As time is not on our side, how about concentrating our propaganda efforts on simply one focal point: A cap on Consumer Credit & Creditcards, and a phasing out of these within 3-5 years?

Because I see these as factors as factors that actively encourage overconsumption at the consumer level, overproduction at the manufacturer’s level, and a helluva lot of activity at the service-providers’ level.

(In case you’ve missed reading my detailed reasoning of this earlier on in this discussion thread, you may consider reading http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com/blogs/2007/12/10/Stop-Credit-Cards-Consumer.html .

I suggest this as a kind of focal point for all our efforts because:
i) With less of bank credit circulating in the system, overheated economies would cool down
ii) the consuming public would see that a state of emergency has been declared.
iii) We anti-growth activists would effectively have to lobby for only one clear thing: Cap and roll back credit!
IN other words, we can stop arguing for a bewildering array of measures/legislations to cap economic growth.
iv) Progress made on this front is simple and easy to monitor — no ambiguities whatsoever.
v) Legislation on this front is simple and requires a minimum of justification before the consuming public, who would debate and bargain every inch of the way.

So what say, Magne, Steven, John, Dave, Trinifar, Brian… Can we together move a resolution to just lobby central bankers to put a cap on issue of fresh consumer credit during 2008?

Given the paucity of time, let us get down to building consensus amonst ourselves on focal points, guys… please!

Warmly,
Krish

Thanks for the headsup on Wallerstein. From a recent article of his:

This is the way that hegemonic decline builds on itself. The leading country concentrates on the short-term situation, and overinvests in unfruitful military expenditure. Speculation replaces innovation as the source of profits. And before one knows it, the others (in this case the Japanese, but not they alone) speed ahead controlling the technology of the future. This is what the United States did when it was, oh so long ago, an ascending economic power.

The only way to turn this around, even partially, is a major cultural shift in the United States. George W. Bush is not at all ready even to think about it. Are Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama ready to exert their leadership in this direction? Nothing is less sure.

We in the US have so thoroughly rejected any and all forms of socialism one result of which is a lack of any kind of a long-term central planning function. Thus, we don’t engage in Kyoto/Bali, we make no effort toward conservation of energy (or much else, like water), we are left with looking for the quick success of economic (and military) speculation on a vast scale (e.g. subprime mortgages, corporate buyouts and consolidation).

The chickens are coming home to roost.

And yeah, I admit it: I have been thinking quite often about what might go on inside the mind and soul of honest, hard working citizens (the list of toxic and polluting occupations is endless) — as they’ve been bombarded with newspaper articles about the problems concerned with the natural byproducts of their daily work: toxic waste and pollution of the atmosphere; with the end result of environmental destruction of a catastrophic dimension (well, that is what the natural sciences all have to say, anyway).

Such an awful lot of people are — as a matter of fact — “in the business of biosphere destruction”, getting paid for doing it, by employers who get rich because they stay loyal to the company and keep on doing it — and this shall have to stop, or mustn’t it? And, yes: can it possibly be stopped? Or would such a belief be absolutely utopic?

Reality is absurd. Human nature is bizarre. And the life I lead is confusing.

I agree with both of you.

Our time is surely coming. After all, our ‘side’ has not yet been given its chance to demonstrate what we have to offer and are capable of doing. We have all that we need to succeed .

Of course, time is also not on our side. Time is the thing that is NOT ON OUR SIDE which concerns me most.

Perhaps we can agree to do what is doable, with the assurance that things will work out for the best.

Always,

Steve

Sadly, you are dead right. It’s the grim truth.

We are like a small bunch of rather earnest schoolboys contemplating how to halt or slow down a giant bulldozer mowing down the rain forests. ‘They’ have the whole system working with them and for them, and ‘We’ have nothing but our bare hands, our brains, our ability to talk and write and plan.

And time is a-running out.

“The perennial tug of war over what average people should think and do about human-caused global warming has just experienced another big yank, this time from those saying actions to cut greenhouse gases are a costly waste of time.”

- —

“A costly waste of time.” — A simple phrase in which a whole lot of truth is located. Time is of the essence here, and the world economy is energy based. The cheapest energy in fossil (oil, gas, coal), so a change of direction must certainly come at great cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review

The findings of the Stern Report can equally be forgotten about, sooner rather than later. There are too many polluting activities at stake here, and such an unbelievable lot of people depend on the money (wages, salaries) they get for being professional polluters of environment, and it doesn’t matter what’s the nature of your job; you’ll always be fighting to keep it. This is the hard reality. Toxic or polluting practices that good, lawful citizens get paid for doing, are not easily done away with. Not at all.

Krish,

As a student during the 1990s I used to enjoy reading the world systems theories of Immanuel Wallerstein, who still remains an important critic of the contemporary civilization and its ways of structuring knowledge. Wallerstein has since the early 1980s been in favour of university reforms in order to structuring knowledge in new and less outdated ways.

A search for “Sustainability” or “sustainable development” doesn’t throw up the right sort of websites, leave alone websites like ours.

I think we need to coin a few suitable names to describe our kinda philosophy. A lot of good things can start happening if good people coalesce under an umbrella-terminology that we all broadly agree on.

How about coining some phrases and formally calling this common belief that we have by some name/names? How about declaring it a new SCHOOL OF THOUGHT, just so we can propound it with the seriousness that it merits?

