New Book: Issues Behind The News
ISSUES BEHIND THE NEWS
The advancement of our country has benefitted from vigorous debate from progressive thinkers who promote ideas that challenge traditional ways of doing and thinking about things. In this debate, different voices are crucial. In a world with growing inequality, where poverty exists alongside extreme wealth, where the headline news is often contained within a mental framework that is determined by existing elites, it is important to hear alternative voices. When scientists portray a dire future caused by environmental destruction, but much needed changes are frustrated by self-interest, other perspectives give us an opportunity to reassess the way we live.
One such voice is heard in this book. Robert brings a well-honed ethical perspective orientated to policy and institutional assumptions that need to be identified and rethought. I hope that this volume receives wide circulation so it can contribute to the ongoing debate about our future and the wellbeing of our country and world.
Marja Lübeck List MP based in Rodney
Table of Contents
1 Introduction to Climate Warming
2 Rare Earths
3 The Science and Economics of Steam Trains
4 An Environmental Ethic
5 The Water, Land and Food Nexus
6 The Government’s Evil Investments
7 The Government’s Response
8 Inequality and the Climate Crisis
9 Fit for Purpose
10 What Can I Do?
11 The Bankruptcy of Responsible Investment
12 How Can We invest Ethically?
13 Coronavirus: A Dress Rehearsal?
14 Coronavirus and Limits to Growth
15 Where is the Money Coming From and Going To?
16 Please Sir, Can I’ve Some More? Trust and Kindness in Government Departments
17 Should We Eat Meat?
18 What Kind of Economy Do We Want?
19 A Modern Parable: Antarctica and Awe
Price: $20. Add P&P = $4.50
To order please contact Robert Howell rhowellnz@gmail.com
Biography
Robert’s primary interest is working to understand the links between ecological degradation, economic and financial systems, and ethics, with particular focus on ethical investment and economic and financial reform, and shareholder activism. He was the Chair of the Council for Socially Responsible Investment in New Zealand from 2003 to 2012. He initiated and co-founded the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility. He has recently published Investing in People and the Planet.
He has had a background as a CEO, management consultant, and contract university teacher, with competencies in strategic visioning, strategic planning, governance and policy setting, organisational and systems design and implementation, and business ethics. He has a MA in philosophy, a postgraduate diploma in health management, and a PhD in community health planning and management. His time as a City Manager in the 1980’s led to the local authority providing much better value for money for its ratepayers. His publications were influential in reviewing the major reforms in New Zealand the 1980’s and identifying the need for further reforms that followed. He ran his own company in international education after leaving the Council.
During the last decade he has developed competencies in writing and teaching the ethical, economic, business, policy and conflict implications of climate change, environmental degradation and sustainability, bringing together philosophical, spiritual, policy and management strategy skills, knowledge and experience.
He is a Quaker who led a twelve year Quaker programme with the Center for Security and Peace Studies at University of Gadjah Mada in Indonesia, to provide Police with Masters Programs in Conflict Resolution, and 5-day workshops for Police at district operational levels with non-violent conflict resolution skills. From 2005 to 2008, 478 Police participated in the workshops.
I'm looking forward to reading this book. Especially the chapter on Coronavirus being a dress rehearsal for climate change. So true.
ReplyDeleteRobert Howell, Issues Behind the News. Auckland, August 2020. Obtainable from: rhowellnz@gmail.com. 107 pages. NZ$20 plus p. and p.
ReplyDeleteThis is just the book we should be reading (and giving others to read) in New Zealand before the election in September. It does not directly compare and evaluate the policies proposed by the major parties to the election. Nor does it tell us which party’s plans will give us the greatest individual material advantage in the short term. Rather, as its title suggests, it explores from a progressive perspective the big questions we all need to be considering when we evaluate those policies ourselves.
This book ranges over the major interlocking challenges we face: climate change and environmental degradation, inequality within and among nations, world food supply, dependence on continuing growth in the economy, and private and state investment in industries that damage the environment and human beings.
It is remarkable in many ways. The author has read very widely and reflected deeply on the information and ideas he has encountered, yet he has distilled all that material into 19 short, accessible essays, with no footnotes. He leads us through arguments to some clear conclusions, but, overall, invites us to think through the issues for ourselves.
Howell’s approach blends ethics and science. He asks “What sort of world do we want to live in? What changes must we make to ensure that human life is sustainable for the long-term future? What habits of mind do we need to change if we are to imagine the needed changes?” Much more effectively than most commentators, he links the big issues to our personal lives, explaining how to calculate (and reduce) our household carbon footprint, detailing the implications of meat-eating and international air travel for the climate crisis, showing how to ensure that our individual (as well as government) investments are in socially responsible enterprises.
While the data Howell has assembled and the fundamental arguments he develops are relevant to all industrialised countries, many of the chapters focus specifically on the New Zealand scene. So, he reflects on the ongoing costs to New Zealanders of the adoption in the 1980s, first by a Labour government then by a National government, of a neoclassical market-led economy and on the policies required if we are to navigate our way out of it. Then, he scrutinises the negative environmental and economic implications of maintaining the country’s dependence on a meat- and dairy-based agriculture.
He concludes with a reflection on the options facing the country in the post-Covid era, insisting on the importance of looking beyond just getting people who have lost their jobs back into employment, to adopt an economy based on the principle of our living within the capacity of the Earth to support human life.
Michael Hanne (co-editor of Warring with Words: Narrative and Metaphor in Politics. New York and Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2015.)