(Krugman would probably lose both his jobs and perhaps even his Nobel prize if he actually started speaking the truth… something’s wrong in the land of big-e Economics. – promoted by eli_beckerman)
Monday’s (1-25-10) column by New York Times op-ed regular and Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman reminded me of something: He, like many a mainstream commentator, seems to disregard the importance of the idea that finite resources are finite. The economy is down, unemployment is way up and not showing signs of improving, and the stock market has declined yet again, and Krugman cites the danger of “a second Great Depression,” yet he writes of that potential event as if it would last only a decade or two.
Krugman: “We have avoided a second Great Depression, but we are facing mass unemployment – unemployment that will blight the lives of millions of Americans – for years to come.”
The last time there was a worldwide Great Depression, however, the petroleum-based economy was much closer to its beginning than to its end. By the early 1900s commercial drilling and extraction of petroleum, coupled with internal combustion technology, was the engine of economic growth. Car and truck transportation fueled by ever-increasing amounts of gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel, undergirded the economy. (During the Depression even the Okies got where they needed to go thanks to cheap gasoline.) A generation later the interstate highway system, introduced as a tool of national defense, helped transform an automobile economy into a car culture as suburban development dominated economic growth. Car culture promises to vault through the first decades of the 21st century as the news media feature “car pornography” on newsprint on television or online and “green” mainstreamers dream of solving energy shortages and global warming through the use of hybrid and electric cars.
Krugman writes of, so far, avoiding “a second Great Depression” but of still “facing mass unemployment that will blight the lives of millions of Americans … for years to come” This analysis is fine as far as he takes it but does not burrow deep enough for the future well-being today’s youngsters, who will not have reached midlife before the remaining petroleum in Earth’s crust becomes uneconomic to extract. Like virtually all economists, Krugman fails to acknowledge that the first Great Depression was comprehensively ended – that is, it did not resume after World War II – because of an increasing supply of cheap oil, which now is ending.
The column, titled “The Bernanke Conundrum,” includes a “full disclosure” reminder that years before Ben Bernanke was named chairman of the Federal Reserve Board by President George W. Bush, he was chairman of the economics department at Princeton University and hired a younger Paul Krugman to join his department. This exemplifies the proximity that blinders most economics commentators – right, centrist or left. They form a pretty small, elitist community.
Krugman opened his column with the words “A Republican won in Massachusetts,” a reference to the political story du jour of Republican state senator Scott Brown’s come-from-behind victory on Jan. 19 to fill the U.S. Senate seat held since 1963 by Ted Kennedy. Would that he will open his column next Nov. 5 with the words “The Greens won in Massachusetts,” to reflect the upset victory of reality-based, future-oriented Green-Rainbow gubernatorial candidate, physician, and singer-song-writer Jill Stein, whose relocalization orientation will have finally and permanently gained political traction even on the op-ed page of The New York Times.
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but I think the focus on “petroleum” and car culture as such is a weak basis to argue for such principles as Ecological Wisdom, Social Justice, Non-violence, and Grassroots Democracy.
The necessities of global warming and peak oil certainly do not necessitate such values. There a host of various futures that we can imagine where human beings (perhaps less of them) continue to exist similarly as they do now even after these catastrophes. Its also theoretically possible that yes, technology may yet provide solutions that our current system could possibly prolong itself with. Even traditional economics has an answer to them, which is to incorporate ecological concerns into their models and assumptions about economic actors.
The deeper question still is why a society and social system might adopt finite resources as the building block of their continued existence. I will use the term capitalism, I am sure another term might work but this I think gets to the point. Industrialism as such fails, because I do not think technology is the final determinate of human social relations, even if it does carry a large influence.
When I use the term capitalism its important to note that what is called “socialism” shares with it. Both assume economic determinism and share the particular Enlightenment vision of human beings as separate from and above nature. The Marxist tradition largely ignores ecological ideas and the basis for a free society is predicated on human beings entering a mature industrial capitalist society. Marx did after all base his revolutionary ideas on classical political economy.
Both the Eastern and Western Blocs relied on fossil fuels for growth, but then they both also relied on hierarchical, bureaucratic, and instrumental forms of human social relations. Absent those things one could even imagine hypothetically human beings coming across fossil fuels and using them sustainably, or with the awareness that their social system should make use of them sparingly.
In any case we should re-localize not for the sake of localism, which takes many forms. We ought to aim for decentralized, human scaled communities because it enables humans to best express the values of democracy, freedom, and creativity in balance with the natural world.
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In defense of Krugman, his job–as he defines it, anyway–seems to be elucidating the week-to-week goings on in the economic arena. I think he does a better job than most. His goal here is to get the Fed to focus on unemployment versus inflation–pretty much the same battle that was fought between Lloyd Bentsen, Robert Rubin, and and Robert Reich near the beginnings of Clinton’s first term. He’s a pragmatist dealing with the nitty gritty of current political realities, and he DOES recognize peak oil and its implications elsewhere. It looks like Bernanke will keep his job (my guess is that Geithner becomes the sacrificial lamb and that Larry Summers is already looking for his next gig), so Krugman’s on target in his advocacy for focusing on unemployment. Set the damn money free.
I see nothing to criticize in your commenmts, Patrick.
Though I’d add–the key to all this is course IMPLEMENTABLE plans.
I’ve gotten myself involved (or enmeshed)in local, organic agriculture for precisely the reasons Patrick states (there are plenty more on that specific subject). I’m loving it, I hope to make a career (that would be my tenth or so now…) of it, I think it’s valuable on many levels. But once you cut through all the propaganda on both sides of the issue, here’s my challenge: feed Boston. Ecological theory is great, and I have no doubt but that, say, Greenfield could adapt, and relatively painlessly, to sustaining itself, albeit in far less comfortable circumstances than its residents enjoy today. But how Boston eats in a post-collapse society remains beyond me.
