Doing What Comes Naturally: Responses to Systemic Crises

Global warming is becoming the rallying cry of many environmental and social justice organizations. As can be expected, they each insist that solving their particular issue is the best solution, or the best place to start, as we begin work to shift demand to renewable energy sources. None, however, mention reducing demand. Of course, we must also remember that these groups all find themselves firmly enmeshed in triage situations of a system that has become normalized; that we legitimize.

For example, a recent Oxfam e-mail action alert starts out by listing aspects of the dire situation global warming is creating; a particular species going extinct, disappearing ice caps, more destructive storms. Then they say what's missing from the global warming debate is the effect on the world's poor. And to a certain extent, that's very true.

However, it seems that what's really missing from the debate about global warming is questioning what the true underlying cause of this crisis is. Nor are the intimately interconnected aspects of the equally devastating crises of energy depletion, mass extinctions, overpopulation, and biospheric toxicity often mentioned. Of course, we can also throw all the deteriorating quality of life indicators into the mix as well as we contemplate what 'dire' really means.

Might there be some overlooked connections between global warming and poverty that run deeper than coastal flooding?

From nearly every vantage point, when you closely examine any of these crises, you quickly uncover one or more aspects of the excess of economic growth and exploitation, which provide the commonality for these issues through their requirement for a never ending quest for more producers, consumers and natural resources. The crises and their secondary manifestations all lay very close to the diseased root of materialism which encourages usury, celebrity status of financial wealth, and materialism's addictive substitution for psychological and spiritual health and well-being.

It's not just poor people, but the 90-95% of the world's population outside of the power and control structure who will, at least initially, suffer the brunt of any negative changes to the environment and to their livelihoods. Meanwhile, those at the top of the control hierarchy--the ruling elites in our Plutocracy (or more accurately, Kleptocracy)--hold fast to their fantasy of having security in troubled times because their credit rating assures them of acquiring the latest technologies. Technology is thought to meet the economic dictum of perfect substitutability.

We don't need poison free food, air, or water. We don't need fossil fuels for the Industrial Growth Society. Atmospheric carbon can increase to 550 PPM and the planet can warm six degrees... or even more. We've got technology!

I call this the techno-rapture. These are the people who will be the most devastated, by being the least aware of and prepared for, the consequences of business as usual.

Being honest about what the problem really is the necessary first step in formulating responses to these systemic crises that will be both effective and lasting.

Capitalism is a system that has failed--dangerously. Fortunately, there is an alternative that just happens to be both life affirming and capable of improving quality of life. The alternative is relocalized steady-state economies and embracing sustainability, especially its carrying capacity aspect. But this alternative is discounted by the system that is threatened by it. Centralized control and power over have no role in this alternative system. We are told any alternative to the status quo is unrealistic or worse, utopian. If this doesn't work to scare people away, we're warned that it's communist. Therefore, no meaningful discussion can take place, as it would be an idealistic or unpatriotic waste of time.

As the various social change groups lobby for change, they all point out the U.S. is the world's largest polluter. It's this abstract other that is the villain. But... the U.S. is us. You and me with our hybrid cars and our solar powered 10,000 sq. ft McMansions filled with our energy-star rated products that use more energy, like 42" plasma screen TVs, than their predecessors did. But, we assure ourselves that everything's really ok because we switched to compact fluorescents and we reuse our shopping bags. We've allowed the system to convince us that discrete individual actions to redecorate our staterooms as the ship of Western culture continues steaming toward the rocks is the best we can do.

What we must realize is that we can simultaneously work to alleviate the symptoms of dominator hierarchies and the economic cannibalism of unfettered free-markets--symptoms such as poverty, oppression, inequity, privatization (piratization) of the commons, and separation from the natural world, each other and our own inner nature--as we create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice.

Embracing a common goal of sustainability would lay the foundation for a democratic culture of peace. This would be in keeping with the life affirming principles of natural systems. It would, therefore, actually be easier than all the effort we're currently putting into maintaining and enhancing a system at odds with these principles. It wouldn't, however, increase GDP.

So, the first decision we must make as we grapple with what to do about global warming is: Which is more important, profit... or people and planet?

If we decide for the latter, let's see of we can agree on a foundation for a sustainable future.

A first point would be recognizing that a healthy ecosystem is the master of sustainability. It is the best place to examine the principles that create the mutually supportive relationships that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient. Each organism has an abundance of opportunities to find fulfillment within carrying capacity constraints, which include being part of the food chain.

A second point is recognizing that humans come from the Earth. Whatever created natural systems principles used them to create us as well. We do, after all, have over half of our DNA in common with a banana. (And if this isn't cause for humility, I don't know what is.) We naturally embody the ability to be sustainable, and can look to healthy ecosystems for the models and metaphors we need to create sustainable lifestyles, organizations, and communities.

The best way I've found to express this is to start with the four core principles of natural systems: mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity. These combine to keep an ecosystem sustainable. The prime activity of living systems in expressing these principles is to self-organize mutually supportive relationships that create more life. It must also be noted that living systems at all scales grow to maturity, and then continue to develop and contribute to keeping the system healthy and in harmony.

From this we can also develop a legally defensible definition of sustainability that has environmental, moral, and scientific aspects. The defense of this definition and what it means to human societies can be founded on a strong constitutional argument that is based in Supreme Court jurisprudence dating back to the beginning of the U.S. It protects property rights by providing a foundation to base property rights on. The definition I propose is:

Sustainability: integrating our social and economic lives into the environment in ways that tend to enhance or maintain ecosystems rather than degrade or destroy them; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations; finding, and staying within, the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation where watersheds and bioregions maintain their ability to recharge and regenerate.

If we can agree that the above points are reasonable, we can use them to start analyzing an issue like poverty from a fresh perspective.

We can start by removing the requirement for economic growth in any response developed. We should also take a close look at what human enterprise has made available to us. It's instructive to note that in the overall global economy, 1/3 of the population creates everything that is consumed on the entire planet. What this means is that we should all be working 2/3 less and have full global employment. Then we can start increasing this ratio even more by looking at increasing efficiency, environmental constraints, quality and craftsmanship, and doing away with throw-away consumerism by helping people discover and remember that being more fulfills in a way that having more never can.

We can quit running people off their land and provide the knowledge to plant and harvest a wide diversity of ecosystem adapted crops instead of a single luxury export crop that requires unsustainable inputs. We can make sure basic nutrition and medicine is available and reduce infant mortality and the need for large families. We can provide honest family planning education that is culture sensitive and return elders to their respected mentoring roles as valuable community members. We could very quickly stabilize global population and start allowing it to drop to a sustainable level, estimated by many to be about 2 billion.

None of this is particularly radical, it's all perfectly feasible, and there are functional examples of each aspect we can draw on. We have both the necessary wisdom and the technology available today. This has been the promise of science, technology, and religion all along. People will not turn into layabouts, but will gain the time to find the fulfillment they've been seeking instead of using shopping or sitting captive to mindless entertainment as a substitute.

The above factors would combine to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, decrease demand, increase personal security and satisfaction, and the need for war greatly diminishes or disappears. If people's natural expectations for fulfillment are being met, poverty would no longer be a symptom of a system seriously out of balance.

And of course all of the above is relevant in other contexts. Democracy advocates, some of whom express their goal as being the desire to experience democracy in their own lifetimes, will focus on an issue like campaign finance reform as being the cure. But this is just another symptom whose root is the same paradigm of domination as the other global crises. If activists of various stripes would concentrate on cooperating to change the root, using their prime issue of concern as a guide for their actions, the branches on the co-evolving tree of life would be different instead of coming out diseased in a different location on the trunk.

