Universal Chi  

Karen Umland/2014

I remember once
standing on the gravel
off of K Street in Arcata
a sudden awareness
a physical sensation
of the pulsation of the Cosmos
lifeforce consciousness
flowing through all matter
the heartbeat of eternity
surging in the ground
coursing up through my feet
pulse traversing the length
of my legs
and into my heart
I am energy and life
a pinpoint of light
from the vast molecular
matrix of stardust
condensed into a small being
an earthling-
for this one brief moment
of distinct lifetime
I am spinning
into and out of
the center of it
in constant motion

It is all one medium
which flows around you
through you
this field of spacetime
you are unfolding your Self into

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Soulution

Karen Umland/2020

It becomes dissolved 
into the ecosystem
one day barely perceived,
indistinct from resource
it’s alchemical properties 
taken for granted
even while daily celebrated;
it’s chemistry abstracted
in emulsion
though each molecule 
was so carefully,
discretely compounded
into tincture






Paradoxical Laws of The Universe (II)
Karen Umland/2022


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 ⏤          ●          ⏤

 |

One is infinity
Out of the singular/emerges a plurality
The Big Bang itself/describes this reality
 

                             How Can Creativity And Resourcefulness
                                            Sustain Civilization 2.0?
​
                                                                         🌎

                                            The Gaia Project White Paper
  

    
     Ours is not the first civilization, though our modern, globally networked and economically interdependent culture is the first truly planetary one, influenced by all that preceded it and every subculture encompassed by it. Many came before us: the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indus Valley, Persian, Greco-Roman, Mayan Empire, Songhai, Mongol, Incan, Ottoman, Spanish, British and thousands of smaller societies which rose and fell and rose again in a new form along the way. We find ourselves at a crossroads now, confronted with deepening inequality (after decades of progress in the other direction) and unprecedented ecological crises, caused by us, all of which presents an existential threat to everything humanity has built and all we do, as well as our very lives. But at this inflection point we’re facing we find ourselves with a choice: can we find a way to build the next stage of human development, the next civilization, consciously and sustainably? Or will we complacently watch ourselves fall off a cliff we not only saw coming decades ago, but created ourselves, and currently march toward with utterly reckless abandon? 
    It is up to us to determine a way forward that honors the lives of those who follow us, while we still can, rather than leaving them an irrevocably broken world to inherit. It is a moral imperative like no other in history, and it could not be more urgent.    
    Before I get into the details of my proposal, let me explain where the name comes from. Gaia is the name of a Greek Goddess, the personification of planet Earth. She was a daughter of Chaos, the primordial being from which all other gods emerged. The Gaia Hypothesis is the idea that living organisms interact with their environment to form a self-regulating system that creates the optimal conditions for diverse life to flourish on our world. Since roughly the Industrial Age Humanity has entered what’s called the Anthropocene Era, which means our actions have created imbalances which have thrown Gaia’s self-regulating systems off. We’re going to have to work hard to bring things back into balance, and it’ll require that we change the way we do some things, but these changes could prevent untold losses down the road, and our willingness to adapt will demonstrate that we’re ready to evolve new ways of seeing and being on the planet. It will be evidence that we are actually getting smarter. We can become a benign mechanism within Gaia’s self-regulating system, rather than working in opposition to it. Hopefully this will help us learn to live together more peaceably and happily too. In fact I believe it will accomplish that because it must.
    This is our roll call to a more honorable and fulfilling way of life, one that considers the consequences of our actions to others downstream from us, temporally, hydrologically and atmospherically. Their rights matter too. 
                                                                             ✧

 What prevents us from recognizing each others’ rights as equal across the globe?

    Economic exploitation. Our current financial paradigm inflicts and perpetuates a type of artificial scarcity that is imposed on the majority of us even though it doesn’t apply to the world of finance. Yet poverty is demonstrably bad for society. Aside from the negative effects on the working poor, even rich capitalists have to emerge from their privileged bubbles occasionally to interact with the “masses,” wouldn’t they prefer not to antagonize them so completely by subverting their equal representation in government? And if our entire civilization fails as a result of climate disaster, their escape into underground bunkers won’t be much of a win- so the status quo ultimately doesn’t serve them either. They should realize that a minimal amount of social cohesion benefits them by providing stability for the market so that they can continue to do whatever it is they do; that lobbying for policies which increase rather than decrease inequity and preventing ordinary people from accessing certain necessities (like healthcare, stable housing and quality education or good jobs) precludes them (the wealthy) from benefitting from the long-term stability that a sustainable, moderately regulated economy would provide. (Unfortunately it is this instability that proves to be so profitable for the moneyed class to begin with. They have a vested interest in perpetuating it.) This doesn’t even touch on the spiritual cost of the tremendous inhumanity inflicted on all of us.

                                                                      ✧

                                                 If you’re more outraged 
                                   by what destitute people do out of need 
                                 than what powerful people do out of greed 
                            then you are looking through a very skewed lens.

                                                                     ✧

    The “American Dream” and “equal opportunity” are mostly fantasies these days, phony lures on the fish-hook of Capitalism, but it’s something we could actually bring about if we decide, all together, to bring genuine fairness to our world. It’s something we seemed to be working toward for a short time back in the 50’s and 60’s before we got sidetracked by the Vietnam War, deregulation of markets, and the privatization of public goods and services. Inroads were made by workers, including people of color and women, as union jobs with living wages were available across what is now the Rust Belt (labeled such after these good manufacturing jobs were outsourced to developing nations where workers could be paid a pittance and environmental laws largely didn’t exist. Mmmmm, Capitalism. It hurts so good, doesn’t it?) Back then parents were able to send their children to college as first generation grads because tuition at public universities was affordable. We were beginning to go in the right direction once, but then there was a terrible backlash by the oligarchs who believe they benefit from an underclass of exploitable, perpetually indebted and powerless workers (serfs, really), as well as private prisons which require a permanently disenfranchised population to incarcerate for profit (and compulsory prison jobs with no to little pay mean we’ve reinstated slavery right here within our borders https://harvardpolitics.com/involuntary-servitude-how-prison-labor-is-modern-day-slavery/ ). The ways these dynamics all feed into each other are shocking in their violation of our basic human and civil rights. It’s a total perversion of the social contract.
    The Military-Industrial Complex, first alluded to by the late President Eisenhower, has made entrenched fossil fuel addiction an all-consuming motivation. It is a central plank in the platform, so to speak. Politically, the so-called War on Terror justifies our continued aggression against non-compliant resource-rich nations. It’s a never-ending cycle of conflict, as this aggression in turn justifies continued hostility to the West all over the Developing World, so it appears we’ve been at a stale-mate for some years now, though the methods of warfare are asymmetrical to the point of absurdity. We’re fighting people on their land for resources that rightly belong to them. And yet we continue to lose these conflicts because you cannot win hearts and minds by shooting and bombing people. Even if you build a school to supplant their own culture in between drone attacks. Go figure.
    Let me be clear: this doesn’t justify the reactionaries in those lands who exploit our aggression to prop up autocratic control over their own people. Two wrongs have never yet made a right, but let’s take responsibility for our own part in it anyway. It might even create space for such factions to reduce their militancy and suspicion. But too many profit from these hostilities. And so it continues.
    Our military is by itself one of the world’s largest consumers of dirty energy, (emitting the equivalent of Portugal’s, Finland’s, or Denmark’s emissions, more than 140 other nations). For decades it has helped oil companies procure that energy from foreign wars and coercion, which profit private energy companies and defense contractors who have corrupted our legislative process and decision makers at the Pentagon. Our addiction to Saudi oil and petrodollars helped fund the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center on 9/11 through back channels and continues to fund extremism and war in the Middle East. Our policy of maximum pressure on Iran in lieu of good faith diplomacy empowers the most militant and reactionary of their leadership, which encourages Israel to endorse the most reactionary of its politicians, further endangering all of us. All in the interest of fossil fuel profits, the petrodollar’s supremacy in the global economy, and to compel resistors to accept Western banks with their onerous interest rates. Petro-Capitalism über alles.
    It is humanity’s energy habits which fuel dictatorships and conflict all over the world, though climate change is increasingly giving us other things to fight about too. And yet if we collaborate effectively with other nations to reduce dependence on fossil fuels before the Peak Oil (Note 1)  hits us in the face, pitting us against each other even more lethally, we might have a chance to protect whatever is worth saving in our society, to carry us into a better future.
    This is all fixable in a way that will be even-handed, transparent and smart, and allow enormous freedom to continue to expand markets in a sustainable and survivable way. We can regulate to reduce harm without reducing liberty to do good business. People who reject any and all regulation do so disingenuously. Business people with integrity who don’t cheat and aren’t finding ways to make money harming others have nothing to lose from smart regulation. Only those who cause harm have anything to worry about, and why should we cater to them? Why do we let the greedy and unethical control legislation, our electoral process, much less the conversation?

                                                                          ✧
    What I’m proposing is a new alternate economic framework; one that will operate parallel to the global market based on private banks and national compound interest-bearing fiat currencies conjoined with ever-increasing debt. This organization will create a system for people to operate in with the goal of spurring economic activity that supports regenerative outcomes for communities and ecosystems. One can opt in to this additional sector of the market depending on what the aim is for any given transaction. With any luck it will offer an alternative that could outcompete some of the more destructive business practices that take place on Earth, and compel change in industries which are reluctant to evolve without impetus.
    I don’t have an economics PhD but I’ll attempt to do it justice with my lay-person’s understanding. Sometimes it takes an outsider, a non-expert, to see fault-lines in and potential repairs to dysfunctional systems, because all of the experts are subject to the same collective fallacies and assumptions. The primary one being: we’re stuck with this system because it’s so entrenched and it’s the only one we can imagine could possibly work. The first strike against that position is this: the system ain’t actually working. (If you’re interested in learning more about the rationale for the GP I will be publishing a book detailing its inner workings more in depth, called Regenerative Economics: The Gaia Project, which will include the White Paper in its entirety. Please read the introductory chapter about Unsustainable Economics, and again note that I am aware of the fact that my own analysis is fairly rudimentary, as I am a lay-person rather than an “expert,” but I’ve been observing and researching, through legitimate sources, a great deal over the years so I hope I’m able to reflect some insight in spite of my blindspots.)
    The truth is that we as a culture have become ideologically welded to this system because our limited imaginations can only envision the world in terms of superficial binaries: we’re either Communist or Capitalist, Marxist or Laissez-Faire, and clearly Communism is a political failure even when it achieves some economic successes so that leaves us with only one option. This is, to me, an obvious fallacy. It’s lazy thinking. There are an incredible variety of possible economic structures beckoning from the Divine Beyond’s more expansive frame of reference. Many of the world’s nations have already realized this and embraced Social Democracy, which opts to restrict or enhance trade as each nation sees fit, as well as provide public goods and services not effectively provided for by the market (though the market is constantly encroaching, to the detriment of these countries’ citizens and the world at large).
     Ironically, such nations have been experiencing their own malfunctions (since 2008 or ’09) as a direct result of private financial institutions’ insolvency, enabled by the deregulation of the financial industry primarily here in the US which resulted in gross malfeasance and breakdown across institutions internationally https://www.npr.org/2020/02/19/807191309/dark-towers-exposes-chaos-and-corruption-at-the-bank-that-holds-trump-s-secrets . Globalism means the breakdowns in one subset of the market impact everybody else too. But the successes are never shared the way those failures are. Funny thing, the way thats happens. We’re socializing the pillaging of the world, adding to the wealth of the financiers’ class, private defense contractors and oilmen, enabling them to take that wealth from everyone below. Who really owns natural resources? Why is it so few people are making these decisions with no accountability to the rest of us? On largely stolen land, or through economic coercion?
       In exchange everybody else gets deeper and deeper in debt, and less able to afford the basic necessities of life as wages are depressed and the cost of merely existing puts the average person further and further behind. This helps to provide plenty of canon fodder for the resource wars, though increasingly our soldiers are merely operating drones from a distance, making them think it’s all just a video game. Except that flesh-and-blood human beings are dying on the other end, and if that doesn’t matter to us we have truly lost our soul as a nation.
     The reductive truth about political and economic systems is this: they’re both just constructs. That’s all they are: concepts➤frameworks➤concretized ideologies given life by our mutual agreement.
      Well... sort of. Most of us didn’t agree to this system, we were just born into it. For generations we’ve been indoctrinated to accept it but it’s mutated from a bizarre scheme into an unstable, destructive, spiraling fiasco. To borrow a physics analogy: economic and social entropy (chaos, disorder) are increasing, requiring a massive re-ordering of the entire system in order to prevent it from crashing. However, since a great number of us absolutely do not consent to this socio-economic disaster, we may be able to agree on one that evolves to cope with our current conditions and challenges. In the modern era our global civilization’s functioning requires stable, universal parameters to define our economic relationships and mechanisms, but they must be sensible and fair, and if they aren’t sustainable we’re operating under the ever-present end-game of collapse.
            As long as we continue to feed our addiction to fossil fuels we are failing miserably at reaching a sustainable, stable society. We are approaching Peak Oil (https://www.ft.com/content/37551636-4d8e-4334-a7b0-64a474ba55e) in the next few years and things will only get worse from there if we don’t work very hard to transition to a post-carbon economy, post-haste. Financial institutions would be smart to think ahead and divest while they can, before the bottom falls out of the dirty energy industry. If they pivot toward renewables now the banking system will be far less likely to hit the wall. And that wall would be far worse than what we saw in 1929 or 2008. It will look like dominoes falling, if dominos were the institutions that keep society together. The price of oil will rise steeply as supply is outstripped by demand and then we will experience inflation only hinted at in early 2022. Possibly banks and investors imagine they’ll be fine because the rise in energy prices will continue to provide them with windfall profits (in fact this year’s steep price increases were mostly motivated by that end, not supply problems or Biden’s energy policy as was claimed, though in Europe it’s been closely tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine). But unless we plan for it and mitigate it wisely there will be so much economic turmoil as a result that entire sectors of the market will suffer, and most of the pain will be felt by wage-earners. Other industries won’t be immune if we have massive unemployment and instability. The pain will trickle up to the banking and investment echelon too, as the rest of the market begins to collapse; couple that with the massive hits the insurance industry is inevitably facing as a result of climate change. 
       Consider the possibility that there could (and should) be class action lawsuits directed at all of the industries dragging their feet in the energy transition, and that in itself could bankrupt the financial industry in one fell swoop. Wouldn’t that be karmic. The worse climate disruptions get, the more they’ll have to pay, but they seem to think they can just wait for it and go bankrupt when the time comes. None of this even touches on the repercussions from job losses which will translate to foreclosures and bankruptcies, all of which will result in insolvency at a level we can only begin to imagine. I don’t doubt they’ll expect another bailout, even though it’s their system that’s bringing us to the brink. The amount of social disorder that arises in response to all of this will be catastrophic. 2020 will look like child’s play in comparison. 
    We don’t have to give in to their demands or blindly follow their agenda though. We have an alternative, one that empowers the rest of us and enables civilization to continue, albeit in a different, more evolved form. 
                                                                   ✧
    Something I don’t think we as a society have really grappled with is the disconnect between our secular or religious ideals and our economic reality. In prehistory many of our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived relatively egalitarian, communal lives, as spiritually-oriented beings first and foremost, once they started to evolve beyond a purely animalistic level (at least that’s what much of the archaeological evidence and more contemporary subsistence communities show us). Later they began collecting in agrarian settlements, developing common traditions and values, which grounded most small societies and their members in a cultural and ethical continuity that protected many of them from serious abuses (except from outside: for more on the dynamics of socio-political development in prehistoric human societies please look into the book The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler). Over time, in the Middle East, Far East, North Africa and Europe a series of complex overarching economic models developed (generally some variation of monarchic feudalism, gradually morphing into imperialistic capitalism or imperialistic communism) after many of these cultures began trading with and conquering one another. 
    I believe conquest left these societies unmoored from their spiritual and ethical frameworks, which then increased the levels and kinds of abuses inflicted within them, (targeting vulnerable members) and against outsiders, perpetuating atrocities like slavery, ethnic cleansing, brutality against colonized people, eventually the Holocaust, Native American, Armenian, Soviet (it is estimated that as many as 20 million Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, and East Germans were killed or starved under Stalin), Cambodian, and Rwandan genocides, etc. Exploitation seems to have been baked into many early socio-political structures the more complex they became. As systems grew increasingly complex, a parallel dynamic evolved alongside some of them: the gradual expansion of rights and the various people entitled to them, relatively recently creating a large middle class and intelligentsia outside of the nobility, increasing access to education and a decent standard of living. But the truth is, humans lived in relative harmony for many thousands of years in many regions of the world prior to the era of conquest and economic exploitation. Man-against-man (and women and children) brutality is not our normal and we must reject it, before it destroys everything that matters, including what’s left of our tattered and confused spiritual values.

