Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Waking from our collective dream
From the RoundTable blog
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An article in the June 4 issue of "The Economist" titled "Detroitosauras Wrecks" describes in economic and political terms the tendency to protect the status quo. This tendency is most clearly exemplified with the failure of GM as it spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to maintain laughable fuel standards for decades -- dollars that would have been better spent on innovation and pursuing the next generation of solutions.
Why do we hold on to what we have with such a delusional sense of what it means for the future? If nature's rules reserve the most ferocious animal reactions to threats to the young of any given species, why have we failed so miserably to ferociously protect our children's future on this planet? Why have we decided that our principal obligation to our young is to fill their closets, bedrooms and playrooms with the latest games and gadgets?
As human animals, it appears to be our animal instincts that drive us to protect our territory -- especially as that territory shrinks. And how can that territory not shrink with 6 billion of us here now and 9 billion of us projected to be here by 2040? The ferocity of this protectionism will undoubtedly get much, much worse.
Paul Krugman has, in the June 29 New York Times, laid out a succinct update on the latest climate science and the treason of those who deny its existence. What level of pain will be required to wake us from our collective dream? How fast will the feedback loops need to go before the political will of our nation can get beyond the silly reliance on protecting the status quo? This question is asked of each of us, but most specifically for Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner.
Thomas Friedman in his latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," offers some viable alternatives for the next steps in our cultural development. The changes that are required are systemic in nature. Unfortunately, piecemeal solutions may be all that our policymakers can discuss. Whether Democrat or Republican -- the failures we see are not owned by either political party. They appear to be the property of a political system that -- though arguably the best in the world -- has failings that will almost certainly result in an increasingly rapid degradation of the world we live in.
Jared Diamond explains in his book "Collapse" how previous cultures expanded their consumption of resources up to the maximum in the best of times only to be surprised, and decimated, when the good times ended. The cataclysmic result of these societies' living beyond their ecological means rings painfully true in light of the impacts of the sudden deflation of the housing bubble that -- for whatever sociological reasons -- failed to raise the alarms that it should have.
In what could be viewed as an over-the-top depiction of what it will take to change the rules of the game, Matthew Glass in his novel "Ultimatum" implies that only the most unthinkable human confrontation and resultant loss of life is capable of waking us from our current stupor.
It has become frighteningly easy to ignore what is happening beyond our city limits. It takes only the slightest amount of willingness to see what is happening to the world around us and to the millions of our species who are suffering now and will suffer far more in the decades to follow. It takes only the slightest willingness to act on the information this new awareness provides to first slow and then reverse the current trends.
We have all found a way to hide our heads in the sand, in catalogues, in the paper's sports section and in our own self-absorption. It's time to wake up, look up, get up and get moving. To say that we cannot afford this solution or that solution implies that we can afford to stay on the path we are on and that positive change will come only when our children realize it's their turn to clean up after us. For a generation of American kids who are increasingly coddled, catered to and think that vegetables are grown-up food -- the writing is on the wall. I hope we can teach them to read that writing -- and eat their vegetables.
