However, in a world undergoing seismic socio economic and environmental convulsions that are growing by the day, gold may not prove to be the solution to our future security that many are hoping for.

If one stands back a little from the spinning vortex of speculative financial roulette that preoccupies the world’s media and many of her better-off citizens, one will observe that unfortunately gold is inedible (some will say ‘fortunately’) and is less easy to turn into plough shears than other baser metals. A fact that has not gone unnoticed by globally oriented financial investors. These speculators have recently started pouring money into agricultural land holdings as a hedge against higher food prices, set against a guaranteed demand for world staples like wheat, rice, maize and sorghum. Unfortunately the objective of such investment policies are not benign, but rather are symptomatic of the same convulsive profit driven motives that have catalysed the seismic economic swings of the past decade.

So, where to turn when all around is turmoil stirred by inflated egos, unashamed greed and rabid exploitation?

The answer to this starts by firstly recommending careful consideration of the circumstances that have brought us to this point. Then, a plan of action which offers a longer term commitment to a saner and perhaps ‘simpler’ model of everyday living – one which shifts decisively away from the present day capitalist consumerist ethos that has brought our planet to the brink of asset stripped ecocide and unchecked human inequality.

In seeking to raise our awareness of the background to this unprecedented upheaval, it soon becomes apparent that there is some other force operating behind the front line villains picked out as being responsible for the rising and falling fortunes of the global economy. Those ‘in the news’ are often simply puppets of this unseen regime which appears to be intent upon a far going domination of global events for its own ends. The regime appears to be composed of a rather small group of very wealthy individuals and corporations that have established a controlling influence over both national government and the international financial institutions that form the lynch pin of the global economy. It is a mostly shadowy cartel whose field of influence includes such institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. Its leaders are also strategically placed to control events within the European Union, the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the Pacific Rim economic zone.

Banking empires, pharmaceutical giants, oil magnates and food and seed monopolies are well represented within this club, which exercises decisive control over all our lives without us ever really noticing it. At their behest, moral codes and human values are flaunted and dispensed with with reckless abandon, and brutal wars are started in foreign countries with almost complete impunity.

One soon becomes aware that the fascist regime of the last Great War did not end with the Nuremburg trials, but re-established a formidable foot-hold within Western and North American society – performing this stealth-full manoeuvre right under our half closed sleep filled eyes.

The fact that this state of play is successfully disguised as ‘democracy’, is proof of their cleverness and our stupidity.

Recognising this state of affairs for the first time can be a shock, especially if one has pinned ones faith in the status quo to see us through these “troubled times”. However, reality it is, and once we have absorbed the truth there can be no turning back. Which brings us once again to the question:

“Where does one turn when all around is turmoil ..?”

The answer is – firstly we have to turn to ourselves; to recognise that we are complicit in allowing such a dark agenda to have become adopted right in our midst. After all, we live in what citizens of Europe and North America like to refer to as a “modern democracy”. Yet it is we ourselves who have repeatedly put our faith in autocratic charlatans who freely exercise the levers of despotic power. It is we ourselves who have handed responsibility to run our affairs to those who are masters of spin, deception and propaganda. It is we who have filled the role that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain filled on the cusp of World War two when he held up a scrap of paper and declared it to contain Hitler’s promise that Nazi Germany would never invade the United Kingdom. We too, like Chamberlain, have appeased ourselves in submitting our destinies to the diktats of the corporate vandals and the smiling politicians in their pay.

We have freely allowed ourselves to be duped into a state of virtual paralysis by a corporate backed media whose agenda has nothing to do with “raising awareness” but a great deal to do with keeping us busy with the trappings of superficial consumerism and junk status entertainment. The vast propaganda machine that pumps out the relentless message that we should strive ceaselessly to acquire the means to purchase our pleasures from the glittering shelves of the global market place.

However, these shelves are now beginning to lose their lustre, and we are beginning to lose the scales from our eyes. We can begin to see that we confused this ‘virtual reality’ with actual reality. The world turns out not to be a hypermarket after all, but a sentient being in an advanced stage of severe fever; poisoned, polluted and exploited almost beyond recognition – by us – the trolley pushing, brand seeking puppets of the global corporate elite. That small cartel marching on its robotic way to the grand take over of every last bankable asset on planet earth, as well as all those who, consciously or unconsciously, submit to becoming porns in its sinister master plan.

