On Sunday, Friends of the Everglades is hosting Dr. Harold Wanless, chairman of the UM Department of Geological Science, who will update facts and science related to climate change and its impacts on South Florida.
In context of what the future holds, the writer and culture critic Jim Kunstler has been a leading light, and one cited frequently on our blog.
I read a recent post on Kunstler's blog, Clusterfuck Nation, by Clive Doucet, a former municipal official in Ottawa. It is a thoughtful assessment of the end times for an economy running on industrial lines of mass production and distribution of consumer goods that Kunstler sees ahead. In important ways Doucet, Kunstler, and Wanless link up to provide glimpses of the future.
"I don’t believe there’s any collective cliff face waiting for us to drive over," Doucet doubts. "Rather it is going to be a city by city progression, province and state by state parade. It’s going to be more like a moth eating away at a wool blanket. At first the holes are scarcely noticed. There is simply too much systemic inertia, supported by too much global investment in more cars, trucks, oil, bigger boats and jumbo jets."
The beach renourishment project highlighted on this blog, yesterday, in Delray is one such example of both inertia -- piling up sand against the relentless sea -- and of "a moth eating away at a wool blanket." A commenter on this blog wrote, along the lines, "beach erosion has always happened in south Florida. What makes you think this is sea level rise?"
The short answer is that this particular moth -- sea level rise -- is eating away at coastlines around the world with astonishing speed, compared to recent geologic history. Don't take my word for it: listen to Dr. Wanless on Sunday, April 14th, at 1:30 PM at Pinecrest Garden in South Miami.
Doucet goes on, "The most successful economies will continue to be the ones that find a multitude of ways of slowing and managing the steps down as the European Nordic nations are doing today." But that will not happen in Florida, where we are conjoined with the fantasies of the Growth Machine that the miracle to come -- a return to the patterns of growth that transferred so much wealth in the 1990's and early 2000's -- is around the corner if only we free businesses from burdensome (ie. environmental permitting) regulations.
In assessing my thinking over the past quarter century, I believed -- wrongly -- that Florida would eventually come to its senses when the massively inflated dreams of the Growth Machine came apart at the seams. Even in the 1980's one could see that prospect on the horizon.
The age of scarcity -- where we are today -- has the opposite effect. Scarcity compels even more image creation while insiders concentrate on accumulating the wealth of society, as though already tugging for the pieces of the "wool blanket" (as Doucet describes).
If special interests suppress the angels of our better natures while relative climate normalcy is still visible -- almost like an after-image when a flash bulb has gone off while a photograph is taken -- how will they behave in the generations to come?
CLIVE DOUCET | APRIL 1, 2013 11:03 AM | REPLY
Post Clusterfuck Nation
Ever since I read “The Long Emergency: Confronting the Converging Crisis of the 21st century" I’ve been a fan of Jim Kunstler. When I was a city councillor, I brought him to Ottawa to speak and it was a very successful event. The hall was packed to hear America’s Jeremiah preach the coming economic and political meltdown and I continue the connection to this day.
Reading his weekly blog ‘Clusterfuck Nation’ is like a taking an intellectual emetic. One read is enough to flush the dyspepsia of the previous week’s repetitive news cycles which trumpet more events but never new directions.
The only problem with Jim’s Clusterfuck Nation rants is the same one as the original Jeremiah had. It’s a long, long drop from our current state of petroleum based bliss to the one where people will abandon just-in-time global production, cheap franchise distribution and the world re-localizes.
I have no doubt Jim is right and it will happen, but unlike Mr. Kunstler I don’t believe there’s any collective cliff face waiting for us to drive over. Rather it is going to be a city by city progression, province and state by state parade. It’s going to be more like a moth eating away at a wool blanket. At first the holes are scarcely noticed. There is simply too much systemic inertia, supported by too much global investment in more cars, trucks, oil, bigger boats and jumbo jets.
It will be a long series of small, downward steps, each one taking us a little closer to the return of local economies that Kunstler writes so eloquently about. The most successful economies will continue to be the ones that find a multitude of ways of slowing and managing the steps down as the European Nordic nations are doing today.
It’s not especially complicated. Look at the city of Detriot or Cyprus and you can get clear images of the steps down in operation today, but that doesn’t mean it’s coming to New York or Toronto anytime soon. As frustrating as it is for Jim Kunstler, there’s simply too much money to be made out of supporting the status quo, but in a more perfect world this is how the steps down would be delayed and reduced.
