[P2P-F] Fw: The Double-Edged Sword of Resilience

Tue Apr 3 11:50:04 CEST 2012

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John Fullerton <jfullerton at capitalinstitute.org>
To: Robert Searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk> 
Sent: Monday, 2 April 2012, 22:15
Subject: The Double-Edged Sword of Resilience

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The Double-Edged Sword of Resilience
Capital Institute's work on financial system reform is very much driven by the concept of system resilience.

In an email exchange last week Bill Rees, co-creator of the "ecological footprint," fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and professor at the University of British Columbia, invited us to look at resilience from a perspective we often fail to consider. As he explains, while resilience is critical for systems’ survival, in times of great instability, that same resilience can be problematic for the larger system(s) in which a resilient subsystem is housed. This idea is also a critical argument advanced by Donella Meadows in her seminal book Thinking in
Systems.

Read more at This Week at Capital Institute.
We welcome your comments and thoughts on this topic. Please leave them in the comment box on our website or send us an email at contact at capitalinstitute.org.
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It's Conference Season!
We’d like to call Capital Institute community’s attention to four not-to-be missed events upcoming this spring. “Degrowth in the Americas,” to be held in Montreal from May 13 to 19 will focus on what degrowth means for our Hemisphere. BALLE’s “Prosperity Starts
Here,” to be held in Grand Rapids from May 15 to 19, is the organization’s annual gathering of local economy entrepreneurs and visionaries. The Public Banking Institute is hosting the inaugural Public Banking in America Conference in Philadelphia April 27 to 28, focusing on public banking success stories and the hidden costs of our current banking system. On Earth Day Slow
Money NYC will showcase five pioneering food entrepreneurs from the lower Hudson Valley of New York in Pocantico Hills, NY. Capital Institute Founder and President John Fullerton will be a speaker at the Degrowth, BALLE, and Public Banking Institute conferences. Find out more about all four events here.
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$20 Trillion Choice: An Update
Think Progress Green blogger Brad Johnson has posted a two-part interview with John Fullerton about the $20 Trillion Choice he described in CI's Future of Finance blog last July. The first piece lays out the case behind the "Big Choice," and provides an excellent visual of the $20 trillion carbon bubble. The second focuses on the new economy, looking beyond GDP. What We're Reading  

Two reports out this week emphasize how climate change is already making the weather considerably more extreme.

New Reports on Connections Between Extreme Weather and Climate Change
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Comment of the Week

“John, Fascinating to read this ex-insider's calm reflection. What makes it a nightmare situation, to this outsider, is that most people in the industry presumably know full well that the world's 'unsustainable underfunded pension obligations' are features of a global Ponzi scheme - a.k.a. the perpetual growth economy - that cannot be fixed. People who might otherwise have become 'statesmen,' perceiving no way the system can be fixed, therefore game the long collapse, as is happening now. I'd go further than your correspondent Rachel: rather than change the system to one that cannot be gamed, we're best off tending to the seeds of a new kind
of economy; gardens can thrive in the absence of all global systems.”

- John Thackara, Financial Statesmanship for a New Economy
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Quote of the Week
“Our task is to look at the world and see it whole.”
- E.F. Schumacher

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