Bren Smith https://www.greenwave.org/team
-We need to draw down carbon by lifting up people. I'll tell you what a just transition is not: a soulless empty job or money alone. A just transition is about meaning and culture, jobs that people write and sing songs about - there aren't any good songs about lawyers out there. There are tons of good songs about fishermen and steelworkers and lumberjacks. There is a deficit of autonomy, of agency in our economy. We need self-directed lives succeeding and failing on your own terms, we need solidarity and soul-filling work.
-I was in Newfoundland when the cod stocks collapsed, thirty thousand people out of work. It was amazing to see an economy built up over a hundred years decimated over night, fishermen walking like hungry ghosts on the streets, canneries emptied and boats beached and that had a huge effect on me. I realized there aren't going to be any jobs on a dead ocean, there won't be any food, these are kitchen table issues. I realized that I had to figure out a way to work with the ocean, I had to be a steward in order to make a living on a living planet.
William McDonough https://mcdonough.com/
-Archimedes said "Give me a long enough lever and a fulcrum, and I can lift the world". The fulcrum we use for all our levers of change are our human principals, our values. You need something that doesn't move, if you're going to move everything. All the levers that we need to make the changes that give our children hope, they need something to lean on, and that something should be what we believe in. So start with what you believe in - the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, and then move to the less and the more.
-Net zero is a noble goal but it means we want to be less bad. Less bad, by definition is bad, just less so. It's not good. When we say stop, and don't say what to do instead, it's hard to stop. I say get out there and do more that is good.
-A product is a service. What you really want is the service of the product, not the object itself. That is the key of the circular economy. Sell the light, not the fixture.
-The question of business is often: how much can I get, for how little I give? I want it cheaper and I want more - its about limits and greed. The question I like to ask is: how much can we give for all that we get? It's about abundance and generosity.
Manuel Pastor https://solidarityeconomics.org/se-book/
-COVID was the disease that revealed our illnesses of economic precarity, of systematic racial disparities, of inadequate health care. However it also revealed our mutuality.
-Why would we want to go back to a normal that did not work for so many? With so many jobs that are high risk with low pay? With so many left without a social safety net? This is a moment of transformation. It requires reimagining and restructuring to be able to recognize the disparities that have existed, challenge inequality and lift up our commonalities.
-Traditional economics assumes that people are selfish and you need the state to constrain people. But people also act out of mutuality and concern, people rush to the rescue of other folks. The questions is, does our system feed the wolf of selfishness or does it feed the spirit of inclusion, fairness and mutuality?
