consumerism

One day it will dawn on us that this is no ordinary recession. This is not a fiscal or credit crisis. Another trough in the usual boom and bust cycle. This time Keynesian prime-pumping won't work (if in fact it ever did, contrary to legend). We cannot spend or inflate our way out of this one. And if we do the reverse, if we cut back spending and implement austerity and conservation measures, we will only be taking our foot off the gas pedal-----not braking our motion toward the cliff. And the poor and the unemployed will suffer a disproportionate amount of the pain. Traditional left wing or right wing strategies are obsolete. The problem they would attempt to solve is much deeper than they imagine, and beyond their comprehension.

Debt snapshot

The following is a snapshot of American federal indebtedness as of February, 2012:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Now, if we strike the last eight zeros of each item, we can imagine this predicament in terms of a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

OK, now let's go even further. Let's suppose that a family argument ensues over who is more competent to manage family finances---Mom (a "progressive")----or Dad (a neo-con Republican). Of course, in a real family situation, the kids---however mature and well-educated, would have only a token voice in determining how the household should be run----much like the voters in America (that's what makes this a good analogy).

Like the national family of the United States, this family is riven by a deep ideological divide. Mom thinks that the way to get out of debt is to borrow more money and spend it. Dad, on the other hand, thinks the answer is to borrow more money and spend it. See the difference? No wonder public discourse is so extreme and heated! There is just no common ground anymore.

However, Mom the liberal Democrat thinks that a lot of this borrowed money should be spent on "entitlements", after all, the kids are "entitled" to dental care, medical insurance coverage, good clothes and all the electronic toys that allow them to be active participants in the social media. All you need to do is pass a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing peoples' "rights"---- and bingo---- the people will have them. First class medical coverage for everyone. In-state college tuition fees for all the children of millions of illegal aliens. Fat union paychecks and pensions for public sector workers. New physical infrastructure in place of what is crumbling around us. All those good things. We can pay for it by selling the Chinese more Treasury bills. Nothing like more pseudo-purchasing power to get the economy rolling again. As Chris Clugston puts it,

Pseudo purchasing power

“Pseudo purchasing power enables us to increase our ‘current’ procurement level of natural resources and of the manmade goods and services derived from those resources, through fiscalimprudence—that is, by liquidating our previously accumulated economic asset reserves, by incurring ever-increasing levels of intergenerational debt, and by underfunding investments critical to our future wellbeing.” http://www.wakeupamerika.com/PDFs/On-American-Sustainability.pdf

Dad the neo-Con, meanwhile, thinks the borrowed money should be spent on a high-tech security system and firearms and weapons training. Maybe the house will be foreclosed but by God, he will defend it from anyone who threatens his American way-of-life! American taxpayers pay a trillion dollars for military protection each year, not counting the money spent on homeland security. But the underlying costs of running the society that the defence industry protects will continue to rise to the point that this "protection" will become unaffordable. Who then will guard the seaways that allow passage of vital imported non-renewables? The Chinese?

The truth is, both Mom and Dad are spendthrifts, and neither have a clue that "money" and "credit" do not constitute real "wealth". You don't 'stimulate' a corpse by an injection of adrenaline nor a moribund economy by "quantitative easing" or another "New Deal" or "green" stimulus package. Stimulate demand by any means you like, but eventually a re-flated economy would run into the brick wall of diminishing and prohibitively expensive natural non-renewable resources. Is that not what happened in the eight year run-up to 2008? http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/4/044006/fulltext

There is one critical entry that did not show up in this balance sheet. The per capita consumption of the metals, minerals and fuels which as a citizen of America's industrial economy, each American draws down: 38,000 lbs. per year. This is capital, not income, and it will never be replenished. http://www.mii.org/pdfs/percapita.pdf

The Greek disease masks a much deeper malady. And lynching bankers, taxing the rich or changing governments will not cure it. If only it were that simple.

Tim Murray

March 24, 2012

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Have you seen the latest TV commercials promoting the new Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011? The theme is summarized with the slogan, "The Things We Make, Make Us". The 'manifesto' video ad, 1:01 minutes long, makes an unanabashed appeal to American pride and patriotism. Poignant scenes are punctuated by proud declarations.

"This once was a country that made things, beautiful things, and so it is again." "It was a country of colts (with the image of colts galloping across the screen) that made Colt revolvers, and Jeeps (pictures of a stream of Army Jeeps presumably poised for the Normandy invasion, then liberating the streets of European towns in the Second World War).... These things make us who we are."

