Investing & Environment: Impressions from SRI in the Rockies Conference, 2011

SRI in the Rockies, “the premier annual gathering of investors and investment professionals working to direct the flow of investment capital in more positive, healthy, transformative ways,” has been held annually for 22 years. The conference has long since traveled beyond the Rocky Mountains, but the name is a true brand in the socially responsible investing world and thus lives on.

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Looking Back From the 23rd Century

Once upon a time there was a great empire, far more powerful than that of ancient Rome. On the founding of this mighty empire, a tiny nation at the time, their professed ideals sent a charge of hope around the world. In a world ruled by kings and ruthless tyrants, here was a new nation that stood up for the rights of people. This tiny nation declared that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights such as Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It called all people free except the black people that some of them owned. The Blacks were not considered people because they were property. Almost a hundred years passed before the Blacks were declared a free people. Their freedom came at a great loss of life on both sides of a great Civil War.

Ownership Society, 2004, Ed Lucas

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Spark That Went Around the World

This is a fantasy but a story of what could someday come to be when enough people have a change of mindset and it all started by a small farmer of Seattle Pike Place Market.

George the Dreamer, a small truck farmer, sold his production of fruits and vegetables at the Seattle Pike Place Market. He got there early every Saturday morning and drew his lot for space and always hoped to end up on the main shopping thoroughfare that some people called Goodwin Way to honor one of the Market’s early pioneers even though the Historic District’s managing commission has thus far denied that honor to him for some bureaucratic reason. Mr. Goodwin built the main market structures that sheltered the farmers and their customers from Seattle’s bountiful rain.

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Ched Myers at JEM

Ched, in the red vest hand made in PalestineIt came on short notice, but for those 16 or so who heeded the email that Ched Myers of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries was in town and had time to swing by the JEM office for an evening’s bible study with an eye to the situation in Palestine-Israel, it was quite a treat.

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Our Economic Black Hole

…We’re at a crossroads. Up to this point, cheap and abundant energy has fueled consistent economic growth. The only real discussion among the managerial elite was how to grow the economy—whether in planned or unplanned ways, whether with sensitivity to the environment or without.

Now the discussion must center on how to contract. Sadly, that discussion is radioactive—no one wants to touch it. It’s hard to imagine a more suicidal strategy for a politician than to base his or her election campaign on the promise of economic contraction. Instead, discussions in policy circles tend to turn on how to maintain the illusion of growth. Denial runs deep, but sooner or later reality will make itself known.

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Fair Trade Shopping in San Diego

For those of you close to JEM in San Diego, with a jones to do good by buying Fair Trade, here is a handy list of locations where you can do so (with notes on what kinds of goods are available), courtesy of Fair Trade San Diego. FTSD also has a number of upcoming events for the month of April, including a space at Earth Fair on Earth Day, April 20.

San Diego FT Vendors PDF list.

Metanoia Newsletter, November 2007

Download the November 2007 newsletter here. PDF format.

Features:

• Alternative economics and the global capital system
• A “getting to know JEM” house party
• Celebrating the fair trade way
• Abundance economics workbooks coming soon