David Korten
Feedback? Questions?
Include your name, the article headline, and your message.
Finding our way to a viable human future will require the guidance of a true eco-nomics, grounded in biology and ecology rather than finance and capital.
Changing course to transform into an ecological civilization will take international cooperation. But the U.S and China are setting a poor example.
Climate action, racial justice, and economic reform ultimately all have the same end goal. Our movements should unite behind it.
Building an ecological civilization is the only way forward to saving both the planet and humanity. And time is running out.
The Bush administration used the attacks to label dissent and protests against international trade agreements as terrorism. Now movements have recovered their lost momentum.
If we’re going to survive as a species and heal the Earth, we’ll need to drastically cut back on our consumption.
We’re in a time of global and national crises. President Biden must rise to the task.
There’s a way forward after the election, and it must involve having open and honest conversations about our hopes and fears.
The founders of this nation did many things, but establishing democracy was not one of them. That’s our job.
The COVID-19 outbreak is the planet’s way of telling us to do better, both in the environment and in the economy.
The coronavirus outbreak is presenting us an opportunity to rethink our economic system—and remake it in an image we’d prefer.
The pandemic is exposing the deep systemic problems in our society—and it removes any excuse for not addressing them.
Our current economic paradigm is leading us to a world that nobody wants. To change that, we will have to invent an economics suited to the 21st century.
We are entering humanity’s defining decade, and 2020 is when we have to make the hard decisions.
The climate crisis is our common cause, and we’ll need to elect a president that is willing to take it on.
Humanity’s existential crisis can be resolved only when we the people stand united behind a vision of the world we truly want.
An economic system that serves everyone and the planet is necessary for our survival. Here are some guiding principles to get us there.
Soil, not money, is the source of wealth, and our economic system needs to reflect that.
As the time when climate chaos, peak oil, and an unstable global economy unraveled society, or as the time of a Great Turning?
Socialist baiting of the last century won’t work against the new generation of political leaders.
We need true democracy if we’re to halt the slide into self-extinction.
The founders of the United States have the society they wanted—one that keeps people like them in power.
In 2019, we must move beyond the myth of the lone individual to recognize our deep interdependence and responsibilities for one another and nature.
Around the world, people are realizing the current path will lead only to disaster, and they’re beginning to ask the hard questions about what to do next.
We evolved to be connected to nature and to one another, but our exploitative global economy is severing those relations.
Our future depends on bridging the partisan divide that elevates corporate interests above our personal well-being.
Transformation begins with clarity on the nature of the choice that confronts our species.
An invitation to the wealthiest man in the world to consider putting Earth ahead of space.
Current trade agreements are great at creating more billionaires, not so much at protecting the interests of workers.
The civil rights icon saw economic issues to be intertwined with racial justice. Today’s globalized economy makes justice that much harder to achieve.
Tariffs on imports could be part of reorienting the global economy. Now is a good time to talk about it.
Some CEOs are getting the message that even though the economy is growing, they need to serve their communities, too.
For the well-being of most everyone—including the rich—equality is more important than growth.
Roughly 20 percent of U.S. workers are in a high-paying finance, technology, and electronics sectors. The other 80 percent face a daily struggle to survive.
We must reduce our burden on Earth’s regenerative systems by approximately 40 percent.
A new book outlines how the superrich have worked to undermine our country, and what we can do to fight back.
The Trump/Republican tax cut proposal is an opportunity to discuss how to redistribute wealth and power.
Perhaps the most compelling reason to change our ways is that Earth needs our help. In our responsibility to respond, might we unite in common cause?
Our system of law has the rights issue exactly backward. But humanity is slowly reawakening to the simple logic that Mother Earth’s rights must come before human rights.
Forget the GDP, it’s time for our leaders to pay attention to metrics that matter.
In explaining why his city got rid of monuments to Confederate generals, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu eloquently summarizes our country’s history of diversity.
The integration of knowledge, science, hospitality, and travel can have huge benefits for human connections and peace.
This is the real-world economy for a living Earth that we must learn to structure and manage to provide a safe space for humanity.
Has Trump served us all in breaking things open? Only if we use the moment for serious rethinking of policy.
Local control is a foundational conservative principle—but progressives also embrace it.
Giving back requires humility. It will be a true test of learning new skills.
We must shift the structures of society to ensure the Earth remains healthy and everyone has access to a decent livelihood.
