U.S.
Economy: Recession,
Depression, Or Collapse?
By Shepherd Bliss
14 November, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“For
Consumers, the Hits Keep Coming” a recent banner headline in a
New York Times-owned daily newspaper here in Northern California reports.
The article misses the main points. If we continue to understand ourselves
as primarily passive consumers, rather than as active citizens, the
US economy will enter at least a recession, probably a depression, and
possibly a collapse. Even our republic is at risk.
Rampant consumption, our
addiction to growth, and our failure to accept limits to growth damage
us. The headline beneath the banner—“Cleanup Response Criticized”—reveals
one of the saddest results. We are not adequately cleaning up the San
Francisco Bay after a recent oil spill. Many other aspects of our environment
need cleaning up. Without a healthy natural environment and climate
conducive to humans, no economy can endure. Over-consumption drives
the increasingly extreme and chaotic climate.
We have contaminated our
air and waterways, clear-cut our forests, and our inner cities are dying.
The pollution of such natural resources often preceeds economic and
societal collapses.
I appreciate the Press Democrat
for recently reporting the emerging economic trends in numerous articles.
What I miss is more analysis, connecting the dots and providing context.
The shrinking dollar, soaring gas prices, housing slump and stock market
fall, though inconvenient, are not the biggest threats to the economy.
These are symptoms caused by deeper systemic problems. We need to learn
from these events and discover how to build more sustainable societies.
Otherwise, these “hits” are likely to increase and spread.
We need to quickly evolve
from our destructive individual consumption patterns that damage not
only the economy but the Earth itself. We need to consider their many
negative impacts and work together as active citizens concerned with
the whole economy and the environment on which it is dependent.
Look around. Things are falling
down and apart in the US, including cities like New Orleans, the Minneapolis
bridge, and the Twin Towers. An increasing number of high-level government
officials—like Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales—have been
forced out of office. The cuts are likely to go deeper. One can try
to ignore, deny, or seek revenge for these events, all of which invite
more disasters. Prudent planning would be a better alternative. These
are not isolated events but point to systemic causes.
These are more than the “economic
cycle of advance and retreat” that the Nov. 10 article reports.
It is not just “things (that) have come together in the last 10
days.” The US’s false economy has been de-stabilizing for
years and is now reaching a more degraded stage. We have become vulnerable
to a variety of “hits” and should expect even more. Our
economy has been described by some as a “house of cards,”
which is likely to fall. An unraveling is occurring, creating a time
of great uncertainty and fear.
Many major American institutions
are in crisis, including healthcare, religion, transportation, political
systems, energy, and education.
The Iron Curtain came down
and the Berlin Wall seemed to suddenly fall, as did the Soviet Union.
The US economy may suddenly fail.
Protecting markets and “consumers”
from the truth of how bad our economic reality is will backfire. We
do not need to “panic.” But citizens do need accurate news
and analysis to get ready for the potential of a radically diminished
economy. We are living in a time of unprecedented planetary crisis.
People need to prepare physically and psychologically for massive changes.
It is not enough to write
about a “silver lining” and report the perilous optimism
of an economist wishing that “hopefully this week is not a microcosm
of where we will be a year from now.” We need more than false
hope to get us through the coming hard times.
Most of the US population
continues destructive, over-consuming behaviors that harm all of us.
We are not merely victims of the problems; we cause them. We cannot
merely blame outside “terrorists.”
Among the facts left out
of recent articles in the mainstream press on the declining US economy
is the Iraq War. With so many resources dedicated to war-making, dealing
with events like Katrina and cleaning up oil spills are more difficult.
“The Hidden Costs of
the Iraq War” is a congressional report recently released. It
states that the economic costs to the US of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
are already around $1.5 trillion. For the average U.S. family of four
that is more than $20,000.
We are experiencing more
than what headlines describe as a “slowdown.” It could be
a “meltdown.” We might be approaching what James Howard
Kunstler describes in his book “The Long Emergency” as “catastrophe.”
Santa Rosa author Richard
Heinberg’s “Peak Everything” describes our situation
well. “Waking Up to the Century of Decline” he sub-titles
this new book. This sounds like bad news, but when we face changes early
enough, we have more opportunities to cope with them and transform them
into opportunities.
Helpful responses include
reducing our consumption, accepting that we are contracting, and understanding
ourselves as citizens able to take action, rather than as merely passive
consumers who can only react. Citizen activism is what me most need
at this point in history.
Humans can be far more than
objects whose purpose is to buy, shop, spend, and grow the economy.
We are threatened more by our own behavior than by any outside terrorists.
With crude oil costs at their
highest ever and approaching $100 a barrel, what Heinberg and other
Peak Oil theorists have been predicting for years seems to be entering
its next stage. With the supply of petroleum and other fossil fuels
diminishing and the demand for them increasing--especially from rapidly
industrializing China and India--we are moving toward a radically worsened
US economy.
When the mainstream press
fails to report news and offer analyses that a large number of people
are aware of, we can turn to citizen journalists on the web. The mainstream
press is loosing readers because it no longer adequately investigates
and reports some of the important stories. Fortunately, we now have
other places to go to be informed and educated.
“Closing the ‘Collapse
Gap’: The USSR Was Better Prepared for Collapse than the US”
was published by the authoritative www.energybulletin.net. A Russian,
Dmitry Orlov, who now lives in the US, wrote, “The US economy
is poised to perform something like a disappearing act.” Orlov
compares the “two 20th century superpowers.” An extended
version of his analysis will be published as the book “Reinventing
Collapse” in May by New Society Publishers.
Orlov examines the arms race,
the space race, the jails race, and the “Hated Evil Empire Race.”
He concludes that “many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union
are now endangering the US.” So we should “expect shortages
of fuel, food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity,
gas, and water.” If we plan for such possibilities now, we will
be better able to deal with them.
Though Orlov details the
threats to the US economy, he and his editors at EnergyBulletin remain
optimistic. Orlov writes about the possibilities for an expansion of
“enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom” during times of
collapse. Russia, after all, did recover. It may be more difficult for
the US.
Helpful responses include
strengthening local economies, being less dependent upon globalization,
outside corporations and things distant, and knowing and preserving
the sources of the basics--such as food and water. “There are
many things we can do to navigate down and around” our problems,
Heinberg writes, “so as to enhance human sanity and security and
happiness.”
Canada is one of the many
countries whose citizens are ahead of the US in prudent planning for
pending crises caused by extreme climate, Peak Oil, and related matters.
The Vancouver City Planning Commission has posted a report on a 2006
seminar on collapse at www.plancanada.com. Videos of such ongoing seminars
to get ready are available at www.peakmoment.org.
Too many Americans selfishly
believe that they have a God-given right to consume whatever their wealth
can purchase, without regard to the consequences to other people and
the Earth. They take, rather than give, even the natural resources of
other peoples. As a farmer, I know that you reap what you sow and that
chickens come home to roost.
Our economy is paying and
will continue to pay the consequences of over-consumption and the over-purchasing
of people reaching beyond their resources that characterized the housing
market. We have been greedy. There are limits to growth and those limits
are crashing in on us.
Yet many piles of rubble
have been rebuilt—often more beautiful than before they fell.
Phoenixes have risen from the ashes before. Yet our future is uncertain,
without guarantees.
It is time to think and write
about more than the probability of a recession and consider the real
possibility of a depression or even collapse. Then people can get ready,
be active citizens, and prepare their personal, social, and political
responses. We must do this together.
Shepherd Bliss,
[email protected], teaches at Sonoma State University
and has run am organic farm for most of the last 15 years.
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