There is growing support for the idea of a tax on financial speculation. A tax of less than a tenth of one percent on every financial transaction would have little effect on share trading or currency movements. However to those who use high powered computers to make thousands of automatic trades each second, a fraction of one percent tax will add up very quickly. It’s like a really cheap GST, but not just for goods and services AND financial instruments. In the UK the campaign is called the Robin Hood Tax, and they’ve released this humourous video to explain it:
The internet can help people be more sustainable in many ways. Apart from finding information about all sorts of things you can also connect with people in more and more ingenious ways. Social networking services live Facebook and Twitter allow people to join causes and share ideas, insights and information.
There are many other sites offering way that you can connect with people to share what you, or they, have:
I recently blogged about Hire Things a website where you can find things to hire in your locale.
It took more than a month for the huge container ship Ebba Maersk to cruise from Germany to China — a week longer than it took two years ago. But for the owner, the Danish shipping giant Maersk, that counts as progress.
In a culture where speed is expected, from overnight package delivery to bullet trains to fast-cash withdrawals, the company has created a sales pitch that may startle some speed-addicted customers: Slow is better.
By halving its top cruising speed over the last two years, Maersk cut fuel consumption on some routes by as much as 30 percent, greatly reducing costs and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Government's $13.1 million cut for Adult Community Education, announced in the 2009 Budget, has seen the number of community-based courses plummet.
Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce said that though adult education courses benefited students, it was a question of whether taxpayers should foot the bill. "We support continuing education and will continue to support courses that deliver clear economic benefits. We simply cannot justify spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on courses that do not clearly deliver these benefits."
Firstly, why does everything have to have an economic benefit, what's happened to social and environmental benefits? We pay taxes for infrastructure, services and amenities that would otherwise not be available in a purely commercial system. Secondly all education has an economic benefit either directly and/or indirectly.
Adult education courses offer benefits far beyond short-term returns on investment. A quick look at any adult education programme will see that they offer courses that increase people's competence, confidence, self-sufficiency and general well-being. In purely economic terms this means that people are more productive because they are healthier, motivated and more competent.
Adult classes also provide an opportunity for social interaction, networking, collaboration and sharing.
Adult education is one very good way to help sustain and improve our society; it's relatively low cost can easily be justified by the multiple, varied benefits.
Tax reform has been in the news recently because of the publication of the Victoria University of Wellington Tax Working Group's report. The changes that the working group recommended could be likened to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Our tax system promotes unsustainability and it will take a lot more than a few tweaks to change that.
As an example the report recommends a comprehensive capital gains tax as well as a land tax but these are then offset by lowering (or eliminating) progressive income tax rates for high income earners, businesses and trusts. They also propose an increase in GST to cover the reduction in other taxes.
The benefits of tax
Taxes are an enforced way of sharing. Even though most people complain about having to pay taxes most realise that they also share in the benefits – infrastructure, amenities and services – that taxes pay for.
Taxes also have the added benefit of redistributing wealth from where it accumulates to where it is needed.
Taxation is also a very effective way of internalising costs which are caused by economic activity but not factored into prices. These include environmental costs such as climate change and social costs such as the health system.
The problem is that our tax system perpetuates an unsustainable economy because it taxes the wrong things and not the right things.
Taxing resources
Taxing good things, like employment, to subsidise bad things, like environmental degradation, just doesn't make sense. A sustainable tax reform would shift taxes from incomes to environmentally destructive activities.
Across the board consumption taxes (GST) are often favoured by governments because they are easy to administer but they treat good consumption and bad consumption exactly the same. By using ecological taxes at the resource level the non-renewable and polluting resources will be more expensive and uncompetitive compared to recycled, renewable and clean resources.
If we taxed water use, land use, energy use, raw materials and pollution (at the same time as reducing income taxes) resource use and pollution would reduce rapidly. The problem is that labour is taxed as a resource which creates a tendency towards lower employment and higher resource use.
Tax shifting
Tax shifting has broad support by economists around the world and has been adopted in different ways by many governments in Europe and is beginning elsewhere.
In a column in Fortune Magazine, Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw succinctly sums up the idea of tax shifting: "Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming--all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer."
Tax shifting does not decrease the total amount of revenue for the Government. However shifting income taxes to ecological taxes will create jobs, improve resource efficiency and stimulate more sustainable business and consumption practices.
As Lester R. Brown says in his book Eco-economy "If the world is to restructure the economy before environmental destruction leads to economic decline, tax restructuring almost certainly will be at the centre of the effort. No other set of policies can bring about the systemic changes needed quickly enough."
So lets stop fiddling about with those deckchairs and let's turn this Titanic around.
There is too much stuff... And let’s face it, we usually don’t want the stuff, we just want what the stuff does. For example, you want a hole in your wall so you buy a drill – but you didn’t really want a drill that might end up sitting unused in your toolbox for the next twenty years – you just wanted a hole. To get the hole without buying a drill, you could borrow or rent a drill.
