Local currencies are coming back into popularity to judge by a couple issued by Transition initiatives in the UK. Australian social innovators, however, experimented with a local currency well before the British…

Talk about rapid response. Within a couple days of Michael Shuman finishing his Brisbane address, something like $36,000 had been raised to set up a local economic initiative. It seemed like the idea of LEI’s – Local Economic Initiatives – that emerged in the 1970s only to soon disappear, had been reborn. Michael is an  Read more »

FOR MICHAEL SHUMAN, his visit to Australia was a whirlwind of appearances and presentations that started in Brisbane, took him into Northern NSW, down to Melbourne, then up to Coffs Harbour and Bellingen, down south to Hobart then north to Sydney. Michael works with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies in the USA.

Written by Russ Grayson. First published in Online Opinion in 2007. GO LOCAL. That’s the suggestion of NSW North Coast community educator, Tim Winton, for coping with what he sees as the approaching peak oil crisis. ‘Peak oil’ describes the reaching of a peak in global oil production. After that, an inevitable decline kicks in,  Read more »