade at locally owned businesses.   At the same time their very design can reflect and honor the history and culture or an area. This is true of BerkShares.  On the 20 BerkShare note, for example,  you find Herman Melville, novelist, essayist, poet, and mariner.  Melville is best known as the author of one of the greatest of all American novels, “Moby Dick” (1851). Written at his Arrowhead farmhouse in Pittsfield,...

Background Information

"Catalyze the Great Transition," builds on work carried out by the Tellus Institute in Boston over the past 15 years and, more recently, by the New Economics Foundation in London to delineate a rigorous and hopeful vision and pathway to an equitable and sustainable future.

The Global Scenario Group, convened by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Tellus Institute, published...

Imagine if leading economists spent time in the wilderness. Perhaps the chair of the Federal Reserve could spend an afternoon standing at the mouth of the Tsiu River on central Alaska's little explored lost coast, as the sleek bodies of silver salmon everywhere swelled upstream pushing against him.

Andrew Kimbrell, driven by his personal experience of the Coho salmon on the Pacific Coast, is on a quest for an economic ecology, a consideration of our economic system as...