Category: Uncategorized

Is the financial crisis worse than the climate crisis?

Not even close.

via.

So there’s all this talk about a so-called brain train (no trademark – no need) connecting our little college burg with the big city. Living in Lower America, you often get the feeling that you’re on the front lines of the culture wars.* And with public transit, it is no different. The reality of SUPER TRAINS blasting across the region is as much a foreign concept as having your passport or speaking a second language. This BT’s only currency whatsoever is as a football that gets booted around occasionally, but it’s going nowhere, and until it begins to get brought out to tailgate at the big home games (stay with me), it’s not going anywhere. We will simply continue to spend inordinate amounts on new road construction, sit in traffic, listening to oldies or talk radio, getting angry and resentful about the wrong things. It is a massive example of our stupid. Ouch. Stove… Hot!

If the intertubes is so special and all, why are hundreds of thousands of people still driving into downtown ATL everyday? They’re not making anything, per se. What is it, to attend productivity meetings?

There are things to get angry and resentful about. Consider:

This is the State Transportation Improvement Program funds in Georgia by category for 2008 – 2011.

Financial summary here. Caution: Need to distinguish between billions and millions.

Building trains, tracks and stations is expensive. No argument there.

But what we have now is very expensive and it’s bad economic policy, bad environmental policy and bad social policy that has resulted in a host of perfectly foreseeable crises, not the least of which is that we’re running out gas to drive the cars on the roads. I’m somehow sure that we will be at the midpoint of blacktopping some new four-lane when the very last barrel of oil is pumped from the ground.

* said front-line proximity may contribute to good art making.

‘bump’ image reproduced from a Sierra Club website with permission of the Sierra Club.

One reason it might be difficult to talk about living more simply without getting wrapped up in the current financial meltdown is that they are not… unconnected. The problems of how we might go about shifting toward greater sustainability is writ small against the massive color backdrop of the shift itself. There is no alternative. The massively wasteful infrastructure that was required to make the whole thing go has overshot its own projections. In that way the correction previously discussed arrives disguised in the collapse of the financial system on which it was constructed, i.e., not disguised at all. Attend:

cheap gas… interstates… suburbs… exurbs… over-development… excess housing capacity… over-priced real estate… not-so-cheap gas… mortgage defaults… bankruptcies… bank failures… market crashes. All of this has a symbiosis with long commutes, abandoning cities, demonizing conservation, castigating high taxes, government generally and its attendant accomplishments and regulations. Results: crumbling infrastructure, no public transit or other public works mechanisms (indeed, an open hatred for them) to combat the elevated levels of fuel prices, carbon dioxide, global warming and national security fears brought about by the long-chain addiction to a product we do not make; no jobs to drive to from houses we cannot afford. Bonuses: Long commutes enabled talk radio to manufacture rage against fictitious villains and domestic enemies, rage which allowed the responsible parties to evade responsibility for longer than should have been possible.

Reality will not be mocked, apparently. A government lies its way into a war at its peril. A society hinges its future on a few very finite resources, beneath the staggeringly presumptuous banner of Pax Americana… and it designs the ultimate payback for its hubris.

Kunstler, who watches these things closely, pens a timely diddy:

Any way you paint this grotesque panorama, it looks like a very new chapter of history for life in the USA. Basically, we are a much poorer nation than we were even a couple of years ago, and we have a much-reduced ability to project our will around the world, or even among our own floundering sectors and regions. Most troubling to me is the question of legitimacy that now hangs over the proscenium like a guillotine blade. Factoring in the old saw that history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes, I think the situation emerging is rather like the crisis of legitimacy that preceded the Civil War. Then, in the 1850s, the nation’s two symbiotic political parties, Whig and Democrat, entered a zone of fatal discredit. The White House had been occupied by a sequence of empty cravats named Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan, and so much pent-up mistrust roiled the centers of power that the nation entered a convulsion.

…

The Republican Party amounts to today’s Whigs. Their candidate for president, John McCain, is trying to run away from his own party — as one might shrink away from a colony of importuning lepers. I am actually not kidding when I label the Republicans “the party that wrecked America,” because I believe that is truly how the popular strain of history will regard them when (maybe if) the wreckage of their ministrations ever clears. But history doesn’t repeat exactly. The current figure from Illinois, Barrack Obama, has yet to offer a truly crisis-clarfying rhetoric, though he labors under the expectation of being able to do so. Like his long-ago predecessor, he is mocked by the coarser elements of what we call “the media” these days — Fox News and the moron-rousers of talk radio.

