Zombie Economics

For a serious treatment of the serious issues we are facing - in straight-forward language, I recommend Zombie Economics: Don't Bail out the System that Gave Us SUVs and Strip Malls ... which leads by asking the very poignant question: "Why squander our remaining resources on a lifestyle that doesn't have a future?"

All this obviously begs the question: What kind of economy are we going to live in if the old one is toast? Well, it's also pretty obvious that it will have to be based on activities productively aimed at keeping human beings alive in an ecology that has a future. Once you grasp this, you will see that there is no reason to despair and more than enough for all of us to do, so we can recover from the zombie nation disease and get on with the next chapter of American history -- and I sure hope that Mr. Obama will get with the new program.

To be specific about this new economy, we're going to have to make things again, and raise things out of the earth, locally, and trade these things for money of some kind that we earn through our own productive activities. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is optional. The only other option is to go through a violent sociopolitical convulsion. We ought to know from prior examples in world history that this is not a desirable experience. So, to avoid that, we really have to put our shoulders to the wheel and get to work on things that matter, and do it at a scale that is consistent with what the world really has to offer right now, especially in terms of available energy.

In my view -- and I know this is controversial -- a much larger proportion of the U.S. population will have to be employed in growing the food we eat. There are many ways of arranging this, some more fair than others, and I hope the better angels of our nature steer us in the direction of fairness and justice. The prospects of a devalued dollar imply that we very shortly will not be able to get the all the oil-and-gas-based "inputs" that have made petro-agriculture possible the past century. The consequences of this are so unthinkable that we have not been thinking about it. And, of course, the further implications of current land-use allocation, and the property-ownership issues entailed, suggests formidable difficulties in rearranging the farming sector. The sooner we face all this, the better.

So its back to farming and gardening, eh? That might not be all that bad, when you think about it...We might actually end up happier and more fit.

I'm reminded of an old adage that went something like this..."It you want to be happy for a few hours, get drunk. If you want to be happy for a few years, get a wife. If you want to be happy for ever, get a garden."

Then, there's also this one ...

Old Chinese Proverb
If you want to be happy for a few hours, get drunk,
If you want to be happy for a week, kill your pig and eat it,
If you want to be happy for a month, get married,
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, go fishing.

Climaticide

We really, really do want our leaders to lead us to a solution on the problems associated with Climate Change.

Let the earth help us to save the earth

Check out this suggested means of pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. Seems worth a try if its valid...

Click here to read all about Olivine Sequestration, in a short brief by Olaf Schuiling, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

What's So Good About Waste? Five Part Series on Efficiency

The Climate Progress blog has a five part series on energy efficiency, started this past summer - an excellent primer on energy efficiency. None of these posts are overly long, and all have good comments attached. One has to wonder with such a case why efficiency is so frowned upon, or in all too many more cases, simply ignored. To date, we have tended to favor supply-side solutions over demand-side savings.

Energy efficiency is THE core climate solution, Part 1: The biggest low-carbon resource by far cites a well documented study from 2007 by consulting giant McKinsey & Co, which makes the claim that energy efficiency has the potential to account for as much as 40% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Energy efficiency, Part 2: The limitless resource documents the progress a division of Dow Chemical made in discovering efficiency through a series of ROI Contests. The author copied the process and found similar success within divisions at the Department of Energy.

Efficiency, Part 3: The only cheap power left demonstrates the absurdly low price of efficiency (less than 2 cents/Kwh) when compared to supply side solutions. And yet, incredibly, supply side solutions ranging from traditional coal and nuclear generation to renewables get far more press. Go figure.

Energy efficiency, Part 4: How does California do it so consistently and cost-effectively? A combination of building code and lighting regulations and decoupling have made California a model for all other states when it comes to efficiency. ("Decoupling" is the term for providing utilities regulatory incentives for energy efficiency programs that save consumers money - compensating them for NOT producing energy.)

Energy efficiency, Part 5: The highest documented rate of return of any federal program shows that the key to making efficiency work is good regulation and sensible legislation. Indeed, good government can produce tremendous savings when it is put into practice. Too often, politics gets in the way.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

The value of a bright light is that it takes away the darkness where our leaders often run to hide. For too long, we've let our leaders off the hook when it comes to addressing problems - and surprise, surprise - our problems don't go away when we ignore them! They come back bigger and stronger, more intractable.

