The Thin End

The G7 met last month in Canada.  Did you notice the big distraction? Or, perhaps I should say distractions.  The world leaders met, and yet failed to consider the most pressing problem of our time - climate change and habitat loss.  Yet,  these are the man-made causes of their problems. Instead,  they were concerned largely with trying to stabilise the status quo on global trade.  To keep things as they are.  The meeting ended in chaos.  The system is broken, but goes on clunking away destroying the planet at each turn of the wheel.  Political wood mouse We thought of writing about the wood mouse again.  The wood mouse was deemed too 'political'  for us to promote in the USA, or at least one major social outlet deemed that this was so for our podcast  Learning from the Wood Mouse .  What we can learn from  Wood Mice is dangerous stuff!  So, we will try not to mention the wood mouse in this article.  ...

President Trump is right. There is something wrong with global trade, and with the deals that make them possible. What we need, however, are the right kind of solutions. Solutions that help the producers, the farmer and farm workers, as much as the consumers. Solutions that help the planet heal itself from pollution and loss of habitats. Solutions that lift people out of poverty. Solutions that prevent the 'need' to grow crops destined to destroy lives through narcotics abuse. a new deal on trade We need a new global deal that produces sustainable economies with social and environmental objectives. The G7 scurry around trying to repair a broken system. They are rightly angry that Trump has given up on that system, but neither Trump nor the G7 have the right solutions. So they fight over the entrails of a broken system. The neoliberal view of 'free markets' meeting needs is a myth.  Markets are neither 'free'  nor good at meeting social and  environmental n...