When we decide to call things what they are and realize how fragile we and this whole living system are, the roads to the future will re-open. Like we say, the reason that green is so compelling is that it links our hope with our evil. We’re going to traverse a few more of these two-way avenues we’ve been loath to roam before we find a lesser way out of this mess. Or, alternately, we’re going to realize there are worse things than being poor.

We’ve all seen them, the little openings to nowhere that occasionally slash the side of a new roadway or a newly-widened old one. They’re usually placed in front of cow pastures or other open space, then the bit of formed concrete suddenly gives way to dirt, grass, a ditch then a fence. Many, many of these will now go abandoned, giving a certain circular echo to the once-presumed opportunity in the emptiness. What they are – what they were – are placeholders for a future entrance to a development that is not there yet but one day will be. The one day that’s coming when we will call these relics ‘green markers’ or ‘option stops’ or some such term indicative of the serious moment that crops up when we temporarily get post-irony, again. ‘Starting in the low 300’s’ indeed.

Some might say that one day is here; no one made the announcement but this dog whistle sounds a lot like the trillion-dollar insurance company investment we and our adjacent progeny all just made. These little ciphers in the road to our past should be memorialized as markers for our stupidity, little DOT-sanctioned homages to the greed that once controlled how and where we once lived. I use the past tense because they are over. Finit-O®.

Though this is the end to neither greed nor stupidity. So stipulated. It is only the end of the way this powerful combination once dictated how we lived. Suburbs, gated enclaves only accessible by private vehicle and situated far from an interaction with and vulnerability to other people – also known as life – are things of the past.

Yes, come and play Finit-O®, that fun game where we bid farewell to an entire set of tenets and beliefs predicated on short-term individual comfort but revealed as the path to long-term collective agony, celebrated with curb openings to non-existent suburbs and lionized beneath crumbling gates to exclusivity and literal isolation. And these are not just funparks but monuments to serve as a constant reminder of the greed and stupidity that permitted us to forget our priorities in good times, to elect and re-elect those for whom pillaging earth and man was a preference. Ah, look familiar? That’s because it’s already been different for a while as we’ve entered the end of the beginning of the end… of the beginning. (Almost had you there! Everyone wants to KNOW.) We’re even becoming wise to many of the shades of green.

So… who’s in charge of this grand transition, you might ask? Mobile one to home base – come in, home base.

Using chemicals to grow food is in many ways similar to raising bears who are unafraid of humans – not a good thing. With bears, we know what happens; with pesticides and herbicides, not so much – but like bears, we’ve got a pretty solid idea.

Known alternately as organic farming with a spiritual component and the first modern ecological farming system, biodynamic agriculture fuses the concepts of earth and soul with the ingredients we put into each. This bit of symmetry is no accident. One of the small-t truths is that we expect a sort of harvest from both, and it’s okay to admit this. The conundrum of inputs and expectations is less related to the bizarre instance of food magically appearing in cans on the shelves of our supermarkets that it resembles; it is more akin to the imperceptible marvel that comes from almost any time spent living in Europe and/or parts of South America where, in the process of exploring, eating, drinking and living, wine simply becomes food again. The back-alley alchemy is what we’ve done to food to make it so sterile, anti-septic and often poisonous. Stepping back from this abyss is powerfully hypnotic, tied to increased health, vigor, libido, creativity, connection, community, meaning and almost any other ailment identified by name or fame in TV pharmaceutical commercials.

I often wonder whether this particular blog thing-y is cumulative or just a bunch of unconnected latitudes spanning a distant planet called sane. Then I answer, yes. Viticulture is an easy jumping off point on biodynamic Ag, and more importantly, a dead giveaway to its essence. See [insert abstract noun here] not for what it is, but for what it should be. Imagine a pairing for each of the seven sins but, of course, always consult your doctor.

This is well done, but I mostly enjoy the sound loop.

Generally speaking, there are many ways to create a picture out of the clues, like we might using a few handy items from around the house to fashion an idea with a crafts project. If it’s a big picture you’re interested in, you can do that, too. Start off with using whatever is available, the tools at hand. For information, there are many things in plain sight all around us all the time, which we see and hear repeated so constantly that we forget they are being said, much less who says them and why. “Viewer discretion advised,” for example, or ” As a condition of the $2 billion settlement, the companies admitted no wrong doing.” We get ideas by making decisions about conditions and information coming into our heads. We cultivate the ability to decide whether a thing is viable or just another ruse aimed at concealing the truth. Objectionable logic is just that, but how do we tell?