But now its time to take back our power and to take firm control of our destinies. We can still make this choice – its not too late. Nobody with the means of survival needs to be a slave – and nobody with some land needs to go without food. We are fast becoming aware that ‘money in the bank’ is no guarantee of our future security. As dying state and private financial institutions increasingly empower themselves to reach ever deeper into our pockets, we struggle to grasp the fact that much of what they steal goes straight into the pay cheque of the brightest scavengers and the bonuses of already bloated bosses. We barely seem to notice when our revenue payments are utilised to further crank up the deadly imperialist war machine so it can bludgeon its way through yet more oil and mineral rich countries in order to fulfil insatiable material addictions and barely disguised neo-colonial ambitions.

However, behind all events is a law of karma which states “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And just as the despotic forces of imperialism appear to be wresting decisive control over mankind, strong voices of reason and truth are rising to challenge its dominion. Right in amongst the genocidal acts of nefarious despots we are witnessing the dawning of fresh visions of another way mankind can look after itself and this sentient planet upon which we all reside.

In fact we have arrived at something of a watershed; one where it will no longer be possible to sit on the fence and not commit to a resolution of this age old conflict, one way or another.

Thus, those now fretting about how and where to securely invest their financial savings, just might find that cosmic Lila has brought them to an auspicious karmic fork in the road of life. Pointing to the left – a signpost saying “Financial Security” and to the right a sign saying “Voluntary Simplicity.”

Those whose priority is to preserve their wealth will take the left fork and they will put their money into gold. Those who seek to deepen their awareness and move beyond material dependency will choose the right fork. Those who turn left may find themselves still in familiar territory with no lack of advisers on how to put up barriers against uncertainty and change. However this will merely ensure an extended contract with the dark ways of the old regime. For those who turn right will be a challenge of a very different nature: how to shift away from old material dependencies and towards a simpler and more harmonious relationship with the non material values of existence; the universal energies that are held back by materialistic indulgence. Those who take this path may wish to consider investing whatever funds they possess (individually or collectively) in some fertile land capable of producing good quality, ecological food, fuel and fibre for their daily needs. Thus taking control of their destinies and ultimately achieving independence from the clawing centralised control system which feeds upon the compliant serfdom of its participants.

The more we can free ourselves from from this unholy contract, the less power it will have over us and our World, and the more realised we will become in the fulfilment of our deeper needs and creative aspirations. Once the collapsing institutions of the status quo have dragged all that has value into the cauldron of its hastening demise – where we find our next meal, how we generate our energy and where we acquire pure water – will become of paramount importance. The skills of the land will be at a premium, whereas the skills of money making will become a useless impediment.

We can start right now. We can take our money out of the mainstream banks which fund the oppressive institutions of this planet – and put it instead into ethical investment institutions, local ecological food and farming ventures, local human scale renewable energy initiatives and/or the thousands of localised land based and artisan ventures now springing up all over the planet. We can, right now, begin to end years of energy sapping compromise and finally put our money where our hearts are. Because when the corporate gods are toppled and the lights go out, we will need to be prepared.

This preparation process can catalyse a new and positive interaction at the community level. One where we start purchasing the basic necessities of life from those who are already operating humane, responsible and environmentally benign enterprises; and not those who are exploiting the last seams of planetary wealth for their personal profit and power.

So to those who think they will find their salvation in precious metals, I would countenance them to think again. One cannot eat gold.

Julian Rose
September 2011

Julian is a British pioneer organic farmer, writer and activist. He is currently President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside which is leading the fight against GMO in Poland. He is author of “Changing Course for Life – Local Solutions to Global Problems”

www.changingcourseforlife.info

Both appear to be teetering at the edge of a financial precipice and the great politico-bureaucratic machines that run the show – on both sides of the Atlantic – seem incapable of agreeing what economic medicine might keep this beast on the rails.

They, and we, are now learning that in a finite world no resource is infinite, least of all institutionalised financial wealth whose very existence is dependent upon interest payments made on capital lent to those who cannot sustain the levels of repayments demanded of them. In a ‘debt based’ economy (which ours is) all participants will ultimately land up losers.

We cannot know the exact timing surrounding the unhinging of a large sector of the global market place, but that some form of large scale collapse is imminent, there can be little doubt.

