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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges: Growth Is the Problem
from truthdig:
Growth Is the Problem
Posted on Sep 10, 2012
By Chris Hedges
The ceaseless expansion of economic exploitation, the engine of global capitalism, has come to an end. The futile and myopic effort to resurrect this expansiona fallacy embraced by most economistsmeans that we respond to illusion rather than reality. We invest our efforts into bringing back what is gone forever. This strange twilight moment, in which our experts and systems managers squander resources in attempting to re-create an expanding economic system that is moribund, will inevitably lead to systems collapse. The steady depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, along with the accelerated pace of climate change, will combine with crippling levels of personal and national debt to thrust us into a global depression that will dwarf any in the history of capitalism. And very few of us are prepared.
Our solution is our problem, Richard Heinberg, the author of The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, told me when I reached him by phone in California. Its name is growth. But growth has become uneconomic. We are worse off because of growth. To achieve growth now means mounting debt, more pollution, an accelerated loss of biodiversity and the continued destabilization of the climate. But we are addicted to growth. If there is no growth there are insufficient tax revenues and jobs. If there is no growth existing debt levels become unsustainable. The elites see the current economic crisis as a temporary impediment. They are desperately trying to fix it. But this crisis signals an irreversible change for civilization itself. We cannot prevent it. We can only decide whether we will adapt to it or not.
Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, argues that we cannot grasp the real state of the global economy by the usual metricsGDP, unemployment, housing, durable goods, national deficits, personal income and consumer spendingalthough even these measures point to severe and chronic problems. Rather, he says, we have to examine the structural flaws that sit like time bombs embedded within the economic edifice. U.S. household debt enabled the expansion of consumer spending during the boom years, he says, but consumer debt cannot continue to grow as house prices decline to realistic levels. Toxic assets litter the portfolios of the major banks, presaging another global financial meltdown. The Earths natural resources are being exhausted. And climate change, with its extreme weather conditions, is beginning to exact a heavy economic toll on countries, including the United States, through the destruction brought about by droughts, floods, wildfires and loss of crop yields.
Heinberg also highlights what he calls the highly dysfunctional U.S. political system, which is paralyzed and hostage to corporate power. It is unable to respond rationally to the crisis or solve even the most trivial of problems. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/growth_is_the_problem_20120910/
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Chris Hedges: Growth Is the Problem (Original Post)
marmar
Sep 2012
OP
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)1. Hopefully more and more people will begin to wake up to this new reality
and stop trying to resuscitate a brain-dead economic model.
marmar
(77,077 posts)2. Sometimes you kick, sometimes you get kicked.....
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)3. We're going to Green Wash climate change until it becomes unbearable...
at that point, people will say: "OK, now let's get serious. How much do we have to cut back on our use of fossil fuels to make this better?"
We'll tell them what we've been saying all along: "Carbon goes up, it doesn't come down. This is as good as it will ever get."
They'll then kill the messengers.