Political courage is hard to come by these days, especially when it comes to dealing with climate change - that may be one of the things I admire most about Obama. He seems intent on tying economic recovery to investment in green infrastructure. Let's hope he keeps his spine up in the face of all those who will try to sway him this way and that, in hopes of avoiding taking the medicine they know they need.

The world has a portentous meeting coming up in Poland next month, which will be an opportunity for world leaders to demonstrate the leadership the represent.

In a recent analysis by Alister Doyle for Reuter's printed in the Toronto Star (see Economy offers excuse to avoid climate fight: But Obama's election seen as cause for hope ahead of Polish summit), we find a discussion of how political leadership is severely challenged by the need to balance economic needs and environmental ones.

TheStar.com - World - Economy offers excuse to avoid climate fight

"The days are gone when the EU can hide behind the United States and still look good," concluded Jennifer Morgan, of the E3G environmental think-tank.

But isn't "economy v. ecology" a false argument? Devilstower in Daily Kos thinks so. In No Dark Cloud without a Darker Lining the argument is made for rejecting any continuance of old conservative ideologies that got us into problems. It's hard to let go of cultural handholds when hanging on a cliff, but we must.

Let's face it, leadership is best demonstrated when dealing with intractable problems. Leadership in good times is easy, what many aspiring "leaders" seem to hope for when they seek the mantle of leadership. In contrast, leadership in hard times is difficult, but sublime - that's where leaders earn a place in history - by pulling people together to overcome difficult problems.

Perhaps finally, at this time in history, we will see some leaders step up to the plate instead of stepping away - perhaps now, finally, our leaders will lead the world population to do some things that are on the face, unattractive and at an individual level, unappealing. That is the crux of it - we must cooperate at a society and do things the whole of human society desperately needs - economic and environmental reform - but which the individual human finds against his/her personal best interest - in a word, our leaders need to address the Tragedy of the Commons.

In the Year 9595

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
In the Year 2525

OK - so its a corny song, but I can still remember the lyrics and tune from back when I was a 12-year old sixth grader discovering rock and roll in 1969. Curiously, the message of ecology and man's impact on the earth is even more true today than it was over 40 years ago when this song was penned in 1964.

Here's a modern take on the same concept, A Lonely Universe Without Us, pondering whether we will last as a species.

Not altogether bummed out yet? Check out this article, which adds to our species peril yet another issue to consider, by going beyond Global Warming to something called the Holocene extinction event.

You probably had no idea. Few do. A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully underestimated by almost everyone outside science. In the 200 years since French naturalist Georges Cuvier first floated the concept of extinction, after examining fossil bones and concluding "the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some sort of catastrophe", we have only slowly recognized and attempted to correct our own catastrophic behaviour. Animal Extinction - the greatest threat to mankind

Sighhhhhhh.

Shopping Shame: Consumption Chaos

I was hoping this was a hoax, but it appears to be for real. Over 2,000 shoppers, some on line for over 24 hours, stormed a WalMart opening on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving that marks the start of the holiday retail season and one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Incredibly, when notified of the tragedy and asked to leave the store, some shoppers complained that they needed/deserved to keep shopping because of their time in line! Such insensitivity is competely out of line with the very nature of the holiday that purportedly drives this consumer behavior in the first place. "Peace on earth, goodwill toward men," indeed!

This tragedy can only be taken as further evidence of a national loss of all sense of propriety and values when it comes to consumers and shopping. While it remains an isolated incident, it is nevertheless indicative of a system gone horribly awry. And WalMart bears responsibility for not having better crowd control measures in place. While some may argue that such tragedy could not have been avoided, it can only be seen as criminally negligent that corporate management and local supervisors allowed their employees to be in such a position of jeopardy, having created the conditions for chaos in the first place. Without their policy of focusing shopper interest on bargains and limited supplies on an early morning opening, the crowds would not have assembled in the first place.

What will WalMart management do now to address this? Will there be a repeat next year?

UPDATE: 11/30
Apparently, others feel this way. Here is a thoughtful treatment of the whole issue of crowd deaths in Death by Shopping.