    One of the primary errors in modern history has been the centering of economics to the detriment of sacred values and homegrown ethics; which is not to say that prior to that the historical record didn’t include mass pillaging as “wealth creation” but the impact has gone global and the consequences and rationalizations have grown in complexity and scale. What hasn’t changed is that there is always a convenient “other” available to exploit, punish, push aside or plunder.

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                                                   What Are We Really?/2020

                                                   We are not economic units 
                                              having a vocational experience, 
                                                      we are spiritual beings 
                                                 having a human experience, 
                                               which is now centered around 
                                                      economic transactions 
                                                             to the exclusion
                                                     of most everything else.
                                   Our status defines every aspect of our lives, 
                                                       detrimentally for most

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    We are not simply economic units, we who belong to the species homo sapiens. We are vessels of spirit, children of God, cousins, sisters and brothers, co-creators of our human culture. In the modern world we’ve mutated into “wealth creators,” skilled workers, “influencers” (human advertisements), labor, and management. These are now the ideas that define us and our worth, and it’s deadly wrong. It’s making us sick, morally and physically, and it’s killing many of us, spiritually and literally, in part because those categorized as labor or skilled workers are seen as expendable. The major flaw in our system is its relative moral vacuity. I believe this socio-economic paradigm is also one of the primary causes of rising rates of mental illness and drug abuse. It’s a constant source of stress for all of us, which aggravates genetic predispositions to conditions such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addictions, and the development of personality disorders. Those born at the bottom are also increasingly left out of policy considerations as the planet is paved over for those whose extreme wealth dictates our collective fate. 
    This distorted outlook, by design, also prevents us from being fully present and aligned with the beauty and miraculousness of life. If you have your basic needs met and are fulfilled by meaningful relationships and a sense of community then you’re less susceptible to advertising for unnecessary consumer goods. See how that works? It’s very effective indoctrination of members of an ever-more alienating society. But take note of how many entities profit from our alienation: corporations, bankers and the investment industry, advertisers, manufacturers of frivolous consumer goods, and the for-profit medical and pharmaceutical industries which are there to medicate the existential pain away or treat your stress-induced heart disease and diabetes.
    Social status at birth almost exclusively determines whether or not we will survive into late adulthood, reproduce, thrive, self-actualize; this is an echo of the age of feudalism, when the offspring of the nobility were free to play musical instruments, enjoy a garden, or paint watercolor pictures while the peasants toiled for their meager bread. There exists now a larger class who have access to such goods, but there’s also a correspondingly large pool of labor to cater to them for poverty wages. And we in this society were all raised with this idea that we, too, could one day enter that class of people who are comfortable and secure, if we work hard enough. In my case, I was born middle class but as a result of my father’s abuse was led to believe I was unworthy, and toiled at menial jobs when unable to find work doing something I love. But I also fell in love with the kind of work that didn’t pay even subsistence wages too. At some point I imagined my creative work could support me, but that was something I struggled to have any faith in. I was led to believe I would never find a place in the world, and I know I’m not alone in that. Some of us are taught that at home by a domestic persecutor, and some are taught that by a culture that devalues us for one reason or another: our neighborhood, skin color, gender, disability, whatever.
    No longer do we all have faith in the American Dream, which fueled the ambitions of generations of people from all over the world. We’re losing confidence in our primary ideology: that anyone can achieve anything with hard work and inspiration. These are all symptoms of a disease which has taken hold of entire nations: Capitalism as the defining strategy for all human endeavors. There are limits to its utility. It has to be restrained, and its rules must be delineated anew. It can’t be the primary value system or benchmark humanity uses to define itself or our inter-relationships. It’s starving many of us of meaning and connection, healthcare and adequate housing.
    The novel Coronavirus reaching pandemic levels as we all fret about how to keep the economy going while people get sick at exponential rates is Exhibit A in this debate. The fact that we’ve had to discuss how to pay for testing and treatment while people die of Covid19 is a damning factor. That we decided it was worthwhile to fund a bloated and ever-more-privatized-for-profit Department of Defense but starve Public Health departments (and all necessary and life-sustaining public services) across the country says so much about our warped priorities. That the US president actually disbanded the Pandemic Response Team put in place by his predecessor, President Obama, demonstrates that we have been going backward in tragic and preventable ways. 
    But this is what will inform our readiness for the next pandemic (or any kind of foreseeable crisis), and that means we might yet build a system that protects public health, democracy, economic stability, national security, and promotes climate stabilizing measures to such a degree that we will have invested in solutions which save us enormous amounts of money (and pain) in the long term. We could be saving lives, educating all of humanity which opts in, promoting poverty-ending programs, funding climate mitigation efforts, creating a regenerative subset of the global economy founded on renewable rather than dirty energy, one which functions regardless of inevitable crises, and helps to prevent much of the economic fallout they cause for ordinary people. The Gaia Project will do many of the things the government should be doing, but doesn’t, because of the ideology of artificial scarcity, which gives the banking system a continuous supply of impoverished people who pay subprime rates on credit that they need just to survive. And when they end up addicted to drugs and steal to support that dependency, they land in a for-profit prison, adding more to the bottom line of the Dow Jones Industrial Average while destroying people’s lives. I am not alone in feeling that this system actually sets vulnerable people up for failure.
    Recently a friend described the Project as “the infrastructure of love.” It absolutely is love in action. And it could very well save our declining civilization, if not give birth to a new one that considers the well being of our earthly souls in everything we do.

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    To begin I will address the major existential threat which is breathing down our necks and requires rapid deployment of multi-pronged strategies to manage. That doesn’t mean I consider it to be more important than the other challenges we face, just that it’s so urgent that building a program to overcome this problem will, I hope, lead to greater momentum to deal with the other issues humanity faces more systematically than we have been willing to in the past. 
    The first step in dealing with climate change is to immediately cease subsidies to fossil fuels, then institute a transparent, auditable carbon fee and dividend program, and make it international, possibly administered by the UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program). We can start this in the US and apply border adjustments with the aim of encouraging adoption by other nations who haven’t signed on from the beginning. The second step is to pass legislation like the Build Back Better Act, and entrench investment in public works like community resiliency. The Gaia Project (of which the Gaia Treasury is an ancillary division) will be an adjunct to these measures. The Carbon Fee and Dividend program (Note 2), The BBB Act and the Gaia Project are all necessary, as we need to incent the conservation of fossil fuels in addition to funding the transition to renewable energy on a massive scale, starting now, as well as subsidize the latter in a way that is fair for the so-called Developing World, which is slated to be far more drastically impacted by climate change than those who are chiefly responsible for it (the proverbial Global North, but in reality- all of the world’s biggest consumers of resources- wherever they live). In addition, the Gaia Project considers and provides remedies for numerous other of humanity’s challenges, all in search of solutions. 
    I could write entire books about those challenges, but plenty of books written by much better authors have already explicated most of them. Energy policy isn’t the central priority for a lot of people, since general inequity and oppression are always in need of genuine remediation, but if we don’t deal with our catastrophic carbon addiction civilization could actually end, precluding any opportunity to deal with the other challenges. Though some might imagine a post-Apocalyptic world in rather rosy and idyllic ways, I do not. I rather enjoy amenities such as indoor plumbing, transportation, grocery shopping, semi-functional democracy, and interconnectivity with the rest of humanity. The era of enough for everyone would also end, which would not be idyllic at all. Currently we actually do have enough feed to everyone, but it isn’t distributed equitably. That needs to change. Not only that, economic inequity and our current energy policy actually reinforce each other in numerous ways, so addressing one does help mitigate the other. I would add that as indigenous and historically marginalized communities continue to mobilize in the fight for environmental justice and sustainability some of this inequity will burn itself out simply through the empowerment of and solidarity between these groups. It will take an enormous mobilization to push that along, however. And it isn’t really enough to undo a lot of the damage.
    Fortunately the scientific establishment, long a bastion of Eurocentric and masculine thought, is rapidly deploying strategies to include diverse voices, and to recruit new leaders from these historically marginalized groups out of recognition that diverse perspectives yield better scientific inquiries and more in-depth and comprehensive results. (Bianca Jones Marlin is just one great example of this dynamic in action.) Plus, the next Einstein could in fact be Ojibwe or Malawian, we don’t know if they don’t have access to mind-expanding educational opportunities. Diverse representation is beginning to multiply at higher and higher levels, (as evidenced by the exciting appointment of Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland!) and as that happens we will see shifts in priorities that will elevate those solutions which cover the highest number of issues possible, while including the greatest possible number of distinct perspectives and interests. We may be seeing a frightening resurgence of fascism in many parts of the world, but the majority of humankind rejects such hate, greed, fear-mongering and incitement to violence. With our greater numbers, facts and connectivity, democracy, coexistence and liberty will win. But only if we address the staggering inequities, externalities, volatility, and unsustainable nature of unrestrained Capitalism (which is really a cult, more than an economic philosophy, given that it refuses to grapple with moral issues or reality’s complexity and constraints)
    We never have fully addressed the original sins of genocide and slavery in this country, we just allowed enough people of color to make gains that everyone else would buy into the belief that if you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps then you must deserve to be in poverty, excluded, criminalized and addicted. How is this in any way consistent with the teaching of Christ, whom so many in power purport to worship? Jesus stood with the downtrodden, and was martyred for trying to lift them up. It’s a bit late in the game, (better late than never) but now we have a way to finish the work he started in spirit. His intent is powerfully expressed in this excerpt from the Gospels, largely ignored by those on the political Right:

        “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, 
        I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, 
        I was a stranger and you invited me in, 
        I needed clothes and you clothed me, 
        I was sick and you looked after me, 
        I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

            “Then the righteous will answer him, 
            ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, 
            or thirsty and give you something to drink? 
            When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, 
            or needing clothes and clothe you? 
            When did we see you sick or in prison 
            and go to visit you?’
            “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, 
            whatever you did for one of the least of these 
            brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ 

                —(Matthew 25:35-40, New International Version)

