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Ecological Sustainability, the Growth Machine, and the Financial Crisis
Issue 2, March 2009
Global ecological sustainability is imminently threatened by a massive ecological bubble. Global terrestrial, atmospheric, aquatic and marine ecosystems are no longer adequately intact to maintain conditions for life. The mark of progress and an equitable, sustainable economy is not how fast the economy grows at the expense of destroying these ecosystems. It is whether the basic needs and more of all Gaia’s people and creatures are being met, while maintaining forever the ecological sustainability of their shared ecosystem habitats. [continue]
Even through the rain, people continued to arrive. They crowded into the garage carrying saws and hammers, with tool belts strapped on. They were here to fight climate change. Everyone quickly introduced themselves and shook hands. With the pouring rain outside, the puddles outside growing, the crowd seemed expectant and excited. As in old-fashioned “barn-raisings” where neighbors pooled tools and skills to perform tasks bigger than any one of them could manage, the group of volunteers would weatherize this four-apartment building, helping out the residents while helping the planet. This was an idea whose time had come. [continue]
From whatever perspective we choose this fact is clear “there is a threat to life as we know it”, and this threat is being constantly amplified by the actions of man. The actions of modern technological man have helped bring this threat very close to becoming real for us on this planet Earth. In a fundamental sense, life can exist only in low entropy “islands” within the isothermal energy system that is the universe. Descriptions of these phenomena can extend from gas clouds, to nebulae, to stellar and planetary systems. Information allows for more detailed descriptions of greater complexity, be it of physical or biological systems, all being organized and sustained by the differential flows of energy possible in such “islands”. [continue]
Stern warnings followed by stern warnings, as drought pushes up grain futures
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Human activity cannot expand forever on our finite planet. An economy growing at 3% a year doubles its size every 24 years. Centuries of such growth have brought us to a mature size. As with individual maturity, there comes a time for societies to stop growing, recognize their power and take responsibly for their impacts. As a mature species, we have two responsibilities to Earth and ultimately, to ourselves. The first is to live within the availability of natural resources. Global production of oil has stalled for three years at about 85 million barrels a day, yet demand continues to increase. (Presently reduced by about 5 million bpd due to recession) This results in rising prices. The increased cost is reminding us all about how dependent we are on this particular resource. [continue]
The Global Financial Crisis has replaced Global Warming as the world media’s number one preoccupation. But most pundits and commentators have yet to realize that the Global Financial Crisis is another symptom of Global Warming, just like melting polar icecaps. Contrary to many pundits’ opinions, the crisis was not brought on by the Market’s failure to regulate the economy. The Market is wiser than the pundits. The crisis is a result of the Market regulating the economy. The Market realized that in the future, free market forces will have to account for damage to the environment as a real cost of business. Wisely, The Market devalued assets, with a bias against companies most inimical to the environment. [continue]
Faced with today’s economic crisis, many pundits are acting like fundamentalist preachers. Their rants accept certain centering truths as pure and eternal. They view the ‘free market’, for example, as a manifestation of nature, not a socially constructed model—not a crafted, even legislated, rationalization designed to yield general ‘economic’ predictability and control. Accordingly, they regard alternative interpretations and environmental accounting as unnatural market interferences. [continue]
The primary focus in green programs is on correcting the physical contributors to global heating (warming is now an unacceptable euphemism!), pollution and squandering of resources. The prevalent planning addresses better resource management and reducing carbon outputs. The human factors that lie behind these problems are often not addressed directly. This is like dealing with road safety by focusing only on the mechanics of automobile design, highway construction and driving regulations, while ignoring ‘the nut behind the wheel’ and failing to invest in driver training and safety awareness. And time is running out. [continue]
The markets flail about like landed cod and even the mighty Ford and General Motors face the prospect of bankrupcy. Suddenly we’re all social democrats again and intervention is the name of the game – (in some things). The political class seeks a route through the mess so that we can steam full ahead over the precipice’s edge, and have luxury goods to play with as we plummet… Oh – I know I shouldn’t, and if there was a hell I would go there…but…when there is so much hopeless tragedy visited upon the innocent in the endless procession of road deaths, it’s nice to know that witless shits get offed too.
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Our mortality is the thing we understand from the time we become aware. We will all die. This is our underlying strength and overriding weakness. Man’s design flaw was built in. You and I cannot be sustained forever. Is this why we have designed all other things to follow the same principle? Designed for Demise. Take care of today, tomorrow will look after itself. If we accept this, maybe the concept of sustainability, of an infinite future, could not have been built into our endeavours, as we planned that future with our demise as the inevitable outcome. [continue]
As reality becomes harder to deny, I’m hearing an increasing number of cries, growing in intensity and tinged with urgency welling up from the grassroots regarding Peak Oil, catastrophic climate destabilization, biospheric toxicity, rapidly dwindling quality of life, increasing wealth gap in the Global North, and increasing poverty in the Global South: “What can we do?” However, all the proposed solutions from the mainstream simply involve putting band-aids on the symptoms of industrialism and empire. [continue]
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