With this collapse will also ultimately go the entire foundation of modern day capitalism, and particularly the ‘perpetual growth’ based economic formulae that have driven this planet to the edge of ecocide and the mad growth machine perilously close to its own ultimate demise.

The vast debt based financial manipulations of the past decade already signalled that a global crisis was in the making. And attempts to solve this crisis by applying an ever tighter squeeze on the already minimal assets of the working man and woman has now reached a ‘back against the wall’ point of no return, provoking the first waves of citizen based ‘non compliance’ uprisings. We are likely to see more of these as the elite bankers and corporate despots who hold the reins of power, try to hang onto this power by exerting their repressive authority on an increasingly disenchanted populous.

The entire edifice which we were led to believe constituted the secure foundation of a modern civilisation, is now falling on its knees and the centuries old profligate ‘top down’ theft of both people and the planet is now rebounding on its perpetrators, dragging all and sundry in its turbulent wake. As a result, we are, in the next half decade, going to pass through the vortex of a huge change to our customary ways of life. A change for the better, if you don’t like the ‘take-all’ consumerist package at the helm of modern neo liberal capitalism. A change for the worse if you do.

Desperate rescue attempts will of course take place in which billions of dollars, Euros, pounds, yen and roubles will be thrown at the sinking banks, financial institutions and corporate marketing machines, in a vain attempt to resuscitate – one more time – the dying machine. But it won’t rise again because there is no crane big enough to lift it out of the grave it has dug for itself.

What will this mean to you and I?

Well, that depends on how reliant we each are on the trappings of the neoliberal consumer society.

If we are heavily reliant, we will have a long way to fall and will not have an easy landing. If we are not too trapped we will have less far to fall and may have a softer landing. However, we will all be subjected to an intense propaganda campaign as the wounded beast throws out its grasping tentacles to try to further enslave us in its accelerating demise. Beware of this. We will be heavily indoctrinated not to let go of old patterns of thought and behaviour which give a false sense of security concerning the strength of the status quo to see us through “these hard times”. We will be lent on – even by many of our friends – to tow the line and submit to the “austerity” measures dictated by our increasingly autocratic governments. Beware of this, for it is a deception. Austerity demands that hard working people continue to cut back on their meagre savings in order to enable the elite wealth mongers to maintain their seemingly impenetrable financial empires.

Crises are created by those at the sharp end of the power pyramid and have proven to be invaluable tools for the enslavement of the many. The main card in their austerity pack is the ‘fear card’. If we can be made to feel sufficiently frightened of what may lie on the other side of the collapsing financial world which is their citadel, then we will be more likely to do all that we are asked to do to avoid further rocking the boat. However, this is the road to unconditional slavery – and its what dying monsters feed upon to retain their self delusions of power.

So, if we want to avoid serfdom to the beast, we had better sit down and honestly ask ourselves here and now – before its too late – just what might lie on the other side of global economic collapse?

It will require some fortitude to look this question in the eye. It will require a deepening of our perceptions of what is actually going on around us and a willingness to research what forces stand behind extreme cyclical historical events. It will require recognition of the part that we ourselves – as well as our ancestors – have played in bringing about such crises and an awareness of the fact that they are largely a reflection of our own state of being. For the road to the great collapse is a long and pot-hole strewn one and is made up of many decades of blind adherence to false Gods.

We are all complicit – on different levels – and only by admitting this can we start to put things right.

Only when this first hurdle has been crossed will we be able to start constructing a proper platform for positive change. A platform which necessarily reintroduces us to some very simple premises concerning what steps to take to avoid being swept away, or reduced to serfdom, by the tsunami of global upheavals that are now under-way. I use the term tsunami advisedly because the way the planet has been treated over many generations of abject resource plundering, perpetual war and the toxic poisoning associated with excessive corporate greed, has resulted in a state of unprecedented geological, atmospheric and social destabilisation. A state mirrored by the current financial meltdown itself. How could it be otherwise? The two are inseparably locked into a cause and effect domino that has now reached breaking point.

Our ecology and climate cannot exist in hermetically sealed isolation from our financial activities.

The wounds we inflict upon our this Earth reverberate throughout and the repercussions return to haunt us. So, in taking our first steps of mitigation in the face of a world succumbing to both geological and financial turmoil, some very elementary questions shift into the foreground:

“Will I have the ability to procure enough food to feed myself and my family?”

