The NOW Labz project is a collaboration between the HotSpring Network, Quipu.cc, and partners, aimed at bringing thoughtful people together to brainstorm solutions to big problems. Quipu.cc will be hosting a NOW Labz series of cyberdialogues, timed to coincide with the Commission on the Status of Women, to discuss women’s rights, gender rights, childhood equality … Continue reading NOW Labz CSW 2013 Online Meetings
User-made economic atlas for the 21st century to launch this spring
The way we get information about the economic landscape is skewed toward those who benefit from policies enacted in the interests of those already in power. In other words, our economic informational system is skewed toward the privileged, and effectively perpetuates a “trickle-down” model for measuring progress, even as the same system produces numbers showing that model is not adequate to fomenting sustainable economic frameworks that secure and advance the democratic possibilities of an expanded middle class.
Continue reading “Quipu.cc: User-made economic atlas for the 21st century”
The Winter 2013 edition of the HotSpring Quarterly was released one day after the 2nd inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama. It once again focuses on innovative projects for building a clean energy future, a more participatory democracy, and a human-scale foundation for major social change. Sam Daley-Harris tells the story of his Center for Citizen … Continue reading Winter 2013 Edition of HotSpring Quarterly
We need a system of cooperative public-private infrastructure financing, a national infrastructure bank. But we also need to use that fabric of cooperative investment and output to foster specific areas of major improvement to our national economy. The model could be replicated across the world, but the US is uniquely positioned to deploy this solution … Continue reading Blueprint for a Renewable Energy Infrastructure Bank
On Tuesday, October 4, 2011, Joseph Robertson delivered the fourth Climate Talk, as a live webcast, presentation of his book, Building a Green Economy: The Economics of Carbon Pricing and the Transition to Clean, Renewable Fuels. The talk was intended to focus on the technologies and strategies that can allow for a smooth, rapid, intelligent, and … Continue reading Building a Green Economy webcast
The World Bank hosted its annual Civil Society Policy Forum last week, and the clear, and very conscious, theme of the meetings was the connection between high-level transparency, stakeholder outreach and the building and securing of a functional and reliable civil society. In recent years, stakeholder outreach has been moving to prominence in the deliberations … Continue reading Illuminating the Landscape of Human-scale Policy Outcomes
Saturation means more of a given ingredient cannot be added to a given volume or fabric of activity, without spilling over, and being wasted. The fossil fuels market is saturated, in the sense that it cannot effectively capitalize on major new production investment without major new construction of productive facilities. The industry has effectively pushed … Continue reading Saturation vs. Scalability: Old & Costly vs. Clean & Efficient
A World Bank study has projected that the global financial crisis and resulting recession will plunge some 53 million people across “emerging markets” —like China and India— into absolute poverty, in 2009 alone. In China, tens of millions of people have lost jobs related to the export-dependent manufacturing sector. Such a collapse in private fortunes … Continue reading 53 Million in ‘Emerging Markets’ Plunged into Poverty by Great Recession
Carbon → Fee → Dividend → Simple
The conventional wisdom on action to reduce carbon emissions is that it must be expensive, harmful to the economy, and result in less productive power generation. This is a blatant falsehood based on the outmoded idea that combustion is the most favorable way to harvest energy. All systems of carbon taxation or carbon emissions capping operate on the principle that applying economic pressure in a targeted way can inspire markets to change their behavior. This is the very logic of market-based economic systems.
Continue reading “Carbon Fee and Dividend: to Spur Job Creation, Industrial Boom”
It is a virtual mantra in the universe of political analysis that “business doesn’t like uncertainty”, and it is true that declining consumer spending, increasing fuel costs, squeeze profits and that in some cases, businesses worry about changes to the regulations they must follow. But uncertainty is the nature of an evolving global economy, and … Continue reading 21st Century Business Needs to Learn to Deal with Uncertainty
The Poet Economist 