Good Thing We're Going to Have to Live w/ Less Stuff -- We'll Stay Alive on Earth for Longer

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



Good Thing We're Going to Have to Live with Less Stuff -- We'll Stay Alive on Earth for Longer That Way

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted October 25, 2008.

If we scale down economic activity -- especially if the rich do -- we could all live in a cleaner world.



As the most serious economic crisis in 80 years rolls across the planet, financial panic has shoved food shortages, public-health emergencies, and ecological disasters into the background. With fantastic fortunes at stake, the number-one priority of governments and businesses must be economic growth; those "green" initiatives announced not long ago with such fanfare have already been deferred or forgotten.

We Americans are now told that because our economy has been kept afloat for so long on borrowed money and borrowed time, "our" wealth and "our" jobs have gone to the other side of the globe, with India and China typically the scapegoats. We shouldn't cut our carbon emissions, we're told, until India and China cut back. If our food crops end up in landfills or petrol tanks, we're told, that doesn't affect hungry people; rather, eating habits in the Eastern Hemisphere are the real key to the food crisis. (For example, at the height of the early-2008 global food shortages, President George W. Bush said of India, "Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.")

In all such pronouncements, the message is consistent: "We in the West have gotten what we want. Now, if the rest of you try to do the same, you'll spoil things for everyone." Where I live, there appears to be little awareness of the grotesquely contorted positions that such arguments require their proponents to assume. I lived in India in the early 1980s and the late 1990s, married into an Indian family, and have returned for months at a time in recent years. I have cheered on those Indian citizens who are going against the grain, urging respect for nature and sufficiency for all, and showing how both can be achieved. That's in contrast to the model of the traditional industrial powers, which translates to efficiency for the few and deficiency for everyone else. But government and business elites, both East and West, continue working on the assumption that India, China, Brazil, and other emerging powers will follow the same destructive road to wealth that Europe, Japan, and America continue to travel.

Too much more of that lopsided growth will make this planet a very nasty place to live. If greenhouse-gas emissions are to be reduced to a level that will avert runaway global warming, economic activity will have to shrink, not grow. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/104402/good_thing_we%27re_going_to_have_to_live_with_less_stuff_--_we%27ll_stay_alive_on_earth_for_longer_that_way/

[stray cat]

1. but the poor and the soon to be desolate and the middle class soon to be poor

may see their lifes severely shortened

[midnight]

2. As I read about food shortages, and young family's starting out,

and being dependent on jobs that will be gone soon, and the greed that looms over everything, I can only think how wonderful it will be when we can no longer afford a military. Although to hear some talk about the pentagon, one could find a good chunk of money around the place. While it is not clear why this war in Iraq was shoved down our throats, it is becoming clearer to us that the governance of this country was shoved aside during the process. The munitions that have been unleashed in our neighbors backyards, and our drinking water have speed up the every growing environmental problems. May our good sense and strength guide us from the divisions that having been coming down this pike. May we hold on tight to our knowledge that this country was bravely created during times like this.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Too true

First step should be the ban all advertising - the bane of the 20th century.