stephenhinton

The economics of pollution and non-renewable material surcharges

Market based instruments

If renewable solutions were cheaper for firms to use, they would. This is how price signals function to steer the behaviour of firms. For the circular economy to function, price signals should favour circular products and production methods. In other words, it needs to make better business sense to install circular and renewable energy infrastructure, and to install and use infrastructure that uses recycled materials. Without that, the linear economy – one that inputs extracted materials and outputs materials as waste will continue to be the modus operandi of the profitable firm.

This article explores how to use price signals to steer firms’ buying behaviour in a way that keeps the economy stable. Market-based instruments are financial mechanisms that steer price signals to guide the behaviour of firms and markets in general. Continue reading “The economics of pollution and non-renewable material surcharges”

The Community Finance Canvas: commoning in practice

How can we create alternatives to the current system that:

1. Protect collective resources, both material and immaterial, that require a lot of knowledge and know-how?
2. Develop social processes that foster and deepen thriving relationships?
3. Produces in, as Commoning expert Silke Helfrich calls it, a Commons-Creating Peer Economy, or Commons-Oriented Economy?

Commoning is less a noun than a verb because it is primarily about the social practices of commoning—acts of mutual support, conflict, negotiation, communication and experimentation that are needed to create systems to manage shared resources. This process blends production (self provisioning), governance, culture, and personal interests into one integrated system. Continue reading “The Community Finance Canvas: commoning in practice”

Opinion. Trump wins: time to get on with green growth

Stephen Hinton 2016 — Photo: Maj-Lis Koivisto

Promising to “make America great again”, a composed and rather humble Donald Trump held his US presidential victory speech this morning. His stated strategy is to rebuild infrastructure, and to harness the skills and talents of everyone. That includes the many people who voted for him who feel they have been left out up to now. He particularly talked of veterans and made it clear that Americans includes the wide range of ethnic and cultural diversity of all its citizens.

Doubling growth was also something he talked about.

Continue reading “Opinion. Trump wins: time to get on with green growth”

How Researchers Could Miss the Real Energy Story

Repost from the excellent blog of actuary Gail Tverberg. Gail has an uncanny ability to spot what is happening in the interface between energy and economy. She has an amazing intellectual capability to model it combined with clear and insightful communication.

Our Finite World

I have been telling a fairly different energy story from most energy researchers. How could I possibly be correct? What have other researchers been missing?

The “standard” approach is to start from the amount of resources that we have of a particular type, for example, oil in the ground, and see how far these resources will go. Growing development of technology seems to allow increasing amounts of these resources to be extracted. Thus, limits seem to be farther and farther in the distance, especially if a person starts out with an optimistic bias. It is easy to get this optimistic bias, with all research funds going in the direction of, “What can we do to solve our energy problems?”

Approaches for forecasting future supply problems that start from the amount of resources in the ground suffer from the problem that it is hard to draw a sharp line regarding…

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Opinion: Ericsson divorces Sweden and kills technology

Technology died today. Not the machines, but the paradigm. The belief that delivering high-tech creates jobs, prosperity and shareholder value got killed. The news hit this morning in Sweden’s newspaper SVD among others, that Sweden’s flagship, Ericsson, is shedding thousands of jobs and shutting down manufacturing in Sweden. The decision is sending shock-waves through the municipalities where Ericsson units are one of the largest employers. The likely effect is that whole communities will suffer in a domino effect decimating local suppliers then local services then house prices. And it’s probably the best thing to happen to Sweden for a long while. More on that later. First to the situation. Continue reading “Opinion: Ericsson divorces Sweden and kills technology”

The Economics of Happiness: making an inner transition

This Video is from a talk given at the Economics of Happiness event organised by Initiatives of Change and Local Futures.
The session was based around the ideas of Helena Norberg-Hodge that designing an economy on a human scale can bring wealth, happiness and prosperity in an ecological way. She talked of the steps local, national and international, to getting there.

Initiatives of Change invited Stephen to share his experiences with early stages of Transition initiatives. An extended version of his slide pack is available below the video.

The slideshare pack

A circular economy needs a framework of rules and financial incentives to work

The idea seems logical: when a product or material enters the economy it should stay there – if it comes from below the ground. If it comes from nature it can return at a rate the eco-system can absorb it. The problem is, we are living in a society that has been weaving a complicated web of laws, rules and, taxes and fees since money was created. At the moment it just doesn’t pay. Ushering in the circular economy means making sure it pays by dismantling a few parts of this framework and replacing others. But where to start? Are there existing points of control that can be adapted to stimulate circularity? This article identifies a few essentials. Continue reading “A circular economy needs a framework of rules and financial incentives to work”

OPINION: Sweden is one step closer to crashing in the chasm

Sweden’s largest exporter, Ericsson, is about to shed all manufacturing in Sweden, sack half its employees and be broken up and sold. This is bad news for sustainable Sweden; with its internet of things and wide R&D capabilities Ericsson has the competence and potential to be a major contributor to the Swedish Government’s ambition to be fossil-emission free by 2045. It seems very few really care to do what is necessary. They would rather let small local initiatives pick up the pieces. That is possibly the best option.

According to recent newspaper reports, Sweden’s largest exporter, Ericsson, is about to – in the worst case – shed all manufacturing in Sweden, sack half its employees and be broken up and sold. This is bad news for sustainable Sweden; with its internet of things and wide R&D capabilities Ericsson has the competence and potential to be a major contributor to the Swedish Government’s ambition to be fossil-emission free by 2045. With this latest news it is looking more and more like Sweden will fail to “cross the chasm” keeping its high material standard. It seems, though, that very few really care to do what is necessary. They would rather let small local initiatives pick up the pieces.

Continue reading “OPINION: Sweden is one step closer to crashing in the chasm”

Economics of Happiness: working with the narrative

London 14th September 2016, Initiatives of Change center:

At a recent workshop Helena Norberg-Hodge shared an alternative paradigm

she calls the ‘economics of happiness’. Below is a trailer from a film Helena produced on the subject.

What if human well-being didn’t have to be at the expense of the environment? What if we could simultaneously increase genuine prosperity,reduce social inequality, and tackle climate change? With some simple economic shifts, all this becomes possible. That’s because so many of our current crises—financial, social and ecological—are linked to the scale of the economy. Localisation is a solution-multiplier that systemically reduces economic scale, creating benefits that ripple throughout society. In this day-long seminar, her talk highlighted human-scale economies and the steps—at the community, national, and international levels—that can bring us there.

Stephen Hinton provided his perspective from helping local initiatives in Sweden.

Global warming will accelerate as oceans reach limits of remediation

Systemic Disorder

If humanity stopped all production of greenhouse gases today, Earth would experience several decades more of additional global warming. That is not simply because the carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases thrown into the atmosphere by human activity won’t disappear in a day, but because the oceans can’t continue to act as shock absorbers.

Earth has tipped into a heat imbalance since 1970, and this excess heating has thus far been greatly ameliorated because the world’s oceans have absorbed 93 percent of the enhanced heating since the 1970s. This accumulated heat is not permanently stored, but can be released back into the atmosphere, potentially providing significant feedback that would accelerate global warming.

The latest in a series of scientific reports detailing the disastrous course of global warming, “Explaining Ocean Warming: Causes, Effects and Consequences,” concludes that the mean global ocean temperature will increase by as much as…

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