In the next few days, I expect to hear that some people involved in yesterday's tragedy in New York were swept along by the crowd and were helpless to stop. It is possible that the glass doors reported to have been broken by over-eager shoppers were actually broken by the force of the crowd, not deliberately. We may see.

I am not exonerating people in the deadly shopping crowd. If police are able to identity individuals whose behavior escalated the danger, by all means they should answer to the law. But the forces that created the crowd were not limited to the crowd, and blaming individuals in the crowd misses several larger points.

A number of commenters are blaming the disaster on greed. Greed as a force for evil is something we Buddhists can appreciate. Greed, along with anger and ignorance, is one of the Three Poisons that fuel the passions that confound and trouble us. So, yes, there is greed behind the pushing and shoving to get the best seat or the best electronic doo-dad for a Christmas present.

Our consumerist culture encourages our desires, however. Rarely are we told there is anything wrong with pushing and shoving to get what we want. There was also greed behind a business decision to encourage "door buster" shopping without hiring enough security or factoring in crowd control.

Air Going Out of the Balloon

What will replace consumption in our daily lives? What will drive the world's economy when Americans' credit well runs dry, when they lose the urge to shop and they stop buying so much stuff? The jury is out. Judith Freeman: What consumes our nation's soul

[in Aug 2001] An economist on the evening news was discussing the economy, then in the midst of a serious slump. The economist looked into the camera and said, "If the American consumer packs it in, the entire global economy is in jeopardy. The American consumer better hang tough, or we're in real trouble."

I don't think I'd ever before quite understood in such stark terms just what beasts of burden we'd become. What the economist said made me realize something I'd never considered — that the entire global economy, as he put it, depended on Americans continuing to consume.

Over the years, that phrase — "the American consumer better hang tough" — has passed through my mind many times. And, each time, what those words conjure is a great herd of donkeys so loaded down with goods that they're staggering beneath the weight.

Now, of course, we're all thinking differently. It's time to pull back. The beast of burden simply can't carry any more. Few Americans have much in the way of savings. Many of us have lived beyond our means. The typical American carries credit card debt of more than $8,000, and credit is tightening. The party is over, and for many, it wasn't even that much fun.

There might be a good side to this. It's as if the consuming fever has broken, if only temporarily. We're disinclined to carry more debt or keep shopping, even if we could, even knowing that the entire global economy might depend on us getting and spending. We're all wondering where this economic meltdown is headed, and how long it might last. And will there be a time when we can hope to be relieved of our burden of hanging tough? Can there be a different kind of engine to drive the world economy other than the endless, often mindless consumption by ordinary Americans? These are the questions I'd like answered. But I'm not holding my breath.

Talking Turkey and Cold Turkey

Thank You for Change...
President Bush's Last Thanksgiving Address and Obama Interview with Barbara Walters

We live in a propitious time: times are hard and getting harder...but we still control our destiny, we still have each other, we still can choose how to live. Daniel Schultz: Sharing our thanks and our plenty

Yet at our annual Thanksgiving Eve service tonight, we will thank God for our good fortune with full and grateful hearts.

We'll give thanks, too, for the ability to collect donations of food and money for grocery store gift certificates. Nobody in our congregation - hopefully no one in our neighborhood - will have to go hungry. That's a blessing.

But as we offer up thanks and praise and foodstuffs this evening, I hope that we will take a moment to consider that it doesn't have to be this way.

Don't get me wrong: Charity is a wonderful thing. But why must our economy be geared such that it produces a few winners and many losers?

We didn't have to come to this pass, after all. We chose the path to perdition, following the logic that lust for material things is good, that consumption rewards (and drives) success. Meanwhile, the consequences for neighbors and the Earth's scarce resources are what economists call "externalities," costs that need not be calculated.

It's not just the housing bubble bursting or the oil economy staggering under the weight of demand or the credit markets collapsing. It's all of it, the entire wicked assumption that we deserve to have everything we want while others go without.

The good news is the choices we made to get ourselves here are just that: choices. No law says we must live extravagantly. No rule I am aware of prevents us from living a grateful life.

But don't let the realities of economic hardship take the fun out of the holidays. We need the holidays. We need to celebrate with friends even more than we need to consume and buy stuff. Judith Levine: An alternative to shopping frenzy

Relax. People can learn to live with less — happily. I know. A few years ago my partner, Paul, and I spent a whole year not shopping. We bought nothing but necessities: basic groceries, Internet access. We forwent clothes, books, CDs, movies, restaurant meals.

