Right Relationship book

Berrett Koehler, a prominent USA publisher, has agreed to publish the book that the Quaker Institute for the Future team have been working on since 2005. The tentative title is Right Relationship: The Hands-On Guide to Building a Whole Earth Economy. It is to be available Jan 2009.

The central message is that there is a growing incoherence between the human economy and the integrity of Earth’s life support systems. The book envisions a restructured economic system based on the right relationship between the human economy and the integrity of Earth’s biosphere.

Addressing the issue of energy use, economic growth, and wealth accumulation, and the way our present economy exploits and damages Earth’s communities of life, is an extremely difficult matter. Virtually everyone in our society, in some way, is living off the pattern of energy use and economic activity that is damaging Earth’s biotic integrity and leading to increasing ecological disruption. Nothing less than a major re-adaptation of human settlements and economic activity is required. Because the magnitude of our dilemma encompasses the whole adaptational stance of our culture, it reaches deeply into our spiritual life. The final chapter of the book will survey different methods of governance by which the shift could be accomplished.