boorack
08.03.09, 19:06
www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html
"""
Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist
quoting from it. Consider this faux article from June 2005 about America’s
addiction to Chinese exports:
FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd.,
a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western
markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of [garbage]
Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad
shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy
these.’ ... One month later, we will receive an order for the same product,
but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless
[garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it,
judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that,
when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and
contemptible.”
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic
crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents
something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us
that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply
unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the
wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”
We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and
more stores to sell more and more stuff made in more and more factories in
China, powered by more and more coal that would cause more and more climate
change but earn China more and more dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills
so America would have more and more money to build more and more stores and
sell more and more stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...
We can’t do this anymore.
“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass
on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes
the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by
depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish
and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows.
“You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious
behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and
say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are
destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in
a way that others can enjoy.”
Over a billion people today suffer from water scarcity; deforestation in the
tropics destroys an area the size of Greece every year — more than 25 million
acres; more than half of the world’s fisheries are over-fished or fished at
their limit.
“Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial
means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that
we’re living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets,”
argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International.
But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: “Mother Nature
doesn’t do bailouts.”
One of those who has been warning me of this for a long time is Paul Gilding,
the Australian environmental business expert. He has a name for this moment —
when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once — “The
Great Disruption.”
“We are taking a system operating past its capacity and driving it faster and
harder,” he wrote me. “No matter how wonderful the system is, the laws of
physics and biology still apply.” We must have growth, but we must grow in a
different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of
net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only
to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as
many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering
more stocks.
Gilding says he’s actually an optimist. So am I. People are already using this
economic slowdown to retool and reorient economies. Germany, Britain, China
and the U.S. have all used stimulus bills to make huge new investments in
clean power. South Korea’s new national paradigm for development is called:
“Low carbon, green growth.” Who knew? People are realizing we need more than
incremental changes — and we’re seeing the first stirrings of growth in
smarter, more efficient, more responsible ways.
In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: “When we look back, 2008 will be a
momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us,
‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did
you think? What did you do?’ ” Often in the middle of something momentous, we
can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the
marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.
"""