The good news is, a little moderation can bring a lot of cheer.

The Year Without Shopping occurred to me at Christmastime. I'm a secular Jew, but I'd scattered $1,001 on gifts and holiday odds and ends. As my credit line grew smaller and my shopping bags heavier, I envisioned their contents, along with those of a nation, disliked and discarded — and moldering in landfills forever.

I decided to investigate the connection between the personal activity of shopping and the global problem of overconsumption. I figured that the best way to understand the draw of the marketplace would be to quit it altogether, then see how that felt. I knew that my no-shopping budget would be on Mother Earth's side. Which side would the macroeconomy eventually be on? Today it's clearer than ever that we'll have to worry about that sooner rather than later.

During our cold-turkey year, I was sometimes bored. British psychotherapist Adam Phillips calls boredom the restless state of waiting to desire. Consumption gives us myriad names for inchoate desire — and ready objects to allay it. Take away shopping, and you're left with the restlessness.

When we couldn't go out for a beer or a meal with friends, Paul and I felt lonely. When others talked about the latest movies, we sat dumb. In a consumer society, much of our social, cultural and political lives — even our identities — are cobbled together from the things and experiences we purchase.

Not shopping, we devoted more time to activism and more money to causes. I paid off an $8,000 credit card debt without really trying and haven't run it up again. I still shop less than I did. And on more or less the same income, I give away much more money than I used to.

The hiatus reminded me how sweet it is to take home the perfect pair of trousers or sit in a cafe watching the world. Unless you're a monk, material abstinence does not magnify the spirit. Still, compared either to consumption or abstention, the best soul-grower is social connection.

Which brings me back to the holidays.

What about gifts and parties? Were we going to impose our skinflintery on our loved ones? Did we have to beg off fireside get-togethers just to avoid bringing a box of chocolates?

We relish lighting up the dark days with giving. But how could we give without getting and spending? How could we celebrate without adding to the global litter?

I got a clue from the past. The midwinter holidays originate in pagan rites to seduce the sun back from the underworld. Doing that requires excess — gorging, reveling and giving.

In this spirit, Paul and I throw an annual Hanukkah Latke Bash, the no-shopping year not excepted. We load the table with potato pancakes, vats of sour cream and homemade applesauce, and plates of smoked fish. Our guests arrive with libations and load their plates. Our feast is cheap — basically the food of the shtetl. And all that's left in the end is (compostable) bones.

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough," wrote Blake. Now think celebration, not shopping. Because in spite — no, because — of the economic gloom, it is our duty, and can be our pleasure, to make the season as festive today as in the fattest times.

Happy Thanksgiving, All

Yesterday, I received an email from a colleague in Canada, indicating that they're still working this week (they celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday similar to ours in October).

Last night, I practiced my Spanish at the local La Salsa restaurant and learned that Spanish for "Happy Thanksgiving" is "Buen día de acción de gracias."

Even though Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, the idea of a harvest festival is not. We are so closely tied to this earth that many people in this long list of cultures have a tradition of celebrating a special day to give thanks for sustenance. In our American culture, we conflate the celebration of the harvest with the notion of divine deliverance in a new land.

To be blunt, Thanksgiving in America is typically celebrated by over-eating with family, indulging in the bounty of food, nestled in the bosom of loved ones. "Perhaps moderation can take a pass today," I'll tell myself, "it's Thanksgiving." It's hard not to overindulge when the feast lies before you, and its all so good. I'll be reminding myself though, of the Swedish concept of Lagom, which introduced this new blog yesterday. As it occurs to me, we might translate the strategy of Lagom in American English as "Quit while you're ahead."

Funny how football, a uniquely American sport, has joined the holiday tradition, at least in our family it has. Tonight, we'll leave our family meal and drive down to DKR Memorial Stadium to fight for a parking spot, so we can watch the UT Longhorns pound the Texas A&M Aggies, striving for those "style points" that will convince human voters to keep us at the top of the BCS polls - come on National Championship!

I'll probably lose my voice from yelling. At least, that's the plan.

