It’s rare that an economics article strikes me as actually pretty radical, but this one did. It goes beyond old world left/right thinking, and even beyond the new wine in old bottles thinking of the green new deal.
Is it feasible or reasonable? No idea, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.
https://eand.co/our-civilization-needs-a-new-economy-or-it-dies-fbacb514e4c2
So, is he saying that, in order to keep her global ecosystems running fulsomely, as she’s been doing, come (Siberian Traps) hell, (Meltwater Pulse 1b) high-water, (Taurid) comet apocalypse, or snowball-Earth, Mam Gaia is now going to need a bank account, provided for her by her johnny-come-lately hom sap child, and stocked with fiat currency conjured out of thin air for her, as usual, by this same delusions-of-grandeur-hag-ridden teenager species?
And this universal monetisation will somehow save everything? Managed, of course, by this same deluded teeny? Because - of course - he can do it so much better than his (tough-bitch, hyper-experienced, fearsomely-tenacious) mother. Like managing the Amazon account, of the Sahara account, or…
Surely Loki is having a royal piss-take with humankind right now.
What has to happen - and will happen, will-we, nil-we - is that hom sap needs to get his fool hands off the levers of power on this planet (not that we’re ever going to be able to manage those levers, any more than Phaeton could control his dad’s horses), and recognise that we’re not in charge here, never will be, and the only prudent posture is to learn - sorry, re-learn - what our gatherer-hunter ancestors knew and performed rather well for many millennia: Honour thy Mother; follow her mandates!
Of course, it could be that this is a brilliant idea which I’ve just not understood. But at first blush it seems quite zany to me. Maybe it’ll grow on me, with a bit of coaching… 
Lol! Yes, at first (and maybe second and third) blush it does seem weird, I’ll grant you. And maybe it is actually bonkers.
The thing I liked about it was a total reimagining of money, and a new economy built on the idea of celebrating the gigantic but previously unacknowledged role of nature in our economy.
It seems to me that we are going to have to overhaul what we understand as money and the “money supply” in a pretty radical way.
This may not be it, but it seems to be taking the conversation in an interesting direction!
Cheers
Nope, I read it twice and it seemed even more bizarre the second time.
There isn’t really any such thing as an economy, and money is a construct…but enough of us believe in it to make it very plausible.
In theory the notion of carbon costs (for instance) being factored into pricing seems like a good deal for mam Gaia (to plagiarise R). It could certainly make environmentally harmful production less competitive. Demand could drop and ecological harm could be mitigated/reduced. But various hedging arrangements come into play and it’s all a bit too much like the selling of indulgences.
Thanks for the comments @KarenEliot.
This is at the heart of a lot of my thinking, and I’ve been struggling to come up with a way of organising that does away with the concept of money altogether. I’ve not been at all successful in getting there, and one of the things I liked about the article was that it was one of the few I’ve come across that tries to think about money in a whole new way.
But - I could have read it cockeyed. I’ll have another read.
Cheers
PP
Don’t give up on the basic idea, though, P: that our basic concepts about money and economies need root-and-branch rethinking. That’s clearly right.