ecology

Illustration by Ben Clarkson

By Robin Tennant-Wood
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

For over a century, we’ve thought of work as the use of human labour and technology to transform natural resources into tradeable goods. This economic model has brought us unparalleled prosperity - and exhausted the planet’s capacity to support us. Building a green economy, Robin Tennant-Wood argues, requires nothing less than a fundamental change in how we understand work and a complete overhaul of the global economy.

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Conrad Schmidt helped found the Work Less Party as a way to spark a discussion about the value of work.

By Anna Kirkpatrick
Briarpatch Magazine
November/December 2009

Work is a blessing and a curse. At its best, work gives our lives meaning and purpose. Many of us derive our self-identity from our work. More than just a means to an income, work can provide an opportunity to contribute, interact and connect with others.

Yet at the same time, work can be demeaning drudgery. Meaningless employment can sap us of dignity and creativity, leaving us drained and diminished. British economist E.F Schumacher was well aware of this dual nature of work, advising in his book Good Work that young people “should be taught that work is the joy of life and is needed for our develop­ment, but that meaningless work is an abomination.”

What, then, makes work meaningful? What is good work and how do we find it?

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Editor’s note: This is, of course, an incomplete list. Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comment section below.

Books

Mark Anielski, The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth (2007)

Sharon Astyk, Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front (2008)

John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (2009)

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By Dave Oswald Mitchell
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2009

And all of the crew they were brave men,
But the Captain he was braver.
He said ‘Never mind the ship me boys
There’s none of us here can save her.

Let her go down. Swim for your lives!
Swim for your children, swim for your wives
But let her go down.’

Knight, sung by Steeleye Span

This ship may not yet be going down, but it’s certainly heading straight for the rocks.

How do we change course? Or failing that, where are the lifeboats that can preserve us and carry us back to shore? In less nautical terms, these are the sorts of questions with which this issue of Briarpatch is concerned.

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Illustration: Nick Craine

By John Bellamy Foster
Briarpatch Magazine
July/August 2009

This essay is excerpted with permission from John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet, Monthly Review Press, (2009).

Underlying the goal of ecological revolution is the premise that we are in the midst of a global environmental crisis of such enormity that the planet’s entire web of life is threatened and with it the future of civilization.

This is no longer a controversial proposition. To be sure, there are different perceptions about the extent of the challenge that it raises. At one extreme, there are those who believe that since these are human problems arising from human causes they are easily solvable. All we need is ingenuity and the will to act. At the other extreme are those who believe the world ecology is deteriorating on a scale and with a rapidity beyond our means to control it, giving rise to gloomy forebodings.

Although polar opposites, these views nonetheless share a common basis. As Marxist economist Paul Sweezy observed, they each reflect “the belief that if present trends continue to operate, it is only a matter of time until the human species irredeemably fouls its own nest.”

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