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Editorial:Evidence is growing alarmingly that humankind may well have already done irreversible damage to the living environment, and that if this is not the case, then we have little time left to change direction and avoid this catastrophe.
Two recent books between them comprehensively cover the issues involved. One I reviewed in the last issue, but have chosen to include in this one a further, longer review, in the hope of persuading you to get it Gaian Democracies, see page 105. This book identifies the current global economy as driven by a ‘Global Monetocracy’, as a self-adjusting system which must be challenged and replaced by a global network of small-scale, participatory democracies. It quotes instances of the successful implementation of the principles the authors advocate.
The other I took with me for holiday reading, and found it covered an amazing range of related topics, on the theme of the impending peaking of fossil-fuel extraction, and the implications of this for the future.
I review this book, The Party’s Over — Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, on page 86.
Fundamental to the author’s message is that over the last few centuries the economy has been driven to grow by the need of the debt-money system for ever-expanding volume of money, to avoid collapse of the system, and that with the inevitable decline of available fossil-fuel energy, which can only partially be compensated by renewables and energy-efficiency, this will trigger a. collapse of the system. He looks at the various possible scenarios for the future, most of which are pretty grim, but with the possibility, if enough people demand and institute the needed changes fully and soon enough, for a far better eventual future.
This confirms the need to resist the Euro, for the reason of guarding the right to reform our money system:
"When exercising the powers and carrying out the tasks and duties conferred upon them by this Treaty and the Statutes of the ESCB, neither the ECB, nor a national central bank, nor any member of their decision-making bodies shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions or bodies, from any government of a Member State or from any other body. The Community institutions and bodies and the governments of the Member States undertake to respect this principle and not to seek to influence the members of the decision-making bodies of the ECB or of the national central banks in the performance of their tasks." The Maastricht Treaty: Monetary Policy -Article 107
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"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit and, with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it all back again. Take this power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then the world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you want to be slaves to bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit." Lord Josiah Stamp, former director of the Bank of England (Speech - 1940)