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Perfect storm of environmental and economic collapse closer than you think
Jonathon Porritt, Guardian
Green measures have to be at the heart of any financial rescue packages if we are to avoid catastrophe
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A “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and high-cost energy will hit the global economy before 2030, said the government’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, last week. Factor in accelerating climate change and this lethal cocktail leads to public unrest, cross-border conflict and mass migration – in other words, an economic and political collapse that will make today’s economic recession seem very tame indeed. But though I totally agree with John Beddington’s analysis, I think he’s got the timing wrong. This “perfect storm” will hit much closer to 2020 than 2030.
… And then there’s the debt issue. Governments have systematically stoked up levels of personal and national debt (including insane asset bubbles in housing, land and property) explicitly to force-feed high levels of economic growth. We will all be paying off those financial debts for decades to come.
On the environment front, as our financial debts have built up, so have our debts to nature – in terms of the unsustainable depletion of natural resources, measured by the loss of topsoil, forests, fresh water and biodiversity. Everybody knows that liquidating capital assets to fuel consumption is crazy but nobody seems to know how to stop it.
There is a simple conclusion here: the self-same abuses of debt-driven “casino capitalism” that have caused the global economy to collapse are what lie behind the impending collapse of the life-support systems on which we all ultimately depend.
As regards appropriate remedies, the link between today’s recession and the perfect storm that awaits us in 2020/30 couldn’t be clearer: sort out today’s calamity by investing in infrastructure and technologies to help avoid tomorrow’s infinitely worse calamity. In other words, a massive “green recovery package” along the lines we are now seeing in the US, South Korea and other European countries, focusing on energy efficiency, renewables, smart energy grids, new transportation solutions and so on.
(23 March 2009)
Social effects of inequality have profound implications
Lynsey Hanley, Guardian
We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens’ incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks’ holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more.
Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don’t soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why.
The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet’s resources.
Wilkinson, a public health researcher of 30 years’ standing, has written numerous books and articles on the physical and mental effects of social differentiation. He and Pickett have compiled information from around 200 different sets of data, using reputable sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the US Census, to form a bank of evidence against inequality that is impossible to deny.
(14 March 2009)
EB contributor DE writes:
An excellent book review and a timely book.
The “banging their heads against a brick wall” passage of the book review resonates home in me as that’s the way I feel all the time. It’s the affecting, surreal nature of living in a culture of make believe. As Jiddu Krishnamurti observed, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.
It is tragic that this kind of research–the conclusions of which have long been obvious to me–will never, contrary to the hope of the book reviewer, resonate with the unapologetic and resolute American culture (We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. – Barack Obama).
The Three Bears & The Great Transition (WORD document)
Mike Gould, Futures Trust (New Zealand)
The current international financial and economic turmoil has raised the question as to whether we are facing a depression or a recession. While a full range of pundits and commentators give an equally full range of answers, the reality is that we are facing three bears and a Great Transition. Without acknowledging this, discussion relating to whether we are in a recession or depression can be only superficial at best.
[The three bears are population growth, global warming and oil depletion.]
… the complexity and interrelationship of the major issues facing us is such that, any certainty as to the details of where we might end up, especially if based on any single-issue approach, can only be misplaced. What seems to be important is not that we have detailed plans of what we should do, but rather an acceptance that we need to continually re-evaluate and be trying a range of options as well as being nimble on our feet while the ‘three bears’ continue to roam the landscape. The bears have shown their capacity to move suddenly, and often erratically, at the drop of a honey pot. Flexibility might well be our best response.
What does all this mean for those people in New Zealand who have to make decisions irrespective of prevailing uncertainty?
Some of the ways forward for us are becoming clearer. While there will be some direct impacts from global warming they are unlikely to be as severe as they are in many other countries. In this respect we are particularly blessed. Indeed James Lovelock, of ‘Gaia’ fame, recently wrote in an article for the London Times, that New Zealand was one of the few countries that could be regarded as a lifeboat for human civilization. This might seem ‘over the top’ to some, but all the evidence put forward from our own research organisation, NIWA, indicates impacts from global warming on our islands are not likely to be overly severe. That’s not to say we won’t have some problems, but they are unlikely to be of a scale to cause us major national disruption. Secondary follow-on in the form of migrating people from very badly affected areas is another story. Population growth (other than that which may result from increased migration) is unlikely to be an issue in New Zealand for the foreseeable future. It is hard to see that we will not have enough food to eat as long as we can organize a sensible distribution system for all. The depletion of oil, on the other hand, will, at some stage, probably in the not-too-distant future, cause major problems if we don’t start planning now. Our electricity and transport systems are obvious candidates for considerable planning and action before the trouble starts, as trouble there surely will be as oil becomes less available and relatively expensive. We have much natural gas and coal. Global warming issues will probably constrain their use. Development of our broadband infrastructure seems to be a ‘no-brainer’. In short, ‘electrify everything that moves, and if you can’t, go by broadband’.
