Because the Future Matters: Let's Stop Letting Modern Economics and Our Energy Addiction Ruin Almost Everything!

by John M. Braden

Overview

Because the Future Matters: Let’s Stop Letting Modern Economics and Our Energy Addiction Ruin Almost Everything! takes as its starting point the importance of the fundamental role that energy in one form or another has always played—and will always play—in the economic life of human beings.
Very quickly, however, in Chapters 2 and 3, the author jumps right in with a set of energy-related proposals intended to go a long way towards remedying three major interconnected problems that are currently confronting Canada and much of the rest of the modern world: (1) increasingly serious environmental degradation, (2) the increasing likelihood of a sudden shortage of one or more key natural resources and (3) the increasing likelihood of a disastrous social breakdown.
Braden calls this set of proposals Intelligent National Frugality.
Once having introduced his proposals to the reader, he spends the rest of the book discussing what they are intended to accomplish, how, and why. He also argues that Intelligent National Frugality is as compatible with free enterprise as it is with socialism.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940152461626
Publisher:	John M. Braden
Publication date:	11/10/2015
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	401 KB

About the Author

John M. Braden was born (in 1942), raised and educated in Ontario, Canada. For several years in the
1960s and 1970s, he lived and worked outside of North America. Since then, he has been living back in
Canada, mostly in rural eastern Ontario. He has worked at various jobs and on various projects over the
years. In addition, since at least the 1970s, he has been thinking about and reading about the ideas put
forward in this book.

Although the book deals mostly with what he calls Intelligent National Frugality, Braden and his wife,
Judith Wolfe, have also tried to incorporate a fair amount of personal frugality into their private lives.
The results have been uneven. In and around their small rural home, they keep their consumption of
energy quite low in a variety of ways. But as regards transportation, they still cover considerable
distances by private car every year, not to mention the odd trip by commercial airliner.

In general, Braden feels, rural living has provided him with a setting (peace, quiet, nature, available
time) conducive to the writing of a book such as this.