Hopefully, you were able to watch the Amory Lovins talk in yesterday’s post? If not, then do find time to watch how Professor Lovins sets out the powerful argument that the USA could soon, relatively speaking, be energy self-sufficient.
So on top of the Lovins presentation, I wanted to draw your attention to an item on Climate Crocks last October 5th.
One of the great stories untold in the American media is the ongoing revolution in one of the world’s most advanced economies – as Germany undertakes a bold and serious transition from powering a great engine of prosperity on fossil fuels, to plentiful and inexhaustible renewable energy.
Listening to Mitt Romney double and triple down on the bogus Fox/Fossil narrative about “clean coal” and failed renewables, it might be well to consider how one of our toughest manufacturing competitors is going all-in on the high stakes renewable energy revolution of the new century.
The article is a detailed analysis of how Germany is powering ahead, pardon the pun, in the provision of non carbon-based power, as this reference illustrates,
German use of coal to generate electricity has declined steadily from 1990 to 2011, according to readily available statistics on the German electricity system. The percentage of coal-fired electricity in German electricity generation has fallen from 56.7% in 1990 to 43.5% last year–a decrease of more than 10% despite a increase in total electricity generation during the same period of about 10%. At the same time the share of renewable energy in the electricity mix has increased from 3.6% to 19.9%, mostly due to the rapid development of wind energy and biomass.
Here is one for you- http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml – the idea is totally leftfield, but it fulfils certain issues such as distribution, decentralisation of power and offers a recharge network for electric cars and it has received a big chunk of government funding. It is so out there that I wonder if it could possibly be the answer but you never know.
Very quickly one finds that Solar Roadways are involved in something VERY interesting, namely,
Years ago, when the phrase “Global Warming” began gaining popularity, we started batting around the idea of replacing asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels that could be driven upon. We thought of the “black box” on airplanes: We didn’t know what material that black box was made of, but it seemed to be able to protect sensitive electronics from the worst of airline crashes.
Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to “paint” the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born.
Now watch this!
and then watch this, as nearly 1.5 million others have!
The Solar Roadways project is working to pave roads with solar panels that you can drive on. Co-founder Scott Brusaw has made some major steps forward since our first visit back in 2007, so we visited him again for an exclusive update on the project, including the first ever video recorded of the Solar Roadways prototype! For more information visit http://www.solarroadways.com . This Solar Roadway project is highlighted as one of many planet-friendly solutions in the feature film by YERT – Your Environmental Road Trip. To learn more about YERT, visit http://yert.com .
Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. Arnold J Toynbee
I’m not sure where to start but as a result of finishing a particular book, plus a recent essay on Tom Dispatch, then another recent essay from Simon Johnson of Baseline Scenario fame, there were so many thoughts bumping around this aged brain that I had no alternative than to offer them to you, dear reader. You should also be warned that this is going to be two posts, covering today and tomorrow.
So let’s start with the book: The United States of Fear by Tom Engelhardt. To be brutally honest, I purchased the book more as a gesture of support to Tom who has been very supportive of Learning from Dogs, in particular allowing me permission to reproduce any essays that were published on TomDispatch, as a number have so been. What an error of judgment! Tom’s book provided another one of those rare but inspirational occasions where you know the world will never look quite the same again!
The back cover page of the book sets out the theme, thus,
Published 2011
In 2008, when the US National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the administration of newly elected President Barack Obama, it predicted that the planet’s “sole superpower” would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing fifteen years hence. In his new book The United States of Fear, Tom Engelhardt makes clear that Americans should don their crash helmets and buckle their seat belts, because the United States is on the path to a major decline at a startling speed. Engelhardt offers a savage anatomy of how successive administrations in Washington took the “Soviet path”—pouring American treasure into the military, war, and national security—and so helped drive their country off the nearest cliff.This is the startling tale of how fear was profitably shot into the national bloodstream, how the country—gripped by terror fantasies—was locked down, and how a brain-dead Washington elite fiddled (and profited) while America quietly burned.