        Anyway, I’d like to address the concerns of Americans who supported 45, believing that he was their champion. I hope they’ll read this proposal in full because it stands to not only elevate the entire country, but to close all the cracks where people of any color, including beige, get lost. It matters not your hue, gender, political, sexual or religious orientation- you would be welcome at a Gaia Clinic in your community, you would be the recipient of educational support and renewable energy, you could benefit from the housing support described herein. And on a larger level, as the tide rises, your boat would rise too. Your wages would rise, your job security would rise, the quality of jobs available would expand, the buying power of your customers will increase. The Project stands to stabilize the economy by diversifying it and making it less susceptible to collapse. Because the Terra Dollar would be pegged to real-world commodities, its value would be reliable, especially given that the GP will invest heavily in regenerative agriculture, steadying the market and creating a feedback loop that reins in climate disruption while improving the market for necessities and sustainably produced goods. It’s interest-free (or possibly minimally demurrage-charged) nature discourages hoarding, keeping it circulating in the market, encouraging more economic activity. 
    We’re all in this together, and this is a way for us to stop allowing ourselves to be pitted against each other in an inhuman competition for low wage, dead-end jobs that suck the joy and purpose out of life. Those jobs will still need to be done, but we can get concessions for workers to improve conditions, raise pay, and reduce hours. The Gaia Project will help by directly creating jobs in a myriad of sectors which will be meaningful, positive, and well-paying (just in time for the robotics and AI revolution making so many human workers obsolete). It’s good for you no matter what your political persuasion, but I do hope and believe that it would help to reduce this vitriolic conflict the nation is engaged in at the moment. 
    The truth is, economics is only artificially a zero sum game. We’re taught that it’s the natural order, in an ultra-competitive hyper-capitalist culture which pits us against each other, in what’s referred to as a Darwinian struggle for survival. This dynamic is manufactured by the most powerful among us, designed to keep us divided by ideology, bigotry, scarcity and fear so that we’re less able to confront the real threats to our economic security: those at the top, bending the rules of The Game in their own favor, and throwing bones to the rest of us every once in a while to gleefully watch us go at each others’ throats for scraps. In reality, as more people gain economic mobility and the ability to start small businesses, earn decent wages, or join co-op enterprises, the potential for new economic activity and general system-wide resilience and stability will only increase, as will good-faith civic engagement, I hope.
    The zero-sum economic system we have settled for has corroded our sense of community and interdependence, and we need those more than ever before, given that we are facing increasing climate catastrophe and emerging threats like Covid19 (and I hate to break it to you but the changing climate makes new viruses and other infections like Lyme Disease, Zika and Malaria increasingly problematic. We don’t even know what other health threats might be buried in the  permafrost or hiding in a corner of wilderness somewhere.) It’s impossible to predict all the other potential hazards lurking in the shadows, but it would be wise for us to figure out how to prepare for those we can anticipate. Instead we’ve allowed ourselves to be distracted by conspiracy hoaxes and rabid propaganda which steadily erode our ability to speak to each other civilly. And unfortunately some of the most uncivil among us actually hold elected office now. We need a screening process to keep the most obstructive, pathologically churlish, anti-social personality-disordered and potentially homicidal people from gaining national office. They are a danger to our democratic republic. Threats of violence are not legitimate political discourse.
    I think some of this us/them rhetoric is also related to the fear provoked by our environmental/climate challenges, and I believe some of it will abate as we take a more confident, direct approach to addressing and remediating it. It has to help alleviate some of the primal fear floating around these days. Confronting the problem collaboratively, proactively and systematically will help us feel as if we’re finally doing something effective to save ourselves and civilization, thereby reducing the pressures and anxieties we’re all feeling about an uncertain future. I would also add that increasing genuine prosperity for all, reducing insecurity around housing, education, and healthcare, and witnessing a more egalitarian, co-operative economic model IN ITSELF will increase morale and a sense of fellowship among us, in addition to reducing conflict. I believe that one of the major factors in the demoralization, substance-abuse and enervation of modern humans (particularly Americans) is related to the hyper-monetization of our very lives, the belief that we aren’t intrinsically worth anything, but that our value is determined by a dollar sign instead. This is false and immoral. And ending poverty at the root level will reduce the guilt plaguing the West, those who are prospering as a result of a history of exploitation, on the backs of workers, and nations.

   The Gaia Project, in conjunction with smarter national economic policy, is the best strategy I can imagine for setting us up to be able to take these challenges on successfully. (I am currently workshopping different names, such as The Gaia Regenerative and Adaptive Development Project.)
    This program could help us to answer the questions: why are we alive? what’s the purpose and meaning of existence? in new, more concrete ways than we’ve been able to in the past. It could provide a profoundly important framework on which to build a livable, more meaningful and interconnected future.
    And one of its biggest selling points, for those on the political right, is that it largely won’t be paid for by tax dollars! Having all but given up on the prospect of nudging our government in a more equitable direction I’ve come up with a synthesis of the two political ideologies that incorporates the ideals of both. I believe we can solve all of these problems without raising your taxes, just allocating them more wisely and refusing to subsidize the wrong interests, in addition to the financial innovation described herein. In fact as these programs get scaled up taxes could actually drop for those who make less than $200,000 a year, depending on how much investment we can get- and without a doubt you would be paying a lot less for healthcare, so if you’re working or middle class your net income would go up, and so would income for small businesses which currently fork out the money for employees’ health insurance premiums. We would also be saving massive amounts of money in the long run by minimizing climate impacts, economic instability and medical gouging during crises such as the novel Coronavirus pandemic. If we do nothing, our expenditures for healthcare and disaster relief will indisputably bankrupt nations, several times over, no matter what. (And the insurance industry and Pentagon know this full well. Reports have been released for years stating this exact thing.) The savings from expanding the objectives of the NIH to cover drug manufacture alone (See the section on Gaia Health Clinics) will save us untold billions of dollars in addition to saving lives, improving peoples’ quality of life, and reducing corruption.
    At the moment our healthcare dollars are ludicrously dissipated by the various competing interests in the market (insurers, pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, those medical device manufacturers who sell untested devices which prove to be lethal or mutilating, requiring lawsuit payouts, etc). If they’re not only in the business of making lots of loot, and they actually care about improving people’s health, why can’t we regulate pricing for these essential goods, so that more people have access to them? We can streamline this entire industry by allocating public moneys wisely and precisely. There is no reason for Americans to be the only people on Earth who allow such farcical gouging for necessary expenditures. We’ve only tolerated it because so many of us have been brainwashed into believing regulations are somehow “bad.” When done right, regulations are designed to protect the interests of the individual and society at large, not corporate behemoths and their proxies. Why would any sensible person be opposed to protecting their own interests, not to mention their health?

                                                                           ✧

    Our dependence on fossil fuels is, at this point (and for decades now) completely indefensible. Things can only get worse. Considering our racist foreign policy, dictated by reliance on petrol and petrodollars which prop up Western economies, and the mass murder that has already been perpetrated in support of it, one can assume that as global supply continues to dwindle such wars will increase in number- unless we do an about face immediately. 
        For decades, we’ve been engaging in economic coercion (if not outright hot warfare) against oil-producing nations which resist our domination, and that would only continue to escalate if we refuse to interrupt the status quo. (When I say ‘we’ and ‘our’ I am speaking of the West in general, not strictly the USA. This https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gy9d49/libyan-oil-gold-and-qaddafi-the-strange-email-sidney-blumenthal-sent-hillary-clinton-in-2011 article demonstrates this fact quite well.) Not only that, but our past misdeeds have given cover to Russia’s own, by providing them with propaganda designed to distract from their malfeasance. And it isn’t as if we can truly win these struggles: the oil supply is going to run out at some indefinite point, we may as well save ourselves the hassle of increasing social, international, environmental and economic upheaval by dealing with it proactively. The number of lives that would be saved would dwarf the numbers lost in all past wars put together, easily. We’re talking billions of human lives going forward. 
    If we continue to do almost nothing to subvert the trajectory we are on relative to fossil fuels, war, and climate there is no way to estimate the potential casualties; we’d be waiting for “The Market” to solve the problem as the pipe bombs explode on Main Street and Smart Bombs explode over the Middle East, Africa and South America, and heat waves (https://www.wired.com/story/a-grid-collapse-would-make-a-heat-wave-far-deadlier/), drought and flooding would be causing the world’s food systems to collapse- leading to mass starvation and a global state of emergency. No, thanks. It’s like a train is bearing down on us carrying fifty train cars full of nuclear warheads and the railroad tracks have been blown up, guaranteeing we will be obliterated. We see what’s coming, but we’ve so far refused to take any serious action to save ourselves. What gives, people?
    There’s no way for us to know just how bad things might get, nor how quickly, as there are so many variables we can’t yet begin to comprehend. What we’re already seeing should give us pause, but denial is still an active coping mechanism for too many of us, and it’ll destroy countless lives if we allow it to continue to dictate economic, political and energy policy. I wish it weren’t necessary to engage in what some may feel is fear-mongering, but people seem ill-equipped to motivate themselves to change without such prodding. I hope the alternate vision I describe here-in is sufficient to ease our hearts, however. It’s born of a deep love for Creation and a desire to galvanize us into learning how to see beyond our immediate, one-dimensional short-term interests. The soulful effects engendered by this proposal should be motivation enough, but sometimes the positive must be contrasted with the negative in order to prompt change. Humans are notoriously resistant to change until things are unequivocally do or die. I don’t want to let us get to that point -though some might argue that we’re already there. We’re definitely at the edge of the precipice, looking into the abyss. There’s still time to back away, we haven’t begun to plummet just yet. The Middle East, home of much of the world’s energy reserves, has been staring into the abyss for longer than the West has, with the exception of US soldiers who were sent to kill and die for the oil/gas and private defense contracting sectors.
    Incidentally, we don’t actually know when the oil supply will run out but we do know that most of the low-lying fruit of easy-to-drill subsurface petroleum and natural gas is already burned, leaving low-yield tar-sands, shale oil and indefinite oil deposits in the deep ocean. Oil and gas companies are employing new techniques to get at these reserves, but the health and environmental costs are appalling, and the amount of energy input required to get it out of the Earth's crust reduces the value steeply, and the carbon cost of using it increases enormously. The ratio to describe this is referred to as Energy Return on Energy Investment, or EROEI, and in order for it to be a net gain, the ratio must be greater than 1. When we’re talking about tar sands and the like we begin to approach a ratio of 1, which means we’re burning oil to extract oil at almost a net loss. Which is extremely stupid and destructive, necessitating a pivot toward using our remaining energy reserves to build up renewables right now, before we reach a ratio of 1. FGS, this isn’t hard math to figure out, folks. It’s very straightforward.
 Who pays these subsidies and external costs? http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland/2012/01/13/frackings-externalities/ Not the people seeing the profit: oil and gas executives and investors, but the communities where the land is being fracked and permanently poisoned, or the coastal waters are being polluted, and the taxpayers who already subsidize these alternative production methods will have to pay for remediation after the oilmen move out. Let’s get real- the cost of developing these low-quality reserves is money better spent on renewable energy that will continue to produce energy into the future, rather than what we get with fossil fuels: burn it and it’s gone. The only traces being an increase in carbon in the atmosphere, fracking fluid in your water table, private jets and extra homes for the execs- multiplying their carbon footprints even more https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2017/02/23/fracking-is-dangerous-to-your-health-heres-why/#4d1246d15945. Hasn’t anyone heard of “Right livelihood?”
    Oil producing nations are also suspected of inflating their reserves in the interest of encouraging or maintaining foreign investment, short-term economic stability and governmental power, as well as to keep investors from dumping stock overnight, thereby causing a global economic tailspin even worse than the last one. Listen up, folks: the bottom is going to fall out of the fossil fuel market, sooner rather than later. My advice to investors and oil-producing nations: diversify your portfolios and your economies while you can. Invest your oil revenue right now in alternative energy production and put your back into it. This will not only keep you from losing everything, it’ll help stabilize the economy while we transition. The smart thing to do would be to use what’s still accessible to grow our renewable energy supply directly, rather than continue to burn it up in the same manner. In fact thirty years ago that would’ve been the smart thing to do- now it’s our only conceivable option. Conventional (Internal Combustion Engine, or “ICE”) engines, energy-guzzling SUVs, unnecessary airplane flights, and energy inefficient buildings need to be things of the past. Right now. In fact the pandemic-required development of virtual meetings and work-from-home could stand to be implemented far and wide wherever possible. Commuting to and from work five days a week is an unnecessary strain on the roads, which then require more frequent maintenance, automobiles (ditto) and a tremendous amount more gas as massive numbers of people sit in their cars idling on the  freeway, spewing pollution. It also reduces people’s quality of life by a significant amount. Why are we doing this? In situations where people absolutely must go to the office companies should build incentives in to encourage their employees to carpool, at the very least.
     Additionally, the pollution from extracting, refining and transporting fossil fuels has always hit vulnerable communities the hardest, and for a perfect example of that one need look no further than the horrific treatment of Native American (Indigenous) tribes in resource rich parts of the US: oil in Alaska (and wherever else it has existed), uranium and coal mining in the Southwest, Southeast and Dakotas, and the pipelines being built through Indian Country after having been nixed by affluent communities who have the power to fight them. Just take a look at DAPL, and the ongoing fight for self-determination and protection of tribal lands and water, to see how destructive our energy policy is right here in the US of A. Here is an excellent breakdown of this dynamic: https://www.reimaginerpe.org/node/307 . In addition, it’s communities of color which have borne the brunt of pollution from refineries around the country in places like Louisiana, the SF Bay area, and the Rust Belt, making every aspect of our fossil fuel dependency not just environmentally destructive but racially injurious as well. We’re now seeing evidence of this discrepancy in disproportionate levels of vulnerability to COVID19 as well as chronic asthma, lung disease; in addition, higher levels of poverty and stress as well as disparities in access to healthcare make people more susceptible not just to lung and infectious diseases but cancer too.
    Look a little further south to Central and South America to see how our oil companies have run roughshod over the indigenous people of their lands, polluting the soil, air and water with near impunity, leading to increased rates of cancers and birth defects, as well as causing explosions and toxic fires. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Crimea (Russia’s version), Sudan (China’s version), Nigeria, our compromising relationship with Saudi Arabia, which has been pummeling Yemen with US-made munitions as well as funding terrorism all over; our continued cold war with Iran which has nearly crippled their economy as a result of their refusal to become a vassal state in order to control their crude and the vending of it for US dollars. Our Mid-East policy has provided ample justification for their continuing antagonism to the US and Israel, and their government has used our bad behavior to justify their’s to their own people. The list of collateral damages from our for-profit fossil fuel and petrodollar dependency is dispiriting and nauseating to say the least. 
    Instead of wringing our hands in despair and panic, it’s time we began taking decisive action. More than protest, more than letters to the editor or carrying signs in the streets. More than buying a Prius, Leaf or a Tesla and crossing our fingers in the hope that it might make a difference (or swearing off cars for public transportation and bicycles, for that matter). It’s time for policy changes, and dramatic, large-scale ones. Incremental change is not going to cut it with this problem. We’ve run out of time for increments. The scientific community has come to the conclusion that we have approximately one decade left to avoid the very worst consequences of our carbon addiction by getting clean, basically by going cold turkey, but even that fails to take into account runaway effects such as the thawing of the tundra in the far northern hemisphere, which has been releasing a vast amount of methane already, accelerating the process; or massive glacial calving which reduces the Earth’s ability to reflect solar energy back into space, or droughts drying up forests, turning them to tinder which catches fire and burns uncontrollably, releasing even more carbon. (Our historic policy reducing prescribed burns has also made those fires all the more dangerous.) Which means we have already begun to hit tipping points. More here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 . 
    In addition, having buffered the cumulative impacts of our emissions so far, the oceans are absorbing massive amounts of CO2 and are now becoming acidified, which is killing off vital ecosystems and life forms like coral reefs. Oceanic currents are being altered as the top layer of water heats up, increasing the severity of droughts and coastal storms. We’re seeing cascade effects, and they’re causing ecosystem collapse and species extinctions at unprecedented rates (at least since the asteroid impact which took out the dinosaurs millions of years ago.) How can we knowingly continue to kill off the living systems of Mother Earth, when she has nurtured us since our primitive ancestors crawled out of the oceans? How can this not be seen for what it is: a moral wrong on a scale we’ve never witnessed before, much less collectively caused, but one we can mitigate if we take decisive action right now? 
    Sadly, for many who are lucky enough to have avoided seeing severe impacts yet, the reality of what’s happening still feels remote and unreal. Since leaving California in 2006 I hadn’t witnessed the devastation of severe wildfires now getting more destructive every year, until I went back in Autumn of 2017 and saw communities being burned to the ground right over the hill from where I was. If it isn’t happening right in front of you it’s all too easy to dismiss it as a hoax or someone else’s problem. But I promise you, this thing is going to eat all of us alive if we don’t do something drastic while we still can. And even if you still consider yourself safe from what’s coming, are we not actually our brother’s keeper? Have we not been called on to love our neighbors as ourselves? Do we actually love this country, or only the self-serving perspective exemplified by rugged individualism? Does the land not figure in at all, or the future your children will inherit? Do we not have a responsibility to offer them something better than a broken world, dispatched by our ruthless greed and heedlessness?
    We would do well to remember that as cooly as our economic calculus appraises Nature and her worth, so too can she decide that we aren’t worth saving; that the costs of our existence outweigh whatever intrinsic value we might hold as a species of interest. My hope is that we will realize, before it’s too late, that Nature (the physical manifestation of God’s energy and intention) in all her beauty, diversity and intensity is worthy of our conservation and veneration, not only because we’re dependent on her for our very lives, but because she has an inherent right to continue to exist in all her glory. She is God’s Creation, the gift of life itself. We are only one flavor of life which managed to spring out of her bounty.
    The Gaia Project is designed to address more than climate change and finite fossil fuel resources, but that is what I’m leading with because that is a genuine existential threat to human civilization, and that alone should be enough to compel us to put aside our differences and rivalries in order to work together to implement solutions right here and now. Putting it off until 2050 is not acceptable. Our window is closing and if we don’t get our act together to face it courageously and collectively we are selling out the future to appease the oiligarchs. We’re done with that. Do we want to look back on this period, from the rubble of the future, and wonder why we turned our heads and ignored the multidirectional threats staring us in the face? Do we want to live with the regret of cowardice and willful ignorance? I, for one, do not. I will fight for humanity and the viability of life on Earth until my last breath if need be, and I invite you to join me.