(I suppose that’s why my radar dings whenever I hear talk about ecology. I want to see the plan. Numbers and blueprints).
Which leads to the dirty little secret most folks avoid but that Patrick at least touches on when he writes “…perhaps less of them.” We can’t feed Boston on local organic produce because there are too damn many Bostonians. The author of “Ishmael” at least brought the subject to the fore, and writers like Richard Heinberg write chillingly about the need for massive “die-offs” of human beings. This is going to be be an incredibly tricky subject, as it’s fraught with horrible memories of forced sterilization, forced abortion, eugenics, acceptable rates of starvation, “death panels,” even genocide–the whole litany of horrors that characterized the latter half of the previous century. To even mention the subject is political suicide. I have a pretty strong stomach, but when I started reading somewhat deeply into what appear to be reasonable conclusions about the earth’s carrying capacity, even I have to gulp. None of the solutions are pretty, and the alliance against even the most painless solutions is going to be very big and very powerful.
Technology ultimately IS the solution to most of these issues–but not as it’s usually thought of–“oh, we’ll develop some way-cool new technology to solve problem X.” Rather, looking back towards previous technologies and rescusciting some of them ol’ ecological solutions that worked for so many millenia might. But in answer to the question of why–despite our increasing knowledge of hitting the oil reserve curve peak–we continue to adhere to our current methods of resource utilization, well, I have to ask again: how you going to feed Boston?
And I’ve gotten involved with politics because, like most of you on here, I agree 100% with Eli that while we must make our own small differences and lead by example, lifestyle choices aren’t going to suffice for salvation (especially since that leaves our corporate-personhoods free to make their own “lifestyle choices!”). And having read yet another eloquent comment here by EB, I can only hope that HE runs for office soon–I’d love to hear his words delivered from a podium!
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I am glad to have a conversation like this that really gets to heart of these matters.
“If decentralized, human scaled communities are inherently better, inherently more democratic, free, creative and balanced with the natural world, then we should be able to advocate for them and create them. The problem is that the timescale of that philosophical on-the-merits approach is no longer applicable to the situation.”
Apocalypse has no ethics. It doesn’t matter if we have a year, a decade, or two thousand, a grounding for a particular kind of world still needs to be argued and practiced. Philosophy is not some dead abstract thing, ideas come from history and society, from human practices and interrelations with their environment. The Green movement has had these ideas since before a full awareness of the gravity of the crises before us.
Thus why I would make a case about the history of capitalism and the attempts to move beyond it or make it humane. There is a history latent with means of dealing with the coming crises humanely that we need to build off from.
I would take one thing back though, I cannot defend the tenor of the last paragraph in my first post. I would say something like this, “We need to re-localize, here’s why its actually a vast improvement”
“Feed Boston”
Cuba. Or at least some of the stuff that went on there in the early 90s. I should say I am not all that hip with Deep Ecological ideas that “Ishmael” seems to imply. But would take an even longer conversation…
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Totally different…
growing season. Semi-tropical, year round. We’re a hell of a lot more restricted up here in terms of what we can grow as well as when. And, too, one unforeseen freeze and we starve.
And land. I know there are some small-scale cereal farms in MA now. Is the land in our region capable of the sustained grain production needed to feed our massive urban areas? (Note: Cuba was never able to meet its needs for rice). Maybe. But that’s problem #1.
And politics. The central government was able to displace owners, workers, and land.
And it wasn’t pretty. Farmers relied on oxen. That’s nobody’s idea of a good time and pretty much the reason why Americans struggled to get off the farms once new opportunities existed.
Incidentally, the operation only proved successful as it did once Castro introduced capitalism into the equation. Worth pondering.
Cuba currently imports 80-plus% of their food, something which most of the films and books celebrating the “cuban miracle” tend to leave out. This isn’t necessarily because the agroecological methods weren’t working–the “Special Time” (always love the phraseology those goddamned dictatorships come up with) did indicate the productivity organic ag is capable of (and what it isn’t, which is equally important). But since even the Cubans quickly reverted to “green revolution” style farming once Chavez opened the taps and let the oil run free, I wonder about our chances here.
The “Cuban miracle” seems to me somewhat overplayed. (The organoponicos only fed a very, very small segment of the population). Believe me, I want to believe in it. I’m still studying it.
Me–I take the peak oil business pretty seriously. And I don’t eat factory farmed meat. I’m hoping to be farming, canning, slaughtering and storing soon. But I have plenty of serious doubts as to whether we small organics are going to feed Boston. Sucks. So I’m hoping to be able to feed my family and friends–that will be tough enough. Poachers beware (yes, I’m afraid it’s going to be that kind of world. Get yourself a piece of land, some healthy pigs, and a rifle).
Neither the government nor the culture is moving in any meaningful way in the direction we need to–in fact, both are racing in the opposite direction–and time is growing short. Americans simply can’t forsee an alternate future, and only react to big-bang type catastrophes (9/11, Haiti)–which don’t require them to change their own lifestyles in any way whatsoever.
Sorry for such a dismal post. I don’t want to be a collapsitarian (and I by and large look with skepticism at folks like Kunstler, probably because I find so many of his politics reprehensible), don’t find anything remotely romantic in the image of defending my foodsource with firearms, and don’t relish the thought of lambing at 4 in the morning in subzero temps. I don’t know what the future looks like. But I know–even having looked at the Transition Towns model and all–that I haven’t seen blueprints for Stoughton–or Boston–so these days, it’s looking pretty Hobbesian to me.