Think of it as the story of how the Cold War really ended, with the triumphalist “sole superpower” of 1991 heading slowly for the same exit through which the Soviet Union left the stage twenty years earlier.
One of the fascinating aspects of the book is that it was put together from 32 essays previously published online by Tom; the complete list with titles and dates is on pps. 205 & 206. So giving you a real feel for the book is easy! I’m going to do that by linking to one of those essays available in the archives of TomDispatch here. That essay was called Washington’s Echo Chamber and appears in the book starting on page 170 under the sub-heading of Five Ways to Be Tone Deaf in Washington. Let me quote you a little,
So much of what Washington did imagine in these last years proved laughable, even before this moment swept it away. Just take any old phrase from the Bush years. How about “You’re either with us or against us”? What’s striking is how little it means today. Looking back on Washington’s desperately mistaken assumptions about how our globe works, this might seem like the perfect moment to show some humility in the face of what nobody could have predicted.
It would seem like a good moment for Washington — which, since September 12, 2001, has been remarkably clueless about real developments on this planet and repeatedly miscalculated the nature of global power — to step back and recalibrate.
As it happens, there’s no evidence it’s doing so. In fact, that may be beyond Washington’s present capabilities, no matter how many billions of dollars it pours into “intelligence.” And by “Washington,” I mean not just the Obama administration, or the Pentagon, or our military commanders, or the vast intelligence bureaucracy, but all those pundits and think-tankers who swarm the capital, and the media that reports on them all. It’s as if the cast of characters that makes up “Washington” now lives in some kind of echo chamber in which it can only hear itself talking.
As a result, Washington still seems remarkably determined to play out the string on an era that is all too swiftly passing into the history books. While many have noticed the Obama administration’s hapless struggle to catch up to events in the Middle East, even as it clings to a familiar coterie of grim autocrats and oil sheiks, let me illustrate this point in another area entirely — the largely forgotten war in Afghanistan. After all, hardly noticed, buried beneath 24/7 news from Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East, that war continues on its destructive, costly course with nary a blink.
That was published by Tom a little over 18 months ago! Seems as relevant today as then! Let me stay with perspectives from 2011.
Chomsky, visiting Vancouver, Canada in March 2004
On the 24th August 2011 Noam Chomsky wrote an essay entitled American Decline: Causes and Consequences. Chomsky, as Wikipedia relates, is Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Here is how that essay opens,
In the 2011 summer issue of the journal of the American Academy of Political Science, we read that it is “a common theme” that the United States, which “only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal — is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay.” It is indeed a common theme, widely believed, and with some reason. But an appraisal of US foreign policy and influence abroad and the strength of its domestic economy and political institutions at home suggests that a number of qualifications are in order. To begin with, the decline has in fact been proceeding since the high point of US power shortly after World War II, and the remarkable rhetoric of the several years of triumphalism in the 1990s was mostly self-delusion. Furthermore, the commonly drawn corollary — that power will shift to China and India — is highly dubious. They are poor countries with severe internal problems. The world is surely becoming more diverse, but despite America’s decline, in the foreseeable future there is no competitor for global hegemonic power.
So, according to Chomsky, it’s not as ‘black and white’ as Engelhardt sets out. But do read the full essay.
Nevertheless, the idea that the USA is ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ is supported in an essay published by Mattea Kramer on TomDispatch on the last day of September. I’m going to end Part One by republishing the essay in full. (Note that this is being published here after the first ‘debate’ had taken place.)
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Tough Talk for America
A Guide to the Presidential Debates You Won’t Hear
By Mattea Kramer
Five big things will decide what this country looks like next year and in the 20 years to follow, but here’s a guarantee for you: you’re not going to hear about them in the upcoming presidential debates. Yes, there will be questions and answers focused on deficits, taxes, Medicare, the Pentagon, and education, to which you already more or less know the responses each candidate will offer. What you won’t get from either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is a little genuine tough talk about the actual state of reality in these United States of ours. And yet, on those five subjects, a little reality would go a long way, while too little reality (as in the debates to come) is a surefire recipe for American decline.
