NATURAL WEALTH

Politicians talk about "creating wealth" and "growth", referring to financial wealth, but the processes they are talking about are fundamentally exploitative and destructive, of people as well as the environment. Our true fundamental wealth is our natural wealth, and financial wealth can only flow from that.

Everything we need comes from a healthy environment, from sunlight, air and water to food, fuel and materials.

POST INDUSTRIAL LIFE

A political-economic system that doesn't recognise that is basically flawed. In a successful post-industrial way of life, human beings will remember that we are just a part of a complicated web of life, and that the more varied and robust the whole network becomes, the better the long term quality of our human lives can be. If there's human beings around in a hundred years time we'll be living much simpler, more localised, but I think happier and healthier lives.

ENERGY

It's a key issue and one of several that may force change whether we like it or not. The recent drone strike on a Saudi refinery, which knocked out 5% of world supply, showed just how vulnerable the whole supply is for a start. Ultimately there is only so much fossil fuel available and we've had all the easy-to-get stuff already. What's left is lower grade and much of it is only worth exploiting if the extractors are given subsidies. (Check out Energy Return on Energy Invested and have a look for yourself at the subsidies given to oil). That cheap energy is so embedded in our whole way of life though, and cheap it is: I worked out that in the UK we're effectively paying something like the equivalent of £0.03 for labour. More on the PLAN Z PAGE.