Here’s how we get serious about the awful monetary system

I have been hearing more of my environmentalist friends mention that the monetary and banking systems are driving a metacrisis, where nearly everything is getting worse, nearly everywhere. Like me, they have come to realise that by incentivising endless commodification, debt, and growth, an expansionist monetary system is at the root of so much of what’s going wrong. But most of them are at a loss for what to do about it. Why? Because it’s big, vague, and hard to understand. In my case, it took years of study to feel that I could speak clearly on the subject – finally taking to the TEDx stage in 2011. In the years since then, I met many environmentalists who were so overwhelmed by the topic that they went back to what was familiar to them: fighting plastics, pushing for stricter deforestation laws, or calling for lower carbon footprints. All are important. But if we ignore the expansionist monetary system that drives such harms, amongst others, our situation will only get worse. That’s why it is important that more of us do the ‘hard yards’ in learning about the nature of current monetary systems, what the alternatives are, and how to enable them. That is important, whatever our current assessment on the pace of societal disruption and collapse; although a breaking of old systems can create space for the alternatives. 

The mainstream still needs to wake up to money 

Today, when I look at leading green groups like WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, I see that they are still focusing on what we did 20 years ago when I was head of the ‘markets and economic governance’ team at WWF-UK. For instance, they continue to criticise bank loans to oil or mining companies, but rarely mention how money itself is created. 

Over the last two decades, monetary systems have become even more destructive, complex and peculiar. Not only did the financial crisis of 2008 lead to massive amounts of newly created money being handed to financial institutions, in some countries the Covid-19 lockdowns were used as an excuse for existing plans to give money to large corporations, in the form of corporate bond buying (I explain this process in detail in Chapter 2 of Breaking Together). Also in that time, cryptocurrencies have come and gone and then come again in ever larger waves. The dominance of Bitcoin in that space shows the valuations are about its fame for breaking the paradigm, rather than the latest technical excellence. In the environmental finance field, ESG-informed asset management has expanded to become both normal and largely useless, while carbon markets have expanded and alienated people who cared about the climate and paid attention. 

There are some islands of civic contribution to the matters of monetary reform and currency innovation, with highlights including OpenCivics, Grassroots Economics and CoFi. However, these initiatives are surrounded by a sea of non-engagement from the more established organisations in civil society. That is unfortunate, as there has been a lack of leadership from either the banking system or the cryptocurrency world on matters of systemic damage from the sector they work in. Seven years ago, at a UN event I helped to organise, I asked the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, to recognise his opportunity and responsibility to lead on the issue of the carbon footprint of many cryptocurrencies. Such carbon footprints are unnecessary, as different approaches to issuance and security can be used. Since then, I have not seen much industry leadership, with ethical initiatives restricted to philanthropy schemes which serve the self-interest of marketing specific cryptocurrencies. 

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If you want to change the money system you need to understand what’s wrong

It is obvious that if the bigger picture of the monetary system continues to be peripheral to mainstream environmentalism, most green leaders will remain daunted. And that creates serious risk. Because when the problem is structural but our solutions are piecemeal, we risk promoting the wrong things, resisting the wrong things, or ignoring the right things altogether. 

This is well explained in a new article from my longtime colleague Matthew Slater. He critiques common assumptions about money among environmentalists, especially those inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future. In the novel, a fictional “Carbon Coin” is introduced as a bold solution to climate change in the form of a new currency issued in exchange for proven ecological regeneration. Using this as an example, Matthew warns that superficial understandings of money’s operation can lead to misleading or counterproductive proposals. He explains that resource-linked currencies (e.g., tied to forests or metals) would not necessarily reduce overconsumption or fund conservation, nor be that useful as currencies. He explains that such systems are still vulnerable to political manipulation and financial crises. Perhaps his main point is that attempts to reform global monetary systems often ignore the deeper issue: money systems are shaped by elite power structures, not by design or democratic participation. Innovations like Bitcoin, cap-and-trade, or microcredit, though often well-intentioned, have been co-opted to serve elite interests. Thus, he concludes that systemic change through top-down monetary innovation is unlikely to succeed. Instead, Matthew advocates for grassroots economic alternatives, such as local currencies, informal exchange systems, and small-scale economic networks that bypass the dominant financial system. These offer resilience against financial shocks and reduce dependency on exploitative structures.