What this all comes down to is agreeing on a common goal--sustainability; guided by a set of values such as those in the Earth Charter--respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence and peace; and developing a willingness, and accepting the responsibility, to become fully human.

It's in our nature to do so. It is a rational choice that also just happens to feel good.

There are numerous tools we can use on the journey to a sustainable future. A few of the effective ones include a process from applied ecopsychology, Dr. Michael Cohen's Natural Systems Thinking Process, that can both empower us and reconnect us to all aspects of nature--personal, social, and environmental. There's a project known as relocalization that provides a new blueprint for our social and economic development. The Green Party provides a political platform that deeply embodies these concepts. And there are a number of social studies that show widespread support is available and growing (Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson's Cultural Creatives), that rapid change is possible (Paulo Freire's work with illiteracy in indigenous tribes and Marian Diamond's work with enriched environments), and that a partnership society is both functional and provides a precedent for balanced cooperation between the natural world and human society (Riane Eisler's Partnership Way).

Let's get busy.

Goodbye Suburbia

In a short piece on Gristmill, Joseph Romm thinks suburbia has a future, and that $280 a barrel oil won't impact the American way of life because we'll all just switch to plug-in hybrid vehicles so the effect on our pocketbooks will remain constant. In stating why Peak Oil won't destroy suburbia, Romm, and some of the online responses to his piece, displays a peculiar Western trait most often evidenced by K-12 textbook authors--the inability to think systemically; to connect the dots; the tendency to reduce complex sets of relationships to a single issue that is presented as independent and autonomous. Scientific reductionism to the rescue.

Peak Oil spells the end of suburbia because suburbia is entirely dependent on oil. Not just for the cars, but for the sprawl, strip malls, cheap and unnecessary goods, and cheap housing built on farmlands, wetlands, and desert ecologies for the worker bees as they flit back and forth to their low-wage no benefit service sector jobs and other shallow distractions from our near total disconnection from anything meaningful.

Thinking that hybrid vehicles present a solution to global warming ignores the fact that about 50% of the greenhouse gas contribution a vehicle makes during its lifetime occurs during the extraction of the resources and manufacturing for that vehicle. Peak Oil won't make only gasoline more expensive, but everything cheap oil makes possible such as the 1500 mile Caesar Salad grown on lands depleted of nutrients, and then packaged in plastics and smothered in creamy processed foodstuffs based on oil.

When the "green revolution" of agribusiness comes to an end, suburbs and the expressways that lead to them are going to have to return to farmland. A growth economy that is dependent on cheap energy will not continue functioning when oil is at $200-$300/barrel, unless money becomes completely valueless (although a good argument, based on international currency trading and derivatives markets, can be made that it already is).

Global warming (actually, catastrophic climate destabilization) isn't just from gasoline powered internal combustion engines. Another major contributor is loss and degradation of natural carbon sinks from sprawl, excessive consumption, and population overshoot. Driving electric cars to the suburbs will only put off the inevitable. Trying to power all the vehicles we assume we need to maintain the charade of affluence and independence with cellulosic agro-fuels will most likely speed up the overall process of the demise of the American lifestyle.

The rise in the price of oil is a reflection of one thing--it is a finite natural resource that is on the downward slope of its depletion curve. This is the point at which it is very important to become aware of and to understand the difference between environmental economics--the greening of orthodox growth economics where technology can substitute for energy--and ecological economics, which looks at the whole system; its interrelationships and carrying capacity; and ways to continue improving once the steady-state of maturity is reached.

I mean, what we're talking about here is the possible end of life as we know it, or in the more optimistic scenarios, merely the collapse of what is known as Western civilization. Who honestly thinks suburbia is going to survive 1) the imminent collapse of a growth economy that is based on cheap and abundant fossil fuels, 2) a two-thirds human population reduction to the sustainable global limit of about 2 billion, and 3) the mass migration of the majority of that population into habitable areas as changes unfold from catastrophic climate destabilization that are on track to occur even if tomorrow we stop all greenhouse gas emissions, razing the rain forests, and polluting our air and water? When you combine the rational, emotional, and spiritual evidence for the shape we and our planet are in, the worship of material consumption, mammonism, and domination isn't a system that's worth protecting and preserving.

It also must be pointed out that neither "greenness" nor quality of life in the built environment is solely a function of density (you may freely substitute market or production efficiences here). While it may be that big cities such as New York have access to a greater number of natural history museums, zoos and aquariums, teaching about nature is not functionally equivalent to being in nature. We've long known this to be qualitatively true, and it can now be shown to be quantitatively so on a number of indicators as well. The economic principle of perfect substitutability doesn't hold any better here than on thinking that technology can substitute for energy. And of course, there are all the studies of the negative physical, mental, and environmental health effects of overcrowding.

The conversation we all need to be having is the best and quickest way to put an alternative in place that improves quality of life and provides expanded opportunities and support to develop one's potential. A system in which we create the quality goods that we need (not manufactured need or throw-away goods), within carrying capacity limitations (not the myth of infinite abundance), and have the time to enjoy and benefit from them (not working two jobs to pay off credit card debt).

The pieces of this alternative already exist, we don't have to wait for a techno-miracle. They include powering down, relocalizing, and overcoming our disconnection from the natural world, each other, and our own inner nature. It involves shifting our mindset from having more to being more. It involves giving up the unfounded assumption that economic growth is necessary for prosperity and that we can consume the entire planet with no ill effects if we call it "green." It involves working with the creative energies of life in building mutually supportive, responsible relationships.

This is the direction we would head if we were to allow our rationality to be fully informed by our emotions and spirit. We could press our intelligence into service and admit that reverse is the proper gear to select when you're going the wrong way down a narrowing path.

Common roots and a systemic solution

A recent posting on Gristmill

"Brit's Eye View: Are we too obsessed with climate change?" by Peter Madden concerned the worry that by concentrating on global warming (what I call catastrophic climate destabilization) we risk the danger of ignoring other urgent environmental concerns. By only looking at long-range targets for the year 2030 or 2050, we can overlook what needs to be taken care of today or next week. While global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism, government and big business think that if they just concentrate on going low-carbon, everything will be fine.

An online comment by Fergus Brown to this story made some excellent points as well. There is a tendency in the media to conflate global warming with environmental problems, to think that every environmental problem is due to global warming, and that solving global warming will cure all environmental ills. There is a growing backlash among people tired of hearing every problem being blamed on global warming. This creates a particular problem of global warming denialists being able to simultaneously marginalize or brush-off other environmental problems.

That global warming gets conflated with other environmental problems does make sense, but not for the reasons given. These problems are all the direct outcome of a cultural paradigm that is disconnected; that sees nature as an "other" to be exploited for personal benefit just as the affluent North does with what it considers to be third-world countries. Global warming and all other environmental problems are really a problem with human attitudes; with a lack of restraint in both human population and consumption; with the reliance on addictive substitutes for the natural fulfillments available in abundance for any species that stays within the carrying capacity of its ecosystem; with focusing all of our energy on competition and destruction instead of cooperation and creation. This is a choice for humans, it is not a hard-wired immutable natural principle.

