Our current economic and civilizational model is based on a false conception pseudo-abundance in the natural world, thereby creating an engine of infinite material world in a finite natural world. And it is also based on a false conception of pseudo-scarcity, which aims to create scarcities in the immaterial world, where the costs of reproduction are near zero. A sustainable economy demands that this duality is simply reversed. We must recognize the limits of the natural world, and create a free culture of exchange in the world of immaterial value: culture, intellect, spirit.

This section is dedicated to that goal. Thanks to Franz Nahrada of Global Villages for his pioneering work in reconciling material sustainable and free knowledge exchange.

Introductory Articles

1. Bill McKibben on Why We Need a P2P Energy Grid
2. Towards planetary, peer to peer, and green consciousness. Dale Carrico.
3. On harnessing collective intelligence for climate change. Thomas Malone.
4. Towards a World Wide Web of Electricity. Michael Powers.
5. 2007 Status of Decentralzed Renewables and Micropower

Also:

1. Alex Steffen: To achieve zero emissions by 2050, we have to start NOW!!
2. Michael Ben-Eli on the Five Core Principles of Sustainability
3. A Critique of the Stern Report. Ted Trainer argues that global warming cannot be solved at little cost, as implied by the Stern report.

Policy Proposals

1. The "centralized" $420b Solar Grand Plan of Scientific American.

Proposals for Green Computing, by Bill St. Arnaud:

1. Green Grid
2. Green Broadband
3. Follow the Energy Computing Grids
4. Bits for Carbon Trading
5. Virtualization as strategy for green computing

Citations

Paul Hawken on the emergence of the sustainability movement:

""I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two.

By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn¹t work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or doctrine, no authority to check with.

I sought a name for it, but there isn't one." (from his book Blessed Unrest, cited by http://thenetworkedbook.blogspot.com/2007/05/networked-book-adhocracies-turning.html)

Paul Hawken on redesigning markets for sustainability:

The Creation of Waste: "We need a different kind of growth, one that reduces and changes the inputs of raw materials and energy, and simultaneously eliminates the outputs of waste."

The False Efficiency of the Free Market: "Markets are superb at setting prices, but incapable of recognizing costs."

Markets Ruling Nature: "The sheer size of the largest corporations tends to grant them the political and economic power to externalize costs that should properly be absorbed by the company and therefore be factored into the price it sets for its product."

The Hollowness of Corporate Culture: "The growing power of corporations has not been accompanied by any comprehensive philosophy, any ethical construct, other than the accumulation of wealth as an end of itself."

Altering Incentives through Green Taxes: "We must design a marketplace that obviates acts of environmental destruction by making them extremely expensive, and rewards restorative acts by bringing them within our means." (from his book The Ecology of Commerce, cited at http://www.strategyandcompetitionbooks.com/Strategy-and-Competition-Books/The-Ecology-of-Commerce.htm)

On the Energy-hungry Internet

Equipment powering the internet accounts annually for 9.4% (or 350 billion kWh) of the total electricity consumption in the US, and 5.3% (or 868 billion kWh) of the global usage. [1]

Key Resources

1. To monitor developments, see also our Delicious tag on P2P Ecology
2. MeansBusiness is a unique concept database of 20,000 key ideas from business and management books
3. Green Frog, a 'clean-tech' blog from Olivier Jerphagnon