So here’s a brief guide to what you won’t hear this Wednesday or in the other presidential and vice-presidential debates later in the month. Think of these as five hard truths that will determine the future of this country.
1. Immediate deficit reduction will wipe out any hope of economic recovery: These days, it’s fashionable for any candidate to talk about how quickly he’ll reduce the federal budget deficit, which will total around $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2012. And you’re going to hear talk about the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan and more like it on Wednesday. But the hard truth of the matter is that deep deficit reduction anytime soon will be a genuine disaster. Think of it this way: If you woke up tomorrow and learned that Washington had solved the deficit crisis and you’d lost your job, would you celebrate? Of course not. And yet, any move to immediately reduce the deficit does increase the likelihood that you will lose your job.
When the government cuts spending, it lays off workers and cancels orders for all sorts of goods and services that would generate income for companies in the private sector. Those companies, in turn, lay off workers, and the negative effects ripple through the economy. This isn’t atomic science. It’s pretty basic stuff, even if it’s evidently not suitable material for a presidential debate. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service predicted in a September report, for example, that any significant spending cuts in the near-term would contribute to an economic contraction. In other words, slashing deficits right now will send us ever deeper into the Great Recession from which, at best, we’ve scarcely emerged.
Champions of immediate deficit reduction are likely to point out that unsustainable deficits aren’t good for the economy. And that’s true — in the long run. Washington must indeed plan for smaller deficits in the future. That will, however, be a lot easier to accomplish when the economy is healthier, since government spending declines when fewer people qualify for assistance, and tax revenues expand when the jobless go back to work. So it makes sense to fix the economy first. The necessity for near-term recovery spending paired with long-term deficit reduction gets drowned out when candidates pack punchy slogans into flashes of primetime TV.
2. Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources: Hard to believe? It’s nonetheless a fact. By now, it’s a tradition for candidates to compete on just how much further they’d lower taxes and whether they’ll lower them for everyone or just everyone but the richest of the rich. That’s a super debate to listen to, if you’re into fairy tales. It’s not as thrilling if you consider that Americans now enjoy the lightest tax burden in more than five decades, and it happens to come with a hefty price tag on an item labeled “the future.” There is no way the U.S. can maintain a world-class infrastructure — we’re talking levees, highways, bridges, you name it — and a public education system that used to be the envy of the world, plus many other key domestic priorities, on the taxes we’re now paying.
Anti-tax advocates insist that we should cut taxes even more to boost a flagging economy — an argument that hits the news cycle nearly every hour and that will shape the coming TV “debate.” As the New York Times recently noted, however, tax cuts might have been effective in giving the economy a lift decades ago when tax rates were above 70%. (And no, that’s not a typo, that’s what your parents and grandparents paid without much grumbling.) With effective tax rates around 14% for Mitt Romney and many others, further cuts won’t hasten job creation, just the hollowing out of public investment in everything from infrastructure to education. Right now, the negative effects of tax increases on the most well-off would be small — read: not a disaster for “job creators” — and those higher rates would bring in desperately-needed revenue. Tax increases for middle-class Americans should arrive when the economy is stronger.
Right now, the situation is clear: we’re simply not paying enough to fund the basic ingredients of prosperity from highways and higher education to medical research and food safety. Without those funds, this country’s future won’t be pretty.
3. Neither the status quo nor a voucher system will protect Medicare (or any other kind of health care) in the long run: When it comes to Medicare, Mitt Romney has proposed a premium-support program that would allow seniors the option of buying private insurance. President Obama wants to keep Medicare more or less as it is for retirees. Meanwhile, the ceaseless rise in health-care costs is eating up the wages of regular Americans and the federal budget. Health care now accounts for a staggering 24% of all federal spending, up from 7% less than 40 years ago. Governor Romney’s plan would shift more of those costs onto retirees, according to David Cutler, a health economist at Harvard, while President Obama says the federal government will continue to pick up the tab. Neither of them addresses the underlying problem.
