We’re eight years on from the your documentary The Economics of Happiness release. Are we any closer to what this Economy of Happiness looks like to you? Are we seeing the impact in the way that you hoped this documentary might bring about? [Continued…]

And this was a hugely sponsored message from big business because in the last 30 years, the huge industries have moved to poor countries because they’re so cheap, labour is available and they were putting the factories there that are making our shoes, that are factory farming, growing our food and there they needed to use lots of fossil fuels and dramatically pollute countries like China and India. So we really need to be very well informed right now of the bigger picture so we can immediately get on these genuine systemic solutions.

I want to stress that, I wouldn’t worry at all about the state of the world if it weren’t for the fact that in the support for global trade, our governments are supporting giant corporations and supermarkets in this insane trade. This includes routinely not just importing and exporting the same thing, but sending apples to be washed on the other side of the world and flying them back again, or for instance, Tasmania flying scallops to be treated in China, before flying them back again.

Norway flies fish to be de boned in China, before flying them back again. This is going on a massive scale, and yet we’re not talking about it. It’s not a secret, it is not a bunch of bad people sitting in a dark room plotting to destroy the world.

Our economic system has become so big and global that almost no one is looking at the contours and the workings of that system.

So that’s really, really urgent. And part of that deregulation for global trade has included deregulating finance so that now we have private financial institutions as a bench essentially driving a casino economy in which they create more money out of thin air, through hedge fund speculation, and every day people around the world buy their bread, buy their food, their currency, their lives are being profoundly affected by this casino. But unfortunately, again, most people aren’t looking at it.

For that reason, I’ve seen a real sense of urgency, because that casino’s still continuing. Very often as we look for solutions, we look too much just at the individual, at the ‘we must not drive our car, we must recycle our plastic’, and we’re not looking at the systemic ways that we really could make a difference, as communities and at the policy level.

So, because that casino is still continuing, I feel a sense of urgency. But I see this spontaneous, really very heartening way in which people are waking up and starting these localisation initiatives. It’s quite a spontaneous thing.

Even when they don’t know about the global economy, there is such a longing for community and connection to nature to recover that sense of being spiritually deeply connected.

And so that’s happening. It’s just that we urgently need to clarify, stand out and we need what I’d call big picture activism very urgently.

It’s like people are waking up, but a little bit too slowly I guess. So then what is your advice to people that want to be part of their systemic change but they don’t know where to start?

Well, I guess my message is, please look at organisations like mine. There are others, we’re part of networks, but we are still a relatively small group of organisations that are trying to get people to look beyond these individual solutions, which by the way have been promoted by big business and not only have these solutions been promoted by big business, but there is a huge dominant narrative out there that is so misleading. It’s basically saying, “Ah, it’s people. They were told about climate change, they were told not to drive their car, they were told not to get in an aeroplane and to recycle their plastic, but why have they not listened? What’s wrong with these people? They’re in denial, aren’t they? Let’s spend a lot of time looking at the psychology of these people because there is something wrong with them, they’re just not changing their individual behaviour.”

And I’m afraid this narrative is being incorporated by many environmental organisations that aren’t seeing the big picture. So the end result is pointing the finger at individuals, trapped in the system where the taxes are used to subsidise the global trade, subsidise this situation, where it’s extremely difficult for them to get out of their car.
It’s subsidising not only the use of the car and the advertising and the promotion, but making public transport more and more inconvenient, etc.

So, these poor people are feeling self-pity and self-blame at the same time as they’re feeling this sense of urgency and panic, so I want to ask people who hear this podcast, please look at this differently.

Listen to voices like ours that can show you how this focus on the individual is very counterproductive. Of course, when you can, do what you can as an individual, but we need to open the big picture to see we need systemic change.

How would you as an individual create systemic change? Well, you can try it by linking up at the local level to start creating those local community systems that can start bringing the economy home.

It can happen much more rapidly than you think. I’m amazed at how much has been accomplished by a community in the local food initiative and thank God there are some local governments and even some regional governments now that are beginning to support this. But until now, no national governments.

So that’s another area we have to look at, not the conventional politics, we need to go beyond this focus on the individual and the theatre of politics, to understanding the big picture, which is the real power. The real political power has now moved outside of the national boundaries. It’s in the hands of the globalised media, in the hands of the globalised casino, globalised food economies, and we need to be understanding that, and getting the word out as quickly as we can.

Let’s get on with building a people’s movement that is so awake and so aware that it demands the change.

We’ve got to mobilise people. But remember that what you’re going to be mobilising them for, is to do something that you would start doing right now and you can feel so much more empowered and see the impact of what you do if you joined a systemic movement towards localised economies, community-based economies.