Three Cities Switching To Life-Affirming Economies
Three Cities Switching To Life-Affirming Economies
“Doughnut economics” invites nature and social well-being into urban planning.
(YES! Magazine) The city of Portland, Oregon, prides itself on being ahead of the curve. In 1993, it became the first U.S. city to adopt a climate action plan, which now calls for cutting carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Portland also has long been a leader in progressive urban planning strategies, and since 2006 has been a member of C40, an international network of cities seeking innovative ways to reduce emissions.
That’s why in 2013, as the city’s planners began to develop the 2015 update to the climate plan, they started working with a new model to calculate the city’s carbon emissions profile. Using the Stockholm Environment Institute’s model, the city could enumerate the emissions of the life cycle of 536 different products and commodities used in the Portland metropolitan area—everything from raw materials like timber and food crops, to manufactured items like office furniture and chocolate.
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Thus emerged the visual idea of a doughnut: two concentric rings, the outer symbolizing the world’s ecological ceiling (beyond which lies environmental destruction and climate change), the inner symbolizing the social foundation (inside which is homelessness, hunger, and poverty). The space between the two rings—the “substance” of the doughnut—was the “safe and just place for humanity.”
The world already was overshooting the ecological ceiling and falling short of the societal foundation in many places.
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Adopting an ambitious re-envisioning of the city’s economy doesn’t come easily. Organizers convened a multi-day series of workshops in 2019 that included municipal, community, and business leaders. The end result was a city “portrait” that considers the city through four lenses: what it would mean for the city’s people to thrive, how the city can thrive within ecological limits, how the city impacts the health of the entire planet, and how the city affects the well-being of people around the world. ...........(more)
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/ecological-civilization/2021/02/16/cities-life-affirming-economies
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Let's discuss this over-all unhealthy consumed food-based model - do you prefer baked, fried, yeast or cake, and/or glazed, sugared, filled with sweet (jelly/custard). - Hey, who gets to eat the doughnut hole, full of social resolutions? The kids? Stereotypically, LOL, the doughnut is also the unfit boys in blue favorite, freebie or not, food, no? Is the product certified organic/non-GMO and packaged without plastics or parabens, phthalates, or made with chemical dyes and preservatives for an eternal shelf-life? - at least, carbon neutral-ly mfg'd?
Whatever, the doughnut is one of the most unhealthy processed foods there is, being full of sugar, unhealthy fats, and dessicated by glyphosate carbohydrate or grown in-tired nutrient-deficient soil.
I'd suggest a pizza model with the costs paid thusly - crusts paid by the perhaps top 10% (I prefer a thick crust), sprinkled by the profits of non-dairy protein-rich cheese investors, and topped w/healthy rainbow-colored veggies and/or lab-created pepperoni/sausage and foraged from community and tended personal plot to fork "victory" gardens. We all get an equal slice. The pizza model wouldn't create any "doughnut hole" wastage or "mini" product purchased most often to treat the sweet-teeth of kids or rationed by dieters watching portion size, LOL!