Here’s reality: Medicare could be significantly protected by cutting out waste. Our health system is riddled with unnecessary tests and procedures, as well as poorly coordinated care for complex health problems. This country spent $2.6 trillion on health care in 2010, and some estimates suggest that a staggering 30% of that is wasted. Right now, our health system rewards quantity, not quality, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of paying for each test and procedure, Medicare could pay for performance and give medical professionals a strong incentive to provide more efficient and coordinated care. President Obama’s health law actually pilot tests such an initiative. But that’s another taboo topic this election season, so he scarcely mentions it. Introducing such change into Medicare and the rest of our health system would save the federal government tens of billions of dollars annually. It would truly preserve Medicare for future generations, and it would improve the affordability of health coverage for everyone under 65 as well. Too bad it’s not even up for discussion.
4. The U.S. military is outrageously expensive and yet poorly tailored to the actual threats to U.S. national security: Candidates from both parties pledge to protect the Pentagon from cuts, or even, in the case of the Romney team, to increase the already staggering military budget. But in a country desperate for infrastructure, education, and other funding, funneling endless resources to the Pentagon actually weakens “national security.” Defense spending is already mind-numbingly large: if all U.S. military and security spending were its own country, it would have the 19th largest economy in the world, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and Switzerland. Whether you’re counting aircraft carriers, weapons systems, or total destructive power, it’s absurdly overmatched against the armed forces of the rest of the world, individually or in combination. A couple of years ago, then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates gave a speech in which he detailed that overmatch. A highlight: “The U.S. operates 11 large carriers, all nuclear powered. In terms of size and striking power, no other country has even one comparable ship.” China recently acquired one carrier that won’t be fully functional for some time, if ever — while many elected officials in this country would gladly build a twelfth.
But you’ll hear none of this in the presidential debates. Perhaps the candidates will mention that obsolete, ineffective, and wildly expensive weapons systems could be cut, but that’s a no-brainer. The problem is: it wouldn’t put a real dent in national defense spending. Currently almost one-fifth of every dollar spent by the federal government goes to the military. On average, Americans, when polled, say that they would like to see military funding cut by 18%.
Instead, most elected officials vow to pour limitless resources into more weapons systems of questionable efficacy, and of which the U.S. already owns more than the rest of the world combined. Count on one thing: military spending will not go down as long as the U.S. is building up a massive force in the Persian Gulf, sending Marines to Darwin, Australia, and special ops units to Africa and the Middle East, running drones out of the Seychelles Islands, and “pivoting” to Asia. If the U.S. global mission doesn’t downsize, neither will the Pentagon budget — and that’s a hit on America’s future that no debate will take up this month.
5. The U.S. education system is what made this country prosperous in the twentieth century — but no longer: Perhaps no issue is more urgent than this, yet for all the talk of teacher’s unions and testing, real education programs, ideas that will matter, are nonexistent this election season. During the last century, the best education system in the world allowed this country to grow briskly and lift standards of living. Now, from kindergarten to college, public education is chronically underfunded. Scarcely 2% of the federal budget goes to education, and dwindling public investment means students pay higher tuitions and fall ever deeper into debt. Total student debt surpassed $1 trillion this year and it’s growing by the month, with the average debt burden for a college graduate over $24,000. That will leave many of those graduates on a treadmill of loan repayment for most or all of their adult lives.
Renewed public investment in education — from pre-kindergarten to university — would pay handsome dividends for generations. But you aren’t going to hear either candidate or their vice-presidential running mates proposing the equivalent of a GI Bill for the rest of us or even significant new investment in education. And yet that’s a recipe for and a guarantee of American decline.
Ironically, those in Washington arguing for urgent deficit reduction claim that we’ve got to do it “for the kids,” that we must stop saddling our grandchildren with mountains of federal debt. But if your child turns 18 and finds her government running a balanced budget in an America that’s hollowed out, an America where she has no chance of paying for a college education, will she celebrate? You don’t need an economist to answer that one.
The origins of this saying seem to have disappeared in the mists of time but it’s a rare person that doesn’t write a list from time to time. But when it comes to critical processes, having a list, or better known as a ‘checklist’ is essential to completing the process correctly.
