NEO Magazine Issue 1 | Page 48

Pragmatic Idealism: We can pragmatically harness business in its many forms to achieve social transformation and conservation of resources. Enter social enterprise and impact investment. Compassionate Capital: Investment does not have to be for profit alone. People are not only motivated by greed (the classic Milton Friedman assumption). Care for others and concern for one’s community and environment can be equally important motivations. Social enterprise and microfinance are creative approaches using compassionate capital. Conscientious Consumption: Consumers can purchase or boycott with conscious and affect corporate behavior. We have the power to demand that the corporate sector adopt renewable and efficient energy, recycling, non-genetically modified foods, and socially responsible practices through the sheer power of organized boycott. Environmental Economics: Investment into conversion of energy grids from fossil fuels to renewables combined with fiscal and credit policy that will drive business to use renewable and efficient energy. This approach will drop actual carbon output levels while creating jobs and business opportunities in multiple sectors that can scale renewable and efficient energy technology, water conservation, recycling, organic agriculture, while reducing fossil fuels absolutely. (This is not to be confused with trading carbon or pricing natural resources sometimes called the “green economy”). These ideas are only part of growing matrix of often separate yet interconnected movements, running in parallel, but coming into an inevitable synergy and convergence that will change the economic architecture of our planet. Some of these ideas come from villages and ghettos, others are being driven by business and financial photography courtesy of laurence brahm localization. Empower people by getting capital to communities (rather than only to banks who just speculate with Fed bailout funds issued on the back of more debt) and the austerity that has crippled Europe.