The Approaching Great Transformation: Toward a Livable Post Carbon Economy

by Joel Magnuson, Helena Norberg-Hodge (Foreword by)

Overview

"A brave book by a smart person with a masterful command of economic theory."—Publisher's Weekly

How should we act and think economically in the world as the era of cheap oil comes to an end? The Approaching Great Transformation begins to answer this massive question, focusing on the people and communities already at work on the transition: energy descent pioneers in the UK and the US educating their communities about the road ahead, small enterprises defying traditional  “profit” in favor of permanence and sustainability, and cities preparing for a post carbon future.
 
Highlighting the work of thinkers like John Ruskin and E. F. Schumacher, Magnuson here builds on his previous book, Mindful Economics. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609804817
Publisher:	Seven Stories Press
Publication date:	04/09/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	859 KB

About the Author

JOEL MAGNUSON is an independent economist based in Portland, Oregon. He is a visiting fellow at the Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, serves as an international advisor to Anglia's Interconnections, and is on the faculty at the East West Sanctuary in Nagykovácsi, Hungary. He is the author of Mindful Economics: How the US Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How It Could Be Different (Seven Stories Press, 2008).

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: ANOTHER SEA CHANGE
 
Every epic historical transformation began with economic turbulence and collapse. As a general rule, when the economic foundation of a society is significantly disrupted, it destabilizes everything else. Everything begins to change. The Roman Empire finally crumbled when its Mediterranean system of conquest, slavery, and trade was thrown into chaos by the Saracens who launched their invasions from northern Africa. And the feudal system of the Middle Ages was brought down when its agrarian economy was ruined by plague epidemics and wars over religion. Today another historic sea change is beginning to take form and the underlying cause, again, is a major economic disruption. Though this time it will not be caused by invading and conquering armies or plague epidemics, the disruption will be a global decline in the availability of oil—the paramount and finite energy source that has supported all the major industrial systems for the last century. As resource limitation and climate change are beginning to shake the foundation of our entire way of life, another historic sea change is in the making.

Our current global system of production and commerce is driven by an imperative for endless growth and expansion. But limited supplies of oil and virtually all other resources are binding this expansion like a rope tightening around every economy in the world. Yet in a kind of blind and desperate attempt to keep charging forward with more economic growth, governments nearly everywhere are plunging themselves into massive and unsustainable debt. Whether it smashes into the wall of resource limitations and debt fatigue, or makes a shift away from business as usual, our global economy is going to change.

As we begin to feel these changes we will be forced to reexamine what we consider to be the good life. Many of us in the so-called developed world have high expectations for our career choices, our levels of income, the things we want to buy, and all the other accoutrements of a plentiful lifestyle. But this is all beginning to change. The cause of this change is a fairly simple but sobering reality: the resource base of our planet can no longer sustain it. When I refer to a declining resource base here, I am not only talking about oil, though oil is the big one. Other fossil fuels, water, topsoil, basic metals, and virtually every other resource available to us are being consumed to exhaustion. We often say that our desire for high material standards of living is to provide for our families—our children. The cruel irony is that our children and grandchildren will be the first generations to experience the full brunt of the economic and ecological damage we are doing now. That is, unless we do something now to change that.
In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004, 2011), evolutionary psychologist Jared Diamond chronicles an impressive list of examples of how humans have a penchant for self-destruction. Though his examples are taken from different places and at different times in history, they all basically follow a consistent pattern in which entire societies collapse as a result of their destruction of the environmental habitat that would have otherwise sustained them. But we don’t have to follow this pattern. We are an evolving species and we can learn from the lessons of history. We have conscious awareness and the ability to be proactive and possibly shape the direction of this historic sea change toward something better. This would be our lasting contribution—our great transformation.

The choices we make today as we adapt to mounting scarcity may be the most important historical events of the 21st century. We can choose to be forward thinking and work actively toward positive changes in a spirit of celebration and make this transformation in ways that are healthy, ecologically sound, economically stable, and just. or, we can choose to be complacent, to continue treating our world as an infinite resource pipeline and an infinite waste dump, to brace ourselves for endless wars over resources, and to trudge through one debilitating crisis after another, pushing all of humanity through a long historical period of decline—a descent into a kind of Dark Ages of the third millennium. This would be a tragic downfall for humankind, but the ultimate cause of our downfall would not be the crises themselves. The cause would be our refusal to deal with the obvious fact that the oil Age—the age of seemingly infinite abundance—is coming to an end.