    Which brings us to our solution...

    The Gaia Project can be conceived several different ways. Initially I imagined it to be associated with the production of data: all digital data created or shared anywhere on Earth would form a measure to create an international fund which would be fixed to the data cache, then distribute moneys to each nation on a per capita basis to build renewable infrastructure and mitigate climate instability. It would act as a sort of tax. This is one option, only the first and least fleshed out, and it completely fails to address the source of many of our market woes: a profit-ravenous, bank-debt driven, corrupt and corrupting, unsustainable and unstable financial system.
    Another and far better option is to create an entirely new currency, called Terra Dollars. I googled this thinking that some science fiction writer may have already coined the term but it turns out an actual economist, the late Bernard Lietaer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer ) did so in 2001 as a possible alternate global currency. It is sort of a no-brainer, etymologically(Note 3). Terra dollars wouldn’t replace other currencies, but once integrated into the economy would be interchangeable in trade, either international or local (but protections must be put in place to prevent the possibility of speculating. This goes back to my call to ban currency speculating altogether in Unsustainable Economics). We could build a central bank with its own mint. We could work with community banks and credit unions to carry a line of Terras for small business loans, and help customers integrate their finances in both Terras and dollars, as well as eventually opening up Gaia Bank (or treasury) branches around the world. Employees who are payed in Terras would be encouraged to do their banking with one of these institutions since commercial banks are more interested in amassing currencies which accumulate compound interest(Note 4). It would also make sense to pay people in a given ratio of Terras to dollars, so that some could be saved and the rest spent. The idea is that Terras continue to circulate throughout the economy, and any institutions which facilitate that are welcome to sign on.
    One scenario might entail backing the Gaia Treasury with an invested sum from multi-billionaires interested in supporting the mandate.
    There are numerous prospective funders: Melinda Gates(Note 5), Warren Buffet, Mackenzie Scott, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and Ted Turner all come to mind, though I’d be happy to welcome anyone to the party. They would be credited with using their fortunes to help save and evolve human civilization. Of course, in one sense, this scenario would only be necessary to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the banks, as they might be reluctant to accept Terras without some initial faith investment by such pioneering and civic-minded thinkers. On the other hand, should there be another financial meltdown with a series of concomitant bank failures, investing part of one’s fortune in the Gaia Project might ultimately prove to be providential and foresightful. Dollars would maintain their value as a form of savings within the Project, and would help to collateralize the Bank’s activities and investments. 
    I also have numerous other fundraising ideas which would reduce the necessity to create too much more money, including clothing design and manufacture, a franchise permaculture vegetarian restaurant, artisan crafted furniture and household goods, a streaming and film production company, healthy skincare products, all done as sustainably as possible. The Gaia Marketplace is already evolving its brand. I hope T-shirts, hoodies, and stickers will be available later this year(Note 6). I am also considering advertising sustainably manufactured goods on the website which have been well-vetted, and possibly vending those goods in the brick-and-mortar shops. Then we become a clearinghouse for socially responsible products, which supports the mandate as well as offering the GP additional revenue. Once certain efforts have gotten off the ground, beyond the initial startup phase, many of the Project’s activities will start to pay for themselves, requiring only occasional subsidies during lean times. And ultimately they will provide not just jobs but more revenue to invest in the fund.
    Once the GP is off the ground and has proven its viability we can start an investment service, but fixed-profit and in well vetted, socially responsible industries. Regular investors would be able to invest a sum and, with the advisement of technology and business experts, the Gaia Board of Directors or Investor’s Team would determine which companies to invest in and provide a cap for amounts, so that no company would be over-capitalized -thereby creating artificial bubbles or enabling corporate malfeasance. This would keep new companies lean and focused, until they become profitable, are able to pay back investors (at a fixed profit, much like an interest rate on a loan) and decide if they wish to and are able to expand -without the pressures related to being beholden to your investors’ portfolio demands- at which time a new round of assessment and investment might take place. Another major place for investing would be a community exchange, which would help capitalize local small businesses, matching investors preferences with the best recipients. Anyone could keep a savings account at the Gaia Bank too, and national currencies placed there will accrue interest, as at any other institution. I can’t think of a safer place to put money, as it would be accredited and insured but have the advantage of never over-leveraging itself or taking undue risks. We would be the home for the stable, reliable and pro-social Bear Market.
       Honestly, the topic of stocks and trade makes my eyes glaze over, so this aspect of the Project will have to be better fleshed out by a consultant than I can do on my own, but I think it’s safe to say this entire side of GP activities will create a whole new, more socially responsible, principled avenue for “wealth management.” If I had a lot of money, it’s exactly the kind of place I’d like to park it for a while because it would be treating finance like a garden, avoiding the weeds and fertilizing the most spiritually nutritious and delicious plants.
    If a company wished to get funding from the GP they would need to meet certain criteria, like pay equity (no gender or ethnicity pay gap, as well as a reasonable ratio between executive’s and workers’ pay), manufacture must be as sustainable as possible, distribution has to be as democratic as possible (so if you were talking about a food market of some kind, incentives could be built in to locate in known food deserts, for instance, though it’s quite possible that the GP would directly establish a cooperative grocery chain which would be specifically intended for areas which are currently food deserts. We would do well to set up permaculture and vertical farms nearby, increasing available jobs and income for locals while reducing carbon emissions.) Advisement on long term mission statements would be part of the deal. They would be required to analyze their impact on communities they’re embedded in, and respond appropriately. I’d also encourage companies to diversify their production locations as they grow and enter new markets, so as to minimize transportation, though this wouldn’t necessarily always be possible. All of this would enable responsible innovation and even help guide the rest of the market toward regenerative goals, as other companies and investment houses would have to compete with the missions of GP investments. Ethical and sustainable alternatives to mainstream finance will lead us into a brighter future in this way too.
    The Gaia Central Bank or Treasury would be non-profit and have a board of directors- the membership from a rotating roster of nations chosen randomly. From one period to another each nation on Earth would have a representative chosen, so a computer program would throw every nation’s name (or nation’s pre-selected agent’s name) into a digital hat, and then as each round of selections is completed, those nations are removed from the next sorting, until every nation has had a representative and then we start over with all countries’ names in the hat again. The most appropriate choices for representatives would be ecologists, but certainly people from other disciplines would be welcome (especially public health specialists, education experts and heads of successful NGOs whose mission coincides with the GP). These folks would help determine the priorities of the GP internationally, in coordination with the BOD for the Project itself. It would be imperative that there be a rigorous protocol for evaluating any potential conflicts of interest of the candidates or agents.
    At some point the bank could go into loaning to nations (at low interest) for certain kinds of sustainable economic development or infrastructure, which could help build reserves so as to avoid inflation, avoiding the problems inherent to flooding the global economy with new funds created every year, but I’m ambivalent about this. If we offered truly fair debt processing the banks would have to compete by becoming more fair at debt servicing themselves, which is a plus. Another option is- by supporting the shared mandates of organizations such as UNICEF with Terra dollars, their budgets could then be freed up for more micro-lending for small businesses and other kinds of economic development projects around the world. International development must be non-profit and geared toward sustainable goals, and NGO’s like UNICEF are already primed to support such objectives.
    Ultimately, this system is not intended to replace the so-called ‘free market’(Note 7), but create a competitive, parallel economy which is both regenerative and more just, by replacing the profit motive in ostensibly public sectors of human activity with non-profit funding (public education, supplemental housing, environmental stewardship, scientific pursuits in the public interest and healthcare in particular. I am considering developing a diversion from and alternative to the prison system which would be free of corruption and genuinely focused on rehabilitation too). The market would continue to operate, but these vital sectors would be protected from the predatory nature of amassed capital and monopolistic domination as well as the guaranteed boom and bust cycles and eventual total collapse inherent to the unfettered capitalist economic model. It would help minimize things like corruption in the for-profit Charter School movement and healthcare industry and would help wake us up to the corruption intrinsic to private security contracting(Note 8) for the public sphere (what happened in the Iraq war and what has been happening in privatization of the prison system are cases in point. For more on these issues please follow these links: https://www.brookings.edu/research/cant-win-with-em-cant-go-to-war-without-em-private-military-contractors-and-counterinsurgency/, https://www.ibtimes.com/winner-most-iraq-war-contracts-kbr-395-billion-decade-1135905, https://www.samwoolfe.com/2014/03/the-dark-side-of-private-prisons-greed.html. The Gaia Project will also protect the "Free Market" simply by providing stability that the financial industry has been undermining since its inception. It truly is of benefit for everyone. Having competition may just clean up their act, too, but at the very least we will no longer be held hostage by their greed and malfeasance to the degree that we have been.  

