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by Shepherd Bliss
"For Consumers, the Hits Keep Coming" a recent banner headline in a New York Times-owned daily newspaper here in Northern California reports. The article misses the main points. If we continue to understand ourselves as primarily passive consumers, rather than as active citizens, the US economy will enter at least a recession, probably a depression, and possibly a collapse. Even our republic is at risk.
Rampant consumption, our addiction to growth, and our failure to accept limits to growth damage us. The headline beneath the banner-"Cleanup Response Criticized"-reveals one of the saddest results. We are not adequately cleaning up the San Francisco Bay after a recent oil spill. Many other aspects of our environment need cleaning up. Without a healthy natural environment and climate conducive to humans, no economy can endure. Over-consumption drives the increasingly extreme and chaotic climate.
We have contaminated our air and waterways, clear-cut our forests, and our inner cities are dying. The pollution of such natural resources often preceeds economic and societal collapses.
I appreciate the Press Democrat for recently reporting the emerging economic trends in numerous articles. What I miss is more analysis, connecting the dots and providing context. The shrinking dollar, soaring gas prices, housing slump and stock market fall, though inconvenient, are not the biggest threats to the economy. These are symptoms caused by deeper systemic problems. We need to learn from these events and discover how to build more sustainable societies. Otherwise, these "hits" are likely to increase and spread.
We need to quickly evolve from our destructive individual consumption patterns that damage not only the economy but the Earth itself. We need to consider their many negative impacts and work together as active citizens concerned with the whole economy and the environment on which it is dependent.
Look around. Things are falling down and apart in the US, including cities like New Orleans, the Minneapolis bridge, and the Twin Towers. An increasing number of high-level government officials-like Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales-have been forced out of office. The cuts are likely to go deeper. One can try to ignore, deny, or seek revenge for these events, all of which invite more disasters. Prudent planning would be a better alternative. These are not isolated events but point to systemic causes.
These are more than the "economic cycle of advance and retreat" that the Nov. 10 article reports. It is not just "things (that) have come together in the last 10 days." The US's false economy has been de-stabilizing for years and is now reaching a more degraded stage. We have become vulnerable to a variety of "hits" and should expect even more. Our economy has been described by some as a "house of cards," which is likely to fall. An unraveling is occurring, creating a time of great uncertainty and fear.
Many major American institutions are in crisis, including healthcare, religion, transportation, political systems, energy, and education.
The Iron Curtain came down and the Berlin Wall seemed to suddenly fall, as did the Soviet Union. The US economy may suddenly fail.
Protecting markets and "consumers" from the truth of how bad our economic reality is will backfire. We do not need to "panic." But citizens do need accurate news and analysis to get ready for the potential of a radically diminished economy. We are living in a time of unprecedented planetary crisis. People need to prepare physically and psychologically for massive changes.
It is not enough to write about a "silver lining" and report the perilous optimism of an economist wishing that "hopefully this week is not a microcosm of where we will be a year from now." We need more than false hope to get us through the coming hard times.
Most of the US population continues destructive, over-consuming behaviors that harm all of us. We are not merely victims of the problems; we cause them. We cannot merely blame outside "terrorists."
Among the facts left out of recent articles in the mainstream press on the declining US economy is the Iraq War. With so many resources dedicated to war-making, dealing with events like Katrina and cleaning up oil spills are more difficult.
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