The solutions to global warming and other environmental tragedies are one and the same. Quit overconsuming the Earth's limited resources and quit using the biosphere as a waste receptacle. Remember that the prime activity of all other living organisms is to self-organize in the creation of mutually supportive relationships that support the web of life in creating and sustaining more life. Remember that the same principles that create a sustainable ecosystem are an intimate aspect of who we are, and that if we are to ever have any hope of reaching our potential as individuals and as a species, we had best start acting like it. We must think and act the way nature works.

There is not just a problem with focusing on global warming to the exclusion of other environmental problems. There is a meta-problem with focusing on applying band-aids to symptoms of a culture out of balance--that has disconnected its relationships with the natural world, with each other, and with our own inner nature. As Paul Cienfuego of Democracy Unlimited points out, we must quit clipping branches and start digging up the roots.

This, of course, makes the proponents of growth economies very squeamish. By taking every proposed solution to global warming, other environmental problems, the energy crisis, etc., off the table if the solutions don't, first and foremost, protect economic growth, they ensure that the problems will remain intractable. Proponents of the status quo (the sycophants of free-market capitalism and its practice of economic cannibalism) reverse all the relationships they haven't severed. Profit is put above people and planet. However, nature neither produces waste nor grows beyond maturity. As Edward Abbey said, infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. We have been aware of the implications of what we're doing for a long time, e.g. Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac" in 1949, and John Storer's "The Web of Life" in 1953.

Of course, once one reaches these inescapable conclusions, what is the actual process to implement these solutions? What is the alternative to the status quo that we're constantly told either doesn't exist or is utopian and thus unrealistic? The only systemic solution--the one that addresses the common roots of systemic collapse and can improve quality of life as well--that I'm aware of is to relocalize our communities with steady-state economies and reconnect all of our senses to their roots in the natural world.

Economic growth vs. a living planet

A couple of interesting items lit up my screen over the weekend. The first is yet another piece of evidence that the global economy that we all tend to assume will continue providing net benefits to society is a chimera. There is no fundamental reality propping it up. What props it up is fairy dust that manifests itself from central bank controlled printing presses and accounting ledgers.

What this means is that if your life, indeed your entire sense of identity, is dependent on the stage props built by global financial markets, your life could descend into total chaos--become entirely meaningless and without sense of purpose--any day now. A true sense of humanity, however, requires quite a bit more than a growing bank balance, and this is what we must start working on recovering.

Central Banks Add Cash to Avert Crisis of Confidence

10 Aug 2007

"Central banks in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada added about $136 billion to the banking system in an attempt to avert a crisis of confidence in global credit markets.

"The Federal Reserve, in a second day of action in concert with the European Central Bank, provided $38 billion of reserves and pledged more ``as necessary,'' in a statement unprecedented since after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Full Article

Another interesting item from the above article is that American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. this week became the country's second-biggest home lender to file for bankruptcy. The increase in greed fuelled by the sub-prime market is coming home to roost.

The second item provides part of the answer to "How did this all come to be?"

Rachel's Democracy & Health News #919, Aug. 9, 2007

TWO RULES FOR DECISIONS: TRUST IN ECONOMIC GROWTH VS. PRECAUTION

By Joseph H. Guth



Guth, who is a biochemist (PhD) and Legal Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, points out a very important, but often overlooked or understated assumption in the underlying economic paradigm--that growth is good. The assumption is that economic growth provides net social benefits.

There's only one way this assumption can work, though. Human and environmental damage is discounted, and the unequal distribution of benefits is ignored. If the economic benefits that accrue to a small handful of people can be shown on a spreadsheet to be larger than the costs to a much larger but devalued group, then destruction and degradation of our common life support system is said to fall within the acceptable parameters of a cost benefit analysis. Not only is everything "good," but there is a net benefit to society. If ten million people die, but ten people make a billion dollars each, this is a net benefit to society.

Within the current system, the burden of proof lies on those wanting to show that the costs (which are undervalued) outweigh the benefits (which are overvalued). This makes proof difficult because the equation is unfairly lopsided from the start.

Guth's article doesn't address the inherent inequity of the variables used in the equation, but uses the precautionary principle to present one way in which we can at least begin to rewrite the equation. He also presents a good analysis of what is known as "sound science" and how industry uses it to its advantage in order to game the system.

Taken together, the two articles I've referred to above point to the pressing need to relocalize our economies, and to do so in a manner in which people and planet are valued more highly than profits. This leads directly to the pressing need to return corporations to the role of serving as a tool for creating social good, instead of acting as the arbiters of control and value at the top of a hierarchy of self-described elites.

Once again, it's just a story that we all provide the legitimacy for, and it's up to us to re-write the story.

Dealing with the Plastic Plague

To respond to a recent post to an ecopsychology list I subscribe to, I wrote the following. I also highly recommend the article the original post is referring to.

> This is a most disturbing link. Sometimes, I just feel hopeless. I
> don't see how we will ever cleanup our disgusting messes on earth.
>
Our oceans are turning into plastic... are we?
>
> any encouraging thoughts out there on this horrible matter?

First, if you'd like more info on this, although the important parts are in this article, search the culturechange.org website for "plastic plague" (the main article to read is Plastics: Your Formidable Enemy) where you'll also find a link to an excellent documentary on this subject the Algalita Foundation put out called "Our Synthetic Sea," as well as some things you can do about it.

As Jan Lundberg of CultureChange says, "The time is over for more research as a substitute for decisive action, and it is everyday citizens who need to carry it out immediately."

Cities like San Francisco are starting to institute plastic bag bans and taxes, and one of the best things to do is to start removing plastic from your life.

But one of the main things to do, in my opinion, is that once you come to the following realization yourself, is to become almost militant (but in a compassionate manner) about spreading the word that the American way of life is an unmitigated catastrophe. Not only is it toxic, but it is shallow and meaningless. Not only is it disconnected from all the things that really matter in order to have a fulfilling life, but it is destroying life and possibilities for the continuation of life.

People don't like to allow themselves to feel this, and can numb the fact that they are living a catastrophe as long as the oil, fast food, entertainment, and Prozac holds out. They don't want to feel this so they keep themselves very busy trying to look good and be materially successful so neither they nor anyone else notices how empty the American way of life actually feels.

So, help awaken people from the consensus trance. Find the unique ingredients for the red pill your family, friends, and neighbors need. We don't need to wait for a catastrophe to occur for a shift in consciousness to gain the mass momentum to create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice; all we have to do is pay attention to see that we are already surrounded by catastrophe.

And once you come to this realization, also realize that since humans have created the current situation, humans are also empowered to do something about it. Do not let yourself fall into despair. Let yourself deeply feel the catastrophe and let this feeling fuel your sense of righteous indignation and motivate your actions. Everything we do and believe in is based on a choice, whether we consciously articulate it or not.

A concrete action people could do is to come together to create a groundswell of support to force government to reclaim its duty to protect the commons and to revoke the corporate charters of companies who aren't serving the public good. And every company who makes products or who depends on materials that destroy our health and the planet we depend on for our sustenance falls into this category.

Spread the memes that the cure for breast cancer is shutting down Dow Chemical. The health of the economy cannot be allowed to take precedence over the health of people and planet. Convenience is not a substitute for life.

Setting Priorities: Preserving Lifestyle Choices or Life?

A recent e-mail action alert from Environmental Defense focused on cars and global warming, calling for support for a campaign to reduce the contribution to greenhouse gases made by automobiles. This campaign spanned the spectrum from urging car companies to make less polluting vehicles, to personal actions to keep one's car running at peak efficiency, and thus be less polluting.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has jumped on this bandwagon as well. They recently argued in their Earth Action Bulletin that some of the most important considerations for raising fuel economy standards are that they're the least expensive way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and they'll
"giv[e] consumers lasting relief at the pump." This logic is used to support the claim that less financial impact and less pollution will help "break our addiction to oil," when just the opposite is more likely.