“How can I be sure to have regular access to this resource?”

“How will we ensure that we have the basic security of a home, fresh water, warm clothes and enough energy to provide warmth, light and adequate cooking facilities?”

“What about our friends?”

“What if our savings are not enough to buy what we need?

“What if supplies dry-up?”

All these questions will crowd into the mind once we allow ourselves to face the truth. They are very valid questions – and they have answers. However, the right answers will not be arrived at via panic or fear. They must be nurtured into existence through prioritising another medium, an approach to problem solving which draws upon our latent creativity, inventive powers and love of life. As Albert Einstein so aptly pointed out “One cannot solve an existing problem using the same mode of thinking which created it.”

Metaphorically speaking the answer to all our questions lies ‘right in our own back yards’; and metaphysically speaking we will be guided – provided we remain flexible enough to allow our old skin to fall away and a new skin to emerge in its place. The very same process which our planet is now undergoing via the tumultuous cleansing process which will ultimately throw-off the toxic burden of generations of misguided inhabitants.

So now is the time to act in mitigation against being caught on the wrong foot before the collapsing structures of the old regime force us into last minute panic based survival actions. It is now time to seek out real answers and take real steps.

Emerging amongst the detritus of failing financial institutions and the war stained ambitions of global corporate giants, is a growing awareness that we have almost completely neglected the resources we have available to us right in front of our eyes; that a global problem often has a local solution and that this solution might not involve a seemingly inevitable descent into a lowly and disagreeable struggle to survive. On the contrary, it could lead to a more honest and simple approach to life which could enrich, rather than impoverish, the spirit while redeeming a lost sense of connection with the natural world.

Should enough of us decide to pursue such a path now, we just might be able to relieve our planet of a whole extra level of suffering which is sure to be experienced unless a significant change of course is undertaken by a critical mass of humanity.

In the final analysis, there is not much choice in this matter. Once a combination of crises in the food, air, energy and water sectors reaches criticality – many are either not going to be able to afford to fulfil their customary daily needs or will not be able to access them due to transport and infrastructural blockages.

However, we are conditioned to believe that such events will probably never actually happen in Western Europe and North America. Our corporate owned western media does not want to unduly alarm paid up members of ‘consumer-soc plc.’. They don’t want too many thinking they might have to change their ways – for example by ceasing to watch TV and to stop buying from supermarkets. So, as long as we carry on consuming “the daily diet for the dumbed down” there is little or no chance of responding to the rising winds of change that are blowing across our overburdened planet. But free the mind and take a few steps out of this virtual reality world which we have so carefully constructed for ourselves – and suddenly the truth starts to make itself felt.

And just what is this truth?

It was put very nicely by Dr Fritz Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful, some 40 years ago. While lecturing in North America, he was asked if a switch from fossil fuels to human scale and regional renewable energy sources would mean that we would all have to accept “a lower standard of living?”

“No” he replied “I don’t subscribe to the term ‘lower standard of living’ to describe a state in which we freely elect to move towards a life of voluntary simplicity.” A life of voluntary simplicity means a turning away from the heavy ecological footprint excesses of our 21^st century consumer society and finding that we can manage well enough – or even rather better – on rather a little; provided that this ‘rather a little’ is genuinely good quality and doesn’t harm our environment, our body or our soul. An aware mind and a light ecological footprint are therefore prerequisites for life both before and ‘after the crash’ and as soon as we can get started on on them the less devastating the repercussions of this crash will be.

Rather than list the thousands of localised self sustaining group initiatives that are currently emerging in counterpoint to the tottering globalised economy, I prefer to recommend that we pay attention to what I have named “The Proximity Principle.” The Proximity Principle is perhaps best understood as a blend between a law of physics and what we once called ‘common sense’. It instructs us to think and act on the basis that where we reside (hamlet, village, town, city) is the centre of a circle – and what we need (daily necessities) fan out around that centre like spokes from the hub of a bicycle wheel. It says that we should try to access the majority of our daily needs for our physical well being and nourishment from an area as close as possible to the centre of the circle where we reside. Thus we seek to access our fresh food ‘from our own garden’; our local independent small grocer; our farmers market – or perhaps even directly from our nearest ecologically aware farmer.

