Category Archives: Economy

Canada’s Choice

May 29, 2018Climate, Economy, energycanada, Climate, economics, electricity, energy, jobs, Kinder-Morgan, Pipeline, Wind energyguydauncey

by Guy Dauncey

$4.5 Billion Dollars to Subsidize Fossil Fuels? Here’s a Much Better Idea

$4.5 billion of Canada’s money, to buy a bitumen pipeline? Some suggest that it could rise as high as $12 billion, including future construction and legal costs.

So what if the money was invested in solutions to the climate crisis, instead making things worse by being invested in the primary cause, which is our use of fossil fuels? When Canada signed the Paris Climate Agreement most people presumed that it was being signed honestly, not as an act of laugh-behind-your-hand hypocrisy.

Thirty to Fifty Times More Jobs

That much money could leverage enough electricity to replace most of Alberta’s coal and gas-fired electricity, and generate between 30 and 50 times as many jobs. It could also power 18 million electric vehicles for 25 years. Continue reading Canada’s Choice →

Farm Villages – The Way of the Future

April 27, 2018Economycommunity, ecovillages, farming, food, housingguydauncey

Farm-Villages Submission to the Agricultural Land Reserve Minister’s Advisory Committee by Guy Dauncey and Rob Buchan. Deadline for letters and submissions Monday April 30th 2018.

https://engage.gov.bc.ca/agriculturallandreserve/

For an illustrated slideshow on this proposal, see https://www.slideshare.net/GuyDauncey/farm-villages

Introduction

Throughout the world, in every culture, farmers have lived and raised their children in small farm villages.

Here on Vancouver Island, 95% of our food is imported every day on the ferries. At the same time, good farmland sits empty or grows hay, while younger people who want to get onto the land to grow food are unable to do so because of the incredibly high price of land.

Continue reading Farm Villages – The Way of the Future →

Let’s Make Every Business a Social Purpose Business

March 19, 2018business, EconomyA new economy, B Corporations, business, cooperatives, economics, economy, future, money, Partnerships, purpose, Social enterprise, Socially responsible investmentguydauncey

By Guy Dauncey, March 2018

If we are to live in a fair, just, ecologically sustainable world, many things in our economy will need to change, from the way banks create money to the way environmental losses and gains are accounted for and measured.

Let’s start with the businesses that grow the food, manufacture the products and provide the services we all depend on and enjoy.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a successful economy without its businesses. The Soviet Union tried, and Cuba is still trying, but neither has had much success. It’s hard to have success when the spirit of enterprise is not allowed to flourish. Continue reading Let’s Make Every Business a Social Purpose Business →

The Birth of a New Cooperative Economy

February 14, 2018Economya new story, banks, business, Cooperative, debt, ecology, economics, energy, finance, food, housing, jobs, money, taxes, transportationguydauncey

They say we are self-interested, we’re always out to win.
Always individualistic, though it used to be a sin.
They say we need free markets, the better to compete,
and the economy will flourish if we only think of greed.

This is Economics 101, the way it’s taught today. Not a word about nature, community, caring, sharing, or cooperation.

During the mid 19^th century, advances in science, democracy, education, literacy, public healthcare, labour unions, technological breakthroughs, banking, and the power of fossil fuels to generate rapid economic growth certainly made it seem that after ten thousand years of economic stagnation the competitive pursuit of profit was improving life for all. In the 1760s it took eighteen hours of human labour to transform a pound of cotton into cloth. By the 1860s it took one and a half hours. Today, it probably takes five seconds.

Continue reading The Birth of a New Cooperative Economy →

Let Us Create An EcoRenaissance

February 3, 2018Economy, Education, NatureArt, beauty, community, ecology, future, Nature, revolution, spirit, storyguydauncey

by Guy Dauncey, February 2nd, 2018

If you want to see what this EcoRenaissance looks like on the ground, click HERE.

Until a thing has a name, it doesn’t really exist

I can feel this future. I have written a novel about it. I love its colour and vibrancy, its harmony with Nature. But what is its name?

One of the realities of the spoken language is that until a thing has a name, it doesn’t really exist. When we want to create something, we name it.

The feeling that comes to mind is one of Renaissance – the birth of a new vision, the promise of a new future. The Renaissance that was seeded in the 13^th century and blossomed into glory in the 15^th and sixteenth centuries filled people’s hearts, souls and minds with art, imagination and ideas. It took inspiration from the rediscovered science, art and philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome. It made souls take flight, washing away the dull dogmatism and cruel muddy feudalism of a world where nothing much changed except by disease, disorder and death.

Continue reading Let Us Create An EcoRenaissance →

Canada’s Housing Crisis: A Permanent, 100-Year Solution

June 14, 2017Economyaffordable housing, AirBnB, banking, canada, community, community land trust, cooperatives, couch-surfing, credit, ecovillage, energy, homelessness, housing, housing crisis, Housing First, inheritances, money, Passive Home, planning, politics, quantitative easing, tax evasion, tiny homes, zoningguydauncey

100-Years

Guy Dauncey is the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible and nine other books. He is an Honorary Member of the Planning Institute of BC and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.

