NEW YORK, May 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — He is an historian and a political activist widely credited with having raised public awareness about and galvanized public opposition to fracking. Dr. Adrian Kuzminski, Resident Scholar in Philosophy at Hartwick College, has also been a public official and candidate for office who has worked for political change through both the Green and Democratic parties, as well as through various environmental groups.
Kuzminski's new book, The Ecology of Money: Debt, Growth, and Sustainability, which Lexington Books will publish May 16, 2013, is already being hailed "the financial manifesto of the year" by economists and academics who reviewed advance copies.
Kuzminski posits a theory that while the environmental crisis and the economic crisis are deeply connected, they need not be inextricably linked.
"The United States has suffered 16 banking crises since 1790. What's more troubling than the cyclical recurrence of these crises," says Kuzminski, "is that we have allowed this crisis-recovery drama to become part of our national-economic psyche."
"With today's eco-crisis we have reached the limits of growth. We no longer have the natural resources to grow fast enough to pay our debts." This, he suggests, is the real root of America's current financial crisis.
If we are to live sustainably, Kuzminski argues, our system of money and credit must be transformed. We need a non-usurious monetary system appropriate to a steady-state economy, with capital broadly distributed at non-usurious rates of interest. Such a system was developed by an early nineteenth-century American thinker, Edward Kellogg, whose work inspired the populist movement and becomes more relevant than ever as a viable alternative to a financial system that Kuzminski and an increasing number of other economic thought leaders believe we can no longer afford.
Hartwick College economics professor Karl Seeley says, "We've got three intertwined problems of increasing wealth inequality, a stagnant labor market, and fraying ecological fabric. If we're going to get a handle on them, we need to rethink how our credit system works. Kuzminski provides a provocative history of how we got the system we have, and an interesting look at an alternative we might consider."
"Money makes the world go round, and yet remains a mystifying topic for most. Fortunately, Adrian Kuzminski's new and authoritative book clears up our cultural confusion about money and explains how our economic and ecological lives are deeply intertwined. Read this book—our planet's future may depend on it," says Rob Williams, professor of history, Champlain College and publisher of the Vermont Commons.
Adrian Kuzminski is an author and research scholar in philosophy at Hartwick College. His previous works include Fixing the System: A History of Populism, Ancient and Modern (2008); Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism (2008); and The Soul (1994). He is also founder and moderator of Sustainable Otsego, a social network in the Cooperstown, New York area, focused on promoting sustainable practices.
The Ecology of Money: Debt, Growth and Sustainability by Adrian Kuzminski
(152 pages, Hardcover)
Lexington Books, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0739177176
ISBN-13: 978-0739177174
Available at www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, www.powells.com and wherever fine books are sold.
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