I was discussing a new-ish film with friends recently. They liked it, generally; I was perhaps a bit zealous in pointing out what I didn’t like about it and why it was such a problem. They were slightly taken aback. The response was on the order of, “Oh, I wasn’t being critical… I was just watching, being entertained.” I let it pass. They are friends. After all, it’s just a movie… it’s just art… it’s just music, it’s all just entertainment. Just like it’s just politics, I guess, no need to discern anything about these and pick out what works from what doesn’t and why. I’m just wearing these shoes – they could be any shoes at all, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care that they have gaping holes and one let through a sharp rock that pierced my toe. I mean, they’re just shoes, right? We’re not being critical.

But we should be. Do you have a critical knob? Well, set it on high and break it off with something heavy.

There have been a few indirect references recently to the OODA Loop. Beyond its seemingly nefarious applications, why not co-opt it for other purposes? Planetary peril might well be taken as a business and military issue, and if we applied some fundamental precepts about adapting to terrestrially-threatening situations, who knows?

What is certain is that the advertising onslaught continues, it just happens to be coming in the form of a preznitial campaign. I can imagine the gurus sitting around, spurred on by wondering just how much nonsense we can take. We (there is no they) are going to wring the very last few drops of whatever it is we think we want out of the gullible, including but, not limited to, the last unqualified Decider.

Unsolicited advice: If you like people, don’t read Bertrand Russell. If you think torture and occupation are positive goods, don’t watch Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers. But fer chrissakes, even IF you enjoy a good joke, don’t put one on a ballot and ask me to vote for it – especially if you know I might.

Wet behind the ears, let’s not pretend we don’t know what green means.

The fractal aspect of insecurity belies appearances, those symbols that stand for many things, and because they hold the past hostage constrict future possibilities. The connection here is simple and direct. The past is a hostage because we cannot properly face it and therefore must edit heavily, not realizing that the most egregious episodes are the most useful. We need them, to face up to them and get acquainted with our worst tendencies. The utility of blocking them out is childish and immature, which we remain as long as we keep those rooms dark.

You can see how this affects the future. It is one reason why we simultaneously recognize and seem so constrained by the idea of change – paralyzed by its appeal, we are frozen between the shores of yesterday and tomorrow. With both so unknown each seems more than a little threatening. But we can demystify one by reckoning with the other, and still be left with plenty of mystery to go around.

Sensing the need for a shift but loath to fully define it, we default to a resistance to progress as though it were natural and not a contrivance. From what? To what? The recriminations flow: what was so bad about… ? What would be so good about… ? And then rush into the waiting arms of reassuring mythos. “Are you saying we are bad? America-hater! Love it or leave it, hippie!”

Two bad choices is not choice.

Image used under Creative Commons license

So we’re not the only ones to be hosting multi-episode train wrecks. Environmental degradation in La Mancha seems to be based on the same combination of greed, marketing savvy(!), corruption and complete lack of consideration for the consequences of unfettered development that we’ve grown to love, plus a little decentralized policy-making mixed in for good measure. In Almodovar’s Volver, the slow turn of the windmills was an easy metaphor toiling in the background that formed the foreground pastiche of return, of coming back. What we keep coming back to again and again is how progress-as-slash-and-burn-development does not work, financially and morally bankrupts a society while laying waste to the patrimony of a country’s heritage.  Turn right at “A new way to live!” and before long what you’re left with is a battalion of hideous pre-fab swimming pools standing at attention. Debate over whether some minor aspects of megalithic construction projects are green or not is a joke. They’re not. At. all.

Waiting for any of this to sink in seems redundant.

An an excerpt from an article, that maybe should have come before the post below but now just follows up on it:

Meanwhile, the emergence of television sounded the final death knell of what media critic Neil Postman called “the Age of Exposition”—that time in American cultural life when the printed word dominated public discourse and “average Americans did not just think for themselves; they thought rationally about ideals, and they were able to express those ideals in a rational way.” By contrast, the ideals that filtered out from television screens were “simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual.” More information than ever was available to Americans, but it was reaching them in an idiom that placed little importance on nuance and broad perspective.