The Economy--Recession, Depression, or Collapse?

ROUGH DRAFT: Criticisms Solicited, to [email protected]

By Shepherd Bliss (1160 words)

“For Consumers, the Hits Keep Coming” ran the banner headline in our daily New York Times-owned newspaper here in Northern California. The article misses the main points. If we continue to understand ourselves as primarily “consumers,” rather than as “citizens,” our economy will enter at least a recession, probably a depression, and possibly a collapse. Even our republic is at risk.

Rampant consumption and our addiction to growth damage the economy, as well as the environment. One of the saddest results of our over-consumption is revealed in the headline beneath the banner—“Cleanup Response Criticized.” Indeed, we are not adequately cleaning up the San Francisco Bay after a recent oil spill; many other aspects of our environment need cleaning up, including our increasingly fragile and chaotic climate.

Without a healthy natural environment and climate conducive to humans, there can be no economy that will endure.

I appreciate the Press Democrat for recently reporting the emerging economic trends on a daily basis. 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.

What is happening is far more than merely the “economic cycle of advance and retreat” that the article reports. It is not just “things (that) have come together in the last 10 days” or even in recent months. The US economy has been giving signs of decline for years and is now reaching a more degraded and visible stage.

The strategy of 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 prepare ourselves for the potential of a radically diminished economy.

It is not enough to write about the “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.” It is probable that our economy will be far more erratic and worsen in both the short-term and long-term.

Some have been preparing for years for a dramatically worsened economy with gas prices far over $4 a gallon, some banks failing, our money worth less, and more homeless; but most of the U.S. population continues destructive, over-consuming behaviors that harm all of us. We are not merely victims of the problems; we cause them. Many remain with blind faith that the market will correct itself.

If the US continues its current path, our economy will fall apart and perhaps the republic with it. Helpful responses include reducing our consumption, acknowledging that we are in a contraction, and understanding ourselves as citizens of a threatened republic, as well as of an endangered planet, rather than merely consumers. Humans can be far more than objects whose main work is to buy, shop, and grow the economy. We are threatened more by our own behavior than by any outside terrorists.

What we are experiencing is more than what headlines describe as a “slowdown.” It may be more like a “meltdown.” We are facing more than “trouble” and could be approaching what James Howard Kunstler describes in his book “The Long Emergency” as “catastrophe.”

Santa Rosa author and teacher Richard Heinberg’s “Peak Everything” describes our situation well. “Waking Up to the Century of Decline” he sub-titles this new book. That may sound like bad news, but when persons face changes early enough, they have more opportunities to cope with them and build an even better, more sustainable future.

Heinberg’s approach is calm, low-key, and reasonable. Leaders in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, as well as US Congresspersons, have invited him to talk about these issues since his 2003 book “The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies.”

That which Heinberg and other Peak Oil theorists have been predicting for years is now 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 Japan--we are moving toward a radically worsened economy, which could fall apart.

“Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR Was Better Prepared for Collapse than the US” was published by the authoritative www.energybulletin.net. It was written by a Russian, Dmitry Orlov, who describes himself as an “eye-witness” who now lives in the US.

“The US economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act,” he asserts. Orlov proceeds to systematically document his case by comparing the “two 20th century superpowers.” An extended version of his analysis is scheduled to be published as the book “Reinventing Collapse” in May by New Society Publishers.

Orlov looks at 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.”

Though Orlov looks at 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.

I hate to say “We told you so,” but we did. It is time to listen deeply and prepare for a radically changed US and new world, but not the kind that we have been promised. Our capacities to survive and even thrive a changing economy depend upon what we do now.

Helpful responses include becoming even more local 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.”

Fortunately, we are well-located here in Sonoma County—with its abundant natural resources and helpful communities—to even prosper in the changing world. Some are thinking of leaving, and I did recently move away, only to come back after three years. I lesarned that the problems we face are global and related to other problems, such as using our limited financial and energy resources to fight wars overseas, thus further draining our wealth. One cannot just move away from these matters, which can be another form of denial.

Our county is a paradise and can remain so, even amidst drastic changes, especially if we deepen the hard work now to move from a growing economy to a contracting economy and understand ourselves more as citizens than consumers.

(Shepherd Bliss, [email protected], teaches at Sonoma State University, has run an organic farm for the last 15 years, and has contributed to over 20 books.)