Table of Contents

Foreword Helena Norberg-Hodge 11

Introduction: Another Sea Change 15

The Twilight of the Oil Age 17

A Brief Update on Peaking and Warming 19

Our Great Transformation 27

Chapter 1 From Transition to Transformation 35

The Origins of the Transition Movement 36

Transition Philosophy 37

The Ingredients of the Transition Model 45

Transition Projects 55

Challenges to the Transition Movement 58

Conclusion: From Transition to Transformation 62

Chapter 2 Economies in Transition-a Systems View 63

We Are the Agents of Change 66

Taking the Bird's Eye View 69

What About the Individual? 77

Creating a New Universe 80

Conclusion 84

Chapter 3 This Road Paved with Good Intentions 87

The Economics of Growth 89

Rethinking Green Economics 96

Rethinking Green Energy 106

Rethinking Localization-Small is Not Always Beautiful 113

Conclusion 115

Chapter 4 E. F. Schumacher and the Meta-Economists 119

The Early British Meta-Economists 121

The Young Americans 131

E. F. Schumacher, Economist and Philosopher 135

Conclusion 140

Chapter 5 The New Monastics 143

The New Monastics and Crafting New Institutions 145

The B Lab Connections 150

Banking and the North Dakota and Santa Fe Connections 155

The Urban Farmer and the Food Resilience Connection 165

The Local Government Connection 169

The Colorado Connection 184

The Cooperatives Connection 189

The Health Care Connection 193

The Household Connection 197

Conclusion 199

Chapter 6 Education and Our Great Transformation 203

Developing Our Skills-New and Old 206

Reforming Education for the 21st Century 207

Conclusion: Changing the Way we Approach Change 213

Notes 225

Index 229

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Approaching Great Transformation is a breath of fresh air in a world of hackneyed nonsolutions to our social and economic problems. Professor Magnuson pulls no punches regarding the coming collapse of the corporate-commercial-consumer society, or the inability of technological fixes and 'green capitalism' to bail us out of the historical crunch that is virtually upon us. Rather, as we start to run out of energy (read: oil) and are forced to abandon obsolete notions of 'growth' and 'progress', we shall have to confront the question we have collectively been avoiding for roughly 500 years: If money is not the purpose of life, what is? Whether the alternative models discussed in this book prove to be viable or not, the author makes it clear that what we are living with now is no choice at all. His message is simple: change or die."
—Morris Berman, author of Why America Failed

“A challenging and engaging exploration of what it will take to make the transition to an ecologically sustainable future.  Magnuson exposes the false promises of green-wash capitalism—and in the tradition of E.F. Schumacher puts the hopeful shoots of real alternatives squarely on the map for ongoing development.”
—Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and author of America Beyond Capitalism

Editorial Reviews

03/25/2013
Soon, fossil fuels will run out—or become ridiculously complicated and expensive to extract—and the global economy will be in a real pickle, says Magnuson, an economist "specializing in non-orthodox approaches to political economy." These days, no one is safe from rhetoric about "going green"; Magnusson argues that this is mostly a "marketing ploy," a way for huge corporations to have and eat their cakes—labeling their products "green" while relentlessly pursuing "endless growth" and ignoring the reality of a finite planet with limited resources. While "green" and "sustainable" have become catchwords, material consumption in the last 25 years has increased. A "deeper transformation of our core economic institutions" is necessary, he argues; i.e. capitalism must go. While eloquently argued, the book's central message will be difficult to hear for many, though he effectively skewers the mantras of those who hope to ignore the problem: "at least it won't happen in our life time" and "technology will come through." This is a brave book by a smart person with a masterful command of economic theory; unfortunately, for these reasons its reach is probably limited: most people will balk at its central message: that we will "have to get by with much, much less production and consumption." (Mar)

Publishers Weekly

"The Approaching Great Transformation is a breath of fresh air in a world of hackneyed nonsolutions to our social and economic problems. Professor Magnuson pulls no punches regarding the coming collapse of the corporate-commercial-consumer society, or the inability of technological fixes and 'green capitalism' to bail us out of the historical crunch that is virtually upon us. Rather, as we start to run out of energy (read: oil) and are forced to abandon obsolete notions of 'growth' and 'progress', we shall have to confront the question we have collectively been avoiding for roughly 500 years: If money is not the purpose of life, what is? Whether the alternative models discussed in this book prove to be viable or not, the author makes it clear that what we are living with now is no choice at all. His message is simple: change or die." —Morris Berman, author of Why America Failed

“A challenging and engaging exploration of what it will take to make the transition to an ecologically sustainable future.  Magnuson exposes the false promises of green-wash capitalism—and in the tradition of E.F. Schumacher puts the hopeful shoots of real alternatives squarely on the map for ongoing development.” —Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and author of America Beyond Capitalism

"We are literally in the midst of reshaping the world and as a result, this is the time to make the new economy in a way that is redefining, as economist Joel Magnuson writes, “what is good, beautiful, fair, or wholesome, and making sure that our economic system allows us to live according to these beliefs.” —Truthout

"Soon, fossil fuels will run out—or become ridiculously complicated and expensive to extract—and the global economy will be in a real pickle, says Magnuson, an economist "specializing in non-orthodox approaches to political economy." These days, no one is safe from rhetoric about "going green"; Magnusson argues that this is mostly a "marketing ploy," a way for huge corporations to have and eat their cakes—labeling their products "green" while relentlessly pursuing "endless growth" and ignoring the reality of a finite planet with limited resources. While "green" and "sustainable" have become catchwords, material consumption in the last 25 years has increased. A "deeper transformation of our core economic institutions" is necessary, he argues; i.e. capitalism must go. While eloquently argued, the book's central message will be difficult to hear for many, though he effectively skewers the mantras of those who hope to ignore the problem: "at least it won't happen in our life time" and "technology will come through." This is a brave book by a smart person with a masterful command of economic theory; unfortunately, for these reasons its reach is probably limited: most people will balk at its central message: that we will have to get by with much, much less production and consumption." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

According to Portland, OR-based independent economist and international strategic advisor Magnuson (visiting fellow, Ashcroft International Business Sch. at Anglia Ruskin Univ., Cambridge, England; Mindful Economics: How the US Economy Works, Why It Matters, and How It Could Be Different), the world is ready for a great transformation. As the Oil Age comes to an end, living in the post-carbon economy will require a shift in thinking and consumption, and Magnuson proposes both theoretical and practical ideas for how that might happen. He places his analysis at the intersection of economic and ecological concerns to create a picture of how the world will change in the coming years, focusing on the institutional changes that will have to take place in order for real progress to be possible. He addresses the issues of education, health care, banks, and more to show how these institutions will transform as values shift and we move from a consumption-driven society to a more sustainable one. VERDICT Magnuson's text is extremely readable, and his style is intended to bring these big ideas to a general audience, while his chapter on meta-economics, in which he discusses the ideas of John Ruskin and E.F. Schumacher, may be of greater interest to students of the field.—Elizabeth Nelson, UOP Lib., Des Plaines, IL

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