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A New Day Dawning
By Ernest Partridge (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
Perchance, deny it altogether.
With a blithe disregard of basic physics and ecology, not to mention plain common-sense, the late economist, Julian Simon assured us that human ingenuity ("the ultimate resource") combined with economic incentives, would suffice to overcome all alleged resource scarcities in the future. "We now have in our hands in our libraries, really," Simon wrote, "... the technology to feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years... We [are] able to go on increasing forever."
That optimism is reiterated in such free-market think tanks as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all of which are generously funded by the energy conglomerates. The dogma of technological optimism "don't worry, be happy, we can grow forever for 'human ingenuity' will solve all our problems" has been repeated so often by the mass media that most Americans believe it implicitly. It is woven into the fabric of our culture.
Unfortunately, most authentically "ingenious humans," namely the scientists trained in the relevant disciplines, do not share this optimism. There are, they tell us, limits to growth, founded in the finitude of the planet and the laws of thermodynamics, that no amount of "human ingenuity" plus economic incentive can overcome. As my late friend, the writer Edward Abbey put it, "The ideology of constant growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." And as Paul Ehrlich once remarked to Johnny Carson: if an engineer proposed to design an aircraft with a constantly expanding crew and passenger capacity, we would regard him as crazy. And yet, when an economist posits a theory that assumes a perpetually growing global economy, he is considered eligible for a Nobel Prize.
The official Bushevik response? Ignore the scientific Cassandras. Slash the funding of the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal scientific research institutions. Appoint political hacks and corporate apologists to rewrite the scientific reports.
For reasons too numerous to mention in this brief space, the economic/technological optimism of such libertarian and neo-classical economists as Julian Simon is shot-through with scientific and logic errors. However, this brief and dogmatic complaint against the optimists requires elaboration, evidence, and argument, which I provide in a lengthy published article, "Perilous Optimism," You are invited, even urged, to read it.
Policy as if Survival Mattered.
The Bush administration has effectively dismantled the capacity of the American economy to deal with the environmental and resource crises immediately ahead of us. Our productive manufacturing-based economy, which once led the world in output and innovation, has been shipped overseas and replaced with a non-productive finance economy which shifts cash from place to place and from the pockets of the poor and middle class who produce the nation's wealth, to the pockets of the super-rich who own and control that wealth. Moreover, our national treasury has been looted to near bankruptcy, and the national debt is at an incomprehensible ten trillion dollars. However, the United States remains supreme in just one area of research, development and technology: the production of the instruments of war. The military budget, including the cost of the Iraq war, is approaching a trillion dollars, which is more than the military budgets of all other nations combined, as we spend billions of dollars apiece for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and stealth bombers to use against no known enemies other than a few brigands hiding in caves. Here, if we release them, are the funds that might allow us to face the emergencies ahead of us.
Some economists warn that the U. S. economy could not withstand the shock of dismantling the military-industrial complex because it would result in a sudden surge in unemployment, the loss of federal funds to the hundreds of congressional districts with defense-related industries, and the loss of stock value of the major defense contractors.
There is no need to worry: Not if all research scientists, engineers, and workers are kept in place as defense appropriations are slashed by two-thirds or even three-quarters, and all the released appropriations are immediately rerouted to research, development and manufacture of solar, wind, geo-thermal, bio-mass and other alternative energy sources, to the building of a nationwide network of a fast-rail transit system, to the repair and restoration of the dilapidated physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, water and sewage systems, etc.), to no-waste recycling systems, and who knows?, perhaps even to international geo-engineering projects that might reverse global warming and restore the ecological integrity of the oceans.
Such a "reverse mobilization" is entirely feasible, for we have seen it happen before. In a matter of weeks, in 1942, the industrial base of the American economy was converted to the manufacture of the instruments of war: for example, the production of private automobiles was halted and replaced, almost instantly, with the production of tanks, jeeps, aircraft and artillery. And then, less than four years later, the entire process was reversed.
What is required this time is nothing less than a national consensus that the threat of global economic collapse, brought on by population growth, water shortages, climate change, resource depletion and the end of cheap fossil fuels, is far, far, greater than the threat of terrorism or of military attack by hostile nations. As an added bonus, coordinated international efforts to face and deal with the threat of global economic collapse will, at the same time, reduce the likelihood of both terrorism and military aggression.
If any of this is to be accomplished, national wealth must flow back to the federal treasury, a balanced budget restored, and significant sums must be directed to the reduction of the national debt. Count on relentless opposition from the "private" (i.e. corporate) sector, which must be constantly reminded that corporations and corporate officers ultimately derive their wealth from the labor of the workers and from the integrity of the national economy.
Some proposals:
**Corporate tax loopholes must be closed. The practice of U.S. firms incorporating abroad (e.g. in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands) to avoid US tax obligations must be ended. The remedy is simple: enact a law that requires that government contracts be awarded only to firms incorporated within the United States.
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