Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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information to pass through. So, if we accept this model we will have to decide
how to regulate the flow of capital, goods and people through that semipermeable
membrane.
In an organic, holarchic model, each economy – supranational, national, regional,
local and neighbourhood – would be a complete unit. Each whole­part would
have its own unique patterns of circulation of goods, services and information. To
retain integrity, each would have its own currency while also using the national
and international currencies for trade within each larger unit. Each would have
its boundaries and manage them. Each economy would be uniquely adapted to
the place where it was situated, and it would generate virtually no waste. As in
an ecosystem, supply lines would be short – for instance, New Zealand would
produce its own mineral water rather than import it from Italy or France. Each
user of a resource would be placed near the supply of that resource.
In their book Natural Capitalism – The Next Industrial Revolution, Paul
Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins say they believe an economic
system should mimic nature itself, where the waste of one species becomes the
food for another, and where disruptions and imbalances occur but are selfcorrecting
and self­restoring. 7 The authors estimate that more than 90 per cent of
the global flow of physical materials used in industrial processes – some 500
billion tonnes a year – ends up as waste. Here, waste includes everything from
traffic jams to irreparable VCRs, ‘disposable’ nappies, radioactive waste and
vagrant chemicals, as well as the social waste of homelessness, crime, drug