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.

Start here:

1. Towards planetary, peer to peer, and green consciousness. Dale Carrico.
2. Madronna Holden on the Agency of Nature and the Partnership View
3. In this article on Use Communities, Alex Steffen argues that sharing infrastructures are vital for sustainability

Introductory Articles

• John Robb: Design and architecture as sustainable platform building

"Within resilient communities, we will see the establishment of platforms that make it easier to grow/sell food, produce/share/sell energy, trade, share ideas/methods (social software), produce products (fab labs), collect/share/sell water and much more."

• John Robb on the Energy Trap: there is no replacing of fossil fuels by renewables under the current economic models
• Jeff Vail on the Energy Trap: a detailed investigation
• Ran Prieur: Sustainability as Complexity without Growth
• Book by David Holmgren on Energy Scenarios

Distributed Energy

1. Bill McKibben on Why We Need a P2P Energy Grid; Jeremy Rifkin on the InterGrid
2. Towards a World Wide Web of Electricity. Michael Powers.

Status reports:

1. Global Renewable Energy Status Report 2009
2. 2007 Status of Decentralized Renewables and Micropower

Let's not forget:

1. The Case against Nuclear Energy and for Renewables. By Conrad Miller.

Green Computing

• Report: Smart 2020, enabling the low carbon economy in the information age

• The monster footprint of digital technology: The power consumption of our high-tech machines and devices is hugely underestimated. Here are the statistics to give insight in the true ecological cost of our digital infrastructures. Also: [1] ; [2] ; [3]

Resilient Economics

• Herman Daly: A Steady State Economy: A failed growth economy and a steady-state economy are not the same

thing; they are the very different alternatives we face.

• Powerdown Scenarios. Three scenarios for the Post Peak-Oil world, by Richard Heinberg
• The Kick It Over Real World Curriculum: a book of readings to rethink economics
• Heterodox economics for sustainability: Redefining Progress ; National Accounts of Well-Being ; About Earth's Ecological Economics ; Earth Economics; Post-Autistics Economics Network; Degrowth ; New Economics Foundation ; International Society for Ecological Economics ; Footprint Network ; Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics ; [4] ; Toxic Textbooks

Other Topics

1. On harnessing collective intelligence for climate change. Thomas Malone.

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

Generalities

1. Herman Daly's 10 Policy Principles for the Steady-State Economy
2. Cap and Trade Policy Primer
3. Measures for Relocalization and Reruralization, 2 times four essential policy principles, as proposed by Mariarosa Dalla Costa

Specifics: Energy

1. Five Policy Solutions to the Climate and Energy Crisis. By Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute
2. The "centralized" $420b Solar Grand Plan of Scientific American.
3. Peter Barnes commons-based proposal: Why We Need a Cap and Dividend based Skytrust to solve Global Warming

See also:

1. Thermoeconomics]: scientific pathways to solar energy

Specifics: Green Computing

Proposals for Green Computing, by Bill St. Arnaud:

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

Overview essay:

1. ICT and Global Warming. Bill St. Arnaud

Specifics: Green Finance

1. Hazel Henderson on Green Finance: Great intro to developments in sustainable and socially responsible investing, green sustainability metrics, and the necessary overhaul of finance and business education.

Citations

Kevin Carson on Internet and Energy

1.

"To the extent that the P2P model facilitates economic relocalization by substituting the movement of information for movement of goods (i.e., the movement of information on how to produce goods locally for the movement of centrally produced goods), Peak Oil and the increased cost of moving goods may provide strong market incentives to economic models based primarily on the movement of information. In that case, the expansion of information movement capabilities as an alternative to investment in long-distance transportation and overseas production facilities (the Ponoko/100kGarages model using local shops), and as an alternative to the movement of people (teleconferencing and telecommuting), may actually be a powerful multiplier of energy efficiency. If the money and resources devoted to Internet infrastructure results in a corresponding tenfold reduction in the money spent on containerships and trucks, it’s pretty much a no-brainer." (http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/p2p-peak-oil-and-the-degrowth-scenario/2010/05/22)

2.

"Digital technology and the network revolution are at the heart of what’s creating the potential for a low-impact, less resource-intensive economy. Green and high-tech are allies against mass production and the mountains of deliberately obsolete goods piling up in our landfills, and against the globalist economic model of truck/containership warehouses linking points of production and points of consumption thousands of miles apart. If any single thing reduces the need for fuel, it will be shifting wherever feasible from the movement of material to the movement of information."

Herman Daly on the Steady-State Economy

"The closer the economy approaches the scale of the whole Earth the more it will have to conform to the physical behavior mode of the Earth. That behavior mode is a steady state—a system that permits qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth. Growth is more of the same stuff; development is the same amount of better stuff (or at least different stuff)." (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3941)

Paul Hawken on Sustainability

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. [5]

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
4. the Distributed Generation Educational Module

Key Blogs

We recommend the blog Make Wealth History by Jeremy Williams.

Key Books

Book recommended by Dave Pollard on Ecological and community-based economics:

1. Herman Daly on Steady-State Economics
2. Roger Douthwaite's Short Circuit, a blueprint for a community-based economy
3. Thomas Princen explains why we need to evolve to a Logic of Sufficiency
4. Peter Brown: The Commonwealth of Life

Key Companies

For distributed energy creation:

1. Nanosolar: plastic solar panel manufacture: “Panel cost of manufacture is said to be $0.30 per watt. Panel cost at retail is around $1. Price of a machine which will print panels: $0.16 per panel per year.”
2. Konarka Technologies: “thinks their panels will be about 1/3 the price of nanosolar. In about a year or so.”
3. Jellyfish Wind Turbines: $400 a pop

Key Websites

1. 100 of the Most Essential Green Web Resources