   As far as denominations go: Terra ($1.00), Tetrad ($0.25,) Deca ($0.10,) Penta ($0.05) are options to consider(Note 9). For physical coins we could use recycled steel, iron being an extremely abundant element in Earth’s crust, with an outer layer of enamel or glazed ceramic to differentiate them, with different sizing and graphic design. Paper money would be made from bamboo or hemp (or both) with renewably sourced, non-toxic ink, and of course have watermarks to prevent counterfeiting. Appropriate artistic graphics would adorn them, rather than political leader’s faces. Perhaps the One-Terra could have a tree next to a bamboo grove and a hemp crop, the Five-Terra bill could have a Gaia Health Clinic which would of course be rammed earth with a solar roof; a Ten-Terra could have the Gaia Bank building, likewise. A twenty, the solar system, a fifty- the Milky Way Galaxy. A hundred, maybe a rendering of the Big Bang. On the other side would be scenes from nature, regenerative agriculture, and endangered species. (T-shirts with each denomination are being designed as we speak, also one with JANUS’s face -see below for description.) 
    Cash money would have consecutive serial numbers, and electronic funds (which would be distributed to appropriate agencies or NPOs, or to directly purchase specific goods or services) would be traced for several transactions to ensure that they’re being used for appropriate expenditures. Since most people use electronic means for financial transactions the minting of hard currency would be minimal. On the other hand, we can sell the bills as “certificates of deposit”, in a sense: collectible documents which people can purchase with national currencies in order to support the Project. We can issue new hard currency as original, limited edition artwork every five or ten years, infusing the Treasury with fresh dollars cyclically. It could be framed with the notation, “in case of emergency, break glass.” Shazam! Now you have something useful if you run out of cash. Oh, that’s really good. 
    Nations experiencing hyper-inflation and poor governance could receive financial advisement and potentially peg their money to Terras until their economy stabilizes. International coordination would come to bear in such cases, in order to help the country regain equilibrium, including possibly UN peacekeeping presence and elections monitoring as well as general governing counsel and support for public institutions’ recovery. Certain standards for governance could be drawn up to aid nations which are struggling with authoritarian, incompetent and/or corrupt regimes, in order to keep their government in check and functioning. Obviously this is something the US has to grapple with successfully before it can say anything to other nations, but the Gaia Project will operate independently of the US government so we would be uniquely positioned to advise sovereign nations. Our only concern would be their stability and functioning, so there would be no conflict of interest. 
    However, our electoral system needs a lot of work if it’s to function as a true democracy. For instance, we are out of step with the Constitution, which requires one Congressional Representative for every 30,000 citizens of a state. States’ populations have grown for many years, without any corresponding change in the allocation of reps. As mentioned elsewhere, the Electoral College deprives millions of citizens of having their vote count on a regular basis. The fact that each state has the same number of Senators regardless of the size of their population beggars belief. All three institutions are grossly out of step with modern populations and party affiliation. And now our Supreme Court is out of balance as well, due to malfeasance both by the former Senate majority leader and 45, who contorted the confirmation process to gain leverage through underhanded means (though they seem to have been mere tools exploited by the Federalist Society, the “Unseen Hand” of the US Government). This is tyranny of the minority, and it is driving the country into a ditch. Our interests have been supplanted by corporate and fossil-fuel interests, and this cannot continue. We need to have several ballot measures to put citizens’ interests back on the ballot. I think to a certain degree Americans are uncomfortable with direct democracy because when our elected representatives make decisions for us, it’s easier to distance ourselves from them when the outcomes aren’t to our liking. Taking responsibility for where the country is going is hard, but ultimately I think our civic participation makes us a better, more accountable people. And it might help us learn to work together and compromise more effectively too. Perhaps we’d even start to see each other as human beings and end the hostilities ripping this nation apart. 

       Anyway, Terra dollars could be pegged to two things, measuring them differently: global forests (estimated mass and commodity and/or intrinsic value of the contents- wood, potential drugs derived from plant life, water and soil conservation value, carbon sequestration and oxygen production, as well as hunting and fishing, recreation, etc) could define the volume of the Treasury (total Terras dispersed and held in banks) from year to year. This would simply require satellite photos be taken periodically to determine where we’re at, after an initial inventory of said values or potential values. This has the potential added benefit of incenting conservation of forests and the planting of trees, especially if we allocate bonus income to nations which reforest their land as much as possible. They would have to be healthy, pristine ecosystems to be eligible for the premium bonus, but we could offer something for native or acclimatized tree plantations on reclaimed land also, so long as they are nurtured until mature enough to survive, and assessed for ecological fitness. 
    The other measurement option (of strict market value) is to tie it to commodities like organic soy, rice, wheat, and corn, calibrating this with the value of one pound (lb.) or a kilogram (kg) of each. So every six months, perhaps,  we calculate the average of the wholesale costs of these commodities relative to three or five different world currencies for the given weight, (toss the least stable from the equation on any given day) and that’s how much one solitary Terra dollar could be valued at. This should buffer the Terra from any one nation’s market instability, and effects from drought or flood impacts will be mitigated as long as the world’s growing regions diversify adequately. One bonus is that this might help stabilize the value of these food crops over time, as the Gaia Project will actually be investing in and/or subsidizing organic agriculture all over the world anyway, reducing risk for farmers. It should have a stabilizing feedback effect, I hope. And this might make it supremely advantageous for unstable currencies to peg themselves to the Terra. We will have to build some mechanism in to prevent traders from inflating or deflating these commodity prices in order to manipulate Terra’s value however.
    I’d like to emphasize that the Gaia Project isn’t a governance structure. It’s a non-governmental organization which would not interfere with national governance. It’s an adjunct to markets and local authority, and could only help coordinate support for governments in crisis. It would never function as a “world government” but as an autonomous NGO directing vital public services. And, incidentally, I have no desire or intention to build a military body in to the Project at all. That is strictly the purview of national governments, though I hope that in time, nations’ overall militancy will subside a bit as we learn to work together to solve these problems effectively for a change. If we don’t change our trajectory soon, we’ll end up with fascist autocracies replacing democracies while the world burns and food runs out. Let’s do everything we can to avoid that fate, shall we?
    Currencies have historically been pegged to pretty arbitrary measures of wealth, always to the advantage of a monarch, established interest, or insurgent, aspiring oligarch. For an interesting analysis of banking history (going back a couple of centuries, so just the modern financial system) in all it’s bizarreness, please see this: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/05/the-invention-of-money . It clearly demonstrates the artificial nature of our economic system. Its inherent artificiality means it can be adapted in order to solve actual human problems rather than merely being a tool used by the plutocrats to steal more material wealth from the Developing World or debt interest from the poor through usury. For a discussion of the former dynamic, please read Vandana Shiva’s analysis of poverty and its real causes(Note 10). Anyone who has availed themselves of a check-cashing center, a high-interest credit card or been the victim of a sub-prime mortgage already knows full well how usury works against the poor. Usury is so unethical it got its own special mentions in the Bible. Seemingly little known fact: any interest attached to loans is considered illegal by Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, yet somehow humanity manages to get around this very specific prohibition and even allows criminal levels of usury (subprime lending from legitimate banks can go upwards of 35.99%). Not only is interest allowed, it’s required by our debt-dependent shambles of an economic system in order to supply perpetual growth. In fact impoverished people and their subprime debt secures massive profits for banks, feeding the cycle all the way up the chain. Where did we go wrong?
    Another quick solution to a major problem that’s been discussed for years but failed to materialize is the cancelation of debt “owed” by Developing Nations(Note 11). They’ve been forced into economic servitude and the confiscation of their material wealth, often by corrupt, puppet dictators who in most cases are no longer here to answer for selling out their peoples’ interests. This amounts to an on-going crime against humanity. This one reform would bring immediate gains to billions of the world’s people, as they would no longer be forced to hand over their resources to the generational debt collectors of western nations. In most cases, these countries were given dubious pledges for “development projects” that either never materialized or fell far short of what they were promised. This debt forgiveness must be without condition. It could be considered that the citizens of these nations weren’t given a choice to sign on or refuse to, and so the debts lack legitimacy. Their heritage has been sold out from under them, without their consent. It’s time for a global Yom Kippur or a Jubilee, an especially relevant notion at this moment of economic turmoil caused by the Novel Coronavirus, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and pending Peak Oil. If we hope to see all nations come out from under this, we’re going to have to consider radical measures designed to give aid to those who require it rather than enable the rich to profit off of the misery of the poor, as the status quo makes possible.
    If less-industrialized nations are allowed to keep their resources to develop them as they see fit, and given genuine assistance in economic development without conditions, rather than perpetual indebtedness, their economies and communities would be able to achieve climate resiliency much more easily(Note 12). They’re often forced to pay interest forever, without ever reducing the principal, leaving them unable to invest in infrastructure or community health. This is absurd and criminal (but extremely lucrative from the standpoint of development corporations and the banking system). As mentioned before, it’s the Global South which stands to suffer the most from climate disruption, even though they contributed very little to the problem. (Though China and India are certainly trying to catch up.) The very least the West can do is forgive this unjust and burdensome debt and offer aid in increasing economic and environmental resiliency, since we’re largely responsible for this vulnerability in the first place. As the Gaia Project will inject a new source of income into the global market, providing a unique mechanism for finance, the banks must be allowed to either evolve or fail, it’s their choice. (Putting an end to the practices of over-leveraging themselves and creating new artificial bubbles would certainly help prevent their failure. No one ever forced them to behave as abominably as they have.) 
    The financial industry and its apologists would argue that forgiving debt in this way would cause bankruptcy at the highest levels, and this is exactly the point: the whole system depends on ever-increasing monolithic debt to prop it up, and this is partly due to the nature of compound interest, and partly to the fact that the system is designed to enrich those at the top on a foundation of mass, eternally expanding (inherently unsustainable), predatory indebtedness in the first place. That’s how our entire financial system is set up, and don’t think for an instant that it’s intended to end poverty. The richest suck their massive wealth from the poorest at every level (well, with some exceptions: there are people who manage to become rich through their own hard work and ingenuity, but there are many more who don’t). The folks at the bottom are meant to stay poor in order to continue to allow the banks to make more money from late fees, overdraft fees, subprime interest rates, and international loans, to say nothing of private prisons. If the poor gain a foothold the whole scheme falls apart. Why should we support such sociopathic and destructive institutions and their practices?
    I can’t pretend that the solutions on offer are complete or that my analysis is thorough, but we have to start somewhere and I welcome any and all input, if it’s of substance and not merely a personal attack on ideological grounds. My response to that would be: ideology cannot try to argue with reality and win. Reality is far too complex and ideology is far too crude and one-dimensional. If all you wish to tell me is “but it isn’t possible, that isn’t the way economics works,” I will repeat the following sentence to you until you hear it and get it: “Economics is nothing but a human construct.” I will go on to say, “It has been made to work for the benefit of the wealthy since the inception of a debt-driven monetary system, but it’s still just a make-believe structure that enables us to do business with each other. 
    We can create a new economy any darned way we like as long as a substantial majority agree to the new terms. Again, it’s all just a construct. We can reconstruct it to work for the sake of our survival and the continuation of civilization, which the current system is intent on demolishing. We had better adapt it or we will drive ourselves to extinction.” 
    If you’ve ever heard the phrase “only the strong survive,” you may be unaware that it is a total distortion of the original pronouncement, which was: “those most capable of adapting are likeliest to survive.” Let that be us, the contemporary generations of humans on Earth. This is not a call to arms, it is a call to wits, creativity, adaptability, and a collaborative ethos. It is the highest form of psycho-spiritual evolution.

                                                                          ✧

    Onward: The Gaia Project would be monitored by an AI program named JANUS (Just Administrator Nimbly Upholding Sustainability? pronounced Jahnoos) and is represented by an icon which is a green and copper male face, appearing for several seconds, then spinning to reveal a purple and copper female face, both of which have distinct personalities programmed in. Jane is acerbic and blunt, and Jan is sensitive and earnest. We can refer to it as they/them, unless JANUS ends up having their own preference, we’ll see. We could consider them to be a combination auditor, banker, accountant, strategic consultant, regulating agency, fraud investigator, and budget director. Only a few people would be qualified/recognized by JANUS to change the program, including possibly Timnit Gebru, myself, and Jaron Lanier, but there should be a committee of sustainability-economists/ecologists/programmers who are required to consult for any changes, and there should be a way to key a majority in for said changes to the program. At some point JANUS may be advanced enough to evolve long-term strategies to advise us on. We would program them to think ahead but always keep us apprised of untested measures as they occur to them. And not to implement new ideas without our agreement. Naturally.
    Needless to say, JANUS must be programmed by a diverse working group of experts so as to reduce the possibility of any single person’s blindspots, biases, or personal interests being written into the code. Contracts would be awarded to the companies who have demonstrated their competence, value and integrity. 
    JANUS should also have some adaptive mechanisms built in, so that they can be constantly re-evaluating the global economy and biosphere in order to give us the best possible input/advice. I’m agnostic as to the question of the potential development of genuine sentience in an AI system. What I do know is that the way they are programmed determines what their priorities and parameters will be. Garbage in, garbage out. If we program JANUS with absolute clarity as to mandate and methods, and make sure to omit human implicit bias as well as any possible misinterpretation of JANUS’ prime directive, we are unlikely to end up with SKYNET let loose upon the worlds- past, present or future. We can learn from and avoid the fictional H.A.L.’s distortions too. JANUS’ prime directive must be explicitly clear: to monitor human activities for the sake of assisting our survival and thriving, to inform us as to how to balance human needs with ecosystem’s and other species’ needs, and evolve strategies for sustainable habitation of Earth. I can’t see how that could be misconstrued to wipe us out to save us somehow.

    So what is the Gaia Project designed to do?

    Glad you asked!