We face the prospect of an economy with little need for humans. Advances in artificial intelligence call us to revisit basic questions about work, love, and human purpose.
In the chaos of Trump’s first three weeks in office, we can see a frighteningly coherent agenda—and a national and global emergency.
When we call ourselves protectors, we cast our role as fulfilling our responsibility to the community that sustains us—not for our personal benefit, but for the benefit of all.
A world free of extremes of wealth and poverty in which no one needs to stand in line for a chance at a secure and fulfilling life.
The Great Growth Con promises that economic growth—measured by gross domestic product—will benefit everyone, rich and poor alike.
We’ve been pitted against each other for too long. Now is the time to come together to fix our corrupt political systems.
The outcome of this election is a wake-up call to action. Now that we know our elected leaders will not save us, let’s get to work.
China and the U.S. are poised as the dominant players. Will they compete or cooperate?
The purely private-purpose corporation is an illegitimate entity. This is the elephant in the room that no politician dare mention.
The $66 billion sale of Monsanto is yet another reminder of how corporations have colonized the world and subverted democracy. To regain our future, we must claim our right to popular sovereignty.
What is the most important—yet neglected—issue in the political debate? Hint: It isn’t the ideal body weight of Miss Universe. Part 1.
A military response to violence creates more violence. For real security, we need to stop climate change and work toward shared prosperity.
If we can recognize our destruction of other animals’ habitats, perhaps we can recognize our destruction of all the living systems on which we depend.
Has gig work helped you build community or left you isolated and vulnerable?
We can refuse to accept the pervasive, but false, claims that money is wealth and a growing GDP improves the lives of all.
Will we respond to Trump’s appeal to the reptilian brain or choose Clinton’s call to our higher nature?
The deceptive branding behind corporatists’ preference for the term “free trade” over simply “trade.”
Maybe now we can renegotiate the corporate boundaries and interests that overtook those of communities.
Bernie Sanders has the best policies. But Hillary Clinton has the chops to advance a progressive agenda—if we make her.
Current trade agreements have been of, by, and for transnational corporations. Growing opposition gives us the opportunity to change that in our next-generation agreements.
Voters hit hardest by free-trade economics are rebelling against the status quo. We can use that energy to build a powerful, grassroots movement for democracy.
“How do we grow the economy?” is an obsolete question. Local initiatives across the world are looking for maturity instead as they rebuild caring, place-based communities and economies.
Those of us who succumbed to the false promises of Western consumerism at great cost to the planet and to ourselves are Earth’s prodigal children now returning home.
Humanity has been acting like a willful child, demanding everything and leaving messes everywhere. It is time for our species to take the step to maturity, to acknowledge that care and cooperation are key to happiness—and even survival.
Bernie Sanders’ popular campaign suggests that many Americans aren't afraid of socialism anymore. But real democracy is an even better alternative to capitalism.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is slated for an up-or-down vote in Congress. Proponents say it’s about free trade. But it looks more like corporate colonization.
Call it populism versus corporatism or democracy versus corporate rule. Either way, it is a far more meaningful political division than two political parties debating big government versus small.
The leaked text is full of dense legal jargon. But a close reading makes its corporate agenda crystal clear.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
David Korten's new essay (available to read as a PDF) connects the work of finding a new sacred story with the effort to build a new economy.
Those in Mandela's circle were united in their compassion for the architects of the Apartheid system.
"Listen to and work with your base to create a shared, big-picture narrative."
The peoples of earlier times prospered from the guidance of simple stories that offered answers to their deepest questions. We need those now more than ever.
Twenty years ago, David Korten began wrestling with the question, had we become too individualistic and shortsighted to save our species? Here's what he discovered about the power of foundational stories to keep us trapped in a suicidal economy—or awaken us to our spiritual nature.
Is it possible that the human future depends upon a new sacred story—a story that gives us a reason to care? Could it be a story already embraced by a majority, although it has neither institutional support nor a place in the public conversation?
Models for a healthy down-to-earth economy are all around us.
Is it possible that the human future depends upon a new sacred story—a story that gives us a reason to care? Could it be a story already embraced by a majority, although it has neither institutional support nor a place in the public conversation? David Korten suggests that this may be the case and invites you to join an already active conversation.
Wall Street is bankrupt. Instead of trying to save it, we can build a new economy that puts money and business in the service of people and the planet—not the other way around.
If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth. This requires building economies with heart.
Graphics showing climate change, financial
meltdown and peak oil