I believe his ideas are close to the realisation that, as John Ruskin famously wrote, “there is no wealth but life.” True wealth is not one machine, or the products of that machine, nor a bit of life we might choose to to focus on. No, true wealth is all life, including ourselves and wider nature, and the quality of our relations with each other and wider nature. Therefore, any currency should be a mechanism for us collectively enabling that wealth in its entirety, not restricting it or extracting it. In the same way we don’t restrict bridge building because there aren’t enough metres, the availability of a currency should not restrict how much we trust and collaborate with each other. Neither should it control how that collaboration happens, which is the ecocidal situation at present with the ‘monetary growth imperative’ that Professor Christian Arnsperger and Matthew Slater explained previously in a joint research paper. 

The unit of money is therefore best as an abstract one, with its tangible and valuable connection to the real world being the system by which the people who use the currency decide the unit and, more importantly, who gets it, how much of it, and how. In other words, what is most important is how people and organisations go into credit and debt with each other in ways that enable collaboration rather than enabling their domination by the few. Without attention to that, the naming of a currency according to a metal, a country, or source code, a kilowatt hour, a tree, or a certificate of ecological merit, could all be forms of packaging around, potentially, the same anti-Life system. 

The part of the environmental movement that is closest to these ideas calls itself ‘degrowth’ or ‘postgrowth’. Unfortunately, most of the intellectuals involved with that part have been mute on the issue of expansionist monetary systems, with some academics even arguing against the topic being considered. They prefer the idea that the public requires education to drop an ideological commitment to growth, rather than needing to organise to free ourselves from the expansionist monetary system. When I suggested this preference suits intellectuals in comfortable opposition, and that if degrowth policies would be attempted across a whole economy with an expansionist monetary system, we would see terrible consequences, it led to one of the spicy moments on the closing panel of the World Adaptation Forum.

Here’s what you can do

As we say in the more intimate meetings I sometimes attend – let’s take a breath. No matter our outlook -whether we believe in reform, revolution, or collapse and re-emergence- it makes sense to want a grounded understanding of money and a strategy that feels coherent and doable. This won’t be quick. But it can be clear. We can know what to say and what to support. We can align our activism with a deeper strategy that addresses the real drivers of collapse, which also prevent us from softening it and birthing something new.

Towards that goal, here’s what I think you can do, starting today:

• Read Chapter 10 of my book Breaking Together. It lays out the problems with the current monetary system as best I could offer. It is available as a free audio. 
• Then read Matthew Slater’s article on how some environmentalists are mis-stepping as they awaken to the tyranny of the monetary system. If you want to go deeper, then consider the new book on “remaking money for a sustainable future” 
• Write to your favourite green groups. Ask them to deepen their stance—not just on fossil fuel loans, but on money creation itself. Push them to take seriously the role of monetary design in ecological collapse. If you are a member of green parties, or parties with significant green caucuses, then make sure this issue is brought into policy discussions. 
• Encourage them to support useful currency innovations—like time banks, LETS schemes, commitment pooling, and mutual credit systems. Also ask them to support alternative finance, including mechanisms for savings and financing that are outside the banking system. You could even point them towards the latest ideas on how to deploy relevant technologies from the crypto world, compiled by Stephen DeMeulenaere and Scott Morris. 
• Join or start a local initiative. Even if it’s small. Even if it’s informal. Something like a savings pool or a time bank. We can learn by doing, and have fun in the process. 
• Attend events where others are exploring these paths. I’m going to the Festival of Commoning in the UK for exactly that reason. Where I live there isn’t a ready-made group to join yet—but it’s part of the plan for Bekandze Farm, if we survive our start-up phase (your help for that would be most welcome!)
• Stay up-to-date by following the thought leaders on these issues who are pioneering real world applications that meet real needs, such as Will Ruddick and Benjamin Life.
• Consider joining one of the ‘Metacrisis Meetings’ where Matthew Slater and I will discuss the most interesting initiatives in this field.

Back to the future of money

My talk in Stroud will be my first on this topic since opening a blockchain conference at the UN in 2018. I dropped my attention to the issue, as I thought it would take too long to build coalitions to create change and I was needed elsewhere, on more general adaptation to climate change. But now I notice the beginnings of more dialogue between people who, on the one hand, have learned about money and currency from their enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies and blockchain and, on the other hand, those environmentalists coming to the conclusion that monetary issues need our attention. The system has not changed—but we are changing. We can begin to find each other. So we can begin to create what’s needed, patiently, below the radar of collapsing institutions.

Such an approach means we no longer need to wait for permission or grants from the government or big NGOs. Instead, we can reclaim the ability to meet our needs in ways that honour the planet and each other. And with every new conversation and initiative, the feeling of being daunted gives way to something else: determination. Along with the understanding that we will be building new systems in the ruins of the old.

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