June 2017. This is an updated and expanded version of Canada’s Housing Crisis: 22 Solutions, originally published on The Practical Utopian in December 2016.

A PDF Version of this essay can be downloaded here: Canada’s Housing Crisis – Guy Dauncey.

Executive Summary

Canada’s housing crisis is far more severe than most people realize. The fundamental problem is an excess of money pouring into the housing market from various sources, combined with an abdication of responsibility by all levels of government for the past 30 years.

There are many on-the-ground solutions, demonstrating positive ways to build affordable housing. And there are seven new housing-related taxes that could raise the funds needed for a massive expansion of affordable housing.

The fundamental cause of the problem is the excess of funds flowing into the market, and until this is solved house prices will continue to rise, and most other solutions will seem like never-ending sandbagging.

The money supply problem can be solved. The money can be obtained to restore safe, sustainable, socially designed affordable housing as a fundamental human right.

And by establishing an Affordable Housing Social Justice Connector, a permanent, hundred-year solution can be put in place that will guarantee that Canada need never confront a housing crisis again. Continue reading Canada’s Housing Crisis: A Permanent, 100-Year Solution →

What Shall We Call The New Economy We Need So Much?

June 3, 2017Economycooperative economy, economics, green economy, new economyguydauncey

Seventy-Four Names

This is an expanded Appendix 1 to my essay A New Cooperative Economy.

Until something has a name, it hardly exists. So what shall we call the new economy that we need so much? These are all proposed names that I have harvested from my reading. If you know of another, let me know, and I will add it. Updated to 74 names on November 21st 2017.

So which do you prefer? I apologize that this website is not sophisticated enough to allow for scoring. Click MORE to see the list… Continue reading What Shall We Call The New Economy We Need So Much? →

Book Review: The Clean Money Revolution – Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism

May 24, 2017Books, Climate, Economybusiness, future, impact investing, investment, love, money, socially responsibleguydauncey

by Joel Solomon with Tyee Bridge

New Society Publishers, April 2017. Review by Guy Dauncey.

This is a great book. It’s personal, committed, passionate, informative, and full of great stories. For an addicted change-the-worlder, what more can you ask?

And the stories, from Joel’s personal life and those of his colleagues, are about one of the most important challenges we need to embrace on our planet – changing the way we invest our money.

Continue reading Book Review: The Clean Money Revolution – Reinventing Power, Purpose and Capitalism →

The World’s Central Banks to the Rescue

May 9, 2017Climate, Economy, energybanking, Climate bonds, climate change, climate crisis, Green Climate Fund, monetary policy, money, quantitative easing, renewable energyguydauncey

by Guy Dauncey, inspired by Matthias Kroll

PDF download available here: The Boldest Climate Solution

A globally agreed carbon cap? Carbon rationing? Holland’s proposed ban on the sale of non-electric cars by 2025? Oslo’s goal to reduce the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions by 95% by 2030?

No, none of the above.

So what is it? In a nutshell, it’s the proposal that the world’s central banks create $300 billion a year, and use it to leverage investments of up to $2 trillion a year in the urgently needed transition to renewable energy, and other climate solutions.

Continue reading The World’s Central Banks to the Rescue →

A New Cooperative Economy

May 3, 2017Economybanking, business, community, cooperatives, energy, finance, food, housing, jobs, new economy, planning, politics, poverty, renewable energy, solidarity, sustainability, taxguydauncey

Guy Dauncey, April 2017

essay-3

This essay was submitted to The Next Systems Project Essay Contest, in which it won second place. “We received hundreds of submissions from 30 different states and 26 countries, proving that many around the world not only believe system change is necessary, but have thought long and hard about what a new system should look like and how we might get there.” http://thenextsystem.org/announcing-the-winners-in-our-essay-competition/

http://thenextsystem.org/…/2017/04/Dauncey_AtLargeSecond.pdf

You can download the essay as a PDF here. A New Cooperative Economy

Our task is to fashion a political vision and a political narrative that is a compelling answer to neo-liberalism and the ideology of competition, free markets, and the primacy of capital. We need a political economy of cooperation, solidarity, of mutual benefit. – John Restakis, Civil Power and the Partner State, 2016

Our modern economy is in crisis. Can we build an alternative economy as our ancestors did in the transition from feudalism to capitalism? It’s a question that takes us deep into our values, culture, history, politics—and visions of the future.

Continue reading A New Cooperative Economy →

$4.5 Billion Dollars to Subsidize Fossil Fuels? Here’s a Much Better Idea

Thirty to Fifty Times More Jobs

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Introduction

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Until a thing has a name, it doesn’t really exist

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Executive Summary

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Seventy-Four Names

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