1) The financial meltdown. Solution: Return progressive taxation to all sectors of society including the banks. Get rid of derivative and currency speculation entirely. Societies can’t succeed with fewer and fewer people bearing the costs. It didn’t work in the 18th century and it’s not going to work in the 21st. In the long term, it creates a revolutionary scenario and in the short term starves both the public and individual capacity. But progressive taxation won’t work by retaining today’s expenditure patterns. There’s no point in improving public revenue generation if it just means there’s more money for wars in Africans deserts and Asian mountains.
2) The governance meltdown. Solution. Share the taxes more fairly. Cities get 8 cents of every tax dollar; the federal government gets 50 per cent but provides fewer services. This isn’t sustainable. Can you imagine the Mayor of Toronto flying in his armoured car to Calgary for a meeting? Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t have the cash.
3) The environmental meltdown. Solution. Stop subsidizing the oil and car industries. One underground parking space costs 15 to 25,000 dollars depending on where it is. Surface storage costs 5 to 10,000 per slot. Each private vehicle requires 8 storage spaces. No society can continue successfully when it costs more to store machines that it does to house people.
Urban Meltdown: Get off the global umbilical cord. Local rail. Local energy. Local food.
That’s the way we start to walk down the stairs instead of driving happily forward until we arrive at the cliff face. Will it happen? It has already begun in some countries, but not in Canada. Our current crop of federal leaders have made it clear, they are followers and to give them credit, they have been clear about this. When every other nation get their tax, environmental, tax and public investment acts together, including developing nations then Canada will consider following. In the meantime, it’s business and politics as usual.
Needless to say, followers don’t have much street cred. No one cares anymore if Canada has ‘the bomb’ or not, or is more interesting in armed intervention than ‘keeping the peace’, or vice versa. Canada has become a ‘you-lead, we’ll follow country’ while managing to retain it’s unpleasant hectoring qualities as in ‘our banks are better than your banks’. Not a way to win friends and influence people.
Reading, Jim Kunstler’s ‘Clusterfuck Nation’ blog is a pleasant diversion, but it’s very existence in the blog world and not as a syndicated column in the mainstream print media is proof enough that it is the sound of Jeremiah howling and not North America changing. -30-
Clive Doucet is a writer and former Ottawa City Councillor. He is a retired Jeremiah. His latest book is “Shooting The Bruce”. It can be purchased electronically in electronic or print versions. It has no redeeming social importance.
In context of what the future holds, the writer and culture critic Jim Kunstler has been a leading light, and one cited frequently on our blog.
I read a recent post on Kunstler's blog, Clusterfuck Nation, by Clive Doucet, a former municipal official in Ottawa. It is a thoughtful assessment of the end times for an economy running on industrial lines of mass production and distribution of consumer goods that Kunstler sees ahead. In important ways Doucet, Kunstler, and Wanless link up to provide glimpses of the future.
"I don’t believe there’s any collective cliff face waiting for us to drive over," Doucet doubts. "Rather it is going to be a city by city progression, province and state by state parade. It’s going to be more like a moth eating away at a wool blanket. At first the holes are scarcely noticed. There is simply too much systemic inertia, supported by too much global investment in more cars, trucks, oil, bigger boats and jumbo jets."
The beach renourishment project highlighted on this blog, yesterday, in Delray is one such example of both inertia -- piling up sand against the relentless sea -- and of "a moth eating away at a wool blanket." A commenter on this blog wrote, along the lines, "beach erosion has always happened in south Florida. What makes you think this is sea level rise?"
The short answer is that this particular moth -- sea level rise -- is eating away at coastlines around the world with astonishing speed, compared to recent geologic history. Don't take my word for it: listen to Dr. Wanless on Sunday, April 14th, at 1:30 PM at Pinecrest Garden in South Miami.
Doucet goes on, "The most successful economies will continue to be the ones that find a multitude of ways of slowing and managing the steps down as the European Nordic nations are doing today." But that will not happen in Florida, where we are conjoined with the fantasies of the Growth Machine that the miracle to come -- a return to the patterns of growth that transferred so much wealth in the 1990's and early 2000's -- is around the corner if only we free businesses from burdensome (ie. environmental permitting) regulations.
In assessing my thinking over the past quarter century, I believed -- wrongly -- that Florida would eventually come to its senses when the massively inflated dreams of the Growth Machine came apart at the seams. Even in the 1980's one could see that prospect on the horizon.
The age of scarcity -- where we are today -- has the opposite effect. Scarcity compels even more image creation while insiders concentrate on accumulating the wealth of society, as though already tugging for the pieces of the "wool blanket" (as Doucet describes).
