In an interview with Marcin Gerwin of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia Polly Higgins, author of Eradicating Ecocide and Earth is our Business, explained why it is necessary to have an international law making it a criminal offence to damage or destroy the environment. To read the full interview, click here.

This thesis is not only a restatement of the social price of inequality (such as Joseph Stiglitz The Price of Inequality, or Richard Wilkinson The Spirit Level).  There is something deeper: humanity has lost touch with its spiritual roots, and with the ‘covenant’ which ancient wisdom saw in the triangle of relationships between humanity, the earth and God.  – Bishop David Atkinson, Church Times

For the full review click here and go to page 23.

This message is from the Irish Site Value Tax campaign, which started the petition “Finance Minister, Michael Noonan: Stop the government imposing an unfair residential property tax in the 2013 Budget.”:

The 5th of December is budget day and all the leaks from the government would indicate that the government went against their own best advice and opted for a value based, residential, property tax instead of a Site Value Tax. This petition is an attempt to hold the government to account for their actions or lack there of, on this issue. If we must have some sort of property tax we want the government to know that a Site Value Tax is a much better option for all involved. To find our more about SVT click here.

Send this to as many people as you can by email, facebook and twitter today! If we just get two people each and they get two people each, we will have a couple of thousand signatures by Friday, the 7th of December.

Thank you very much for your support on the important issue of property tax.

The Fair Tax was launched in Dublin on 18^th September  and will be discussed at an event at Trinity College, Dublin on 24^th September at 7.30 pm. After the event, the Frontline team (a popular current affairs programme on RTE 1) have agreed to allow time on their programme to discuss SVT in the wider context of the Irish government not discussing or engaging with the public on important issues.  The programme starts at 10.30 pm.

Polly Higgins believes, when it is right to speak out and shine a light on a dark corner.

“Such are the consequences of our current business practices that we are now on a course that spells disaster for humanity and the Earth. To ignore the warning issued by the OECD last week – that current policy will increase the Earth’s temperature 3 or more degrees by 2100 – is in fact a breach of our human right to life.

“However, I believe we can change our course very fast. This week I have submitted to all governments a concept paper, entitled Closing the door to dangerous industrial activity.”

The paper is freely available to the public at www.eradicatingecocide.com. You can download the paper here and a 1 page summary here.

Polly Higgins is also giving the annual Rachel Carson Memorial lecture in London on 30^th March.

Click here to see a film from Australia which explains why property booms and busts occur with remarkable regularity and how public infrastructure, especially roads and railways can be funded without taxing wages.

To test the practicality of Polly Higgins’ proposal to make Ecocide a crime, a mock trial was held in the UK Supreme Court in September 2011 at which the two Chief Executives of two fictional oil companies were found guilty by the jury of the crime of Ecocide.

As a further test of the practicality Polly Higgins’ proposal, on 31^st March at the Institute for Democracy and Conflict Resolution at the University of Essex in Colchester, the two CEOs will be sentenced. They will be offered a process of restorative justice. Leading lawyers, including Michael Mansfield QC, journalists, businesspeople, academics and campaigners will take part in the sentencing process.

“The sentencing is unique in bringing the head of a corporation face to face with those affected by their company’s destructive practices, including representatives speaking on behalf of birds and other natural life, indigenous peoples and future generations in this case based on real-world oil extraction in the Canadian tar sands.”

Tickets may be obtained via this link.

In the news this week: “Brazilian prosecutors say they will bring criminal charges,  including “environmental crimes”, against 17 executives from the US oil company Chevron and drilling contractor Transocean after a new leak of crude oil.”

Anthony Werner, the Managing Director of Shepheard-Walwyn was invited to attend the Dialogue of Civilizations at the World Public Forum held on the island of Rhodes last October. Here is an excerpt from his paper, which has now been published in the Journal of Globalisation for the Common Good:

‘Give us a guide,” cry men to the philosopher. “We would escape from these miseries in which we are entangled. A better state is ever present in our imaginations, and we yearn after it; but all our efforts to realize it are fruitless. We are weary of perpetual failures; tell us by what rule we may attain our desire.’

Witnessing the misery and poverty of mid 19th century Britain, Herbert Spencer, began his Social Statics with the above words. He had in mind, perhaps, Plato’s Republic on the role of the philosopher in educating a political elite – the guardians, as he called them. One of the best known passages from that work is that the human race ‘will never have rest from its evils until philosophers are kings, or kings have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one’.

In view of the present state of the world, I think we can agree that humanity has not yet found ‘rest from its evils’. In this paper we will explore whether there is any particular wisdom to be found in Political Economy that can guide a future political elite in lessening the evils currently suffered by humanity.

Political Economy, or Economics as it is now called, was not a distinct discipline at the time of Plato. It only became a special study in the second half of the 18th century, first in France under the Économistes, or Physiocrats as they are more commonly called, and then in Britain with Adam Smith, often referred to as the ‘father of modern economics’. Economics emerged as a distinct subject in circumstances similar to the ones we are now facing, a mal-functioning of the economic order, which led thinking men and women to ask whether there might be a better way. Likewise the Great Depression of the 1930s led to the emergence of Keynesian economics which has come back into fashion as a way of dealing with the present crisis, with many attributing the current turmoil to market failure, but, as will be argued in this paper, it is really a failure of governance. To find out what Anthony Werner means by this, please click here to view the whole paper.