Large cities present a serious challenge: some highly creative collective ‘greening’ is about the only practical life line available to citizens living in population densities of over 1 million. Very large cities like London access the great majority of their food and energy from abroad and this makes such city dwellers particularly vulnerable to the increasing oscillations of the global market place.

For such vast conurbations, the provision of food alone requires an energy intensive and complex coordinated operation which is likely to break down once secure financial backing is no longer guaranteed. Processed foods require a further energy input and long distance transportation yet more.

‘Fresh local food’ however requires very little energy input and is alive with vital nutrients and vitamins that are lost in transport, packaging and days on neon lit supermarket shelves – all factors contributing to the demise of our planet Earth. And so with energy: start again from your own wood burning stove; passive and photovoltaic solar panels or small wind generator – or link into a community renewable energy scheme. Obtain your firewood from a local timber merchant or farmer/forester. Make a serious effort to wean yourself off ‘the national grid’ and the super market (hugely consumptive energy footprint) and start supporting the local traders of your community: when the chips are down and the lights have gone out – it is here where your solution lies and the relationship we build with our local community will define how well we cope down the pathway to ‘voluntary simplicity’. It is only at the local level that we can participate in the intimate trading transactions that connect the ecological farmer, forester, blacksmith, baker and transporter. Having money will not be so important when bartering and exchange once again become community led activities. Unless we are connected into the dynamic of this infrastructure, our chances of getting through coming seismic events without too much pain are very small.

By following “The Proximity Principle” we will be guided towards the most elegant economic, ecological and socially constructive solutions concerning the sane management of our daily lives.

Such an approach also has the potential to catalyse a renaissance of meaningful relationships and cast a fresh light on shared creative endeavour – in the fields, on the streets and in the home. We will discover that there really are local solutions to global problems.

Julian Rose

August 1^st 2011

This article is taken from Resurgence magasine May/June 2010

The green movement needs to revisit its fundamental principles; including (and especially) ‘Small is beautiful’, writes Julian Rose.

In the rush of excitement over both government and corporate moves to back green solutions for tackling climate change, many of the lessons so clearly spelled out by our founding fathers, including Leopold Kohr and E. F. Schumacher, have been all-too-hastily abandoned by those who should have known better.

Not only should we all be questioning the direction in which the environmental movement has moved over the past decade, but we should be asking why it has failed to come up with a dynamic, localised and ‘human-scale’ solution to the large-scale and government-backed, corporate agenda that continues to dominate our lives and our landscapes. Instead, there has been a noticeable and insidious growing level of largely passive ‘green’ obeisance to central government policies and EU handouts.

It is salutary to take ‘energy’ issues as an illustration of this. Here, it is plain to see the increasing monopolisation of green issues by market-oriented, profit-driven business enterprises and government institutions whose goals bear no relationship to the ones that inspired the term “Small is Beautiful” or the potent spark that title once ignited in our imaginations. There is no relationship, either, to the deeper concepts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘scale’ which directly connect appropriate technological advances with comm-unity regeneration and a due sense of proportion in all things.

What we have seen instead is widespread failure amongst large segments of society to recognise that most negative environmental impacts come about because of the profligate material expectations that continue to dominate our Western world – expectations that are raised and continuously promoted by powerful corporate, government and media vested interests.

Government calls to move towards renewable energy resources in order to “satisfy UK needs” (while meeting binding CO2 emission-reduction obligations) are really calls to continue to massage the needs of a consumer-fixated society rather than to address any of our actual needs, which, in truth, remain largely unknown. What is now known is that sentient human beings embody a greater need for spiritual, intellectual and emotional development than for the trappings of material opulence. The reason why this never gets mentioned is that we have allowed ourselves to be subjects of societal indoctrination, an indoctrination that promotes excessive consumerism as a baro-meter of human happiness and as being essential for the continuation of the now infamous holy grail: ‘economic growth’ and ever bigger profits for the dominant corporations.

But the long-sustained myth about the benefits to be accrued by this unending expansion of consumer-driven growth has recently been dealt a severe blow. There is no shortage of evidence of growing destruction to natural habitats and both ecological and human degradation continuing to be manifest even in ‘developed’ countries boasting a high GDP. Why then, in this ‘developed’ world, are the majority of green thinkers not converging on finding common and enduring answers to the ever deepening crisis in our midst? Are these deeper issues being sacrificed to the apparent imperatives of climate change?