There are transition strategies toward a sustainable future that people can, and should, undertake. But we need to be honest about the future we're heading into, and what it's likely to look like. Let's take the case of the automobile. As in so many other cases today, the big concern seems to be how can we make something that is inherently unsustainable appear as if it is, especially without dealing with directly connecting issues, such as overpopulation and our addiction to a doomsday economy.

While we're on this honesty kick, let's also admit that biofuels are nothing more than the methadone for fossil fuel addicts.

Suburban sprawl contributes as much to catastrophic climate destabilization as the automobile does. Loss of farm and forest land are the most obvious effects, but personal loss of time and well-being are also major factors. Even plug in hybrids--let alone fully electric cars--aren't going to be much of a solution if all of the productive farmland that's left is paved over with more and wider roads running between McMansions in the foothills and big box stores and their parking lots.

Cars do make a major contribution to catastrophic climate destabilization, and for the immediate future we're stuck with them for the most part while relocalization efforts start taking place. And we should do things such as keep them properly tuned and the tires properly inflated, cut down on idling time, and start making a very conscious effort to eliminate unnecessary trips. But replacing your car with a new hybrid isn't going to actually do a whole lot, when you realize that about 50% of the contribution to catastrophic climate destabilization a vehicle makes is during the extraction of the raw materials and its manufacture.

We must start creating living patterns that aren't auto dependent. We need to shift from cars to mass transit for the majority of our transportation needs that can't be met by bicycles or on foot, which in a properly designed and built city are going to be pretty minimal. So, instead of putting our efforts into lobbying for a 3% increase in CAFE standards, which does absolutely nothing to challenge or change the status quo, we need to be lobbying for rebuilt urban cores and better mass transit systems.

And, there's no escaping the fact that we must also simultaneously begin the educational efforts required to address the overpopulation issue and the cultural myth that having more is a better path to fulfillment than being more.

If the actual desire is to do something about catastrophic climate destabilization, let's get serious about it, and demand our policymakers do likewise. There's too little time left to continue applying band-aids to symptoms.

The NRDC wants people to believe that techno-fixes and regulatory wizardry will allow us to continue on our merry way "without sacrificing ... lifestyle choices."

I guess sacrificing life is of no concern, as it might not be the least expensive option.

Carbon Caps or Lifestyle Caps?

A recent editorial in the New York Times talked about the need for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases, pollution taxes, carbon credits, and the search for promising technologies that could mitigate global warming with only minimal harm to the economy at worst. Articles concerning personal changes one can make that meet these goals are showing up with increasing frequency as well.

You know, buy different types of new lightbulbs, a different kind of new car, and buy carbon offsets as a new type of gift.

This ruse of putting the brunt of the blame, and the burden of responsibility, on American consumers for America's 25% contribution to the anthropogenic causes of global warming is also becoming increasingly common.

Yes, Americans are addicted to oil.

But let's not forget that addicts need a pusher. Who are the pushers that feed this addiction to oil that energizes the culture of materialism? Who constantly entice more addicts, starting their dependency campaigns while youth are still in the crib? Who are these pushers who are actually even more addicted themselves to the power (in every sense imaginable) that can be derived from fossil fuels?

The answer to these questions should be obvious. It's industrialists and their immediate masters in the global banking cartels. It's the adherents to the holy grail of a growth economy. How convenient that the mainstream media never mentions the role of these elite sects in either the crisis or their responsibility to deal with it.

Change does need to begin from where we are. Currently people have been hoodwinked into valuing money more than life. So putting a price on pollution, toxicity, radiation, deforestation, greenhouse gas production, etc. and so on is a good place to start for a transition strategy toward a sustainable future. This should cause people to start honestly examining what it is in their lives that is truly valuable and gives their lives meaning and purpose.

If we also start to articulate the viable alternative of relocalization, and its very real possibility of increasing quality of life, we can also inspire and motivate people into helping build this necessary alternative that values those things that really matter. People will discover the increased well-being--and even the status and respect that can be gained--from being a responsibly contributing member of the web of life.

Then we can get to the question the mainstream continues to studiously avoid asking.

Is it really new technologies and market-based schemes that we need, or a new way of relating to and being in the world?

The Systemic Core of Sustainable Change

Not only do we need to understand dominator/taker culture, but its tendrils; how they affect us, and be honest with ourselves about the myriad ways we're complicit without assigning blame or wallowing in guilt; what our true strengths are to oppose it, and the tools at our disposal to undertake the process of change/making new choices; and the benefits that are possible from a partnership/leaver culture we can develop through our abilities and responsibilities as living organisms to self-organize and create, maintain and enhance mutually supportive attraction relationships that work with the cooperative, compassionate, and nurturing energies of the creative life force.

As change agents, we must lay out the roadmap, or framework, for change for all nodes in the web of life, and evaluate decisions and choices on whether or not they are congruent with the natural systems principles that lead to a healthy, vibrant, resilient ecosystem's sustainability.

To achieve this requires agreement on 1) the overall goal, which I submit is sustainabiltiy; 2) the process with which to achieve it, which I submit is relocalization; and 3) the values we share that uphold and quide this vision and mission, which I submit are contained in the Earth Charter--the international people's declaration of interdependence.

Here are the definitions used in the above.

Dominator Paradigm - ranking hierarchies of control based on force, fear, and the threat of force - exploitive, competitive, aggressive, destructive - selfish individualism where the other (nature, people, culture) is inferior and to be used to one's own advantage

Partnership Paradigm - networks of mutuality based on trust - nurturing, cooperative, compassionate, creative - relationships, community, actualization of potentialities through interconnectedness

Natural Systems Principles - mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity

Sustainability - the balance point amongst population, consumption, and waste assimilation within a systems' rate of regeneration and recharge; holistic integration of society and economics into environment so as to enhance rather than degrade; a moral imperative to pass on our natural inheritance to future generations, not necessarily unchanged, but undiminished in its ability to meet the needs of future generations

Relocalization - a return to local autonomy within bioregional self-relience - production and distribution of renewable and non-toxic goods and services as close to point of consumption as possible - global growth economy based on increasing supplies of cheap and abundant fossil fuels will be replaced by steady-state local living economies - interdependent eco-cities not built on automobile dependent sprawl

Earth Charter Values - respect and care for the community of life; ecological integrity; social and economic justice; democracy, nonviolence, and peace

Carbon Trading, Caps, and Offsets--another market driven scam?

There's a "green" gift suggestion making the rounds this holiday season that's touted to be a way of making a difference. Called carbon offsetting, it's a way of contributing to renewable energy in an amount equal to how much carbon you contribute yearly to global warming.

So, I have a question. Does carbon offsetting actually do anything besides assuage a little guilt about killing the planet? I mean, look at the term they chose for this scheme. Offset, not reduce or stop.

It seems to me to be at best an attempt at payoff, or little more than a financial incentive to continue supporting destruction, but I'm sure there must be something more to it than that, at least from all the hype it's getting from mainstream (large and well-funded) environmental organizations.

One of the better explanations--from the advocacy point of view--of what carbon offsetting or becoming carbon neutral means, as well as some of its promises and rationalizations, comes from the website of someone who's passion and commitment to a healthy environment as well as for social justice is both well known and respected, Dr. David Suzuki.

