Nov. 23rd - Buy Nothing Day

RE: Nov. 23rd - Buy Nothing Day

Reposted by ]ean OM
And maybe, by extension, the day after Thanksgiving, Nov. 28,
a traditional go-out-and-shop, buy-it-because-we're-told-to
day. =p

Thanks to my MySpace friend~: Fox




To argue that the average North American, myself included, needs to drastically reduce their consumption is not to say that they should crawl into a ditch and starve. As I mentioned above, the primary reason why my lifestyle is unsustainable is because my food is not produced locally. It is too much of a resource drain on the world for food to be transported long distances. This is why some people are now proposing the idea of “relocalizing”.
According to the Relocalization Network,

Relocalization is a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of Relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to dramatically improve environmental conditions and social equity.


For obvious reasons, the movement to relocalize is built at the local level by community groups across the world: “Local Post Carbon Groups work, within their communities and in cooperation with local government and other community-based organizations, to put the concept of Relocalization into practice. The Groups work on projects such as cooperative transport and food networks, local renewable energy production, community assessment inventories and municipal action plans.
”

Relocalizing is part of the wider agenda of Economic Degrowth.
Anti-bank activist Enric Duran does a great job explaining degrowth:

Degrowth doesn’t need to be a negative idea: just as when a river bursts its banks and we all want it to diminish and for the waters to return to their course, the same thing occurs with the unsustainability of the current situation. Degrowth isn’t something negative, but rather something necessary.


Degrowth attacks the myth of growth. It proposes abandoning the parameters of productivism and consumerism, and ultimately leaving the capitalist system. In order to do this, it proposes re-localising our ways of life.

Degrowth consists in abandoning the process of economic globalisation and re-localising the economy —production and consumption — thus reducing transport. In order to do that we must re-localise politics, thus putting it back under the control of people.


Re-localising politics means, for example, that the levels of sovereignty go from the

bottom upwards. Everything that can be decided at the municipal level should not be decided at higher levels; only things that affect the whole country should be decided at that level. Living in that way would allow us to liberate ourselves from the power of the transnational companies and global economic forces.


This transition to the local ambit should be put in practice together with a radical reduction in consumption, which could in turn lead to a reduction in production and transport. Things which are considered necessary should be produced according to increasingly ecological principles and completing the cycles of the materials used.



According to the participants of the Economic De-Growth For Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity Conference degrowth is characterized by:

•an emphasis on quality of life rather than quantity of consumption;
•the fulfilment of basic human needs for all;
•substantially reduced dependence on economic activity, and an increase in free time,
•unremunerated activity, conviviality, sense of community, and individual and
collective health;
•encouragement of self-reflection, balance, creativity, flexibility, diversity, good
citizenship, generosity, and non-materialism;
Returning to the question of whether the world can function without over-consumption, I believe the answer is yes. Of course, it will require some substantial changes to the way our world is organized, it would involve a fundamental “relocalization” of our food, energy, goods, currency, governance and culture. But I find this prospect exciting because it feels like real change is at our fingertips.


http://www. adbusters. org/blogs