



Basic Income network members and friends will discuss the links between basic income and sustainability. We will begin the think-in with short inputs from Theresa O’Donohue and Eimhin Shortt. A facilitated discussion will follow, with opportunities for all present to contribute and to learn together.

Saturday 12th September 2015

Carmelite Centre, Aungier St. Dublin

2.00 – 4.30PM

€5 Admission Fee

‘The Treadmill Of Production’

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Our opening speakers:

Theresa O’Donohue represents Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, on the Environmental Pillar plenary and convenes the Pillar’s Climate and Energy working group. She is a member of An Taisce’s Climate Committee and coordinator of the People’s Energy Charter. She became involved in the environmental movement via the transition movement 8 years ago and now contributes to energy, climate and development policy at local, regional and national level. As a single, unemployed, mother of 5, having worked in the private, public and voluntary sectors and lived in urban, semi rural and rural Ireland, Theresa has a good awareness of the diverse considerations in policy making. As a systems analyst she has an insightful understanding of development and is passionate about public participation and its critical role in sustainable development.

From 2008-2011 Eimhin David Shortt suffered repeated hospitalisation and surgery with an inconclusive diagnosis of acute Chrons/IBS. Exasperation with the western medical approach, coupled with a steady decline in health and quality of life, led him to India, to the Rajastani desert to live with an Ayurvedic doctor who restored a balance through a strict dietary regimen. During “the horizontal period”, with stints in hospital lasting up to 5 months at a time, internet access inadvertently matched Eimhin’s personal healing process with one of experiential learning as he observed the daily emergence of the networked commons, the remoulding of capital interest globally, and the emergence of new expressions of enterprise, cooperativism, open process, and the commons. On returning from treatment and practice in India, Eimhin became a “serial volunteer”, enabled by his ‘A38’ special dispensation to be mobile and to help with events in the area of social enterprise, impact investment, European project writing, cooperative development, open source web and process development, networked community strategies, and so on. After taking a voluntary internship with the Social Capital Markets in San Francisco and observing shortcomings in that culture, along with a feeling of urgent necessity with regard to both his own health and the national Irish situation in this regard, Eimhin returned home to begin work with (trans)local food systems. Today Eimhin is based in Birr Co.Offaly where he coordinates a local food project inclusive of a community food commons with socio-environmentally, entrepreneurial, and open cooperative aspirations. His work and that of those at the Growery and affiliated networks, weaves the local, national, and the trans-nationally networked cultures. His ‘accidental’ advocacy for BI is one wrought of a simultaneously painful and yet hugely rewarding experience and one that can hopefully shed some light on key points as to why Basic Income is a good idea for everyone.

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