At a session entitled ‘John Perkins on transforming turmoil’, which was held at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2017, founder of the firm Dream Change and author of the renowned book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, explains the difference between the ‘life economy’ and ‘death economy’ and why humanity should choose the former.

On the ‘death economy’

We have created something that I call a «death economy» — an economy based on destroying resources and exploiting the Earth. <...> We have created a system that can’t go on. We can’t continue digging up the Earth, destroying the air, destroying the climate — there has to be another way.

On the mistakes corporations make

I think corporations in the United States have made a lot of mistakes, I think the government made a lot of mistakes and, instead of doing really good things in the world, they did a lot of exploitation. <...> CEOs of corporations want to create a better world, but they are afraid to do so because, if they loose a small percentage of their market share, their profits will go down and stakeholders will fire them. So they face a dilemma.

On technology

We have created amazing technologies: medicine, art, music, but now we understand that maybe we have gone too far.

On transitioning to a new kind of economy

It’s time to change and we have reached the point beyond equilibrium. We need to move to a «life economy», an economy based on cleaning up pollution, regenerating the environment. <...> We have seen huge changes in the last five years regarding production of resources. Last year in the US was the first one when production of renewables was greater than that of fossil fuels.