Growth Is Unsustainable

Today, Monday, Mar. 2, ‘09, the economic news took another downturn. The Dow Jones dipped below 7,000 for the first time since the early ‘90’s.
Among other frightful news is the fall of the California economy and the drag that creates on the world economy. Before the recent downturn California boasted the eighth largest economy in the world. For decades California led the world in trends, social and economic. Now the state is in dire financial straits. For the first time in over a century more people are leaving California than are moving there.
Last year’s housing market collapse was the spark that ignited an economy based on bubbles filled with flammable gasses! The economy had swelled to dizzying heights buoyed by the rush of realty gambling pursued by developers, wealthy and middle class investors betting too many chips on a continuously rising real estate market. Previous warnings of the bubble bursting were ignored or pooh poohed.
Now more than the real estate bubble is bursting. Our entire economic system and our standard of living is going to need a major change, or at least a major overhaul.
All of this was exacerbated by the fact that the United States, with around 5 percent of the world’s population consumed more than 24 percent of the world’s energy resources.
Americans became convinced that the sign of “making it” in our society meant that you and your family must live in a 6,000 sq. ft. McMansion, must have at least one big SUV, pickup truck or more and must have a prestigious zip code.
For more than 100 years Americans have been developing our towns and highways and putting more and more of the earth under asphalt and concrete. We seem to forget that beautiful green forests and valleys are important for more than just nice scenery. They are, as indigenous peoples in the Amazon put it, “the lungs of the earth.”
As the threat of global warming looms in the near future the threat of electric brownouts and shortages is going to make things more difficult. The effects of pollution may become worse as economics trumps environmentalism in the western world and even more so in the developing world.
Water may become the biggest factor. California and other areas of the South West are right now in the throes of prolonged drought. Many crops are failing or not even being planted. Water supplies will be shrinking still.
Global warming is said to make more and larger cyclonic storms occur and to cause more areas to become arid and dry. Some places will flood and others parch. Increasing global temperatures could eventually cause a mass migration toward the poles.
Americans may have to concede that the new generations may not have the same standard of living as the previous ones.
These are tough times, many are losing their homes, their jobs, their businesses, giving up on their dreams of ever having their own homes, getting an education and other things.
There are possible solutions but time is wasting. They need to be implemented. Tough questions must be asked. Do Big Macs and other such fast fare really need to come in boxes wrapped in layers of paper and then in a paper bag as well?
Future employment and technologies will arise from this period of transition, There will be opportunities for some as many fall through the cracks of the changing times.
Mass transit will become a reality as automobiles become prohibitively expensive and their destruction of air quality and excessive use of raw materials will doom them.
And growth as an economic model and as a plan for cities and communities is no longer a sustainable model, we are just about at the end of that ride. Unlimited growth cannot continue forever. You will run out of places to build things!
This could mark the transition into a new era, maybe for the better, maybe not.
The land, the seas and the sky are not impervious to damage from
human activity! We don’t need larger cities, higher populations or bigger anything any more.
The oil reserves in the world are finite. There won’t be any new ones for at least several million years and with few and smaller carboniferous forests these future reserve possibilities will be much less than we had at the beginning of the twentieth century anyway.
Polluted air and polluted water already kills millions. What will a lack of water supplies do?
Technology and advanced science and physics will be the way to find a bright future. Our educational system is widely viewed as a failure now. That will have to change too.
Perhaps this period can result in a new way to approach life, a simpler and more efficient way of life. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention perhaps more communities will turn to wind, solar and other renewable power sources. Perhaps wiser water management will result from the impending crises. Conservation may become a way of life as conspicuous consumerism disappears and people become more conscious of how they spend their money. The very existence of life on Earth is in the balance. Will Earth become just another dry, crater pocked, lifeless, dead planet orbiting the sun?
Could the threat of the destruction of the planet be the impetus for humans to clean up their act? We can only hope that the people of planet Earth can unite in the face of impending global disaster just as they have done in one science fiction disaster movie after another. Can we be inspired to do it for real?