If so, we need to recognise the fact and address it. Countries attempting to comply with national climate-change targets do so by postulating the need for so many million gigawatts of processed energy to fulfil ‘x’ perceived national demand. However, such calculations are predicated upon the wrong model: the current ‘living beyond our means’ one. The one that leads to the statement that we would need four more Planet Earths in order to supply the whole world with the standards of living “enjoyed” by Western Europeans and North Americans.

But what sort of standard of living are we enjoying when, for example, 10,000 tons of food is thrown out of households and supermarkets in England and Wales every day? When every rubbish tip is filled to bursting with packaging materials? When our impoverished soils are still being soused with thousands of tons of toxic agrichemicals every year? When almost everything we purchase today has three or four times less life-expectation than during the Victorian era? Is this still all going to be fine just so long as the generated energy that makes it possible is coming from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels?

The UK Green Party, for instance, is now publicly calling for help in the development of “Large-scale wind and tidal energy schemes” involving “massive investments” that will “raise wind energy production to the levels of Denmark by 2020″. Such ambitions seem to indicate that the Green Party is being swept along by the dictates of mainstream ‘business as usual’, in which broadly centralised energy-distribution patterns are main-tained and under the same corporate ownership – but driven by renewables instead of by fossil fuels.

Some may dispute this, but the impression being given is that there is a supposed ‘plus’ brought about by providing extra jobs through encouraging such schemes, and that this overrides the actual stand-alone merit of the schemes themselves.

So what would a renaissance of genuinely ‘people-led’ regional regen-erative initiatives actually look like?

The essence of my argument is that we don’t need ‘massive investment’ in any grand schemes. On the contrary, we need lots of small investments in highly diversified local and regional schemes, owned and run by the communities they serve. Integrated, local regeneration and ‘people-led’ creative solutions are, I would suggest, the imperative of our time.

There are signs of the emergence of such schemes within localised food and farming initiatives and through such initiatives as the Transition Town energy descent models. However, good as these are, they still fail to touch the broad swathe of green supporters needed to create a critical mass of public opinion for deeper change.

Fritz Schumacher and Leopold Kohr argued most cogently for “appropriate scale” in all things constructed to meet our daily needs; ones that are at once low impact and affordable and utilise local materials, thereby exerting a largely benign influence on our environment. Their words resonate ever more clearly as each year passes. We need to remind ourselves of this and act on such fundamental wisdom while we still have the chance. Large-scale wind farms, vast banks of photovoltaic panels, giant hydroelectric schemes are not the solution in the majority of cases. Not to climate change, nor to human change. Schumacher, in his wisdom, once stated that no structure should ever be built to a height taller than the tallest tree in the area, thereby never dominating Nature or humans.

How far we still are from this level of sensibility and vision! Instead we see green energy proponents applauding the establishment of regimented rows of 30-to-60-metre-high wind turbines that are increasingly marching across the landscape of the Western world, starkly symbolising continued obeisance to the gods of mass-produced power distributed through vast, centralised grid systems. It is a startlingly cogent reminder of just how sidelined and ignored the whole issue of scale, proportionality and environmental impact has been in the blinkered rush for idealistically flawed ‘green’ manufactured energy. ‘Scale’ as a humanitarian instinct guided by Nature, not by money and power.

So it has to asked, maybe even shouted: Why is it that the broader environmental movement is not promoting this sort of subtle and sensitive approach to our human and environmental needs? Why is so little emphasis given to the need for decentralised, human-scale solutions to the most pressing issues of our time? What has happened to environmentalists, ecologists, greens? Have the big environmental lobby organisations sold out to the ‘green’ corporate lobby? Are they simply the purveyors of a superficial greening of ‘business as usual’?

There is a pressing, urgent need to focus attention on the truly human-scale solutions that our world so profoundly needs and not to become obsessed with the grand technological fixes that are being mooted as potential deterrents to climate change. Let’s not be taken in by talk of a new ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ which so excites political figureheads and industrialists today. We citizens should have none of this. It’s more than time to take control over our destinies and cease supporting the out-of-control corporate theft of our futures.

Within the great shake-up which is now under way throughout a wide arena of planetary concerns, we have a one-in-a-million chance to do something radical: to help people take control of their lives at the local and regional levels, within communities, and not further appease the already ‘past its sell-by-date’ consumer-driven status quo.