David Korten

David Korten is the co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, the author of Agenda for a New Economy, the Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is co-chair of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, president of the Living Economies Forum, and a member of The Club of Rome.

America’s deficit attention disorder

Sep 132012

News blog

Money is the least of the US's problems; other deficits loom much larger.

by David Korten

Every generation has an incentive to borrow money from the future to spend on itself."
—David Brooks, The New York Times, Jun 4, 2012

The political debate in the United States and Europe has focused attention on public financial deficits and how best to resolve them. Tragically, the debate largely ignores the deficits that most endanger our future.

In the United States, as Republican deficit hawks tell the story, “America is broke. We must cut government spending on social programs we cannot afford. And we must lower taxes on Wall Street job creators so they can invest to get the economy growing, create new jobs, increase total tax revenues, and eliminate the deficit.”

Duality at Rio +20

Jun 202012

Features

Expect tension between short-term economics and long term environmentalism.

by David Korten

Next week, 20 years after the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit, representatives of the world's governments will gather again in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to frame a global response to the Earth's environmental crisis. Debates leading up to Rio+20 are focusing attention on a foundational choice between two divergent paths to the human future.

A plea for Rio+20: don’t commodify Nature

May 012012

Features

Indigenous wisdom sees a future that does not include a buy-out of the earth's natural systems.

by David Korten.

"Time is life."

With these three words, Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the Bhutan Gross National Happiness Commission, ended his brief description of Bhutan's distinctive approach to economic development. It caught my attention because of the striking contrast to our common Western phrase, "Time is money."

The event I was attending was a small international gathering primarily of indigenous environmental leaders. I was privileged to be among the few non-indigenous writer-activists invited to join them.