By Bronwyn Slater The Netherlands is one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural and food products. Yet it has less than half the land area of the island of Ireland and is bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. How did it become the world’s number two exporter …
By John McDonnell With so many respected individuals, environmental organisations and governments declaring that climate change is the most pressing international issue of our time, it’s surprising that the question of taxing meat and dairy products has not received more attention. Yes, there have been calls for a reduction in consumption of these products, and …
It’s easier than it looks – if we draw upon our common wealth by Peter Barnes There are many visions of what a new economy might look like: more local than global, more sharing than exploitative, more respectful of the earth than of profit. What’s missing in most of these visions, however, is the system architecture needed to guide the …
By Bronwyn Slater The rise of the internet has brought with it a huge growth in the availability of free online courses. For advocates of the Knowledge Commons this must be seen as a very progressive step. The diversity of topics which you can now study for free is amazing. You can learn new skills …
We discuss the benefits of homeschooling and the difficulties parents may face. Is homeschooling better or worse for children than standard education? Is homeschooling better than public school? The critically acclaimed American film Captain Fantastic, directed by Matt Ross, has made many families think about the problems and benefits of homeschooling. In the film Ben Cash …
by David Korten The following is an excerpt from the 10th August, 2012 Yes! article. Any normally intelligent 12-year-old is fully capable of understanding the distinction between a living forest or fishery and a system of financial accounts that exists only as electronic traces on a computer hard drive. Unfortunately, this simple distinction seems to …
by Pavithra Mehta The following article has been re-printed from The Daily Good “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing”. ~Oscar Wilde More than a 100 years later we’ve put pricetags on things that Oscar even in his wildest dreams (or nightmares!) could not have seen coming. For example, today …
by Bronwyn Slater Mark Boyle is a passionate man. Originally from Donegal and with a degree in Business, he had become preoccupied with the problems of the modern world that we are, more or less, all familiar with. He came to the conclusion that at the root of the world’s troubles lay the fact …
by Bronwyn Slater To quote Gandhi: “Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment.” This statement pretty much summarises what Duane Elgin’s book ‘Voluntary Simplicity’ is all about. It essentially shows us how we …
by Bronwyn Slater This is a documentary which was written, produced and directed in 2011 by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder of ‘Local Futures’ and author of the widely-acclaimed book ‘Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalising World’. The book is an account of her time spent with the people of Ladakh in the Himalayas, …