DESIGNING THE GREEN ECONOMY:
The Postindustrial Alternative
to Corporate Globalization
by Brian Milani
with a Foreword by Thomas Berry
Current trends toward corporate globalization and Casino Economics
have been endowed with the mantle of inevitability and economic
progress. The dollar-driven Information Economy has been assumed
to be "postindustrial". But is the current capitalist economy so
progressive or inevitable, or is it actually a decadent dinosaur
desperately trying to find ways to repress growing social and
ecological potentials?
Brian Milani argues that, not only are there alternatives
to corporate capitalism, but that growing human potentials can
be expressed only through a new paradigm of economic
development--the Green Economy--based in a fundamental
redefinition of wealth: from quantitative to qualitative, from
accumulation to regeneration. This redefinition presumes a
basic shift in progressive social change strategy from
opposition to alternatives--something we are already seeing,
but which must become more conscious and explicit.
Part 1 looks at the development of industrial society and
its increasingly ambivalent response to growing human potentials--
through the Great Depression, the Fordist Waste Economy, and
the contemporary global Casino economy. It highlights industrial
capitalism (and state socialism) as systems necessarily based in
scarcity and materiality; and it demonstrates the key role of waste
in artificially maintaining scarcity and class relationships.
Part 2 outlines principles of green economic development,
and practical potentials for postindustrial regenerative
development in key sectors of the economy: the built-
environment; the energy sector; manufacturing and resource
use; and money & finance. The final chapter discusses the role
of the state, and possibilities for decentralized community-
based regulation. It concludes with frank discussion of priorities
for economic conversion and the implications for social change
strategy. Community-design pattern languages, Green Municipal
Utilities, Eco-Industrial Parks, the Carbohydrate Economy,
community currencies, Citizen Assemblies and much more
are reviewed in this synthesis of green development strategies.
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PRAISE FOR
Designing the Green Economy:
"Brian Milani's Designing the Green Economy is a very timely and
courageous book. The author not only gives us a very convincing and
well documented analysis of the reasons for the collapse of the post-war
Fordist economy, the rise of neoliberal Casino Capitalism and why this
economy produces more 'illth' than wealth. He also shows that a
transition to an alternative Green Economy is both necessary and
possible. For all those who begin to question the promises of those who,
in the face of global economic, ecological and social crises, still
continue with just 'more of the same', this book is a must."
MARIA MIES, co-author, The Subsistence Perspective;
and Ecofeminism;
author, Patriarchy & Accumulation on a World Scale
"A concise, deeply-researched, practical guide for shaping
sustainable economies."
HAZEL HENDERSON, author,
Beyond Globalization;
and Building a Win-Win World
"What a surprising mix of theoretical ambition and practical
experience! Reading this book sharpens your view on the post-
materialist society in the making."
WOLFGANG SACHS, Wuppertal Institute,
author, Planet Dialectics;
co-author, Greening the North
"Brian Milani's work is a pathbreaking contribution into the
alternatives opened up by the 'new materialism' and how it can
enhance environmental and social justice."
ROBIN MURRAY, author,
Creating Wealth from Waste
"This is an important book, both in terms of its content and its
intent. Soundly rooted in today's social and political context, it
offers a crucial perspective on technology that all people should
consider very seriously."
URSULA M. FRANKLIN,
author, The Real World of Technology
"Brian Milani has given us an excellent design manual - 'a
complete strategy for regenerative finance'-including a first
class analysis of community money and its part in building the
sustainable community."
MICHAEL LINTON, Landsman Community Services,
LETSystem founder
"An experienced builder, Milani provides not just a painstaking
deconstruction of industrial capitalism, but a positive ecological
vision: the windows on, and doors to enter, a new age of ecology."
WAYNE ROBERTS, co-author, Get a Life! ;
and Real Food for a Change
"In reading the book, I was reminded of John Kenneth Galbraith.
Through everything he wrote ran the theme that economics
should be the servant, not the master...Milani is on the same
wavelength. He wants quality of life and ecological renewal to
replace accumulation of money as the goal of our economic
system, a change that would totally transform the system."
CAMERON SMITH, Toronto Star
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword: Thomas Berry
Introduction: Dimensions of Green Economics
Part 1: Beyond Materialism: The Postindustrial
Redefinition of Wealth
1. Industrialism and Quantitative Development
2. Crisis & Waste: Fordism & the Effluent Society.
3. Post-Fordism: Casino Capitalism & the Production of Illth.
4. New Productive Forces & Emerging Human Potentials.
5. The New Ecology of Politics.
Part 2: Designing the Green Economy
6. Eco-Design: Principles of the Green Economy.
7. The Ecological Space of Flows: the Built-Environment.
8. Transformative Energy: the Soft Energy Path.
9. Living in De-Material World: Manufacturing, Resource Use
& Media.
10. True-Value Software: Regenerative Money & Finance.
11. The State & Beyond: Postindustrial Forms of Regulation
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Brian Milani is research coordinator of Toronto's
Eco-Materials Project
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For more information, see the Green Economics Website at :
http://www.greeneconomics.net
