I attended FoES AGM last Saturday 17th May, an organisation I’ve been a member of for many years though I don’t necessarily support every campaign they run.
I found the society in good heart with membership around 2,600, a year of successes on key campaigns and an increasing profile in the media and politicians.
The AGM passed motions on John Muir, Midlothian Environmental Action, Unilever actions in India, an eco-debt motion, proposal by IGas to buy Dart Energy and a slightly controversial one (before it was amended ) on population.
The afternoon was a workshop type setting after some speeches under the heading “Transforming Scotland’s Economy – making wellbeing and sustainability possible”. First up was Katherine Trebeck (head of Policy and Research at Oxfam based in Glasgow) @KTrebeck. She talked about how various measures or indices are now out of date and discredited with the “mindless pursuit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) taking us in the wrong direction”. That social benefits have plateaued and don’t increase in line with increases in GDP. That the system is broken and business as usual is not an option. Development is much too important to be left to financial ministries and economic measures. That we shouldn’t be trying to repair the economy because we need a new one and a new way of measuring things. Our real wealth is found in our communities and we need new measurements. That why Oxfam has helped to develop the Humankind Index. Some people, especially politician’s have taken the word ‘happiness’ initially associated with this and corrupted it. she now prefers the phrase “collective prosperity”. She encourages everyone to use the “policy tool” that’s been developed for this and apply it as wildly as possible.
Next up as a replacement speaker, Gemma Bone from Newcastle University who talked about banks and the banking system. How economics, politics and environment are all separated, disconnected when they should be connected. That in the banking system only 3% of the money supply is actually created by the government when they print bank notes and produce cash. The rest is created by banks, artificially, by giving loans. Financial systems have been created by people thus, can be solved by people by stopping banks creating money out of thin air.
There was one other speaker but I didn’t take any notes, we broke up into workshops, brief feed back then finished.
Friends of The Earth Scotland in good heart
I attended FoES AGM last Saturday 17th May, an organisation I’ve been a member of for many years though I don’t necessarily support every campaign they run.
I found the society in good heart with membership around 2,600, a year of successes on key campaigns and an increasing profile in the media and politicians.
The AGM passed motions on John Muir, Midlothian Environmental Action, Unilever actions in India, an eco-debt motion, proposal by IGas to buy Dart Energy and a slightly controversial one (before it was amended ) on population.
The afternoon was a workshop type setting after some speeches under the heading “Transforming Scotland’s Economy – making wellbeing and sustainability possible”. First up was Katherine Trebeck (head of Policy and Research at Oxfam based in Glasgow) @KTrebeck. She talked about how various measures or indices are now out of date and discredited with the “mindless pursuit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) taking us in the wrong direction”. That social benefits have plateaued and don’t increase in line with increases in GDP. That the system is broken and business as usual is not an option. Development is much too important to be left to financial ministries and economic measures. That we shouldn’t be trying to repair the economy because we need a new one and a new way of measuring things. Our real wealth is found in our communities and we need new measurements. That why Oxfam has helped to develop the Humankind Index. Some people, especially politician’s have taken the word ‘happiness’ initially associated with this and corrupted it. she now prefers the phrase “collective prosperity”. She encourages everyone to use the “policy tool” that’s been developed for this and apply it as wildly as possible.
Next up as a replacement speaker, Gemma Bone from Newcastle University who talked about banks and the banking system. How economics, politics and environment are all separated, disconnected when they should be connected. That in the banking system only 3% of the money supply is actually created by the government when they print bank notes and produce cash. The rest is created by banks, artificially, by giving loans. Financial systems have been created by people thus, can be solved by people by stopping banks creating money out of thin air.
There was one other speaker but I didn’t take any notes, we broke up into workshops, brief feed back then finished.
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