John deGraaf has made another great film that’s both funny and searing in its critique of the toxic by-products of the consumer culture. It’s called What’s the Economy for Anyway? and you can watch a trailer on YouTube. It stars Dave Batker, an ecological economist, head of Earth Economics and also surprise guest of the Conscious Money Speakers’ Series teleclass tonight.
If you meant to sign up for the series and missed it, you can still do so by clicking here and joining in for the rest of it. It’s discounted 15% – and you still get to hear all the recordings.
About Ecological Economics – they include the cost to the earth in their calculations of “profit” – and take into account the “ecological services” of nature that don’t figure in the equation – like the value of air, water and all those microbes that eat our waste. Some say that the “North” – wealthy nations – are in ecological debt to the “South” or less developed nations since we have used a lot of their resources (including their capacity to absorb our garbage) to make our lives comfortable.
The big take away is that what we measure we can change. Like with Your Money or Your Life, to discover how much is enough you have to see what you have (step one) and what you’re earning and spending (steps 2-3) and how it’s working for you (step 4) over time (step 5).