Carbon Cutters - No Debt

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Running on Empty

Required reading:

Chris Goodall "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life"

Richard Heinberg "The Party's Over"

George Monbiot "Heat"

Required watching:

The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil - DVD

The End of Suburbia - Oil Depletion & the Collapse of the American Dream - DVD

The Revolution

This is a revolution. If you want to shut an airport then stop flying. Want an end to factory farming? Grow your own. An end to pollution? Change to renewables. An end to war & poverty? Microgenerate. Life for your childen? Stop needing oil. YOU have THIS Power. You do not need Government. Seize the initiative. Bring democracy to your community. Be an example to your children. Take responsibility. Change for good today.

Make no Debt

In the Ten Steps we urge Carbon Cutters to make several changes to their lives. These changes are largely external effecting material items. "Make" is different in that it addresses the practical substitution of Material Consumption with Self Reliance. Why go shopping when you would be happier making or repairing something at home? Our "Grow" Step is arguably an aspect of this too.

In "Make no Debt" we address further the issue of Money and our Self Reliance from the economy. There is no point living "off-grid" or being self-sufficient if you are plugged into the Monetary Economy by being deeply in Debt. When Fossil Fuels exit the economy there will be recession. You must weather the storm. The economy around you will change and MUST change too. The system of Debt enforces the high carbon growth economy. Break free.....

What's wrong with Credit?

Credit is Debt. The amount of Debt in an economy used to be limited by reserves of precious metals such as Gold. A Banker could lend only a certain multiple of their precious metal reserves through creating a 'promise to pay'. This was true hundreds of years ago but in the modern economy the "Promise to Pay" has largely replaced the Gold Reserves. The ratio of "Cash" money to Electronic Money in the economy has greatly increased. Never before has our "reserve" of cash been so low in comparison to the amount of electronic money in Banks. This electronic Money is created by Banks. There is practically no limit on the amount of money they can create this way. It is unregulated.

In fact 97% of all our money is created this way. The Banks make money. They are private organisations and they make our money supply. They profit by charging interest. Their cash reserves are meant to be based upon the Savings we deposit with them. However the two are decoupled. In fact inflation robs us of our savings and interest. Inflation is a product of Economic Growth and Economic Growth is a product of the Debt-based money supply.

Since Banks are private Companies who make money by creating debt then there is nothing to stop them from creating unlimited money. Hence they force unlimited debt upon society to make money. The Banks even convinced the Government to borrow from them rather than printing their own money. Hence we pay Taxes to pay the interest on Government borrowings. It flows from our taxes to private banks. Indeed, it is the same a third world debt.

Endless Debt only perpetuates further Debt because the system must continue to expand else it will collapse. Endless growth in Debt pumps up the economy as we work harder and harder to pay off the Debt. But we can never pay it off - if we did the system would collapse because then there would be no money in the economy because ALL our money is someone else's Debt somewhere else. It is a perpetual motion machine going faster and faster until it explodes. It is not sustainable. Since it provokes economic activity that uses more and more oil then it depletes resources. More and more Oil means more and more CO2 leading the Climate Change. Since resources on a finite planet are finite then endless growth is impossible. It MUST collapse. Hence our money supply MUST be taken away from the Private Banks if we are to avert disaster after Peak Oil.

The solution is to put money creation back into the hands of publically accountable bodies such as the Government. Only the Government would be allowed to create money and it would spend the money into existence. This would break the self-destructive cycle and give us a sustainable money supply. This would be infinitely more stable in times of economic contraction that MUST come about due to the withdrawal of cheap oil and energy from our economies.

Post-Carbon Man

When we started Carbon Cutters we never imagined that we were all in such deep trouble! For 200 years we consumed Fossil Fuels and we grew our economies. We built a Financial system that depended upon perpetual growth. Pull the plug on the Oil and there is no gentle descent. We all plummet horribly!

What's wrong with Growth?

Economic Growth is the central Paradigm of our times. We are lead to believe that only growth in our monetary GDP is the path to salvation. Growth is ONLY GOOD! What if we told you this was a lie? What if you knew the evidence proves the opposite? Astonishing isn't it?

Research by the likes of the New Economic Forum and Economist Richard Douthwaite show that growth in our income increases happiness to a certain point only. Beyond that only our income relative to others increases happiness. Since we can't all be richer than each other none of us are any happier.

It gets worse.... If you factor in the negative effects of Economic Growth, such as Global Warming, Resource Depletion, destruction of countryside, traffic jams, terrorism, family breakup, pollution, crime, etc., then our standard of living has declined whilst the monetary economy has grown. Indeed we spend money to protect ourselves from pollution and crime just to prevent further unhappiness. The money we spend on bad things is counted as GDP so it looks like Economic Growth. If you blow something up or kill somebody it all leads to economic growth based upon a purely monetary measurement such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The New Economics Foundation has worked on a "Happiness Index" to measure various non-monetary indicators of our well-being. The results are astounding. Modern industrialised countries are unhappy places and we are getting unhappier by the minute. Where do you have to live to be happy? Try Bhutan. In fact some of the smallest and poorest countries on Earth all score higher happiness scores than those of us in the UK or America.

The message is simple. Economic Growth doesn't make you better-off no matter how you measure it. We simply don't need any more money. Since our relentless pursuit of money, to buy more stuff, just increases our Carbon Footprint then it is time to rethink what we really need in life.

Read this Book

ISBN 1 870098 76 5. Published by Green Books in 1999 (a revised edition from a work originally published in 1992). Written by Richard Douthwaite, the full title reads "The Growth Illusion - How Economic Growth has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet". The Carbon Cutter's review of this book was quite harsh because it is not an easy read for most people. The argument is lost in the Economic Statistics but it remains authoritative... More here.

Read some more...

Milla Blog

Here I am - nature girl without a care in the world. I don't have any money. Good thing too. It seems to be nothing but trouble. I play with Daddy's wallet and pull out all those plastic cards he has. He doesn't worry. He hardly uses them. When he does he pays them off every month in full by Direct Debit. Mummy and Daddy have no loans or borrowings. They only have the mortgage on our home. Daddy says that is bad enough and he must pay it off.

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