    First, the Gaia Project is designed to quickly help phase in a renewable energy economy, based on solar, wind, tidal, geo, possibly all one day amplified by fusion, and/or other forms of as-yet undeveloped energy production and storage, and phase out the exploitation of fossil fuels, which, incidentally, have enjoyed public subsidies(Note 13) in the annual billions for a long time, please follow this link https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs to find out more. We’ve also been socializing the externalized costs of fossil fuels- including a  two trillion dollar war in Iraq- the entire time. That was money we could have used to fund the necessary transition but it paid for mass murder for profit instead. Let’s hope we’ve gotten smarter (saner and more ethical) since 2003. (Knocking on wood until my hand is bloody…)

    We start with a carbon fee and dividend, which increases annually, with the dividend being distributed to families and individuals in order to help mitigate the price increases of transportation and consumer goods. Not long ago, President Macron of France attempted to broach the subject of carbon pricing and the response of his countrymen was loud and unequivocally negative. The reason for this, I believe, is that the government failed to offer a dividend to the public, forcing them to eat price increases resulting from the Carbon Tax. It sounds as if this tax was intended to grow revenue rather than incent conservation, which is another reason it’s deeply unpopular(Note 14). The bipartisan Carbon Fee and Dividend Bill being proposed by the Citizens Climate Lobby in the US (and several other nations) is quite different. For more information about this proposal please visit this link Cit. 23: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act/. This one is revenue neutral as well as returning the moneys to citizens in the form of a monthly dividend, circumventing the French proposal’s problems from the get-go. Its adoption should be a no-brainer. And though it has bipartisan support, it still hasn’t passed through both chambers to get signed. Let’s do this. 
    The Gaia Project goes further, however, by allocating money to each nation on a per capita basis to increase infrastructure such as public transportation (including increased infrastructure for trains as well as the electrification of their lines; possibly also maglev trains and the development of other potential transport options which might harness electro-magnetism for propulsion) offering rebates for electric vehicles, Electric Vehicle (EV) conversion kits(Note 15) https://electrek.co/guides/ev-conversion/ if you can’t bear to trade in your current vehicle (and more power to you because that conserves resources even more), and ready money for transitioning the electrical grid to renewables or building distributed solar at the village or neighborhood level (this way energy storage can be shared as well, which will help equalize cost and resources and stabilize supply vis a vis demand. I have an idea about small scale energy pods that could do this while also protecting us from large-scale sabotage of the electricity grid. Also, the fewer transmission lines electricity has to travel through, the less resistance and waste. That’s a win.) I am also thinking about a local package delivery system that would use vans equipped with super capacitors and hire additional personnel for the USPS to handle more goods. This would require fewer trips to stores and streamline traffic flows, while also reducing retail jobs which cause repetitive stress injuries. (The GP will create many better jobs than those lost.) Delivery costs would be built in as part of a city’s traffic and energy reduction plan. The way we organize ourselves in this country makes little sense in so many ways. Our addiction to driving and cheap energy has inured us to the foolishness of our behavior. But I believe we can learn and adapt.
    JANUS can help evaluate the best companies for providing these goods and services, and it makes sense to diversify rather than encouraging the creation of monopolies which could, of course, reduce quality and increase the potential for price gouging in the long run (though certain industries have set up cartels so they can fix prices. We need to figure out how to eliminate that possibility in these essential industries and others.) We want to maintain competition in order to get the best quality and the best price as well as avoid corruption. Additionally, as technological innovations arise JANUS can help evaluate their viability and scalability. Thanks in advance, JANUS. You’re a real mensch.
    In cities, solar panels can be distributed to public and private buildings, including residences, with certain incentives and precautions (given appropriate access to sunlight, and including on-going coverage of maintenance and repair of any roofing issues which result from installation or maintenance, by a non-profit utility) and likewise wind turbines in outlying areas as well as geo sourced energy, all maintained by a public utility which would ideally be monitored or administered by JANUS. This might entail buy-outs of private monopolistic utilities, but if they operate efficiently and effectively they would not be a problem. We should start with the most polluting power plants, replacing them with clean energy ASAP. Read this https://environmentamericacenter.org/sites/environment/files/reports/Dirty%20Power%20Plants.pdf to find out more about those, as well as some excellent general policy proposals across the spectrum of energy use. We can also kick-start scale algae biofuel production wherever it’s viable. We could require all new coal plants to furnish CO2 capture tech in order to receive permits, and then we could use the CO2 for refrigerant in GSHP systems. I’d like to see international agreements on such a policy. If I’d have been at COP26 I could have floated it out there, but my invitation got lost in the mail…
    Included is the phasing in of Ground (or Air, where necessary) Source Heat Pump (GSHP)  usage (and passive solar retrofit where it makes sense) for indoor climate control. This could entail sealing buildings and increasing insulation while installing a combo GSHP/Heat Recovery Ventilator system if that can be economically devised. This could be done in coordination with public utilities, preserving the rates of pricing for electricity consumption, and gradually replacing oil and gas heating and refrigerated cooling, or at the least using it as back-up only. However I’d like to see us roll out the most sustainable H/C options available first. Energy conservation incentives are a must, including subsidies for energy maximizing renovations and the adoption of new building codes with higher energy efficiency standards. People would still pay an appropriate rate for electrical and heating/cooling, but some of the transitional investments in renewable technologies will be subsidized by Gaia Energy Systems and we will likely be running a number of utilities as communities or municipalities see fit. I’d like to figure out a way to incent the production of longer-lasting consumer goods, including of course higher quality manufacturing of electric appliances so that built-in obsolescence will become a thing of the past. Maybe apply fees to goods that break down too quickly? We have the technological skills to make things that hold up under rigorous use, given that appliances used to last for many more years than they tend to now. This represents the epitome of regressive development. This should go without saying. In fact they should be simple enough that any appliance repairperson should be able to have the replacement part(s) shipped to them and be able to install it themselves. It would be great if we could have roughly universal methods for these repairs even though the appliances themselves will, of course, be available in varying degrees of complexity and quality. It shouldn’t cost more to fix something than it does to replace it.
    Amortization of no-longer-necessary construction of new fossil fuel power plants and feedstock pricing will be included in our calculations, assisted by JANUS, as these costs will be replaced by new, more efficient technology (thus, we can merely add a subsidy to the already existing budget for utility upgrade). This, in addition to the inclusion of currently ignored social costs of fossil fuels (externalities) will demonstrate long-term savings associated with renewables. Also the Project would subsidize job retraining for those in extractive industries, especially training in renewable energy technologies, as well as scholarships for those going into the field of renewable energy development. Even with the current under-utilized level of renewable energy in the US there are more jobs in that sector than in the entire fossil fuel sector. (It’s an amazing fact.) The potential there is staggering. The Project could also incubate renewable development laboratories which are non-profit and international, subject to patent law and monitored for corporate espionage so that when new technologies are successfully generated, outside companies will then pay patent fees to utilize the tech, which would further enhance the Provision’s continued viability.
    There are all kinds of details that the Gaia Project can take responsibility for, such as the recycling, destruction and conversion of refrigerants as we phase HFCs out of production and use. GP can build factories near solid waste facilities, being a drop-off point for appliances and e-waste, where they would be disassembled and all parts recycled. In the case of refrigerants the chemicals would be broken down and reconstituted in more benign forms. Until they’re phased out entirely we could be a source for recycled HFCs in new appliances, and we could monitor the cycling of them until they’re no longer in use, although it turns out CO2 is itself a highly effective refrigerant and can replace HFCs immediately. This makes carbon capture a viable industrial -scale enterprise, for numerous applications. We could also take an active role in speeding up the turnover of soon-to-be obsolete machines by offering low-income households coupons, consisting of zero-interest loans, for higher efficiency appliances with more benign refrigerants as they become available to consumers. We could pay people a fee to drop these appliances off, derived from the funds from selling recovered metals, refrigerants, and other materials, or employ teams to do this sort of work, contracting with municipalities.
    The GP would also finance massive tree planting and monitoring efforts, coordinated by JANUS for regionally appropriate options, taking into account areas which are already experiencing changes in climate and ecology and those which are likely to see change, so drought-tolerant trees, shrubs and grasses in areas which are increasingly water stressed, and water-tolerant flora for areas experiencing increasing flooding(Note 16). Also soil conservation, regenerative agricultural practices, kelp and shellfish forests in the oceans (some kinds of seaweed actually decrease methane production in cattle by up to 82%, reducing one global source of carbon emissions-  but this doesn’t address the massive waste of ag land dedicated to the production of animal feed), and the restoration of wetlands, with a corresponding system to counteract the proliferation of mosquito populations. Incidentally recent studies demonstrate that mussels have a great capacity to filter micro plastics out of ocean water and deposit it in their excrement, which could then potentially be used as a biofuel. They could be cultivated in a relatively controlled environment like an estuary where access would be pretty easy. GP could invest in these enterprises in any coastal area with effluent from a city or town entering the water, as well as on ships drifting near the Pacific Gyre, while we clean that up. 
    In support of soil conservation and regenerative ag practices, GP will maintain a massive heirloom seed bank available to the worlds’ farmers for a nominal cost, in addition to co-ordinating composting, water-sharing regionally, and more effective and benign farming methods and food distribution. This is of vital importance given the growing corporate monopolies on food production, which threaten regional self-sufficiency and national sovereignty already, as well as the viability of ecosystems and soils. GP would facilitate seed storage and distribution rather than control it. Composting infrastructure would also be coordinated and subsidized through GP.
    We need to do everything possible to ensure that people everywhere can independently grow and afford to purchase food going into the future, so any supports necessary for sustainable, resilient farming practices on every continent to make sure humanity will retain access to nutritious foods. Frankly, because the US and other developed economies are primarily responsible for the climate disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, we owe it to the world to fix it, or mitigate the damage as quickly as possible. If we put off making the massive changes necessary we will certainly be dooming humanity to a catastrophic fate, and we must have the moral courage to step up and do what needs to be done. It would give us reason to truly feel patriotic and at peace. And accountability is what leadership is all about. Do we still wish to consider ourselves world leaders? If so it’s clear what has to be done. And it starts with taking responsibility for the aftereffects of our policies in the world (and here at home as well).
    In areas with other climate related problems such as increased wildfires, mitigation techniques such as contract goat- or sheep-herding to reduce flammable under-stories is advised and coordinated. This has the added benefit of providing more food and materials (milk, meat, fertilizer for the forest, wool. The downside being the necessity of providing water to these critters, who could easily be considered state employees or volunteer fire-fighters). There are things we can do to mitigate some of the drought being experienced in the west, but so far everyone has thrown their hands in the air and said, “there just isn’t money for it!” With the Gaia Project there will be.
    The less delicious pine needles a foot or more deep in parts of the forest can be gathered where they’re thickest and be sold as mulch for alkaline soils at Garden Centers so as to provide less resiny tinder in the wilderness; though ecological studies would be necessary to prevent any disruptions of healthy forest dynamics. We don’t want to take nutrients out en masse, so if we replace some of that with surplus compost or treated sewage it might work, keeping in mind potential unintended consequences. Prescribed burns could be utilized where necessary for forest regeneration, and less frequently too in other areas. Obviously we would have ecologists on staff to advise best practices. Locally produced (distributed) solar energy would reduce the need for a massive, unwieldy electrical grid which is demonstrably dangerous in dry conditions. All of these methods could reduce the risk of wildfire, and better building practices (discussed below) would shore up vulnerable communities even more. For ideas about fire management from an Australian Aboriginal leader who has long been fighting for conservation in his homeland please read this article by Alexis Wright https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/opinion/australia-fires-aboriginal-people.html .
    Also included in the Gaia Project are subsidies for sustainable water use, including the building of solar-powered seawater desalination plants, grey water systems and sewage treatment for re-use (treated sewage could be used to fertilize tree, non-food hemp, and bamboo plantations and urban landscaping, for instance, and/or provide habitat and recreation, please look into the Arcata, CA. Marsh). In the last decade desalination technology has become exponentially more cost-effective and energy efficient, and could be deployed on a larger scale wherever necessary, in addition to increases in water reuse and efficiency. As much as possible, fresh water would be stored (such as rainwater,) biologically and mechanically treated (in the case of sewage), reused (such as grey water), and conserved (xeriscape and low-flow faucets and toilets, water-efficient appliances, etc.) All of our systems were built in a paradigm of resource abundance: plenty of water and fossil fuel energy, before the significant drawbacks to the latter were discovered. In order to survive the world our wastefulness has created we are required to create adaptive technologies and efficiencies. Former oil pipelines can be moved and recommissioned as water pipelines to bring water in flood-prone areas to those that are prone to drought, in order to encourage local agriculture and healthy forests. There aren’t many forms of geo-engineering I would advocate in favor of but increasing available water in dry areas is one, if it can be done safely. I’d like to see incentives for filtering tap water for use in reusable water-bottles and a concurrent increase in the price of single-use plastic water bottles, in the form of a deposit like the ones on cans in some states. We need to incent the recycling of beverage containers in every state as well, to keep our plastic and metal junk out of the our roadways, rivers, wildlands, and oceans. 
 
​      Recycling would be subsidized by the Gaia Provision, making the use of recycled materials more cost competitive (especially in contrast with the increases in costs of some raw materials due to the Carbon Fee) and waste disposal prices would rise to incent better use of materials. Some nations in Europe long ago implemented a law requiring appliance and electronics manufacturers to accept the return of their goods to be safely broken down and recycled in the next generation of products. If we can’t pass such a law here then the GP will take this on. Currently, plastic recycling is hovering around 9 or 10 percent, which is atrocious in the extreme. There are numerous appropriate uses for plastics such as recycled HDPE studs for sink/shower surrounds and adhesive-backed coatings for cabinet interiors in bathrooms, utility rooms, and kitchens (to say nothing of stain-resistant carpets, textiles, school binders, lunch-boxes, you name it). Employing HDPE studs in this way would help conserve wood in addition to building rot-proof substrates in typically moisture susceptible areas. Contractors frequently install ceramic tile showers over green paper-backed drywall, which is against the advice of mortar manufacturers, and if their advice were followed properly (by using backer-board in all shower surrounds) walls and floors would be even less vulnerable to rot. These two construction methods together would save an enormous amount of money, resources, and hassle. (Aside from the fact that such surfaces would presumably be more mold-resistant -creating a bonus health benefit.)

