"As the World Burns: Can an Integrated Monetary System Save Us?" - Review of The Tierra Solution

Ethan Goffman, associate editor of the open-access journal for sustainable solutions, Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy, has written a thought-provoking review of Frans Verhagen's The Tierra Solution. You can read the original review, along with some enlightening articles about sustainability, here, but see what he has to say below.

Climate change requires an integrated global approach. Solutions cannot be isolated by borders, nor from our economic and social systems. Big thinking is needed. One recent book that thinks big is The Tierra Solution by sustainability sociologist Frans Verhagen, President of the International Institute of Monetary Transformation. The book recommends a global currency called the Tierra based on carbon. Given the severe challenge of climate change, such sweeping proposals are needed to create a larger vision and stimulate discussion. And clearly, a major shift in our monetary system is needed for a stable, sustainable planet. Still, the book is simplistic in its claims for a singular solution and understates the huge political challenges.

The Tierra would abandon our current floating currency, in which dollars, euros, renminbi, pesos, and other currency fluctuate relative to one another, oftentimes wildly so. While such volatility is economically stressful, Verhagen points out that the gold standard, the classical stable unit of currency, suffers from the artificial nature of gold, which itself ebbs and flows in price. As an international currency based on carbon, the Tierra would be both comprehensive and stable. It would also be tied to the environment, encouraging responsible behavior globally. As Verhagen explains, “[T]he proximity of a nation’s decarbonization level to the [Tierra] standard would determine the...value of its currency.”

Alas, the book leaves a hole as to how a transition to such a standard would take place. It does, however, describe a more complete system of which the Tierra is only one part, albeit the central one. Controlled by a global monetary institution, the Tierra would be a credit-based currency integrated with an exchange of wealthy countries’ ecological debts and poorer countries’ financial debt, and working alongside a carbon tax.

Read the rest of the review on the Sustainability blog, here. And don't forget to leave a comment here or there with your own thoughts on the issue!

Dare to Care Author Calls for Cooperation on Financial Crises in Online Video

Dare to Care author Louis Bohtlingk calls us to action and presents his ideas about how to transform the financial world in his new online video. You can watch the video below, as well as check out Louis's online platform for Dare to Care. Louis invites us:

LET’S RAISE OUR VOICES, SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE AND BUILD TOGETHER!“Join the discussion about the state of our financial world and our economies and what we can do to create a better situation for us all. We need to hear everyone and work together. We all can make a contribution.”

You can view more videos from Louis on his website, www.carefirstworld.com.

Cygnus Review in the UK had this to say about Dare to Care:

“Louis Bohtlingk offers an inspiringly simple yet far-reaching idea 
for transforming our economy and the world of finance, so that it support rather than undermines, 
our human needs and those of our planet.”