With that in mind, then let me introduce you to a story recently sent to me by old friend Dan Gomez.
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I’ve always done it this way!
This is an example of what happens when we do not pay attention to detail, and do not follow instructions and checklists!
A KC-135 Aircraft was being pressurized at ground level. The outflow valves which are used to regulate the pressure of the aircraft were capped off during a 5-year overhaul and never re-opened. The post-investigation revealed that a civilian depot technician who “had always done it that way” was using a homemade gauge, and no procedure.
Apparently, the technician’s gauge didn’t even have a max “peg” for the needle, so it was no surprise he missed it when the needle went around the gauge the first time.
As the technician continued to pressurize the aircraft with the needle on its second trip around the gauge there was a “boom”. One KC-135 went bang! Indeed, the rear hatch was blown over 70 yards away, through a blast fence!
An incident like this is never funny and is further regrettable when we consider that this mistake is one that we taxpayers will end up paying for. Fortunately, no one was reported as being injured.
This was a good “Lessons Learned” for making sure we have trained people, with the correct tools, and who are following detailed procedures. It should serve as a reminder that just because you’ve always done it that way, it does not make it the “right” way!
A President with more speech writers than one could imagine.
Got a vested interest or a strong view? Then draft a speech for the President of the United States of America. Many do. Some are clearly very tongue-in-cheek, some are pertinent. The following from CASSE fits into the latter category. Enjoy.
President Obama’s (Hoped for) “Amaze Speech”
Speechwriter: Brian Czech
President Obama’s hoped-for speech first appeared in the Daly News on August 7. We reprint it this week in anticipation of the President’s September 8th speech.
Pres. Obama
Fellow Americans, this evening I have a special message for you. It’s an unprecedented and surprising message, but ultimately it will resonate with your common sense, good will, and patriotic spirit. It turns out that the recessionary cloud we’re under does have an extremely valuable silver lining. I know; it sounds like something only a politician would say, but wait. I think you’ll be surprised to hear my explanation.
Now before I elaborate on the silver lining, I want to make it clear that the cloud has some rain, too. As a nation, we are struggling with debt, credit ratings, and worst of all, the painful experience of unemployment. The last thing I want is to mislead you into thinking these are problems I take lightly, or problems that will be automatically solved by the markets or policy makers. These problems were many years in the making — decades in fact — and it’s going to take years of diligence and readjustment to solve them.
Yet none of these problems can deny us the silver lining, which is this: the economic turmoil we experience today will change the course of history in such a way as to secure the future for American posterity, starting with our children and grandchildren. Let me reiterate, our own kids and grandkids — the most precious American treasure — will have a secure future as a result of the problems we face today. Here’s why…
Far from the trading floors of Wall Street and the policy meetings of the Federal Reserve, crucial discoveries have been made by scientists, economists, anthropologists, historians, and others collaborating under a broad umbrella called “sustainability science.” No, they haven’t discovered an unlimited energy source, a pollution-free car, or a method to stabilize our climate at optimum conditions. They’ve discovered something far more important and exciting: the key to permanent economic security.
For the past few years, as time has allowed, I and my economic advisors, with the assistance of numerous scholars, have studied this key to economic security. The theory and evidence for it is absolutely irrefutable. The only reason this key to security hasn’t broken into public dialog is because it serves no short-term vested interests; no wealthy corporations, think tanks, or political parties that would stand to profit before the next shareholders meeting or election cycle. But that’s also the beauty of it: the key to security is a non-partisan, scientifically sound approach to the long-run interests of all, especially our kids and grandkids. Fortunately for us, it’s surprisingly simple as well.
What is this key to a secure future? We could coin a new phrase to get credit for the idea or to improve its political flavor, but I believe the clearest term is what the scientists already call it: the “steady state economy.” Political advisors think it’s a bit on the dry side, but after what we’ve been through – stock market crashes, insurance crises, banker bailouts, panic over the debt ceiling, having our credit downgraded — doesn’t a “steady state economy” sound like just what the doctor ordered?