    Experiments at MIT have demonstrated that irradiated, pulverized plastic added to concrete can make the cured product 15% stronger than otherwise but I suspect chopped hemp could be better, leaving the plastic for other uses, and preventing the wasted energy from irradiating a material. And then the hemp is sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere from its growth cycle, replacing a significant amount of the mass of what would otherwise be 100% concrete. I know in my heart that it is these low-tech strategies which will have the greatest impact. We must consider the consequences of our materials choices, from cradle to grave, and assess them not for technological finesse but ecological appropriateness. Fly ash also strengthens concrete, but as we’re phasing out coal it will be less and less available (we should use it in appropriate applications while it’s being produced, however). This may not be the be-all, end-all solution to the excess carbon footprint of concrete but it might bring the numbers down enough to make a difference, while also trapping carbon in a long term sink. There are a variety of alternatives as well, such as calcined clay and a lower-heat pulverized limestone method that shows promise.
    Plastic bags and ‘clamshell’ could possibly be recycled into rigid poly-type, or spray in foam, for use in rammed earth walls or exterior walls with stucco shells. With robust fire prevention, including earth walls and tempered glass solar roof tiles as well as extensive installation of smoke alarms and sprinkler systems (all wise investments anyway) I don’t think this would pose a chemical danger. If we made this code we would be in much better shape. (If you happen to be a chemist and you have some sort of argument against this, I welcome  feedback, as I am not “technically” a “chemist.”)
    Bamboo, hemp, and recycled paper must become standard sources of paper goods, including toilet paper, tissue, and paper towels. Bamboo (some brands as soft as Charmin!) and hemp plantations will be subsidized, as long as food crops and forests are not interfered with in order to replace them. They could be grown on clearcuts interspersed with native trees. Hemp seeds are an excellent protein and EFA source, as a bonus. We can farm plants like aloe (which have medicinal and cosmetic uses) on marginal land, and agave for sweetener, reducing our over-reliance on corn syrup (it’s better for us in addition to being easier on the land). There’s an innovation called silvopasture which reaps the best of two worlds by mitigating the impacts of over-grazing while also cultivating plants for human use. This is most meaningful in a world where people opt to reduce their meat consumption from the get-go. Humans are not meant to eat meat everyday. Our ancestors evolved to thrive on an omnivorous diet because meat was not available all the time. Our over-reliance on animal products and certain crops like palm and corn are driving other species to extinction. We owe it to them to temper our appetites. The benefits for us are enormous.​
     Global trading of agricultural commodities will be monitored by JANUS in order to prevent nations from exporting too many of their staple goods to the detriment of their farmers and general population. Whenever possible, staple foods should be sold in country in order to equalize production and consumption, to prevent excessive and unnecessary transport of these goods. This should reduce the use of energy and concomitant CO2 emissions in the transportation sector, as well as prevent famine and the bankruptcy of farmers, which often results in  tragic waves of suicides. 
    Likewise, JANUS can help to identify and analyze supply and demand chains for consumer goods and help set up regional manufacture to reduce transportation, which would have an additional bonus of reintroducing manufacturing jobs to regions where they were outsourced overseas. We’ve also learned an important but unfortunate lesson from the Coronavirus about supply chains getting gummed up. A pandemic is not the best time to discover how fragile these systems really are, but we can adapt now that we’ve had this experience, and avoid getting caught unawares in the future in the midst of a global crisis. Although international trade would need to adjust to this new reality, overall, humanity would see great benefit in the reduction of carbon emissions as well as the economic rewards for local economies, producers, and consumers. The influx of Gaia Project moneys into each national economy would far outweigh the losses from export of certain goods. Those goods manufactured can then be reallocated in-country, since the population will have additional income to spend on them. Win-win. As robotization increases and 3-D printing improves, we will essentially be looking at massive worker layoffs anyway- so off-shoring manufacturing will become obsolete. The jobs provided through the GP will also help offset those losses in a big way.

    Other areas of investment for the Project: 

1. Gaia Health Clinics (described further down) in addition to subsidies for medical school tuition and the building of new medical schools in regions with none, held up to an international WHO-determined standard and inclusive of alternative healing practices including herbalism, subject to independent double blind testing and some standardization (stringent standards for purity at least. No one should be taking mercury, arsenic or lead with their medicine). Our facilities could have living roofs and gardens where medicinal herbs are grown, in addition to solar panels over the parking lots and bike racks. We’d also be located close to public transportation. The NIH should become a clearinghouse for (non-profit) medically necessary pharmaceutical development, manufacture, and distribution- think epi-pens and insulin at wholesale cost plus 10% to support new R and D (many vital drugs have been developed at NIH but the patents have been sold cheaply to pharmaceutical companies for manufacture and distribution. This makes no sense to anyone but those who profit from the pharmaceutical industry. Many of these drugs were developed on the taxpayer’s dollar and yet they’re being kneecapped when they try to purchase them. And I bet investors regularly get gouged for needed drugs too.) Similarly, the WHO could do the same on an international scale. Thus medication dosage and safety would become standardized and prices would be brought down to manageable levels, and we wouldn’t be subsidizing private profit as we are now. Pharmaceutical companies would be encouraged to use their infrastructure to transition into production of “lifestyle” drugs such as longevity supplements and cosmetics, if they aren’t willing to subcontract for these agencies at wholesale prices, while also agreeing not to lobby governments anymore or spend money on advertising for medically necessary drugs, thereby driving prices up. Drug patents could be sold for a nominal amount to NIH (many of which were developed by the NIH in the first place, as mentioned) and the pharmaceutical companies could use their tremendous financial leverage to buy up commercial ventures in those non-medical goods. There would be a huge influx of new revenue into the global economy, which would provide a larger market for such luxury goods. Pharma would thrive without bankrupting the rest of us. Again, win/win. I would like to add that Gaia Clinics would teach classes on growing and making artisanal herbal remedies for the maladies that don’t require lab-produced medicines, which would also save money for consumers and distribute production. Careful analysis of the impacts of harvest time and soil quality would help determine potencies, and make allowances for them. I made an asthma remedy years ago that a friend said helped her with her bronchitis better than any commercial medication had. Someone else used it for his COPD, stating the same thing. Complementary medicine is medicine, and in many cases more affordable and accessible, often with fewer side effects (and occasionally even more effective) than pharmaceuticals.

2) Improved Social Services and easier access for the disabled, including updated infrastructure; special schools for kids who would thrive there as well as independent living support for kids and adults with autism, Down’s Syndrome, and other disabilities; and aid in developing appropriate programs within the school system for kids who want to be mainstreamed. I think there’s something to be said for both approaches. Having attended a public high school as an undiagnosed student with ASD I have considered how much easier it might have been, how much more I might have thrived rather than struggled (and almost gotten killed at the hands of a fellow student), if I had been diagnosed and had the option of attending a school for kids on the Spectrum, as long as it had a rigorous academic track in addition to programs for kids with different levels of ability. While other kids might feel stigmatized by the experience, I suspect I would have felt safer, and been better able to focus on my studies, at least during school hours. Perhaps that’s a trade-off one can’t appreciate except in hindsight, if you survive to appreciate it.  

3) Public school and library building and maintenance in developing nations or regions with low local tax revenue. Also support for public, non-profit universities, tied to good governance. The potential is there to start an entirely new non-profit educational model, pre-K through 12th grade, maybe even universities and vocational schools in underserved regions. (Gaia University Saskatchewan! Gaia High School Cincinnati, Middle and Elementary schools!) Art schools which resemble my original model could be started almost anywhere. Culturally appropriate educational standards could be determined by a multi-national/cultural committee of rotating representatives, requiring the students ancestral traditions and history be taught and valued equally. (Discussion below.) Integrating all of these narratives into a world history curriculum would be a great way to prepare students for work in a more interconnected world. (Further discussion follows.)

4) The Green Village Project (More detailed discussion in the Book.).
  
5) An international EPA which would have the power to enforce environmental laws and administer fines or other consequences for countries or MNCs (Multi-National Corporations) which violate them. Also an independent international court which would oversee associated lawsuits (monitored by JANUS to prevent corruption).
  
6) Climate disruption mitigation/resiliency training, including earthquake, wildfire, typhoon, drought and hurricane preparedness, aid in rebuilding. Gaia Project could direct a subagency which would administer these services, working in tandem with FEMA. Resilience Force could guide us toward making this happen, with consideration of fairness and safety for workers. For nations which sign on with the Gaia Project we could send teams of rescuers and rebuilders right after a disaster. In fact any government could sign up when disaster strikes as long as they agree to certain terms to protect their citizens’ and visiting teams’ rights. Some aid will be unconditional, such as food, but we must have international measures to incent the respect for human rights.
   
7) Training and subsidies to sustainable building practices such as rammed earth, and straw-bale building- which are both highly labor-intensive; some building skills are required. Incenting adoption of these practices, including increased insulation is a must. In areas requiring rebuilding after disasters, appropriate building techniques should be advocated for and taught (i.e. where wildfires have destroyed housing, new homes be built with rammed earth and fireproof tempered glass solar roof tiles, clay or stone. Why do we put flammable asphalt shingles on these stick framed, at-risk homes again and again?) In addition, assessing overhead transmission lines and replacing the most dangerous with distributed solar immediately, taking advantage of the local energy storage pods mentioned previously.
    
8) Subsidies to non-profit scientific pursuits with public interest features.
  
9) Universal Child Care as well as elder care. And support for public radio and PBS. (We love you Sesame Street! Even Oscar, you grouch. You guys have helped so many kids learn to read and count, and feel included, you’re worth your weight in platinum! Mwah!)
    
10) Drug addiction recovery and prevention in a holistic model of treatment. Alternatives to conventional incarceration, specifically in the case of non-violent offenders. 

11) Setting up an international agency mandated with tech company monitoring, regulation, and monopoly dissolution (if necessary) in international courts.
   
12) Fund grants to non-profit organizations which prove their relevance to the mandate of the Gaia Project in addition to passing muster in the area of administrative integrity. We could also sell their fundraising swag in the Ark and Lumen Marketplace.
    
13) Fund non-profit public works such as Wikipedia which currently rely on donations from users, if they fall short.

14) Regenerative agriculture development and support, improved methods of cooking to replace
open fires in developing nations (rocket stoves and solar ovens for instance), intensive silvopasture and ocean permaculture, and food waste prevention. We wouldn’t need to worry about increasing crop yields if we ate more of the food we produce (something like 50% of food is thrown away in the US). This would make it possible to feed the world with regenerative agriculture rather than so-called “conventional” farming, which destroys soil fertility, pollutes the air and water, and poisons consumers with heavy metals, metalloids like arsenic, and endocrine-disruptors and carcinogens from pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Have you heard about the insect apocalypse? This is another case of humanity authoring its own demise  via the mass extinction taking place. Chemical-intensive agriculture is profitable to corporations but extremely harmful to human populations and ecosystems(Note 17). Here is a take on the potential for a phosphorous nightmare if we don’t change course soon: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/12/scientists-warn-of-phosphogeddon-fertilizer-shortages-loom. GP Regenerative Ag teams would work with local farmers and governments to develop better practices and scale them up. This would include putting an end to the clearing of rain forest for palm oil plantations and beef production. Better land use proposals would be debated and alternative methods of economic development would be incentivized. We can set up local systems where produce which is just past the salable stage, when not sent to food banks, is sent to a local cannery and made into fermented or pickled products for sale instead. In order to persuade grocery chains to participate this produce could be purchased at a discount, making it more profitable than dumping it in dumpsters behind the store. This would apply only to produce which can’t or won’t be donated to local food banks. We would also invest in a system that would send biodiesel or electric vans to area grocery stores to pick up these foods on a bi-weekly basis, perhaps, and also assist in the timely delivery of donations to food banks as well as speeding up the process by which produce is distributed through them since a huge amount ends up rotting before reaching recipients. Unusable produce would be sent to a composting center while past-due dairy and baked goods can be sent to hog farmers, some will take meat too but: ick. We ought to increase disbursement of SNAP benefits and widen the eligibility criteria for the working poor and those on social security, which will reduce the amount of food thrown away to begin with, while improving nutrition, especially if we make this produce available to people who currently don’t have access to grocery stores. This will save us much of the costs of transporting and sorting at food banks too. Also on the docket is local biodiesel production made from restaurant fryer waste oil. GP would be happy to entertain any other ideas for reducing food wastage.

15)  Making materials recycling competitive, environmentally innocuous and viable at scale. This includes plastics, which are currently only recycled at a rate below 10% in the US; also metals, paper, cardboard, plastic coated paper products, wood products, compost, and electronics, pretty much everything we possibly can. Ark and Lumen Industries can reuse and repurpose materials for sale too. For instance I cut up old stretch pants for use as headbands, and we can do this at scale but design them for aesthetics, if we can convince people to send their old stretchy fabrics into our factories when finished with them. Lots of materials can be repurposed this way.

16) We will run a labor agency that can offer higher pay to workers since it will be lower overhead and not have revenue syphoned off for investors and executive pay.