The American industrial heartland will surely rise again, given the inspirational lead that Chrysler beckons us to follow. The fact that the non-renewable resources critical to this heroic enterprise will not be affordably available to sustain it is just one of life's tiny, inconvenient details that are best swept under the carpet. Pessimism, not the reality of limited resources, is our real enemy you know. What did Obama say? He repeated FDR. "The only fear we have is fear itself." God, is that all. And here I thought I had to worry about Peak Everything and the prospect of a thermo-nuclear exchange that might follow the desperate scramble for scarce resources. Or the strong possibility of biological and chemical war, but then, here I go being pessimistic again. Maybe I should look on the bright side of life, the life that these SUV ads promise me.

The reality of urban gridlock vs. the fantasy of wilderness escape

It is interesting that the product Chrysler is pitching an SUV whose production involved the expenditure of a least 400 barrels of oil per vehicle--or its equivalent--and tons of metals and minerals first mined, then transported, then smelted, then shipped to a factory to rendevous with rubber harvested thousands of miles away and fashioned into a vehicle by hundreds of employees who demand a range of products and services as recompense for their beautiful craftsmnship. Employees who fought two hours of traffic driving their Jeep to work, only to repeat the ordeal after their shift. But hey, they are Americans, like the can-do Americans we once knew, who get the job done! And once it is done, this same vehicle then is marketed as an off-road machine that is seen dashing through lush forests, across unpolluted rivers and over the vast and seemingly pristine Moab desert of Utah."Go where regrets can't follow" is the motto that subtitles the scene. Cameras don't show the getting there, however. You know, the Jeep Grand Cherokee stuck in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic on a Friday afternoon as its driver tries to make it to his weekend gettaway, cursing and honking in a vehicle built for speed but trapped in a nation of gridlock. But alas, the promised land of galloping colts, lush forests and pristine deserts, the America of our fantasies, the one advertisers play on, surely awaits us. It is quite the juxtaposition. The nasty, noisy and smoky process of primary and secondary industrial activity that heralds the resurgence of proud American manufacturing, co-existing with an apparently vast and uncluttered American hinterland.

There are more than 254 million registered passenger vehicles in America and more than 100 million are SUVs and trucks, with over 8 million of that category sold in 2008 alone. Few of them apparently know or care to know that it takes 98 tons of dead plants and animals buried for eons at seabed, lake and river bottoms to produce one gallon of gas for a nation that consumes one quarter of the world's crude oil. America isn't a country of colts but a country of dolts. How sad it is to see so many fat-ass Crocodile Dundee wanabees and redneck "chicks with dicks" lay down $40,000 US to feed a self-image manufactured by Madison Avenue when their SUV spends most of its life outside a shopping mall or in the drive-in queue of MacDonalds? How many ever see the wilderness? And of those who do, how, one wonders, do they all manage to find it---where are these huge pristine expanses in a nation bursting with 308 going on 508 million people? The answer can be found in the last line of the commercial that has dominated the airways recently:

"The Jeep Grand Cherokee---built for a world without limits"

That just about says it all. American car manufacturers and their ad agencies--- and those who fall for their pitch---really don't have a goddam clue. The phrase "Peak Oil" is notably absent from all of videos and from all the reviews. Instead, we read about "fuel economy". We are supposed to be impressed that the new Jeep Grand Cherokee can allegedly travel 500 miles on a full 24.6 gallon tank. "That's 16 miles in the city and 22 miles on the highway!". Wow. That means that when gas is $20/gallon as analysts like Christopher Steiner predict it will be, it will cost you about a dollar per mile---that is if hyperinflation doesn't overtake us. Auto journalists, like the consuming public who read their columns, are like deer transfixed by the headlights. They see all the bells and whistles and all of the specs but are blinded by the same infatuation with these toys that Americans of three generations ago had for the Model T Ford. The internal combustion engine is as inefficient as it ever was. But maybe that's a good thing, otherwise there would be more drivers driving more cars. You have to feel sorry for American capitalism, it just can't defeat those efficiency paradoxes. Especially when it encourages runaway populaton growth to grow the pool of cheap labour and delusional, manipulated consumers.

I must agree. The Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011 really is built for a world without limits. Unfortunately, that world is not the one we live in.