Brian, John, Dave, Trinifar… please do give it some serious thought.

Warmly,
Krish

Kudos to Trinifar.

BTW, I’ve started emailing this thing that I wrote (about capping and rolling back creditcard and consumer credit) to every banker I know, and any banking email address I can lay my hands on by fair means or foul.

I intend to spread this thought — and many similar ones — like pollen in the wind.

May I humbly urge everybody to go forth and do likewise? I submit that we don’t have to be dignified; merely loud, vociferous, innovative, PERSISTENT and very very REPETITIVE.

I believe we anti-economic-growth people haven’t been sufficiently noisy. We need to stop being sensible intellectuals, and turn into unabashed propagandists to get people to turn around and look at this issue in a new light. We have to turn the anti-growth thing into a slogan through sheer repetitiveness.

We have to acquire the PESTER-POWER of the advertising industry. If advertising can make people believe that they need to buy a load of junk, then our spiel can be convincing too; so let us just keep dishing it out!

Warmly,
Krish

I like the “fake economy” and “real economy” distinction. And I think the real economy is easier to understand.

Worse thing about the GDP isn’t so much that it’s part of the fake-economy, it’s (as every manager and parent is taught) you need to be careful about what you measure — because you’ll get more of it. Ugh!

That’s true. Unfortunately, it is equally true to say that governments are careful not to mention electrical power and energy demands of private homes and public/private industries, factories, office buildings in the same breath as they claim to be “deeply concerned” with all kinds of future environment protection.

It’s never worded like this: “Sure, we admit that the environment is important, but the sidewalks of Norwegian towns must still be electrically heated during the winter season, because of all the ice and the snow; senior citizens may slip and fall and damage themselves severely.”

- —

Trinifar: “to enslave people to long work hours and the free market fake-economy.”

Thank you very much, Trinifar, for making me feel a little less stupid than I have done, up until now, as the brilliant term “fake-economy” has reached the interior of my scull; my brain; my mind. So I do not have to feel extra stupid for not understanding the contemporary economic system, or do I?

I’m confused. – 8)

There are two uses of the word economy. To avoid confusion we could use the terms fake-economy (the traditional understanding where people serve the economy) and real-economy (as in ecological economics, where the economy serves people).

We’ve been taught that economic growth is good for everyone, hence all this gnashing of teeth over GHG emission caps/cuts harming the economy and thus harming people. But that’s the fake-economy, and no one should care about what happens to something that’s not even real.

As for the real-economy (the one which serves people and respects the interconnection between people and the rest of the environment), the work in Kyoto and now in Bali is trying to preserve as much of it as possible.

Krish’s point about credit in the fake-economy is excellent. Extending foolish amounts of credit is a way to enslave people to long work hours and the free market fake-economy. It’s thought to be a way to increase GDP, which it can do for a while, but the GDP is a fake-economy measurement.

The real-economy is measured by instruments like the GPI, eco footprint, and atmospheric CO2 concentration. I hope the current increase in exposure at Bali, with the Noble Peace Prize, etc. push us to a tipping point in understanding the difference between the concepts of fake-economy and real-economy.

I had a Eureka moment a couple of days ago. Consider this approach:

Maybe, instead of trying to attack the many arms of the Economic-Growthism problem, we should go for its eye.

As you have yourself pointed out, Climate Change seems like a problem of excess CO2 emissions, but on a deeper analysis, one finds that it’s a problem of overconsumption by all of us — individuals, corporates, governments, all.

Analyse deeper still: one finds that a very large part of this overconsumption/overproduction is triggered by and funded by CREDIT. There is an overabundance of bank credit — out of all proportion to actual earnings and savings — that gives people the power to overspend and overconsume.

So this is where the cancerous tumour, so to speak, can be clearly isolated from human flesh. This is where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.

CONSUMER CREDIT — loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances — is a major artery feeding this tumour. Easy loans warp our purchasing decisions, making our desires seem like needs. (A few calls from an aggressive telemarketer of car loans, plus some persuasion from my chartered accountant to increase my fixed assets, is all that is needed to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to a monstrous four-wheel all-terrain vehicle.)

CREDIT CARDS induce an unrealistic sense of economic power by enabling you to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months’ or years’ earnings in your wallet.

And when you do that, you are tempted to do all those wonderful, beautiful, “generous” things that you see in TV commercials like buying your wife a diamond solitaire, booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary or surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris.

Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up… and up… and up.

Driven by this excessive consumer demand, a number of industries flourish, new corporates are created, and new factories get built, diversified, expanded, acquired… Stock markets rise majestically, and governments and the general public feels good.

We aren’t only borrowing economically, we are BORROWING ECOLOGICALLY. Our governments are careful not to mention Economy and Ecology in the same breath. Economists who advise them are kept in a separate department from Ecologists.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing from the future, and let us do it NOW.

And as a community of concerned citizens, let us lobby for a clampdown on consumer credit. Let us write to the government, to our Central Banks and to individual banks and bankers.

Let each person in the banking industry be targetted with this message: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year.

This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario.

Three years is 36 months — far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash. So why delay, postpone and vacillate? Let us attack the eye of the problem by fighting against the Creditcard & Consumer-loan culture!

Warmly,
Krishnaraj Rao
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com