We live on a planet of limited and finite resources. Moreover, this planet has a carefully balanced, but closed system of interactions that sustain life as we know it. Our planet’s ecosystem sustains itself by recycling and balancing all of its components, while relying on an outside energy source, the sun, to keep it all going. But the bottom line is that it is a closed, finite system. An economic system that runs counter to that energy, an economic system that fails to recognize those facts and is instead built on unlimited and constant growth cannot persist. It may do well for a while to zip along harvesting the low-hanging fruit, but eventually it will implode.
Another fact of life that we are either failing to recognize, or at least we’re not talking about it, is the increasing number of humans that are adding their needs and wants to our already stressed planet’s resources. Every third and fourth person on the planet is either Chinese or Indian. Their "economies" need their fair share of the planet's resources as well. BUT here in the USofA we really don’t see images of how much the rest of the world struggles just to eke out not a living, but basic survival. Meanwhile, we bemoan our loss of cheap and readily available “stuff”. We’ve all become so fixated on trying to hold on to the various images of we have of Americus Triumphas, that bloated red-white-and-blue pop-up toy, that we have lost all perspective on our real place in the scheme of things. We’re NOT the only inhabitants of this ship.
Maybe it’s time we re-evaluated where and who we are. A good first step would be to meditate on that old picture of the blue ball planet floating in a sea of spatial blackness. Many of us got a true taste of our place in the universe when we saw that image gracing the cover of the first Whole Earth Catalog. A good second step might be to have a national “read in” on the subject. Maybe we should start that off by poring over the pages of Gaia: a new look at life on earth, by James Lovelock. Then we should read Garrett Hardin’s cogent and challenging book, Exploring New Ethics for Survival. This slim volume might re-awaken us to some of the real issues facing us as a species on a planet with limited resources. It just might get us to extend not only our world-view but our attention spans as well. We sure aren’t going to make it through this living business by relying on sound bites and deliberate ignorance.
It seems to me that we have to become adept at holding at least two perspectives in our minds at the same time: the long now and the short now. Another way of saying that is to suggest that we consider the macro and the micro together. It’s all so neatly incorporated in that 70’s slogan: “Think globally, act locally.” This is a form of systems-thinking that we haven’t really practiced much. Our bonanza of cheap abundant oil, cheap abundant “food” and limitless mobility have blinded us to the realities of existence in the world.
We should be looking for new and appropriate and equitable approaches to our problems. And it should be clearly evident that the government and the corporations are not going to help us out in any meaningful and tangible way. O sure, there may be some “federal reserve” notes floating your way in some form or another pretty soon, but this flimsy paper and the government/corporate alliance is not going to create any fundamental changes in the way things are done in this nation.
Moreover, when we, the collective USofA, think at all of “solutions” to problems, particularly of energy and food production, we tend to be drawn to large solutions, BIG solutions, industrial-sized, one-size-fits-all solutions. But let’s face it, what might work very well in Idaho, might not work well at all in Alabama, or New Mexico, or New York.
Even if Wall Street and capitalism muddle through this current spasm, we probably won’t change the way we do “business”. But the reality is that we can only exploit the rest of world, both its natural resources and its human resources for a limited time. The much bally-hooed “American Way of Life” as it is currently playing out, will, sooner or later, go the way of the dodo. We will, in the words of James Kunstler, have to make “other arrangements”.
Three of the most practical, positive and inspiring programs that are working towards making these “arrangements” are Permaculture, the Transition Initiative, and Green Urbanism. Look into them and join the work force.
