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Roar Bjonnes

Roar Bjonnes is the co-founder of Systems Change Alliance, a long-time environmental activist and a writer on ecology and alternative economics, which he terms eco-economics.

Articles

In the article The Future is Feral—And Climate Resilient in Yes! Magazine, Irene Lyla Lee suggests that it is time to change our attitude towards feral plants. They are not just weeds; they are an integral part of the environment we live in.  …
The contemporary corporation is primarily driven by the pursuit of short-term profits for its shareholders. In contrast, cooperative companies tend to adopt a more holistic perspective on business operations. Numerous studies have demonstrated that c…
   According to the Gini Index, in every major region of the world outside of Europe, extreme wealth is becoming concentrated in just a handful of people. “In 2021, the richest 1% of Americans owned 34.9% of the country’s we…
In today’s economy, if an industrial plant upriver creates water pollution, and a community downriver is forced to cover the cost of the cleanup, it is considered an externality for the company causing the pollution. These types of external…
The Urgent Need for Planetary Systems Change    In February, 2022, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued “a stark warning about the impact of climate change on people and the planet, saying that ecosystem co…
What is carbon offsetting? If you are concerned about global warming and you are the CEO of a corporation in Europe or the US, and your company’s production plants pollute the air and water with various chemicals, then you’d naturally want to do s…
1. Plant-Centered Diet Photo by Anna Pelzer on Unsplash The Western diet is increasingly meat-centered and raising livestock accounts for nearly 15% of global greenhouse gasses. If livestock were a nation of their own, it would be the third gre…
The story of how we got to climate change is familiar to most of us: our extractive human habits, free market economies, and short-sighted use of new inventions gave us coal-fired power plants, industrial farming, and gas guzzling automobiles. These …

Podcasts

Musings on Systems Change with Roar Bjonnes
Musings on Systems Change
It's Time for Economic Democracy
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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? In this podcast, Roar Bjonnes suggests that tax reforms are not enough and that what we need instead is economic systems change through economic democracy.
It’s Time for Economic Democracy
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? In this podcast, Roar Bjonnes suggests that tax reforms are not enough and that what we need instead is economic systems change through economic democracy.
Eight Design Principles for a Local Economy
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 against nature and the local economy. In this podcast, Roar Bjonnes outlines the eight design principles we need to implement a truly local economy.
Beyond Green Capitalism: Economic Systems Change for the Next Seven Generations
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 changes. In this episode, Roar Bjonnes talks about the two most important systems changes needed to create an eco-economy of the future.
Beyond Green Capitalism
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 this fundamental issue is and how to overcome and go beyond the limits of green capitalism.
The Triple Bottom Line: Green Capitalism
In this new Musings on Systems Change podcast, Roar Bjonnes asks if the popular Triple Bottom Line slogan of green capitalism--Profit, People, Planet--which has been adopted by companies such as Shell, is really enough in creating systems change in economics.
Green Gone Wrong
Is sustainable capitalism just another green mean machine or does it hold the promise of a new economy? Can we solve our environmental problems by producing and buying green products?