"The logic of capitalism must be replaced to address the crisis of ecological overshoot and to achieve a sustainable well-being.
According to the Ecological Footprint measure, impact exceeded the planetary limit sometime during the 1980s. A third approach, Rapid Contraction, is unavoidable."

"The key to addressing capitalism strategically is to separate the system into its logic and its institutions. The logic should be replaced as quickly as possible with a guiding framework such as ENL (Economies of Needs and Limits). The system's institutions should be allowed to evolve as dictated by the replacement logic. This combination of replacement and evolution is called organic change."

The Project

The aim of the "needs and limits" initiative is to help humankind reverse ecological overshoot and to achieve sustainable well-being.

This shift requires that we radically alter the way we determine key economic outcomes such as production quantities, resource and waste flows, and population levels. For most economies today, these outcomes arise spontaneously from the logic of capitalism, which is rooted in corporate profits and manipulated consumer wants. The approach suggested here is to replace this logic with one based on human needs and natural limits, and to derive economic objectives explicitly from these new principles.

My proposal for the replacement logic is the Economics of Needs and Limits (ENL). This conceptual framework is summarized in the overview and fully covered in the book shown at right.

Strategy

The transition to a new mode of civilization requires a workable strategy to achieve fundamental economic and ecological change. This requires the replacement of capitalism's economic logic and the evolution of its institutions in a process called organic change. The strategy document lists the key points of this approach.

to download the 250-page pdf book "Need and Limits: A New Economics for Sustainable Well-Being" self-published in 2010 by Frank Rotering in LULU.COM, click on

http://members.shaw.ca/needsandlimits/pdf_files/needs_and_limits-3rd_edi...

RELATED LINKS:

"21st Century Enlightenment"
http://www.wimp.com/centuryenlightenment/

Free Internet book: "Free Culture"
http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf

"Culture Change" by Alexis Zeigler
http://conev.org/ren14x.pdf

www.socialistproject.ca
www.therealnews.com
www.grittv.org
www.informationclearinghouse.info
www.hulu.com
www.steadystate.org
(you can download the 130-page report "Enough is Enough" or the 10-page summary at www.steadystate.org)

homepage: http://www.steadystate.org