One of our ten basic sustainability tips is to buy and use less stuff. Reducing the amount of stuff we own, saves the energy and natural resources that would have gone into manufacturing something new and the emissions that would have been generated in the process.
But how do you find someone with a drill? If you know your neighbour has a one, that’s great, you could ask to borrow it. If not, there are websites growing around the world that encourage the sharing of resources. Websites such as Hire Things (www.hirethings.co.nz) offer people a platform to share within their community. There are many things that you only use occasionally and there are many people who own those things that you could rent from. Not everyone needs to own a lawnmower, a tent or a power drill.
By sharing resources in this way can we can increase the value of the things we own, reconnect with our community, reduce our impact on the environment as well as making and saving money.
Sharing resources is a socially responsible choice that will have significant impact on the world we leave our children. Small changes by lots of people can make a big difference.
Sharing information is a crucial way of being sustainable. A number of writers and organisations make books available for download for free. her are a couple of really good ones about sustainability:
State of the world 2010 State of the World is an annual publication published by the Worldwatch Institute. Each issue has a different theme. State of the World 2010 looks at the consumerism, what it is, why it is perpetuated and, most importantly, how it can be turned around.
You can buy it from the Worldwatch website or you can download a pdf of each chapter for free. Older issues are also available for download.
Worldwatch Institute The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organization recognized by opinion leaders around the world for its accessible, fact-based analysis of critical global issues. The Institute's three main program areas include Climate & Energy, Food & Agriculture, and the Green Economy.
Lester R. Brown is a renowned American environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post called Lester Brown "one of the world's most influential thinkers." The Telegraph of Calcutta refers to him as "the guru of the environmental movement."
Plan B 4.0 is Lester R. Brown's inspirational and practical plan for a sustainable world. This is the fourth 'update' of his original book and is available for download from the Earth Policy website along with several other of Brown's books. I recommend Eco-Economy as well although much of the content is replicated in Plan B.
Unlike many sustainable practices sharing is easy, very cheap and fun – and it just comes naturally.
The following has been adapted from an article by by Janelle Orsi, and is on great website about sharing: The Sharing Solution
The power of sharing is unique in several ways: Sharing is naturally contagious. Sharing opens up a pattern of generosity and mutual care that breeds on itself. A lot of other things we do to change the world aren't quite so viral. One person reducing his or her waste, for example, may or may not inspire a neighbour to do so. But offering to let your neighbour use your basketball hoop or take lemons from your tree can open up the flood gates of sharing.
Sharing is self-serving. Sharing helps us meet our needs more efficiently and cheaply, and sharing our water-blaster with a neighbor might mean that she will let us use her spa pool. Sharing builds community, which makes us happier people. Cooperation has been shown to release endorphins. So there's no need to force anyone to share -- people will naturally start doing it to enjoy the benefits.
Sharing frees up time, energy, and resources. For those of us who are spread way too thin, sharing saves resources, money, time, and energy, thereby freeing us up to garden, compost, recycle, hang our laundry, ride our bicycle, volunteer, advocate for social and environmental justice, and do things to help ourselves and the planet. We'll all get a little more rest and the support of a community of sharers. In short, sharing gives the grassroots the time, energy, and resources we need to grow a better world.
Sharing connects all of our sustainable acts and multiplies them. People are making changes everywhere – planting urban food gardens, composting their food waste, and installing solar panels. But many of these we do in isolation. Sharing adds the element of community, which boosts the potential and the impact of everything we do. Neighbours can get together to jointly purchase or bargain for solar power, or they can start a neighborhood compost project. It's more efficient, and each additional person who joins the effort multiplies the benefit to the earth and to the others in the group. Much of what we do to save the world can be done better if we organise and cooperate, and it can be much more fun that way, too!
We don't need someone else to do anything. We don't have to wait until our government starts a new program or provides needed funding. We don't need to change the laws. We don't have to wait until a scientist invents a solution. We don't even need to form a charity and fundraise to get started. We just start sharing. Today.
Every single one of us can share. Sharing is something that everyone can do. Even a curmudgeon, even a poor person, even a busy person. The hardest part is getting started, ironing out the details, understanding everyone's expectations, and figuring out the logistics. The book The Sharing Solution was written to help everyone through that part. So otherwise, there's nothing stopping any of us from sharing.
Sharing is something we can do right now. Somehow we need to create a sustainable economy. There are all kinds of approaches to this -- some folks reform the system, lobbying, advocating, and making changes bit-by-bit. This is important, but it's very slow. Others propose bringing down the system. This would be messy, very messy. Fortunately, we really don't need to remove the system before we can start replacing it. We can start sharing, nourishing our local economies, going organic, and creating rewarding green-collar job opportunities.