Let's examine a few of the salient points from www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_offsets.asp

"A "carbon offset" is an emission reduction credit from another organization's project that results in less carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than would otherwise occur."

Ok, let's see... Plant A doesn't do something, which allows Plant B to do it instead, there is a transference of money accompanying this agreement, and this is supposed to be an offset of overall harm to the system on which life depends for its support?

"The buyers of the offsets benefit because they can claim that their purchase resulted in new non-polluting energy, which they can use to mitigate their own greenhouse gas emissions. The buyers may also save money as it may be less expensive for them to purchase offsets than to eliminate their own emissions."

Isn't all we're actually accomplishing with this scheme slowing down the overall rate of increase? And once again, money wins out over environment. You can abuse me in any way you want, just give me enough money to make the payments on my hottub and Hummer. And this is supposed to be a "principled" stance for the environmental movement? Did they skip the same ethics class most business majors do?

When are people going to realize that you don't compromise with evil? Less bad is not good. It still leads to systemic collapse, thus is not sustainable, and is the one option that really does need to be removed from the table.

"[S]elling offsets from tree planting projects is particularly problematic for a number of reasons, including their lack of permanence and the fact that these projects do not address our dependence on fossil fuels."

What they also don't address is our underlying addiction to consumer society and blind faith in the myth of infinite growth.

"Significantly, only offsets from energy efficiency and renewable energy projects qualify for the Gold Standard, as these projects encourage a shift away from fossil fuel use and carry inherently low environmental risks. Tree planting projects are explicitly excluded by The Gold Standard."

Translation: We've even invented a standard to ensure you that as little as possible happens to seriously challenge the status quo. The one activity that doesn't generate any income for polluters is excluded

"Gold Standard projects must meet very high additionality criteria to ensure that they contribute to the adoption of additional sustainable energy projects, rather than simply funding existing projects. The Gold Standard also includes social indicators to ensure the offset project contributes to sustainable development goals in the country where the project is based."

Here's a part that actually does make sense, and I think why so many people buy into the rest of the story, and not bother searching for alternatives to the initial creation of whatever harmful product is under consideration.

Net energy use must decrease, and the efficiency of the decreased use must increase. The confounding variables in this equation are excess consumption, excess population, and excess greed--not topics of conversation in polite company, and especially not the incestuous relationships amongst these variables. A techno-fix or accounting sleight-of-hand is much more palatable in maintaining the grand illusion of the consensus trance.

"Finally, all Gold Standard projects have been independently verified by a third party to ensure integrity."

Oh, great... and by someone with the sterling reputation, say, of Arthur Anderson, Inc.?

Ok, in all fairness to our cultural loss of the ability to think systemically, a lot of good people buy into the theory behind carbon trading schemes, and they do so because they truly care about the plight of the planet and a future that is at least livable by humans. It does make sense, in a very limited way, to attempt to curtail our addictions to all the stuff that pumps excess carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by shifting some of our dollars to industries that don't pollute as much on the assumption these industries wouldn't exist at all without at least this level of support, and the pollution from the old industries at least won't be increasing... or hopefully at least not at the same rate, anyway.

However, let's face it, this is the typical behavior of addicts. We'll get off heroin, just give us the methadone.

I mean... do the math while considering the whole system. With increasing demand, there is no net decrease in either natural destruction and resource depletion, nor to human exploitation. CO2 may (or may not) decrease at a specific site, while methane, nitrogen, and sulphur may increase somewhere else (hopefully in a different country so it's easier to ignore). Regardless, deforestation and oceanic deadzones keep increasing, glaciers keep disappearing, and Prozac profits just keep rolling in.

I think I'm going to add the following to a hot-key sequence, I find myself using it so often anymore: Wakey wakey, boys and girls! It's time to take the red pill and cast off the consensus trance!

You really don't have anything to lose but choking to death on your own vomit.

This might not be the prettiest picture imaginable, but try honestly imagining the alternative of not doing so.

Proponents of the various carbon schemes, which include "cap and trade" (cap but not reduce their "right" to pollute) then respond that no, a carbon offset establishes the fact that there is a cost to carbon pollution. Once it is in place the market will establish a true value to that pollution.

Well, yeah, that's pretty much what I said above. If you have enough money, we're willing to let you destroy the planet in any manner you please. The only factor that warrants consideration is the economic one. This is even reflected in the way proponents phrase it--the value of pollution.

Now, I do understand that we do need to shift investment to clean and renewable energy sources. I just don't see any way of escaping the fact that carbon offsets are a way of attempting to work within an inherently destructive and exploitive system. This is one of those inconvenient truths.

What would make more sense to me is to simply tax carbon out of existence, as well as the advertising that supports materialism, and put the money into quality of life initiatives that meet the goals of a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice.

I think there are many avenues this could take, but first we must come to a social agreement that this is the goal and on how we intend to measure progress toward this goal. This would both tone down the posturing, and more easily illuminate spin.

Are we going to continue pursuing the structural inequity, with nothing but a promise of a better tomorrow, from the Industrial Growth Society, or are we going to power-down and learn to maximize our potential within the biosphere's carrying capacity?

When an activity displays a bias toward harm, do we curtail the activity, or simply decide that paying off the victims still keeps the profit margins at an acceptable level?

While proponents of the carbon schemes will admit the concern about giving polluters an option to merely pay for what they are doing as they keep on polluting is valid, they then try to qualify their support by saying it will take time to make a transition from fossil fuel to renewable resources, and they see the polluters as those who will subsidize this transition.

I don't buy this rationalization at all, however. It's been pretty widely reported that conservation would save about 25-50% of energy use. Decentralizing the national grid would save about 50%. Not producing so much needless crap would save an unimaginable percentage. The only thing the transition scenario supports, knowing or not, is the time to shift elite control structures without losing their grip on power by continuing to propagate the myth that growth is necessary for prosperity and well-being. What they're really trying to protect, however, is the myth that elite control, based on one or another permutation of divine right (like eugenics), is really in the best interests of the "masses."

It seems that the aspects of an equitable and sustainable culture that we should be talking about are restoring community, creating walkable cities, building stuff to last and be repairable, restoring pride in craftsmanship, and shifting status and value to how much one contributes to society instead of how much one can accumulate from it. Plus, as numerous climate and energy experts state, we don't have the luxury of time to create a long transition strategy.

And not to be facetious, but it seems to me that a shift to a sustainable future could be done--it is within the realm of physical possibility and violates no known natural laws--to create this shift today with no harm to anyone but central bankers and insurance brokers.

Of course, when I made this point in a recent on-line conversation, one immediate response was that without central bankers and insurance brokers there is no research and development, no innovation.

To which I replied, more than a little incredulously, who funded the wheel? Pottery and glazing? Agriculture and plant hybridization?

Humans, after all, are creative, if nothing else. Banking actually stifles innovation, because only the innovation that benefits the banks gets funded. If it doesn't further or support the industrial growth paradigm, and provide a decent return on investment, it is neither fundable nor insurable.

This line of argument is similar to stating that if it weren't for the Patent and Trademark Office, none of these technologies would have occurred. This is also like the theory subscribed to by Pentagon planners, who assume aggression and competition are both natural and necessary for innovation, which is then used to justify the existence of a military because there will never be peace if we want to have human advancement. What this all is is patent nonsense.

I was, after all, being facetious--at least a little bit. My point was to bring to light but one of the many layers of social deadwood that have managed to create a story that we provide the legitimacy for.

