Roar Bjonnes, Author at Systems Change Alliance

13/06/2020

Do We Want System Change or Systems Change?

At first glance, these two concepts may seem almost identical, one word is singular, the other plural. Two words with basically the same meaning. Or so I thought. Until I read the excellent book “The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and ...

13/01/2121

Beyond Carbon Offsets: We Need Real Carbon Neutral Solutions

Environment

According to Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the financial markets are humanity’s only hope in reducing global warming. He said this in late September 2013, when he, presented the most air-ti ...

04/01/2121

Beyond Collapse: The Prophetic Voices of Umair Haque, Ravi Batra, Peter Turchin, and H. T. Odum

In the title track to Leonard Cohen's 1992 album The Future, the legendary folk singer croons in his raspy baritone: "I've seen the future, baby: It is murder." Cohen is not the only self-proclaimed prophet who has seen the future in recent year ...

15/12/2020

It’s Time for Economic Democracy

Economy

Musings on Systems Change

The best selling French economist Thomas Piketty has documented in well researched detail how inequality is increasing in the world today. His solution? A global wealth tax on the rich. But is that enough to create a more just and equitable economy ...

10/12/2020

Why Free Trade is not Always Free

Economy

The common myth today is that free trade is good and that protectionism is bad. But it all depends. The prevailing views expressed by the World Trade Organization and others involved in negotiating free trade agreements, is that free trade helps ever ...

12/11/2020

Eight Design Principles for a Local Economy

Musings on Systems Change

Shopping locally, growing some of our own fruits and vegetables, these are all very important habits to cultivate if we want to create deeper systems change. But individual changes are not enough in order to stem the tide of economic destruction agai ...

10/11/2020

The Failures of Modern Economic Theories

Economy

“Free markets will save the world.” We have heard that slogan for many years now. Yet free markets have not saved the world. To the contrary, finance crises, climate change, growing inequality and wars fought over oil and other resources, modern ...

27/10/2020

Beyond Green Capitalism: Economic Systems Change for the Next Seven Generations

Musings on Systems Change

Corporate capitalism is addicted to making money and therefore has a very short planning cycle--hardly longer than its next quarterly profit fix. A truly green, regenerative economy will have to plan long term. To do that, we need deeper economic cha ...

22/10/2020

It’s Time to Pay our Debts to Nature

Economy

In Nature, all debts are paid and no one is too big to fail.H. T. Odum While financial debts are human-made problems that can be managed with solution-oriented policies, natural resources have external limits placed on us by the natural environmen ...

15/10/2020

The Natural Resource Crisis: Humanity’s Toughest Challenge

Of all the crises facing the world today, the one with the potential for having the most profound impact on human life is the environmental crisis. The global financial crisis that began in 2008 as well as the economic crisis we are experiencing now ...

09/10/2020

Beyond Green Capitalism

Musings on Systems Change

Green capitalism is overlooking a fundamental issue in economics; an issue that we need to overcome through systemic restructuring in order to create a sustainable economy. In this episode of Musings on Systems Change, Roar Bjonnes talks about what t ...

Roar Bjonnes