It is no secret that our current economic model, with its emphasis on unlimited growth and wealth accumulation, has been unkind to our natural environment and much of the humanity that populates it. Now that this model is beginning to even fail the few whom it enriched, we are in an unusual moment where there is consensus to fix it. Yet we have little collective wisdom on what it means to have a healthy economy. How might such an economy look? And what types of questions should we be asking ourselves as we imagine it?

In Right Relationship Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver use the core Quaker principle of “right relationship”—interacting in a way that is respectful to all life and that aids the common good—as the foundation for a new economic model. Right Relationship poses five basic questions: What is an economy for? How does it work? How big is too big? What’s fair? And how can it best be governed? In the course, Brown and Garver expose the antiquated, shortsighted, and downright dangerous assumptions that underlie our current answers to these questions, as well as the shortcomings of many current reform efforts.

Garver and Brown propose new answers that combine an acute awareness of ecological limits with a fundamental focus on fairness and a concern with the spiritual, as well as material, well-being of the human race. Brown and Garver describe new forms of global governance that will be needed to get and keep the economy in right relationship with the earth and the life on it.

In America, Barack Obama’s leadership brings with it new hope, but governments alone can’t be expected to produce positive change in our economies. Global citizens must also play a part in bringing to life a “right relationship” that enhances social and ecological well being—or else we’ll continue to find ourselves in quagmires like the one we are experiencing today.

“We truly need to reinvent our man-made world if we hope to sustain flourishing human and natural communities. Starting from first principles, this wonderful book provides a much-needed, innovative blueprint for this rebuilding.” - Gus Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, cofounder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World

“This book deserves to sell a million copies. The questions asked—and answered-- in Right Relationship make a vastly more important contribution to our future than analytical models for maximizing GDP.” - Herman Daly, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland and winner of the 1996 Right Livelihood Award

“This remarkable book asks appropriate and fundamental questions about the kind of world in which we want to live and proposes an ethical and systemic approach to designing the future.” - Elizabeth Dowdeswell, former Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and founder and former CEO, Nuclear Waste Management Organization, Canada

Peter G. Brown is a professor at McGill University. He holds academic appointments in the Departments of Geography and Natural Resource Sciences, as well as the School of Environment. He is the author of The Commonwealth of Life: Economics For a Flourishing Earth and Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America.

Geoffrey Garver is an environmental consultant and lecturer in law in Montreal, Quebec. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Quaker Institute for the Future.

Right Relationship
Building a Whole Earth Economy
By Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver
Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
$16.95 paperback original; 240 pages ISBN: 978-1-57675-762-8
Publication Date: February 2009

For information about Right Relationship and the authors, please contact Peter Cavagnaro at pcavagnaro@bkpub.com or (415) 743-6469.