be a better way.” Don E. Beck
Never forgetting that [IT] was R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER who wrote the following in his exemplary plan for the future entitled Utopia or Oblivion • Prospects for HUMANITY
“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone • ALL of humanity now has the option to “make it” successfully and sustainably, by virtue of our having minds, discovering principles and being able to employ these principles to do more with less”Said E. Dawlabani is a leading authority on the application of value systems to large scale change. A writer and public speaker specializing in the Gravesian approach to psychosocial development and evolutionary systems. He was named one of the world’s boldest thought leaders in 2019. The author of MEMEnomics, The Next-Generation Economic System. His writings in the field of finance have been compared to those of Warren Buffet and Ray Dalio. His work has been translated to Korean, Mandarin, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. He has given keynote speeches on sustainable and regenerative economics in many parts of the world. Since 2018 he has turned his attention to the application of the Gravesian model to climate change and the economics of the Anthropocene.Dawlabani is the founder of The Memenomics Group. Since 2004, he has worked closely with renowned geopolitical adviser Dr. Don E. Beck, Graves’ successor and one of the architects behind South Africa’s transition from Apartheid and co-author of Spiral Dynamics, the most authoritative theory on value systems and change. Before teaming up with Beck, Dawlabani had a prominent career in the real estate industry.He is a prolific blogger and a contributor to The Huffington Post, Medium, the Integral Leadership Review, Kosmos Journal and other publications. His work is featured in the Leader to Leader Journal, Newsweek and The Christian Science Monitor and on NPR, PRN, and Voice of America. Dawlabani is the cofounder, COO and past member of the Board of Directors of The Center for Human Emergence Middle East, a think tank that frames political and economic issues facing the region through the prism of value systems. His past activities include being a guest speaker on the topic of transformational leadership at the Adizes Graduate School in Santa Barbara, and the University of Virginia.
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predicament was this terrible! What a pit we are in!” My rather gleeful response was due to the fact that I happen to be in the midst of researching and writing a book exploring the evident fact that resource depletion, debt overhang, and climate change have brought about the end of world economic growth (as currently defined). When I drilled into Fleeing Vesuvius, I encountered a rich vein of thought very much attuned with my own, one that includes stimulating ideas and examples that were new and helpful to me.
While other readers may come to this book with backgrounds different from mine, I think they will nevertheless find just as much stimulation and help as I did.
The authors have applied themselves to an analysis of the most important and fateful economic transition in human history. They are among the People who are Paying Attention (PPA)—an almost completely unorganized demographic consisting of individuals who have the privilege to devote a substantial amount of time to following world political, economic, and environmental news, but who are not blinded by any fixed religious or political ideology.
PPA probably number globally no more than a few million, and (if I may speak for them) have generally come to the conclusion that the world is facing a triple crisis:
The depletion of important resources including fossil fuels and minerals;
The proliferation of environmental impacts, principally climate change arising from both the extraction and use of resources (including the burning of fossil fuels)—leading to snowballing costs from both these impacts themselves and from efforts to avert them; and
Financial disruptions due to the inability of our existing monetary, banking, and investment systems to adjust to both resource scarcity and soaring environmental costs—and their inability (in the context of a shrinking economy) to service the enormous piles of government and private debt that have been generated over the past couple of decades.
While these three crises are converging on us, our leaders remain obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: the maintenance of economic expansion. For a variety of reasons, growth has become essential to the political well-being of modern societies.
Yet our fixation on economic growth prevents our addressing any of the three crises: Governments refuse to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (and thus fossil fuel consumption) because doing so would reduce growth. They refuse to reduce their vulnerability to oil supply shocks because that would require them to proactively rein in oil use, thus threatening growth. And they refuse to explore fundamental changes to financial and monetary systems that would make their economies less susceptible to bubbles and crashes because…well, you can finish the sentence.
Richard Heinberg…