THE NEXT ECONOMY
Mark Twain once remarked: “Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education”. Our children, and the next generation’s children, will require an education that will give them an expansive world view and the systematic analytical skills needed to understand and reverse the root causes of climate change and the extinction crisis. And we must demystify the dogma that new technology will magically provide solutions to these crises. Until we have adequately taught this to our children and/or they have discovered it themselves, we are destined to only deepen these related crises. LOCAL ENERGY The world and its economy turn on energy. Given that, the real question is: “Do we have an energy shortage or too large a demand?” Ever larger development projects, such as mega-dams, irreversibly alter watersheds. Massive, and sometimes thousands of kilometers long, power lines disfigure the landscapes, magnifying the impact of huge dam projects. "Techno Saviors" attempt to replace obsolete technologies with new ones, like industrial wind turbines (Huesemann, 2011). The visual pollution and other impacts they create, are accepted as another "price of progress". Many nations are considering desperate measures, like nuclear power, to keep traditional industrial growth alive and feed the insatiable appetite for growth and the purported benefits of the globalized economy. This is a dead end street. We must rethink the course that lies ahead and look to a local economy, based on low-tech, renewable energies and solar power. Energy should be produced locally and not shipped enormous distances. We need small scale hydro to keep river systems healthy and small scale wind energy that keeps visual pollution to a minimum and is safe for birds. We must reorient our economies to use non-polluting, local, small-scale energy sources that do not diminish biodiversity, change the climate, or reduce the beauty that is so important in our lives. ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN In the Next Economy, good design is one of the primary ingredients of good land stewardship and healthy communities. Good design requires careful ecological thinking and respect for traditional and regional styles. Its implementation should be energy efficient, functional, and comprised of local materials. It should carry forward cultural and historical patterns and harmonize construction and structure within the environmental setting. It should take into consideration the need to minimize the changes that buildings, roads, fences, water towers and other infrastructures make to the original beauty of the places where they are imposed. Architectural design should also foster easy, comfortable and pleasant working conditions for people and our domestic animals (Conservación Patagónica, 2010). CONSERVATION One of our principle objectives we have in the Next Economy is for farms to produce in such a way that conservation becomes a natural bi-product of good
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