"Fears over climate change have set into warp speed motion a mushrooming pileup of confusing and conflicting public policies, corporate goals and individual choices that rarely if ever deal head-on with land use as a major factor in climate change, much less address in any meaningful way the increasingly urgent environmental, economic, political and moral questions concerning land use." excerpt from Chapter 6

In this fact-filled guide for those perplexed by the current global argument about climate change, Geraldine Perry, a Certified Natural Health Consultant with a Masters Degree in Education, examines varying facets of the on-going debate, first noting that most climate change believers stress CO2 as the major villain, which has resulted in a "singular focus on reduction of C02 emissions." Perry points out that other elements such as nitrogen also have an effect and that land usage (agriculture) has always played a major role in climate disasters, as witnessed during the Dust Bowl. The political policies that followed the Dust Bowl, including the misnamed Green Revolution, brought about highly industrialized farming that is rapidly sucking the land dry and producing foods deficient in nutrients. The over-arching issue of land usage leads into international monetary policies that exploit ever-increasing debt as a way of keeping businesses and banks afloat. Connections between climate change (i.e. depletion of resources including land and nutrients), land use (i.e. the difference in value between "tree plantations" and old growth forests), and monetary policy (i.e. accumulation of ever-spiraling debt) form the nexus—the "new trifecta"—of this fascinating treatise.
 

Perry comes across as principled and forward-thinking. She proposes ameliorating the ravages of climate change through a combination of appropriate agricultural technologies, fair distrbution of wealth, and the elimination of central banking. She speaks knowledgably of the justifiable fears of Americas founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson, the powerful banking interests would control public policy and therby determine how and which wealth is extracted from our greatest shared resource, the Earth itself. By reading Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy, a thoughful seeker can discover a new way to look at these large and often confusing issues.

Climate Change, Land Use and Monetary Policy by Geraldine Perry offers a fresh perspective on a complicated subject. Her unconventional but well thought out take on familiar topics offers an opportunity for both believers and skeptics of climate change to think anew.

Her heavily footnoted book quotes extensively from Irving Fisher, Henry George, Thomas Jefferson, John Taylor of Caroline, Stephan Zarlenga, Michael Hudson, Alexander Delmar, Michael Chossudovsky, Mason Gaffney and many others.

Examples of her work follows:

"Jefferson clearly articulated an oft-repeated belief that no generation had a right to bind another with financial claims that would exceed the usufructory limits of the land." "Usufruct, which involves the legal right to use or profit from something belonging to another, became a key feature of the Roman based legal system." It is often thought to include land and natural resources.

"Eating up the usufruct means extinguishing the next generation's ability to share equitably the benefits of a natural resource. No individual or society has authority to cause such extinction whatever personal or collective rights they may allege; rather each generation has the right to inherit undiminished the same topsoil capital that its predecessors enjoyed."

"The entire issue of global warming/climate change has become so charged that any and all information which deviates even slightly from the party line is rejected outright."

"We delude ourselves into thinking that we, as a society, can create wealth through debt; thus robbing from nature and our own future, we set ourselves up for certain catastrophe."

Geraldine Perry encourages us to think holistically. Fertilizer is oil based and is paid for by the increased yields on land, even when that land's topsoil is being diminished. Land is a natural resource that the farmer owns but is mortgaged to the bank, or rents from another owner. Oil or other natural resources are extracted with bank loans, labor and enterprise. Carbon sink plantations in the third world are a mechanism to get first world countries to pay their "carbon debt" so that international agribusiness can profit, pay their bonds and help to pay third world debt which is owed to the international banks. It is a cycle of rents, debt, banks, land, extractions and mitigations. All of these involve the exchange of money. The Mixt Money Case of 1604 decided that money was a public measure.

This extremely well written book knits together climate change, land use and monetary policy in a new and enlightened way. The author points out the circle of rent, debt, money, carbon and diminished topsoil and natural resources in a creative and eye-opening treatise.

Ms. Perry covers topics succinctly and suggests that we are not yet free from the bust and boom cycles that leave us in a financial depression/recession for years. She reminds us that Irving Fisher, Henry Simon and other leading economists of the 1930s sought to understand the causes of the Great Depression and to offer solutions. Their ultimate solution was called the Chicago Plan which has supporters today. You could say it's a combination of the Mixt Money Case ideas, debt free money creation and banking reform.

Ms. Perry quotes a friend and mentor who is a believer of climate change but is puzzled as to why it seems to end with a carbon tax as the solution: "I do not see any way to counteract this level of organized power (green groups, university grants, corporate influence in rent-seeking and carbon emissions trading, my examples) except to persuade people that trading carbon dioxide emission will have no effect on the climate."

I often wondered how having carbon trading billionaires, carbon exchanges, and paying carbon offsets would be good for the environment or aid the poor. The answer, thanks to Geraldine Perry, is now more apparent. 

Perry's examination and illumination of the connection between natural resource exploitation, including soil depletion, and our undemocratic monetary system is critical to understand and, once understood, work to profoundly change. Her work is a compelling call for protecting nature's reserves - both the produce of the earth and human labor - by eliminating our current unsustainable debt money system.

As a 25-year member of Acres USA, knowing and working with Charles Walters as a writer and researcher of healthy soil and water, I wholly endorse the themes and the kinds of systemic solutions discussed in this book. The unusual depth and integration of information presented on seemingly unrelated subjects requires readers to fully embrace the fact that closing our eyes or closing our mind to facts or concepts we do not understand or wish to believe will not make those facts or concepts disappear. If we are to survive as a species we must be willing to face the ever-changing present with an open, deeply inquisitive mind so that we can provide a livable future for all of us. I strongly suggest reading this book with that kind of approach in mind.