In the coming weeks and months, I and my Cabinet will be helping to introduce fellow Americans to the basics of steady state economics, especially what it means for producers, consumers, and public policy. We’ll do this through a series of public announcements, publications, and townhall meetings. Meanwhile, this evening, I’ll provide a brief summary, first by noting what a steady state economy is not.
A steady state economy is not communism, Marxism, or anything at odds with the Constitution of the United States. A steady state economy is not a stagnant, flat-lined economy but is rather continuously dynamic and creative. A steady state economy is not established overnight with draconian policies; instead it evolves as a matter of consumer preference and prudent policy. Most importantly, a steady state economy is in no way opposed to jobs and full employment. To the contrary, a steady state economy is the only economy that can ensure full employment, for your kids and theirs.
The most fundamental feature of the steady state economy is stability. The idea is to stabilize good conditions; stable agriculture, stable manufacturing, stable services, stable production and consumption, stable currency, stable markets, stable international trade, stable impact on the environment, stable air and water, stable climate… You get the picture, and remember, all this stability is at a good level — a level that ensures life, liberty and happiness for us and future generations. At this point in history, the steady state economy is the right goal, and the first step in getting there is recognizing it.
Perhaps you find this amazing. I think you should be amazed. After all, I haven’t said a word about economic growth; in fact I’ve called growth into question. The closest thing to this in presidential history is when President Carter encouraged Americans to consume a little less after the OPEC oil embargo. But President Carter was before his time, and his speech was maligned as the “malaise speech.”
Well, at this point in history, we can no longer afford — literally or figuratively — to pull out all the stops for economic growth. Therefore, tonight you’re hearing the “amaze speech,” the speech that introduces our nation to steady state economics, the alternative to growth.
I understand the adjustment in thinking that this will entail. I’ve gone through it myself. With the exception of President Carter in 1979, my predecessors for over 50 years have prioritized economic growth in their speeches, campaigns, and policies. None even mentioned steady state economics in a speech. Yet with every new president, the pursuit of economic growth has become less realistic, less sustainable, and even less desirable.
Earlier I mentioned the profound developments in sustainability science. Among the sustainability scholars are behavioral scientists and psychologists who have found compelling evidence that economic growth stopped contributing to a happier United States somewhere from the 1950′s to the 1970′s. After that, our gross domestic product continued to rise, but our happiness did not. If you’re like me — meaning old enough to remember — this probably resonates with you. Somewhere along the line the brighter lights, bigger houses and fancier cars stopped making us better off. In fact, all the new “stuff” started working against us. Now we struggle to find enough oil, water, “green space,” solitude, free time, and the peace of mind that comes with a stable climate. It’s all the sign of an economy grown too big.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think we’ve all done some crazy things in life, but I don’t want to go down in history as the insane president who kept trying every trick in the book to “stimulate the economy,” when stimulating the economy was neither bound to work nor even desirable by that point in history. I don’t want to oversee more banker bailouts, more stimulus spending, more loosening of environmental protections in a vain attempt to increase GDP growth. That would be insane. Instead, I’m going to tell it like it is: the pursuit of economic growth has become a dangerous obsession that we must overcome. I say this with the backing of sound science, the lessons I’ve learned, and the concern I have for the future of America.
I’m going to test your common sense now. Do you think there is a limit to economic growth? Remember, economic growth is increasing production and consumption of goods and services. It means more and more people, more and more stuff. It takes more energy, water, space to operate in, and places to put out the trash.
Now as a politician, I can assure you that, in the coming days, well-paid pundits will conjure up magical concepts of perpetual growth based on “dematerializing” the economy. Well when they’re ready to dematerialize it, maybe they can beam us up. Meanwhile, the rest of us in the real economy know what perpetual GDP growth would take: evermore people, evermore stuff. And we know we’re running out of evermore room, resources, and patience for unreal notions of evermore growth.
