The Impossible Task

Pity the poor American Consumer. She has to buy a new car to restore automobile production. She has to buy cheap plastic crap to jump start world trade. She has to buy a new house to revive the housing market. And all this on a shrinking income, and with significantly less credit available.

Any way you look at it, near-term recovery seems improbable. Lurking in the background are any number of serious problems which make any kind of lasting economic growth seem remote: resource constraints; massive financial and contractual liabilities; stocks of capital which are being run-down instead of maintained; government diktat which allocates scarce resources to non-productive use - to name a few.

Against this backdrop, we ask: Is collapse - economic and social - inevitable? Sadly, we have to answer, yes. Inevitable, not because of technical incapacity to adjust to new economic realities, but because of lack of will to do so.

The fact of the matter is that people want things to go 'back to the way they were'. Political leadership reflects this. If people wanted to move on to the future as it needs to be, the leadership would reflect that.

Over 35 years ago a book called Limits to Growth was widely read and discussed. It modelled the overshoot and collapse of Industrial Civilisation which would occur in the 21st Century unless remedial action were taken. The World was warned, but few listened. Instead, population continued to explode; economic growth and expanding materialism were taken for the end-all of human existence.

Now the very crisis that Limits to Growth foretold is upon the world, and yet actions which could be taken even now to ameliorate the effects of the impending decline find voice only on the margins of society. The mass of people and its leaders are, in the words of Mr. James Kunstler, attempting to sustain the unsustainable.

Exactly what is unsustainable? Simply put: A growing population with an economy that requires growing flows of money and physical goods. An affluent, comfortable lifestyle for all is sustainable only when it can be maintained on ever-decreasing flows of resources - i.e., continuously more efficient.

Speaking of new cars, Mr. Obama wants 14 to 15 million new cars sold per year to replace those "old clunkers." Time to go shopping!