The argument was also made that it seemed disingenuous to use a technology such as the Internet, which was funded by bankers to promote a shift in society that only harms bankers and insurance brokers.

As opposed, say, to a system that harms everyone else and the planet they depend on? And let's be real. The only harm it is going to do them might be a bit of job retraining and the need to re-evaluate their sense of self-worth.

Please consider, what real goods, necessary for the continuation of life, do bankers and insurance brokers actually provide?

Might the necessity and funding arguments be related to a general confusion in the public between appropriate technologies and appropriate use of technnology?

Rather than relying on the manipulation of fear and scarcity, don't you think we could come up with a better way to meet our needs and evolve our culture? We are, after all, supposed to be intelligent, rational creatures with the freedom of choice.

Of course solar, wind, and other alternative yet to be available on the shelf need investment; many people want to do something; and most of them would rather not have it resemble rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

And I'm of this mindset as well. But I keep thinking that our efforts will be best spent if directed. Stopping global warming is not a direction, it is a response, necessary as it may be.

It seems to me that we (the environmental and social justice movements) find ourselves in the situation common to high school youth, who when bored, say "let's just do something, even if it's wrong."

To have a direction implies a goal. If we were all to simply agree that sustainability is the goal, and use something like the Earth Charter for our common, shared values and to provide a framework for sustainable development, then we have a yardstick by which to measure progress and with which to evaluate proposals as to whether or not they further us along the path to the goal, or whether they're just holding measures that do little to nothing to address the cause of the problem we find ourselves faced with.

I'm of the opinion that we don't have the time for holding measures, and that a viable alternative is available that requires neither a techno-miracle nor a savior. It also happens to increase numerous indicators of what most people consider to be quality of life.

The alternative that can create a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice is the process of relocalization based on the natural systems principles of mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity. These are the principles that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient. Since these same principles created us--they are a natural part of who we are--it makes sense to me to apply our intelligence to ways we can benefit from these principles in our lifestyles and communities.

But instead, we exert all this energy going through all these extremely convoluted rationalizations to justify a social system based on greed, aggression, domination, and competition, none of which actually contribute to the creation of life. The best that can be said for any of them is that they may temporarily maintain an individual life, and generally at great cost.

Anyway, that was quite the detour to get back to the various carbon trading schemes, and the need to start a conversation about the fact that the pollution economy is the path to imminent ecocide, we need to knock it off instead of financially rewarding it, and we need to start creating things in a new way--a way that's in balance with natural systems and that honors the intrinsic value of life.

Does economic analysis run your life?

One of the arguments being used against solar installations on homes and businesses is that from an economic perspective, photovoltaics stink, even when partially subsidized by local utility companies, because the payback period is so long.

If economics were the only thing that really mattered, this argument might hold water, but it ignores what's actually going on in the world today and their interconnections. The global growth economy is a completely fabricated reductionistic fantasy--the only things that are growing are sprawl, destruction, and the printing presses that create the money. It's no longer a question of if it will collapse, but how soon and how spectacularly.

On the energy front, Peak Oil is here today. It will most likely be possible to stretch the plateau out for a bit longer, but this just makes the eventual descent even steeper. There goes our plastic throw-away economy--everything from iPods to the elastic in your underwear.

Catastrophic climate destabilization is also here today. When people finally arouse themselves from the stupor of the consensus trance, coal fired power generation will be a thing of the past. Even if a technological miracle were to occur so coal could be burned "cleanly" and not just be a bit less polluting, the only way to get the quantity of coal at the rate necessary to continue powering the doomsday economy of the Industrial Growth Society is through mountaintop removal, and that is simply not worth the environmental and human suffering it creates.

Nuclear is a chimera. Processing all the concrete necessary for a reactor is energy intensive and polluting, uranium mining is environmentally devastating and toxic to life, core safety and decomissioning are still problematic, and a safe method of handling the waste is still a pipe dream. 50,000 year (or even 500 year) deadzones so people can run their hair dryers? I don't think so.

This leaves solar, wind, and hydro, which all have drawbacks as well, but these drawbacks are mainly related to the fact that our beleaguered planet is vastly overpopulated and much of this population is either already addicted to overconsumption in order to make up for loss of natural fulfillment, or clamoring to get to this point.

But currently available renewables also represent our best hope of creating a sustainable future. They allow people and communities to regain control of their lives, their well-being, and their economic destiny. Being asked to consider an economic payback of 15 years on a solar installation is a total red-herring when basic survival over the next 5 years is what we should be considering. This means a whole lot of rebuilding and retrofitting, combined with redevelopment of city design on a more human scale instead of being totally automobile dependent.

Of course, the vast majority of people still go into full tilt denial mode when asked to consider the bigger picture.

Energy descent will be combined with increased energy efficiency and energy conservation, of that there can be little doubt. One very radical suggestion would be to tax at about a 90% rate the profits of the pollution economy and use that to invest in renewables, efficiency, and sustainable development within relocalized steady-state economies. This would take the onus off the individual and put it square in the realm of the polis--used in the original Greek meaning of the term.

In all the schemes I've evaluated, the only one that continues to make long-term sense, for both the human species and the planet, is one where people generate the majority of their energy needs at the home, business, and neighborhood levels, with a community or regional utility picking up the slack. This also requires a global population about 2/3rds smaller than it is today, with about half of this population involved in some aspect of biointensive organic food production using permaculture techniques. This social and economic system will stay within bioregional carrying capacity limits, as well as be administered by democratic confederations within these same bioregional boundaries.

Or, we'll continue to elect maniacs on the national stage who will continue to promise a better tomorrow just as soon as we exterminate an "other" who is keeping us from this better tomorrow. In the meantime, we'll continue to drive the SUV to MacDonalds on the way to the Mall to buy plastic closet organizers, where the biggest hill that land yacht is ever going to see are the speed-bumps in the parking lot.

As always, it comes down to choices. Which story do we decide to put our faith in? Which one not only feels right to you, but makes the most rational sense? Which one seems to be in alignment with the way natural systems have been self-organizing mutually beneficial attraction relationships that have supported life for billions of years?

Speedbumps on the road to sustainability

I'm just semi-randomly posting stuff I've written in the past few months to kinda lay a foundation for where I see changes occuring and the evidence I use to come to some of these conclusions. When it has no known basis in fact, I'll try to point this out. Usually.

Yesterday was three articles I'd written immediately after the 2006 mid-term elections. I needed something to fill some space as I was getting the blog setup and seeing how it looked.

I was originally thinking about calling this blog "Goring Sacred Cows: More Inconvenient Truths," but decided it would be way too limiting, as well as not really expressing the positive and creative focus I like to take on where we direct our effort, and on what do we base our choices. But it's going to be a recurring theme as we can't continue making bad decisions, and especially bad decisions that involve little more than making more money. Let's be honest about the sorry state this mindset has gotten us into and what a more rational and sensual alternative might get us.

And then let's just do it. It's all just a story that we believe in, and we can not only choose the interpretation of the story, we can choose an entirely different story as well.

