Author: Molly Cato
Stroud Bioregional
The question facing those concerned about the planet is how we are to move our economy towards a lower-carbon system. Various groups and organizations are working on this from the perspective of energy, such as the Centre for Alternative Technology individual energy audit, Bioregional One Planet Living, and the Transition Towns’ Energy Descent Action Plan.
However, the important next step is harder to take, i.e. reducing energy use and carbon dioxide production by genuinely recreating our local economies and ensuring that 90% of our needs are met from within our own bioregion. Since so much of the CO2 that is produced is in making and transporting things we buy and use every day without making this economic transition we cannot reduce emissions by the amount required.
This transition of consumption from global to local seems impossible if you consider yourself having to take on the global corporations who currently dominate production and consumption. In fact, if we work at the local level this is not necessary but we do have to challenge some of the ideology of our current economy and ignore some of its rules.
So, the proposal is to create a producer-and-consumer group of around 30-50 people initially who will undertake to increase the amount of their consumption and, crucially, production that takes place solely within the local economy. The prototype is already here in the farmers’ market and community agriculture so that many Stroud residents have already made great strides in this direction in the case of food. We need to extend that to our other daily requirements.
I must apologise for coming in as a new person to the area with my big ideas already in place. On the other hand, I have specifically chosen to come to Stroud because I believe it has all the requirements for making this sort of project work, particularly an excellent supply of local resources and a population who are already wised up to the problem. Having worked as a green economist for around 10 years now I do have some theory behind my thinking, but I am more concerned to make something work practically, really expanding and developing the local economy here.
It is also really important that we don’t replicate other work already being done and that we work with existing green shops and community enterprises. Since I am new I will have to rely on other group members to help with this and we must be very careful not to tread on other people’s toes.
This is something that needs to be done by a group so the plans are inevitably vague at present. However, I have two definite suggestions I would like the future group to take up.
First, I think we should begin the process by conducting an annual audit of our existing consumption and we should set a personal and group target for the amount of that consumption that should be from within the local economy by the end of the following year.
Second, we need to make a deliberate choice that this will be a more ‘expensive’ way to organize our lives but that we choose to spend more for a life of greater real value. It is at this point that we challenge the existing economy. My suggestions for how the group trading deals with money are:
• We do not charge for our own time: we see our production as a ‘hobby’
• The group pays for the inputs to everybody’s production on a shared basis
• We raise large-scale capital through share issues within the locality
• Goods traded between group members are traded using a local currency
• Excess goods can be sold in sterling to non-members but the money raised must be reinvested in agreed group activities.
The structure of the group needs to be democratic and I would suggest we establish it as a cooperative, with each individual economic activity becoming a new co-operative once it reaches a certain size.