The limits to capital are less to do with environmental degradation than capital itself. Imagining real solutions to rise from the same set of social relations which generated the problems is likely a crude idealism.

‘Creative destruction’ was always asymmetric and has increasingly become destructive creation, no mere turn of phrase but the consequence of a progressively greater inability to overcome inherent limits, which must be understood as more than a greater contradiction between nature and artificial nature.

It can be claimed that Asia is seeing inflation on the order of 10%, and China and India have some real problems with this now. The food riots and such, as food prices rise 40 to 100%, put incredible pressure on Asia’s Achilles heel, their huge poor population. The fact is that their huge poor sector spends about half their daily income on food alone. IF food prices double, then what is left over?

Don’t be surprised. If you make $2 a day, and were formerly spending $1 a day on food, and then food doubles in price, you get to the point of not being able to eat enough. In the richer nations, food accounts for say 7 to 10% of cost of living, but in poor nations food is over 50% of living costs, so these food riots are fairly easy to explain. This applies to Egypt, India, China, the Philippines, and a total of 33 countries right now. Food inflation is not tolerable for these countries.

I saw a story about a woman in India whose husband is a day laborer, and they have two kids. As food prices rose, they first sent the kids away to more prosperous relatives. Then, finally, last week said they could only eat one meal a day… because they literally could not afford enough food. Now that is what I call a critical situation. Don’t think China and the other huge poor nations aren’t panicking about this.

Best regards,

Also Reagan’s awareness of Winthrop see http://www.reaganlibrary.com/reagan/speeches/farewell.asp
But unfortunately Reagan gave us supply-side economics. Whose results seem far from Wintrop’s ideal.
Yet it is a seductive idea You can do good by doing well. It is a “ziperless” method of Charity.
And we need some non-linear (in Costello’s usage) theory of Economics for our paradigm to shift to. Of course they have to have their shift first.

Being the jaded old cynic that I am, I am not as optimistic as Costello that this thing will play out as benignly as he predeicts. Large segments of the American population have thus far behaved pretty abominably. There’s already been one failed resource war, and all this anti-immigrant antipathy is indicative of a society in search of scapegoats. It could get very ugly.

Costello is absolutely right in that the changes that are needed are cultural. But there is nothing more rigid and unbending as culutre. As Richard Bernstein points out in “Dictatorship of Virtue,” culture is “powerfully conservative. Culture is what enforces obedience to authority, the authority of parents, of history, of custom, of superstiotion. Deep attachment to culture is one of the things that prevents different people from understanding one another. It is what pushes groups into compliance with practices that can be good or bad, depending on one’s point of view. Suttee (the practice, eradicated by British colonialism, in which Indian widows were burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands) and female circumcision, as well as the spirit of rational inquiry and a belief in the sanctity of each human life, are products of cultural attachments of different kinds. Those who practiced suttee, or who believe that women who commit adultery should be stoned to death, do not believe there is anything bad about these practices, any more than those who practice rational inquiry under conditions of freedom think there is anything wrong with that.”

We’re talking about taking core Western values, which at this very moment are rapidly being exported to the rest of the world, and turning them on their heads.

Just imagine the guy who takes the subway being held in higher esteem than the guy who tools around in his new Jaguar convertible coup, the guy who lives in a little 600 sq. ft. apartment having more prestige than the guy who rambles around in his 5000 sq. ft. McMansion, thermostats set at a perfect 70 degrees 365 days a year.

It just ain’t gonna happen without a tremendous amount of pain.

Criticize Costello for failing to edit his piece, but don’t criticize the concept. Peak Oil is not some wacky hippie theory.

The good news is that the younger generation appears to understand the interconnectiveness of everything. Witness the youthful enthusiasm for Obama. I wish them well. They’re going to need all the help they can get.

weinerdog43

If people in their roles of employees/executives acted to make sure their organizations — private, public and non-profit — served other people in their role of consumer/investor in a manner consistent with the golden rule (i.e. do unto others….), then we’d make more pragmatic progress toward insuring that every organization’s success contributed to the safety, sanity and sustainability of the planet.

But this is not what happens today. Instead, we have private sector organizations, lemming-like, pursuing idolatry of ‘free markets’ and shareholder value fundamentalism. Look at the earlier post of stock market drops for signing onto profit-generating conservation measures. We live in a world of ideology. Only ‘we’ can take responsibility for changing that.

But, first we must understand when we are a real ‘we’ capable of concerted, purposeful action.

That happens in the ‘we’s’ of organizations — not the ‘we’s’ of place/locality. And it happens mostly in our shared role of ‘employee/executive’ as opposed to the shared idea of ‘citizen’.

The idealism in Costello’s prescriptions arise because he fails to account for our shared reality and how various ‘we’s’ can and must act in it. His objectives are spot on. His recomended means will not happen.