Tim Murray
October 15/2010

The latest figures on population growth in Canada from Statistics Canada once more underscore the fraud and futility of the strategies against climate change recommended by mainstream environmental organizations and the corporations who support them financially. http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/06/28/14542971.html

In the first three months of 2010, Canada grew by .26%, adding 88,449 consumers to its population, now exceeding the 34 million mark. If that growth rate persists, Canada will be home to some 353,788 more consumers at year’s end than it had the year before. This is only slightly less than the average 367,200 who were added each year between 2001 and 2006 when the country grew by 5.4% or 1.08% per annum. By the same measure, British Columbia, which grew by .37% from January to April this year, is on pace to add 66,760 people to its population, which represents some 13% of Canada’s. This will translate into about 24,000 extra households and 43,000 extra cars. Good news for the home building industry, the developers, the banks and the auto industry----but bad news for the environment.

So much for the much vaunted carbon tax that the British Columbia Campbell Liberals introduced two years ago, with applause from Tzeporah Berman and the environmental movement. According to the BC government website, that tax would reduce green house gas emissions equivalent to taking 787,000 cars off the road by 2020. But as mathematician Rick Shea observed at the time, our provincial population growth rate, which is exponential, would add 520,000 cars to the road by that time, and by 2026, wipe out all gains made by this tax. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=3396&lay_quiet=1

Similar calculations could apply to the nation as a whole. The CBC and its trendy mouthpiece, George Strombopolous, boasted last year that its “Million Acts of Green” campaign to encourage “green” living by highlighting and celebrating the initiatives of ordinary Canadians succeeded in reducing carbon emissions equivalent to taking 10,000 cars off the road. But at least 350,000 people who jumped on board HMCS Ecological Titanic that year spurred the construction of 140,000 more housing units and the purchase of 252,000 automobiles. On average, each Canadian is emitting more than 20 metric tonnes of GHG annually, so the extra passengers we pick up burden the atmosphere by over 7 million metric tonnes of GHG each year. In the face of this growth, technological efficiencies are also of fleeting value. Analyst Brishen Hoff calculated that the energy supplied by the proposed wind farm in Sarnia, Ontario would be negated by just 22 days of “business-as-usual” immigration. http://www.immigrationwatchcanada.org/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_printable&PAGE_id=1976&lay_quiet=1

Oddly though, the “green living” evangelists make no mention of population growth and its impact on GHG emissions in Canada. Collectively, the BC Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation and prominent environmentalist Guy Dauncey have offered some 121 “solutions” to climate change, but not one of them advises readers to practice birth control. Instead, we are exhorted to “change our behaviours”, but not our behaviour in the bedroom. And of course, the ugly “I” word----immigration---is left out of the discussion. That of course, is the most conspicuous omission of all. The environmental NGOs never tire of telling us that climate change is the result of human activity, but they leave the distinct impression that the number of humans has nothing to do with the scale of this human activity. David Suzuki, for one, feels qualified to lecture us about environmental responsibility despite having sired five carbon footprints from two marriages. In his “Penguin” commercial for Ontario power users, he told Ontarians that if they turned down their air conditioners by one degree, enough energy would be freed up to power another 36,000 homes. What he did not say, however, is that each annual crop of immigrants to that province requires the construction of 75,000 homes. Every Canadian with an air conditioner would have to turn it down by 3.5 degrees C just to offset the consumption of the new energy users who emigrated to Canada. Maybe Suzuki’s next energy conservation movie should be called “Sleepless in Toronto".

Two of three new Canadians, are foreign-born and immigrants on average, quadruple their GHG emissions upon their arrival in North America, thereby accelerating the timetable of our global demise. Stating this inconvenient truth is not to make immigrants the whipping boys for our profligate ways. Immigrants come to aspire to our lifestyle, not escape to the austerity they left behind. They were not responsible for our consumptive patterns, but they are eager participants in it. This is not an indictment but a statement of an understandable ambition, shared by all who came before us. But while it is our obligation to reduce our ecological impacts, that endeavour cannot be an excuse or rationale for importing more climate-changers and converting them to hyper-consumerism. Generosity to migrants can be a callous disregard for the world as a whole, as well as an imposition upon those who already live here.

It should also be noted that our carbon footprint is only a subset of our ecological footprint. Population growth is a critical variable in environmental degradation of all sorts---the loss of farmland, soil productivity, water, wetlands, species and biodiversity services. However much we conserve, recycle or reuse, reducing our footprint is futile if the number of feet coming through the airport or the maternity ward offsets those economies. Mother Nature takes no account of our acts of personal green abnegation----only our total consumption. While we are performing “one million acts of green”, there are 34 million acts of brown being committed every day in Canada merely by virtue of our existence. The very last thing the global environment needs is more Canadians---from wherever their source.

Tim Murray
June 28, 2010