What I'm Thankful For Today

I'm thankful of so many things, as I sit here in the quiet living room, with my family fast asleep. I know that many/most of the rest of the world doesn't have the peace of mind I do when it comes to family and loved ones. So of course, I'm thankful first for my family and our health. For the many communities that embrace us and give us social sustenance, starting with St. Mark's Episcopal Church, home for two decades. For the wonderful City of Austin that we call home, for the view of the Hill Country out my back yard. For the University of Texas Longhorns - 19 years now with season tickets! Hook Em, Horns! And I'm thankful that my fellow citizens elected Barack Obama, so we can hope again.

Finally, I'm thankful for the insights I've gained over the past two years, as I've come to look at the world through the eyes of an appreciative house guest. I'm thankful for my newfound sense of urgency and for this opportunity to make a difference in a critical time in history.

I'll not be here but for a short while longer - really, just a blink of an eye - at least when measured in terms of deep time that the Earth (or the God) we are thanking today can relate to.

One of the first uses of deep time in a general interest publication may have been by John McPhee in his 1981 book, Basin and Range, parts of which originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine. One of the metaphors McPhee used in explaining the concept of deep time, which was cited by Stephen Jay Gould in Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), was to

Consider the earth's history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the King's nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history.

Basin and Range was republished with four others and additional material in Annals of the Former World,^[10] a title McPhee borrowed from James Hutton's observation about the geologist's preoccupation with the "annals of a former world," the stories figuratively told by layers of rock laid down over many millions of years.

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia (1999) is non-fiction book by Gregory Benford.

On Thanksgiving, try a new idea: Lagom

Let's face it folks - the pendulum has swung too far and now its coming back the other way, accelerating on its way back down. We've over-reached as a society and now we're in the midst of a pull back. How long or how far this political /economic / societal correction goes is anyone's guess. But one thing that is not up to guessing is that this correction is now unavoidable - there's no way out, it's time to pull back in our lives, time to do what we know is right - moderation has replaced excess as the guiding principle.

I use the term Cake 2 Bread to name this blog because it describes what we are now facing to correct what happened in so many parts of our society over the past several decades. We've piled on in every aspect. If one teaspoon was good, then a tablespoon, a cup, a gallon were even better.

The fact is, more is not always better. There is indeed such a thing as "just right" - in Swedish, they even have a special word for it - "lagom." It's the word you use when you push away from the table after a good meal, content that the meal hit the spot and it's time to stop before you get too full. As you rub your stomach and ponder the meal and all its nuances and specialness, you turn to the host/hostess and say, "Det var lagom!" - "That was just right!" It's the ultimate compliment for a host/hostess to hear, and it's a new guiding prinicple that we all can start to put into practice starting tomorrow. Lagom - Just Right.

Cultural significance

The value of "just enough" can be contrasted to the value of "more is better". It is viewed favorably as a sustainable alternative to the hoarding extremes of consumerism: "Why do I need more than two? Det är [It is] lagom" (AtKisson, 2000). It can also be viewed as repressive: "You're not supposed to be too good, or too rich" (Gustavsson, 1995). The lagom mentality has been fingered as a challenge to economic growth and the reason for Sweden's apparent lack of outward patriotism.

In a single word, lagom is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche, one of consensus and equality. In recent times Sweden has developed greater tolerance for risk and failure as a result of severe recession in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, it is still widely considered ideal to be modest and avoid extremes. "My aunt used to hold out her closed fist and say, "How much can you get in this hand? It's much easier to get something in this [open] hand" (Silberman, 2001). "It's the idea that for everything there is the perfect amount: The perfect, and best, amount of food, space, laughter and sadness."

The concept of lagom is similar to that of the Middle Path in Eastern philosophy, and Aristotle's "golden mean" of moderation in Western philosophy.

Let's give thanks for the bread we enjoy that gives us sustenance. Let's not mourn the loss of a daily diet of cake and champagne. Too much of a good thing inevitably becomes a bad thing, after all. So dialing back to "just right" from "too much" is not really something to grieve, rather its a cause for celebration. Let's give thanks tomorrow for this wake up call that we're experiencing, and let's give some thought to what this ongoing crisis and the pending inauguration really mean.

It's time for change, at the government level, at the economic level, at the society level, and at the individual level. Thank God!