I read an interview recently, in Anand Giridharadas' newsletter, The Ink, with two women, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson, who’ve authored a book called All We Can Save, “an anthology of writings by 60 women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.” Women and girls are becoming vital voices and agents of change for this planet. This makes sense because they are often the most effected by climate change, weather disasters, wars and economic upheavals and their authentic leadership in these areas can make a big difference. This book gives them some of them voice.
The authors note that the environmental movement has been too focused on personal choices as the fossil fuel industry ramps up the guilt and shame to get you focused on your light bulbs and veggie burgers rather than protesting in the streets or running for office as a climate champion focused on systemic change and accountability for those behind the causes of the climate crisis. “It creates a sense of guilt and shame that keeps people out of the movement” says Dr. Wilkinson, “too much of the focus has been on the individual, as opposed to how individuals can be part of a collective, contributing meaningfully to the system-level changes we need.” The recently released IPCC Report is calling for a code red gives us impetus to get moving on this, but it doesn’t mention the individual isolated extremes of weather that will be causing the most damage.
They write of systemic change and leverage points, and like so many authors today, they fail to mention the most influential of all the systems, the system that bestows enormous wealth and power to a few at the expense of the many, including the planetary source of all our sustenance. It is the system that drives the constructed divisions between people, the isolation and alienation, as well as war and oppression with its globe gripping violence. Still, we depend on it every day to survive. It is the monetary system. The climate issue simply will not be addressed effectively until we have public control of the money system by public servants dedicated to the common good. It’s not oil companies that are in the climate driver’s seat, however, it is the capital holders and bank owners, who fund their operations and own controlling interest in those companies. The control mechanism is money thus money is the leverage point for changing the entire economic system. We often focus on the individuals involved because they are in the way of change, but it is the system that is the problem, and it is the system that needs to change.
Shifting the paradigm
As Donella Meadows pointed out, every system has a leverage point at which a small change can change the entire system. Because our economic system runs on money, and money is the economic control mechanism, money is the leverage point in the economic system, the point at which a small change will change the entire system. The legislation introduced to Congress in 2011 by Dennis Kucinich would change the money from private debt-based for profit to public asset-based for common care. This is a paradigm change, from greed to need, from private profit to public care, and from negative psychological consequences to positive psychological consequences.
Here are two aspects of the money issue that are of critical importance in understanding why it is important for addressing not only climate change, but the other critical boundaries humankind is crossing that Stockholm Resilience has identified as well as all the social justice issues the system has caused. Those two aspects are:
1. The monetary history. As Carl Sagan said, “You must know the past to understand the present.” The ancient Greeks acknowledged that money is a vital prerogative of democratic self-governance. Patriarchy captured and distorted this ancient innovation with usury. Today it is how patriarchal power operates. This is important because the monetary system is the most influential system of all human-made systems thus important from a policy perspective for an effective response to the climate and other crises of our time.
2. The psychological consequences of the money system, which is a system of privately issued credit (debt) for profit. This abuse of monetary authority for personal gain is usury which Dante described it as "the anti-art, ...an extraordinarily efficient form of violence by which one does the most damage with the least effort."
Here are two small samples of each to illustrate why I think these are key aspects to be included in terms of the overall effort to shift the paradigm from greed to care.
Monetary History
There have been periods in history blessed with an uncommon prosperity that enriched every segment of society. There was work for all, with favorable working conditions and abundant time for family, community and personal pursuits. These periods were characterized by significant advances in science, technology, education, literature, music, arts, craftsmanship and more. Its ethics included cooperation, an unusual civic pride and long-term thinking that produced some of the most beautiful and enduring public works the world has ever known. These were periods also in which a female deity was worshipped, and women enjoyed a high level of autonomy and position.
The primary economic mechanism driving this prosperity was money issued by the sovereign which had a slowly declining value. One of those periods lasted 3000 years in ancient Egypt which built the Great Pyramids and worshipped Isis. This emerged again in the High Middle-ages which built 1000 cathedrals and worshipped the Great Mother archetype in the form of the Black Madonna. It is a period scholars call the Real Renaissance and was the period when the first universities were founded, and hydro-powered manufacturing took off. These societies were lost to a forced change in their money, due to the war debts of their lords. Thus, publicly issued debt-free money ended and the moneylenders took control of the money. War debt is how they were able to take monetary control of all the governments of Europe.
The power of publicly issued money with a demurrage fee, a slowly declining value to discourage hoarding and to increase its velocity of circulation, was again demonstrated in 1932-33 in Wörgl, Austria in the depths of the Great Depression. Roughly $2.5 million in public works were accomplished in 15 months while issuing only $6000 in currency. During those 15 months the town began to think long-term before the Central Bank had the practice banned despite millions world-around who wanted to duplicate the phenomenon. The great American economist of the 30's, Irving Fisher, even wrote a pamphlet to guide municipalities in implementing the system as an emergency measure. These were the economic ideas of Silvio Gesell, also praised by Maynard Keynes. The privately owned and politically powerful central banks would not allow this wildly successful currency.
As you can imagine such a publicly directed money system would be very useful in addressing the climate issue, doing more with less, as well as funding solutions for the other issues that are all symptomatic of our current debt-dominated and extractive economic system.
Psychological Consequences
There is a growing body of research on the psychological consequences of money and its effect on human behavior. To illustrate why this is important I will share a story of one of the experiments by Kathleen D. Vohs and company.
Two classrooms of people were given a quiz with some ambiguous questions in them. On the wall of one classroom was a large photo of a Federal Reserve Note, a one-dollar bill, on the wall of the other was a large photo of a cowrie seashell. As the two groups began to take the quiz their behaviors were observed by the scientists. In the room with the dollar bill people sat far apart, kept their heads down, did not ask for help but if asked for help responded as if insensitive to others. In the room with the cowrie shell people sat close to one another, did not hesitate to ask for help and people were laughing and joking about the quiz and were sensitive to how others felt. It is important to note that the dollar bill and the cowrie shell have both been used as money. The cowrie shell was debt-free public money, and the dollar bill was issued privately for-profit as debt. A public money system would reverse the negative effects of the current privately owned monetary system.
Which form of money do you think would be best to pursue a paradigm shift with? Should the production of money be a business run for private profit or a resource owned and operated by the public?
As was asked in the Ink interview, "We have incredible practices and technologies in the proverbial toolbox..... But we’re talking about a transformation of our global economy at unprecedented speed, scale, and comprehensiveness. So: what might make that possible?"
This has been my effort at answering that question. Yes, "Beneath it all, there’s a fundamental shift in values to care, connection, reciprocity." There is no doubt that this paradigm shift can be broadened and accelerated by implementing a public money system dedicated to the needs of people and the planet.