I know that for some, and perhaps for many, this is hard to swallow. For decades we Americans have been encouraged to believe in the notion of continual economic growth. But look at it this way: to think there is no limit to economic growth on Earth is like thinking we could fit a stabilized economy into a perpetually shrinking area. For example, with computers, robots, nanotechnology and the like, we could squish the $70 trillion global economy into North America, then the United States, then Iowa, then into the foyer of the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, leaving the rest of the world as a designated wilderness area! It’s a ludicrous notion, and it’s precisely as ludicrous as thinking there’s no limit to economic growth in Des Moines, the United States, or Earth.
Now, let’s consider some of the problems we will face if we continue pulling out all the stops for economic growth. The first is inflation. Typically we use monetary policy — such as increasing the money supply — to stimulate growth. But when the real economy isn’t meant to grow as easily as increasing the money supply, the result is inflation. Nothing could be more harmful to our economy at this point than inflation, which is like a devastating tax on the nation.
Another problem is debt. As you know, my Administration injected a major fiscal stimulus into the economy. It helped somewhat and spun off some jobs, but it did not produce the wave of jobs we’d get in an economy with plenty of room to grow. Meanwhile, it added to our deficit and ultimately our debt. Now our credit is coming into question, as with so many nations in a global economy bumping up against the limits to growth.
Of course, there is no shortage of special interests to pounce on the news of faltering fiscal policy. The answer, they say, is to turn over as much as possible to Wall Street. “Take care of national security,” they say, “and let the markets take care of the economy.” The problem with that approach is that national security is about more than having the biggest military. National security starts with a sustainable economy, which requires a stable environment to support the agricultural, fishing, logging, mining, and ranching activities that have always been and always will be the foundation of the American and global economy. Our manufacturing and service sectors — the best in the world — are the best because we have the biggest and best agricultural and extractive sectors. And we have those because we have protected the environment from overuse, pollution, and displacement.
Consider what will happen if we take an unbalanced approach and prioritize economic growth even more over environmental protection. Does anyone really question whether we will have more environmental problems, including devastating problems? More oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Alaska, more mountaintop mining in the Appalachians, more scraping for shale oil in the Rockies, more nuclear waste, more endangered species, more greenhouse gas emissions, and all the while less water, less fish and wildlife, less wilderness, less nature, less beauty. Does anyone question whether such trends diminish the quality of life for future generations? No, the problems caused by economic growth are unquestionable. It’s just that, for much of American history, the benefits of increasing GDP outweighed the costs. That’s no longer the case, and I’m confident that most of us can sense it.
In fact, the more I thought about this speech, the more amazed I became. Why did it take us so long, in America, to have an open discussion of limits to growth and alternatives to growth? The principles are irrefutable. Neither growth nor recession is sustainable in the long run; a steady state economy is the obvious policy for long-run security. Yet based on the politics of the past 50 years, you’d think economic growth had supplanted apple pie as the companion to motherhood.
Well, now we’re entering a new era of dealing squarely with sustainability. It turns out that economic growth was not a good companion to motherhood, not in the long run. We want apple pie back. We want loving homes for our children, quality time with family and friends, the occasional escape to the great outdoors, and peace. That’s the American dream in a nutshell, and it’s too valuable to sacrifice for economic growth.
So let’s roll up our sleeves and wash our hands of the dirty business of growth at all costs. We know what the right goal is, and malaise won’t get us there. We have work to do to stabilize the economy for our children and grandchildren. Our decisions — what we eat, what we drive, what we build, and frankly how many kids we have — all these will determine the quality of life for the kids that we do have. Meanwhile, those of us privileged to hold public office are responsible for developing the policies to help you thrive in a steady state economy, and for avoiding the policies that force us onto an unsustainable pathway of evermore growth. You could say we are tasked now with “steady statesmanship.”
To conclude, my fellow Americans, do stay tuned. In the coming days and weeks we’ll be discussing the details of transitioning from growth to a steady state. We’ll be talking with you about employment, population growth, stock markets, the banking system, and more. Don’t fear any shocks to the system; you’ve seen most of the shocks already as the policies of economic growth have failed. One by one, we’re going to turn these “failures” into steady state successes.
Learning from Dogs 