    This leads to the question of what would NOT be financed by the Gaia Project. National and local taxation will not cease to exist. National militaries will still be budgeted from taxes (and I hope will refrain from the disastrous policy of privatization which has plagued and gouged the US for decades) and could be subject to audits by JANUS to ensure budgetary integrity, if requested by taxpayers; as should publicly financed election campaigns, which should also be monitored through bipartisan agencies to ensure democratic standards and transparency are upheld. Where voting rights are not upheld the GP could help citizens sue their country or state to ensure their votes are counted. JANUS can also assist in transparently creating algorithms designed to impartially draw or redraw districting lines for representation, or monitor this process as a third party. Judiciaries would still be financed by taxes, as would the police force, community crisis agencies which must be implemented ASAP to direct response teams for emergencies better resolved by non-police entities (such as mental health crises or situations with homeless people, as described by the Movement for Black Lives and others); firefighting, and the penal system. For-profit prisons should be outlawed as the profit motive encourages fraud and corruption, in what should be publicly administered agencies; as mentioned before, GP may begin a rehabilitation program to contract for prison systems, which would be allocated from the state budget for incarceration. In addition to incentivizing corruption, these private prisons end up depriving citizens of their Civil and Constitutional Rights and therefore these institutions themselves must be declared unconstitutional.
    Water resources should be publicly held and fairly distributed across the board, except on private property. GP can mediate between parties in the case of moving waters. Federal agencies designed to regulate industries, such as the FDA, the EPA, the FCC, the FAA, must be given the resources they need to protect the commonwealth and citizenry, and we need to build firewalls into them to make sure they can no longer be corrupted by corporate interests or self-serving political leaders like 45 and his cronies. 
    National Monuments and Parks would still be supported by public moneys, although these, like the US Postal Service, do also manage to pay for themselves to an extent. Since they are our cultural heritage they must always be held in the public domain. Privatizing them would only lead to their being despoiled for private profit, and they belong to the people of the USA, including future generations. This is an inviolable trust, our sacred responsibility to protect Creation. This is non-negotiable.

    We must also continue to allocate a sufficient amount of our tax dollars to social services, as investment in supporting the functioning of at-risk families pays dividends socially, economically, and spiritually. Failing to invest in these vital services causes innumerable disruptions in society. The more we choose to support families, the less money we’ll have to spend on prisons. (And the better we will all feel about our country and world, a priceless benefit.) Plus when communities are healed their members become more productive, another win/win!

    If you’re interested in learning more about the rationale for the GP I will be publishing a book detailing its inner workings and premise, called Regenerative Economics. Purchasing this tract will help jumpstart the funding process and give you a collectible piece of history to look back on once the Gaia Project has transformed our experience of healthcare, environmental stewardship and sustainable commerce.

The Gaia Project Motto: Creativity, Sustainability, Right Livelihood, and the Elevation of Well-Being

The Gaia Project Mission: Healing people and planet by building a sacred and just subset of the economy centering collaboration, creativity, and ingenuity, designed to sustain human communities and natural ecosystems for the next millennium.


Notes:

Note 1: Peak Oil: Oslo-based Rystad Energy has said that its estimate of global recoverable oil resources has fallen since 2019 by 282 bn barrels to 1.9 tn barrels, more than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. The precipitous drop in demand during 2020 as a result of Coronavirus lockdowns and the economic downturn hastened the peak by several years, from 2030, now estimated to occur in 2027 or 2028. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it was estimated that oil prices would spike between 2023 and 2025, just as electric vehicles become competitive with ICE vehicles. -Financial Times, June, 2020

Note 2: The Bipartisan Climate Solution, H.R. 763
    For over a decade, volunteers have asked their Members of Congress to work together to solve climate change. A viable climate change solution needs to be big and lasting — which means bipartisan legislation. We fully support the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. This policy will drive down America’s carbon pollution while unleashing American technology innovation and ingenuity. We support it because it’s:

Effective
This policy will reduce America’s emissions by at least 40% in the first 12 years.

Good for People
This policy will improve health and save lives. Additionally, the carbon dividend puts money directly into people’s pockets every month to spend as they see fit, helping low and middle income Americans.

Good for the economy
This policy will create 2.1 million new jobs, thanks to economic growth in local communities across America.

Bipartisan
Republicans and Democrats are both on board, cosponsoring this bill together. The majority of Americans support Congress taking action on climate change, including more than half of Republicans. Solving climate change is too urgent to get caught up in partisan politics.

Revenue Neutral
The fees collected on carbon emissions will be allocated to all Americans to spend any way they choose. The government will not keep any of the fees collected.

How does it work?
    1    Carbon Fee
This policy puts a fee on fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. It starts low, and grows over time. It will drive down carbon pollution because energy companies, industries, and consumers will move toward cleaner, cheaper options.
    2    Carbon Dividend
The money collected from the carbon fee is allocated in equal shares every month to the American people to spend as they see fit. Program costs are paid from the fees collected. The government does not keep any of the money from the carbon fee.
    3    Border Carbon Adjustment
To protect U.S. manufacturers and jobs, imported goods will be assessed a border carbon adjustment, and goods exported from the United States will receive a refund under this policy.
    4    Regulatory Adjustment
This policy preserves effective current regulations, like auto mileage standards, but pauses the EPA authority to regulate the CO2 and equivalent emissions covered by the fee, for the first 10 years after the policy is enacted. If emission targets are not being met after 10 years, Congress gives clear direction to the EPA to regulate those emissions to meet those targets. The pause does not impact EPA regulations related to water quality, air quality, health or other issues. This policy’s price on pollution will lower carbon emissions far more than existing and pending EPA regulations.

Note 3: I highly recommend the book Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link by Bernard Lietaer et al for an excellent analysis of our current economic paradigm, which can only lead to more intense rounds of chaos than we’ve already experienced (ultimately ending in total collapse or fascist dictatorship) if we don’t change it posthaste. I’d like to think Mr. Lietaer might appreciate my even less orthodox approach to evolving our economic paradigm, but sadly he’s no longer available for a consultation. He left behind an incredibly rich body of work in the interest of helping society become more adaptive and resilient, however. I’ve been stunned to discover the synchronicity between our world views. I feel almost as if I’ve been channeling some of his wisdom from the other side, having discovered his work after coming up with the Gaia Project (it turns out he managed a successful hedge fund called “Gaia Hedge Fund.” He also uses the phrase win/win as over-much as I do. Go figure). 
    He and his colleagues churned out a number of brilliant strategies for building resilience into the global financial market, and several of them would still be extremely beneficial in conjunction with the Gaia Project, particularly the locally based, community oriented alternative currencies. For a summary of his work, please go here https://blog.bancor.network/bernard-lietaer-a-financial-justice-warrior-who-fought-for-freedom-of-currency-25123ca599dd. If you’re looking for more reading on economics, energy, and a post-carbon world, please also seek out Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute, who happens to have been my college thesis advisor and an incredibly pivotal professor, probably for most if not all of his students. In addition to R. Heinberg’s work a few great resources are The Post-Carbon Reader by fellows of the Post-Carbon Institute: https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/post-carbon-reader/ Understanding Climate Change by Burch and Harris: https://utorontopress.com/us/understanding-climate-change-4 and Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawkin: https://www.drawdown.org/the-book has great resources for teachers.
    Here is an excerpt from Lietaer’s book about sustainability issues, as described in 2012:

    “We previously stated that the world is currently undergoing a powerful set of shifting conditions including large-scale biodiversity extinction, climate change in the form of extreme weather conditions (including higher frequency of extreme floods and droughts), deterioration of arable soil through salinization, pollutants and organic exhaustion as well as fresh water shortages. If not properly addressed, these shifting conditions will threaten the survival of the biosphere, which business, the economy, and all other human activities depend on. The following figure provides a summary of the most important threats to long-term ecological sustainability if we continue along our current economic path.”

BIODIVERSITY: Every hour, three species become extinct. The loss of biodiversity is now 50-100 times greater than under natural conditions, without human intervention.

WATER: 1.1 billion people have no direct access to drinking water. An additional 2.5 billion live without sanitary facilities. Every year 2.4 million children die as a result of diseases transmitted via contaminated water.

SOIL DEPLETION: 17% of the area that was formerly fertile is showing evidence of significant depletion.

CLIMATE: The average surface temperature of the Earth is expected to rise between 1.4º C and 5.6º C by the year 2100 [that number has since been revised upward]. Already, significant changes in weather patterns have occurred worldwide. The melting of polar and Greenland ice is well under way and, if not reversed, could raise sea levels to flood coastal lands where 1/3 of humanity currently live. 

“In some circles, the word ‘sustainability’ has become synonymous with constraints, heavy-handed governmental regulations, or even a leftist conspiracy. [Gosh darn those leftists and their concern for things we’d really rather not think about! (Umland)] This perception has been amplified by well-funded disinformation campaigns underwritten by various vested business interests, in particular from the carbon energy industries…
    “Contrary to this view, we see the ‘sustainability sector’ as one of the most promising business opportunities of the 21st Century. During the first ten years of this century, sustainable economic, social and ecological development has become strategically important for business. Corporations with serious environmental and social governance strategies and integrated policies are performing better than the average.”
    “The future relevance of environmental sustainability is voiced by many leaders without any leftist political leanings. Below are a few observations from such leading figures:

    “‘It’s good business to anticipate the inevitable, and it seems to me inevitable, whether we like it or not, that we are moving toward an economy which must be limited and selective in its growth pattern(Cit. 31). The earth has finite limits- a difficult idea for Americans to adjust to.’ -John D. Rockefeller III.” [I would add that this would be made easier if the very wealthy among us would voluntarily decrease their own consumption habits by reducing the number of homes they own, private jets, ICE vehicles, and extraneous STUFF. Those who don’t enjoy such economic freedom would be less motivated to emulate them if they did embrace a more modest lifestyle. Think time-shares with friends and family, volunteer staycations, electric cars and solar panels. I feel certain that if they do, what they have will mean more to them. The Marie Kondo ethos isn’t just for the middle class. The fact of the matter is, some limitations on consumption, whether by choice or economic constraints, actually benefit us psychologically, help us be more creative, resourceful, and appreciative. That’s something poor people already understand, but the wealthiest among us stand to derive benefits from such an ethic if we can figure out how to fairly apply it in society. We live in a culture that chafes at any restrictions on our entitlement and behavior, but the truth is, such unlimited privileges really are making us mentally and morally unwell, individually and collectively. The idea of total freedom is childish and irresponsible, and for a certain kind of person who has never been told no, libertarian philosophy can be all too seductive. What we need are meaningful universal freedoms, not the kinds that result in the many being overrun by the few. (Umland)]
    “‘Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth.’ -Øystein Dahle, former vice-president of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea.” [I take issue with his use of the word ‘socialism’ as plenty of Northern and Western European nations are actually de facto Democratic Socialist. He refers more accurately to communism here. There is a difference, and it is quite relevant. The EEC is largely made up of mixed Socialist/Capitalist economies, and it’s been pretty successful that way, except where it bumps up against US or Deutsche bank failures or undermines itself with privatization. (Umland)]

    “In our view as Philips, sustainability is no longer an option but an imperative. Over the past five years, we have seen more and more institutional and individual investors equating sustainability with good management and good long-term prospects. And so they should.” -Gerard Kleisterlee, CEO of Royal Philips Electronics.” [I would add that this will be more meaningful when corporations don’t engage in green-washing just to enhance their status on the Dow Index. We need to green business up because our lives depend on it, not just because it hypes your brand’s clout. (Umland)]

Note 4: I am contemplating how to make Terra dollars a somewhat demurrage-charged currency, as described in Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link: “a demurrage charge acts like a linear parking fee applied to a currency, imposing a cost on its holder over time. This... ensures that the currency is used as a planning, contractual and trading device: it would not be hoarded but would remain in circulation. Thus it would strongly activate commercial exchanges and investments wherever it circulates.” Rather than actually assign a fee, we could just refrain from applying compound interest to it, so that people could be paid in Terras and not feel the need to spend all of their income immediately. We could use an app, everywhere on Earth, which would enable transactions in Terras, and we could have them integrated in people’s and businesses’ financial accounts, as part of their bank balances, but in all likelihood their savings accounts would be in the national currency (so as to reap the rewards of compound interest) while their checking would more appropriately be in Terras (there to be spent). 
    I imagine Terras would be most compatible with the practices of community banks or credit unions. Perhaps they could upend the way mortgages are handled by enabling people to borrow for home loans without worrying about the snafus inherent to compound interest. I’m not well-enough studied in economic theory to be able to break that down just yet. It would be nice to make mortgages less potentially predatory, and find a way to use Terras for home loans in addition to business loans. Class discrepancies in home ownership are one of the biggest hallmarks of inequality: monthly income spent on rent that goes into a landlord’s equity vs. a mortgage payment that acts as one’s own savings account. Without the profit motive on the part of the Gaia Central Bank there’s no incentive to offer subprime loans which exceed people’s income (one of the disastrous -but profitable in the short term- policies which contributed to the meltdown of 2008/09), which would likewise reduce rates of foreclosure in the long run. Loan sizes would be consistent with people’s ability to repay them. I’ll need the help of a couple of economists to work all this out. To be honest, I’ve always found the details of economics to be mind-numbingly tedious, at the same time that I’ve found the subject to be vexingly relevant and in need of principled innovation.
    From Lietaer, in Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link: “Conventional bank-debt money reinforces a particular perception of time: it mandates short-term priorities. If a different type of currency- one with a negative interest rate- were used, society and businesses would be encouraged to value more long-term opportunities and costs. This change would affect the entire spectrum of economic and environmental activity and directly promote long-term sustainability. Greater concern for sustainable policies in relation to non-renewable resources and for humanity’s relationship with the rest of the biosphere would result,” (Page 98.) Compound interest compels ever-increasing debt and growth. But growth akin to a cancer cell's. It steeply discounts the future by making cash in the bank more profitable than investments in long term, sustainable economic development which doesn’t accrue interest in the conventional sense (it does, however, save massive amounts of money in the future, which is too abstract for bankers and investors, I suppose). The tumor analogy is fitting because this unsustainable economic activity rapaciously appropriates the blood supply (resources necessary for sustenance), ultimately killing the entire organism that is human culture, and taking out most other life with it.

Note 5:  Though Melinda is now separated from him, I’d like to offer a little aside for Bill Gates to consider. I think he could have the best of intentions but he’s been reasonably critiqued for%2