If special interests suppress the angels of our better natures while relative climate normalcy is still visible -- almost like an after-image when a flash bulb has gone off while a photograph is taken -- how will they behave in the generations to come?
CLIVE DOUCET | APRIL 1, 2013 11:03 AM | REPLY
Post Clusterfuck Nation
Ever since I read “The Long Emergency: Confronting the Converging Crisis of the 21st century" I’ve been a fan of Jim Kunstler. When I was a city councillor, I brought him to Ottawa to speak and it was a very successful event. The hall was packed to hear America’s Jeremiah preach the coming economic and political meltdown and I continue the connection to this day.
Reading his weekly blog ‘Clusterfuck Nation’ is like a taking an intellectual emetic. One read is enough to flush the dyspepsia of the previous week’s repetitive news cycles which trumpet more events but never new directions.
The only problem with Jim’s Clusterfuck Nation rants is the same one as the original Jeremiah had. It’s a long, long drop from our current state of petroleum based bliss to the one where people will abandon just-in-time global production, cheap franchise distribution and the world re-localizes.
I have no doubt Jim is right and it will happen, but unlike Mr. Kunstler I don’t believe there’s any collective cliff face waiting for us to drive over. Rather it is going to be a city by city progression, province and state by state parade. It’s going to be more like a moth eating away at a wool blanket. At first the holes are scarcely noticed. There is simply too much systemic inertia, supported by too much global investment in more cars, trucks, oil, bigger boats and jumbo jets.
It will be a long series of small, downward steps, each one taking us a little closer to the return of local economies that Kunstler writes so eloquently about. The most successful economies will continue to be the ones that find a multitude of ways of slowing and managing the steps down as the European Nordic nations are doing today.
It’s not especially complicated. Look at the city of Detriot or Cyprus and you can get clear images of the steps down in operation today, but that doesn’t mean it’s coming to New York or Toronto anytime soon. As frustrating as it is for Jim Kunstler, there’s simply too much money to be made out of supporting the status quo, but in a more perfect world this is how the steps down would be delayed and reduced.
1) The financial meltdown. Solution: Return progressive taxation to all sectors of society including the banks. Get rid of derivative and currency speculation entirely. Societies can’t succeed with fewer and fewer people bearing the costs. It didn’t work in the 18th century and it’s not going to work in the 21st. In the long term, it creates a revolutionary scenario and in the short term starves both the public and individual capacity. But progressive taxation won’t work by retaining today’s expenditure patterns. There’s no point in improving public revenue generation if it just means there’s more money for wars in Africans deserts and Asian mountains.
2) The governance meltdown. Solution. Share the taxes more fairly. Cities get 8 cents of every tax dollar; the federal government gets 50 per cent but provides fewer services. This isn’t sustainable. Can you imagine the Mayor of Toronto flying in his armoured car to Calgary for a meeting? Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t have the cash.
3) The environmental meltdown. Solution. Stop subsidizing the oil and car industries. One underground parking space costs 15 to 25,000 dollars depending on where it is. Surface storage costs 5 to 10,000 per slot. Each private vehicle requires 8 storage spaces. No society can continue successfully when it costs more to store machines that it does to house people.
Urban Meltdown: Get off the global umbilical cord. Local rail. Local energy. Local food.
That’s the way we start to walk down the stairs instead of driving happily forward until we arrive at the cliff face. Will it happen? It has already begun in some countries, but not in Canada. Our current crop of federal leaders have made it clear, they are followers and to give them credit, they have been clear about this. When every other nation get their tax, environmental, tax and public investment acts together, including developing nations then Canada will consider following. In the meantime, it’s business and politics as usual.
Needless to say, followers don’t have much street cred. No one cares anymore if Canada has ‘the bomb’ or not, or is more interesting in armed intervention than ‘keeping the peace’, or vice versa. Canada has become a ‘you-lead, we’ll follow country’ while managing to retain it’s unpleasant hectoring qualities as in ‘our banks are better than your banks’. Not a way to win friends and influence people.
Reading, Jim Kunstler’s ‘Clusterfuck Nation’ blog is a pleasant diversion, but it’s very existence in the blog world and not as a syndicated column in the mainstream print media is proof enough that it is the sound of Jeremiah howling and not North America changing. -30-
Clive Doucet is a writer and former Ottawa City Councillor. He is a retired Jeremiah. His latest book is “Shooting The Bruce”. It can be purchased electronically in electronic or print versions. It has no redeeming social importance.
1 comment:
I laughed out loud when you said you believed "that Florida would eventually come to its senses when the massively inflated dreams of the Growth Machine came apart at the seams."
You give the idiots of this state a lot more credit than I do.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
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