Originally written in October, 2006, here's one in a set of Goring Sacred Cows: More Inconvenient Truths

Speedbumps on the road to sustainability

One of the biggest uphill battles in the quest for sustainability is going to be getting the "progressive" sector of the population to come to grips with their complicity in sustaining the doomsday economy and its voraciously expanding military budget. The denial that runs rampant, not just in the "limousine liberal" set, but with middle-class Democrats and Republicans, is more deep-seated and entrenched than anything you'll find at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

While it's true that you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and that beating people over the head with the coercive emotional forces of fear and guilt will only produce resentment and defensive rigidity, getting help in overcoming one's addictions starts with admitting you have a problem. This entails becoming aware of the consequences, both personal and social, of daily lifestyle choices before healthier alternatives can be evaluated. One reason this admission may be so difficult is because so many Americans interact with daily life through a Prozac haze. The latest figures show that about 50% of Americans take at least one prescription drug daily, and 20% take three or more. When you add in alcohol and other recreational drugs that are self- prescribed, somewhere between 70-80% of Americans desperately need some type of chemical salve to either make it through their day or to be able to tolerate their day.

I once ran an ad for my non-profit's counseling services announcing the creation of a consumer's support group to help overcome the addiction to materialism and actually got a few calls, but no one followed through. It is more of a taboo subject than what gets classified as sexual deviancy. It seems most people would rather talk about why they masturbate than why they continue to drive the mini-van to the mall.

That the materialistic and mechanized mindset of Western Civilization's Industrial Growth Society is a root cause of systemic problems is something that even many social and environmental justice non-profits don't want to deal with. This first became apparent to me about five years ago. Our non-profit was invited to participate in an educational fair. A large regional mall was trying to show how much they cared about the local community by allowing a dozen tables to be setup one day a year for non-profits to interfere with the shopping experience and pass out literature. This basically gave them the justification to chase anyone off during the rest of the year who would dare attempt to awaken people from the consensus trance.

I decided that I'd put a large sign above our table that said, "We can help you overcome your addiction to shopping." The other groups wouldn't let me put the sign up. They didn't want me "causing problems" or distracting from their own messages. They were afraid that the mall management wouldn't invite them back next year. They didn't want to address the fact, or even be reminded, that the whole reason their non-profit group even had a mission was because the mall existed in the first place.

Does human happiness need to be opposed to the needs of the planet? Can satisfaction be found that is harmonious with nature and with people's inner nature? By seeking satisfaction through consumerism, we are doing as much harm to the planet as is caused by overpopulation. Not only does consumerism fail in its promise of happiness, but by decreasing our free time and by keeping us from developing satisfying relationships, consumerism makes us less happy.

Consumerism -- the concept of growth through consumption -- is US economic policy's primary goal. We are 4.5 times richer than our great-grandparents, but are we 4.5 times happier? In the effort to turn consumption into a ritual to deliver happiness and fulfillment, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that material goods can fulfill what are actually social, psychological, and spiritual needs.

Surveys have consistently shown that people have believed for decades that if they only had twice as much money they'd be happy, no matter if their yearly income was $15 thousand or $15 million. But surveys also show that the number of Americans who report they are very happy -- 1/3 -- is the same now as in 1957, despite a doubling of GNP and personal spending since then.

People are unsatisfied, without knowing why. They think they need more of what they have now. But, if what they have now is what makes people unsatisfied, will more of it make them more satisfied or more dissatisfied? Perhaps people are tuning in to the fact that if human desires are infinitely expandable, it is physically impossible for material consumption to provide fulfillment -- a fact either ignored or vigorously denied by orthodox growth economists.

Consumption fails to make us happy, and advertising then cultivates and preys on that unhappiness. Ads make people self-conscious about being human and unique; to be unhappy with whatever they have that doesn't match this year's fashion. The advertising industry then assures people that the corporate gods have the proper synthetic salvation for their falsely created, non-existent problems.

The things that people say make them happy and life rewarding include developing talents, building stronger family and social relationships, appreciation of nature, pursuing education, and having quality leisure time. These are all sustainable and non-consumerist. But the race to keep up with the Joneses is subverting these desires. Instead of having more leisure time, Americans devote one billion working hours per year to buying more leisure wear.

It's time to create a NewStory. The People's Declaration of Interdependence, known as the Earth Charter, points toward a path for doing this based on our common shared values of respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, democracy, nonviolence, and peace. The Earth Charter provides a framework for the NewStory of sustainable development. Remember that the antidote to despair is righteous action. The more we focus on what we don't like, the more it increases. It thrives on that energy. We must focus on what we're for, instead of spending so much time protesting what we're against.

It is also instructive and empowering to realize that we are far from alone in the desire to consciously make new choices that are in balance with natural systems. The voluntary simplicity, Cultural Creative, and relocalization movements toward a post-corporate and post-carbon economy can combine with political progressives to make up about 45% of the electorate. It is estimated that about 90 million people in the U.S. are included in these groups, which makes them about nine times larger than the radical right of Christian fundamentalists, and three times larger than either the current Democratic or Republican Parties.

As the German Greens say, we're neither right nor left--we're in front. Would you like to help lead this parade into a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom, social justice, economic equity, and participatory democracy?

Congrats to the Dems, Part II: Where Next?

This is the post I actually first tried to write, but all that other stuff just had to come out first. Not so much cathartic, as simply laying an honest foundation for where we are, what we have to work with, and where we need to go.

Because the one thing that should be apparent, above all else, is that America voted for change, although as usual managed in some--perhaps not insignificant--ways to shoot itself in the foot while doing so. Such was the case with the defeat of Lincoln Chaffee; and I can't find enough positive terms to describe my elation that Santorum was beaten, but the anti-abortion, pro-gun Casey was the best the Dems could come up with to do so?

Anyway... whatever... I'll let that go for the time being.

So, in the spirit of bipartisanship being called for, how about building a bipartisan relationship between people and the planet they depend on for their health and well-being, and that provides all of the raw materials for any type of economy. Even a steady-state economy, which more people are finally beginning to realize will be necessary as the growth economy implodes and more natural resources disappear, will depend on the sustainability of a productive, vibrant and non-toxic natural world.

I've been working on an article for the past few weeks now dealing with some of these issues. Hopefully, you should find it more balanced and less ranting than these last couple that I've dashed off in under an hour since the election results. Before I finish that article up, though, let's begin looking at some of the things progressives must do to enlighten their new representatives on the people's desire for change, the direction it should go, and how to best enact it. Wouldn't it be great to expand and extend the rightful and long overdue celebration of the defeat of right-wing extremism and religious fundamentalism?

The new Democratic majority in Congress should take a long, hard, and honest look at what the majority of people in America are clamoring for. The Republicans who survived the election should join them in this inquiry. The Democrat's election win was not a "centrist" call to maintain the status quo.

The war in Iraq must come to an end. Actually, let's continue in the spirit of honesty and admit that the war against Iraq, which was really an illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign nation, has been won and has been over since pResident select Bush declared "Mission Accomplished." What the U.S. is now engaged in is a brutal occupation for which the U.S. military is ill-equipped and ill-trained to maintain. It's time for serious rebuilding instead of profiteering to begin.

No one of right mind would say that Saddam Hussein didn't need to be removed from power. Allowing the barbaric and self-serving methodology of a neoconservative ideology to hold sway was the mistake that has proven fatal to thousands of U.S. military personnel, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the ecology of the entire Middle East, and to both the U.S. treasury and its standing as a moral beacon on the world stage. Whether or not this standing has actually been earned and is deserved after hundreds of years of imperialist policy to protect corporate interests is another issue that merits serious discussion as we move forward in discovering ways to build a sustainable culture of peace based on ecological wisdom and social justice.

Fighting terrorism, however, must be recognized as the oxymoron that it is. If we're to have any hope for success in becoming secure from terrorist threats, we must remove the reasons for terrorist activities to arise.