(March 2009)
Author Mike Gould chairs the New Zealand Futures Trust and manages their website – www.futurestrust.org.nz. He writes:
We’ve just started a new service; “Essays” and I’ve set the ball rolling with a piece on
perspectives from New Zealand – http://www.futurestrust.org.nz/content/blogcategory/33/140/. Our issues sometimes differ from those prevailing in the US, although most times there is considerable commonality.
Dr Robert Costanza on ecological economics
Big Gav, Peak Energy
Dr Robert Costanza, Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics recently gave a talk at Wellington’s Victoria University on the the ecological and financial crises that are underway.
The video is quite long (55 min) – Costanza’s talk starts 5 minutes in. There is also an accompanying presentation, entitled “The Global Recession: an opportunity to create a sustainable and desirable future” (.ppt 27 Mb).
Costanza was invited to New Zealand by the NZ Green Party (via frogblog).
[YOUTUBE at original or go directly to the posting at YouTube ]
(22 March 2009)
In his talk, Dr. Costanza mentions that we may have passed peak oil production. -BA
The Next Ten Years: What it Will Look Like
Chuck Burr, Culturequake
If you want to see what the next decade will look like, look no further than France, Ukraine, and Iceland today. This week one to three million people took to the streets of France for a second round of protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis. Protests later turned violent as youths clashed with police.
Protests have also erupted in Ukraine. Ukraine’s economy has gone into a nosedive, its banking system is paralyzed and millions of people have lost their jobs in recent months, industrial production has plunged 26.6 percent in the past year, the national currency, the Gryvna, has lost 50 percent of its value since last summer, default on Ukraine’s $105 billion foreign debt may be imminent or barely avoided.
In October of last 2008 Iceland’s three largest banks failed unable to pay about $61 billion of debt, 12 times the size of the entire economy. The Iceland banking failure slashed more than two thirds off the value of the krona last year, pushing inflation 20 percent and sending unemployment to a record high. The inflation rate fell to 17.6 percent in February, from a 19-year high of 18.6 percent the month earlier.
Worldwide, a wave of social and political unrest could sweep through the world’s poorest countries if G20 leaders fail to come to their aid, the World Bank warns today, March 22, 2009. A new report from the Overseas Development Institute says the a collapse of the global economy would cost developing countries $750 billion in lost output, drive millions more into poverty, lead to an increase to nearly a billion in the number of people going hungry, and cost 90 million lives.
If all of the above spreads over the next decade, especially to China and Mexico, there will be a bunch of clueless formerly-wealthy people sitting around in their mac-mansions wondering what happened.
…Over the next ten years we will probably see: The end of the go-anywhere any-day airline industry as we know it. A 20 to 50 percent reduction in long-haul trucking. The mothballing of the international space station. $6-$10 gallon gas and the end of one or all of the big three automakers. Closure of several national retail chains. A DOW of between 4000 and 6000. Pension benefits cut by half. The Great Depression II will not have ended. Resurrection of the “victory garden” now called the “I need to eat garden.” Mass migrations. Reinstatement of the draft to fight resource wars or mandatory national service. Shortages of spare parts. Gas lines and rationing. Ideas such as petrocollapse and a steady-state economy will have joined global warming in mainstream consciousness. With a decline of world oil production of 6 to 9.1 percent per year, we will see GDP drop from $14.58 trillion in 2008 to between $7 and $9 trillion by 2019.
…If we are going to engineer a softest landing for the next generation we do need to strive for: a steady-state economy, re-localization and expanded nonprofits, local community, respect for our elders, dissolve the nation-state, transition from agriculture to horticulture, and community education—basically a new culture(s). Standardized “no child left behind” should be replaced by “every child can plant a forest garden and feed their family.” But no matter your cause, it is a lost cause without reducing population.
…So What Do We Do Now?
Find like-minded people and start the multi-generational journey to find more ways to support each other. Unplug from the matrix; unplug from your television and the private property debt treadmill. Create community and land trusts. Make things up as you go. Repurpose the best skills to support your community. Plant a food forest instead of an annuals only garden; emphasize perennials. Work from a sense of joy.
The majority is not ready to unplug from the system until they see repeated examples of a better way to live—of new cultures. They need to walk towards something better, not away from something bad. We are not only becoming the change we want to see, but we will be the inspiration for more to follow.
(23 March 2009)