These issues cannot be divorced from their relationships with the even more serious threat facing humanity of catastrophic climate destabilization, the threat facing a global growth economy that has the moniker of Peak Oil, and the loss of our sovereignty to corporatism. This is what I call the Triumvirate of Collapse.

The growth economy is how we've come to define reality and is the basis for our modern notions of prosperity and security. Its immanent collapse due to the decreasing availability and increasing cost of fossil fuels, with no _realistic_ replacement on the horizon, could prove catastrophic for humanity if government continues to ignore the issue and does nothing to help people prepare for energy descent and relocalized economies. These issues are all intimately intertwined and must be evaluated in the context of dominator control hierarchies and how they have led the shift from the founding American ideals of a democratic Republic toward the current Plutocracy that is running America. I would say running into the ground, but with so much topsoil disappearing, it's more like a bottomless cesspool of toxic waste.

The typical progressive band-aid approach of regulatory incrementalism, which we're told by the elites that continue to benefit from it is the only realistic response to corporate abuse and exploitation, must be replaced by a systemic approach that effectively deals with root causes. Only by effectively dealing with these root causes can a sustainable future be built.

Sustainability should become the agenda to unite progressives from the peace, justice, environmental, and grass-roots democracy movement. Adhering to a comprehensive definition of sustainability that includes the concept of carrying capacity must be used to help inform the decision making of our newly elected congress. Meeting the goals for a sustainable future will also provide the yardstick to measure the new congress's progress and success.

The question on everyone's mind should be whether the centrists of the Democratic Party will awaken from their consensus trance? To be honest, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen. What I am hopeful for, however, is that the millions of caring activists, and the tens of millions of caring citizens, that have traditionally identified with and pinned their hopes on the Democratic Party will finally awaken from their own self-imposed consensus trance and realize that their only hope for systemic, sustainable change that is equitable is to join en masse and empower the Green Party. This would transform the landscape of American politics as quickly as Hurricane Katrina transformed the landscape of New Orleans. Our very survival may very shortly depend on it.

The next two years is more than enough time for the current Democratic majority to prove their mettle. Excuses should not be tolerated. If they don't, and in 2008 we are again presented with the typical choice of two appointed party losers who will most likely be McCain and Clinton (and I can't for the life of me decide which of these two is further to the right, and actually trust McCain more as he's closer to a true Republican than Hillary is), the Green Party would be foolish to not seize upon the best opportunity, presented quite literally on a silver platter, they'll likely ever come across.

Outreach and education, passion and compassion in helping people connect the dots between what is actually oppressing them and keeping them from their potential, and what they can actually do about it as the unsustainable system collapses around our feet may be the best chance for electing not only a Green president in 2008, but a solid majority of legislators as well. There is no time like the present to start prepping candidates.

What better gift to the world than providing the Ten Key Values of the Green Party as the foundation for the planet and humanity's future? Because the bottom line is that corporations and their quest for profit and their consolidation of power and control cannot be allowed to continue unchallenged; the planet cannot survive its destructive and self-serving onslaught for too much longer.

The process of relocalization based on the natural systems principles of mutual support and reciprocity, no waste, no greed, and increasing diversity not only adheres to the Ten Key Values, but provides both the path to sustainability and the antidote to corporate globalization. It seems to me to be the real platform that people across the political spectrum are clamoring for.

Congrats to the Dems: Part I

Ok, it's been pointed out to me that I should, if not accentuate, at least give due congratulations for what the Democratic Party managed to accomplish yesterday.

Because, on the surface it seems like a good thing. The Republican Kleptocracy was run out of town on a rail, which, of course, is an excellent thing indeed.

But, it sure seems like the only thing the Democrats did was ride the coattails of a popular uprising against a criminal, arrogant, GOPedophile class that the Democratic leaders have pretty much fully backed for six years--except for those times they have publicly stated they could do a better job of it. Bankruptcy bill, cloture, the supremes, Patriot Act, CAFTA, tax breaks for the wealthy, defense spending... all supported by the majority of the Dems. Only one Democratic Senator voted against giving the shrub imperial powers. They did however, thanks to people like Cantwell, keep the oil rigs out of ANWR.

Truth be told, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters and a small handful of others are the only Democrats who are members of the vertebrate class.

It seems everybody's pissed at the shrub for bringing the stark reality of American imperialism into the light of day. After all, Clinton was so much better at keeping it covered up with NAFTA, the WTO, and his criminal sanctions and weekly bombings of Iraq which were responsible for at _least_ 5 times more Iraqi deaths that what the shrub has been able to accomplish so far. But Clinton knew a much better way to distract the masses, as evidenced by Monica's blue dress. I myself could care less about hummers in the oval office, but how many more people knew where that spot on the dress was than where Bosnia was?

Anyway, let's see what the *Democratic Party* actually offered as an opposition party during the 2006 mid-term elections to the vast majority of the American population so desperately crying out for change.

Their platform on catastrophic climate destabilization was... missing in action. They didn't even have one for global warming, except for a very meager cap and trade system that two or three candidates mentioned in passing.

Their energy plan is what? more nukes? It sure doesn't involve telling the people the truth about Peak Oil and what it means for a future of energy-descent, the end of a growth economy, and what will most likely be massive die-off if a plan for relocalization isn't put into place by, oh, let's say tomorrow.

Their plan to abolish corporate personhood is... shhh... don't bring that up. Their re-election coffers will shrink up tighter than a male's scrotum after jumping into a Minnesota lake in January.

Their plan for election reform is... what? It sure doesn't include IRV or making it easier for third parties to get ballot access. They know where the balance of power would shift if the progressive majority in this country could vote in good faith and had more to choose from than the typical two selected losers.

And what exactly is the Democrat's actual plan for Iraq? Last I heard it was to send more troops in order to do the job "properly."

The current Senate and House minority leaders are on record as saying if the Dems took either house, they wouldn't press for impeachment of a presidency that the _entire_ rest of the world knows is criminal and which your average third-grader could successfully prosecute.

Are they afraid they might make their corporate masters angry?

I'm now supposed to somehow feel better about my and my children's future, and the future of this planet, because the colors changed from red to blue? Based on what evidence exactly, is my question.

So, I hearby offer my hearty congratulations to the Democratic Party for successfully pulling the wool over everyone's eyes with the myth that the overall system is now going to change for the better.

Post election musing

What's this foreboding feeling I have after the elections yesterday?

After seeing the way the candidate voting went (the shift to the Democrats) and the way the proposition voting went here in Arizona (the support for racism and the special interests destroying the world) the main thing that should be apparent--but obviously won't be--is how miserably the American education system has failed the past five generations.

It seems the majority of people who can read have limited comprehension skills and zero skills in critical thinking and analysis. The average voter bought the lies and spin lock, stock, and barrel and seem quite proud of themselves for doing so. Just read a handful of the comments on Tucson's Arizona Daily Star website in regard to the various proposition's outcomes and see if you don't come to this painful conclusion yourself.

So, Arizona retains its image as a racist state of heartless money grubbers willing to lead the race to the bottom as we tax to death current residents to pave (quite literally) the way for those who don't live here (yet) which will maximize the profits of those wanting to bulldoze half the desert to make it easier to drive bigger cars to ticky tacky sprawl and the other half for golf courses kept green with water we don't have.

When the inevitable whining on the left starts--which should start occurring in less than six months (and across the nation, not just in AZ)--it probably won't do any good to remind them that they elected Democrats whose major campaign promise (Giffords being probably the best local example) was that they'd be better Republicans than those currently serving.

All I can say is I hope I'm proven wrong.