[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Why it's best that people lose their jobs ...

Sat Dec 6 19:20:17 MST 2008

... in this unsustainable economy

by Jan Lundberg

Culture Change Letter #214 (November 17 2008)

People need to lose their jobs. It sounds crazy, but what if it's true?

In this time of mounting tensions and rude awakenings, it is fortunate
we can stress compassion and positive ideas. Yet, foremost we must be
warned about our present course as an unsustainable society. Sudden,
disruptive change is generally good to avoid, but sometimes we need to
make an abrupt and wrenching move to save ourselves.

Not being able to eat money is perhaps the best reason to prepare for
the future hardening of economic and ecological reality. Whether we call
our fate petrocollapse or financial collapse, we are about to find out
that a closer relationship to our land and our neighbors is all that
matters. Looking at what a typical job today really does for us or our
community - besides generating cash for others to profit off of - helps
open the mind to an alternative way of living without spinning our wheels.

If we cannot head off the worst of a crisis with intelligent action, at
least we can anticipate changes openly among ourselves. In so doing we
counter the prevailing stupidity which is where the big money is.
Bailing out the automobile industry is the next waste of money on a
colossal scale. Recessions and depressions are just part of the
economy's old-school "business cycle" as well as common sense: what goes
up must come down. It is prudent to say it is better to deal with
reality sooner rather than put it off.

In today's world, what really has to change is our lifestyle. But as
long as people can cling to a paycheck (or stock dividend), change is
retarded and the lethal system of waste and exploitation lumbers on
until it takes us down over the cliff. A slightly milder way of
introducing the need to give up suicide and ecocide is to suggest
exploring, "Why losing your job can be a good thing today". If we
consider essential needs being met, most jobs are seldom directly
applicable anymore to community resiliency. So, whether it is through
employment or unemployment, we need to resurrect techniques of
self-sufficiency.

Here are additional reasons we need to lose jobs that prop up the
climate-changing industrial system (the first three are like saying
"Location, location, location" when one comes up with the three most
important factors for lucrative property values):

* The ecosystem is deteriorating rapidly.

* The environment's going to hell in a hand-basket.

* It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! (from a margarine commercial, 1970s)

* Local economics that liberate people are being instituted and have
great promise.

* Entropy happens. "Everything made gets destroyed" (Bronwyn Lundberg).

* Monotonous work is unhealthy, dispiriting, and such employment is slavery.

* Employment takes time away from important survival tasks such as seed
saving and seed sharing.

* US society and its government have earned disdain by behaving as if
they are fundamentally bad. We have a system of friendly fascism that
white-washes issues of deadly pollution and toxicity. Supporting the
system as a worker paying taxes is one thing, but being unable to bring
about a better world is a killer.

Culture Change has covered these points at length and for years. Here is
all the reason we need for the first three bullet-points:

(Bonn, 17 November 2008) - Two weeks ahead of the UN Climate Change
Conference in Poznan, Poland, the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn
has reported that greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries
continue to rise. [UNFCCC Press Release]

On the same island as the UN headquarters is a player that's like a wolf
in sheep's clothing. We are reminded of corporate news media's real
allegiances when we see an outrageous column in the New York Times on
trying to preserve inappropriate, doomed car manufacturing jobs.
Published Saturday, the column "'Drop Dead' Is Not an Option" tries to
justify corporate socialism by saying auto manufacturer bailouts are
just as right to do as it was to rescue insolvent New York City in 1975.
To make the argument sound progressive and liberal, the "free market"
ideology was attacked by the columnist. I for one was not fooled, and
jumped on it with my letter below:

Dear Editor,

Bob Herbert's column in support of bailing out General Motors shows he
knows nothing about and cares little for ecological health. There are no
jobs on a dead planet. And, any jobs based on unsustainable depletion of
resources are soon going to be lost. Oil has reached its global peak of
extraction.

While the automobile companies are still intact they should be forced to
retool their factories to make bicycles. Losing our car fleet (imports
too) will save 100,000 people a year in this country from crash deaths
and fatal diseases from exhaust fumes. Approximately one million animals
are killed by vehicles daily on US roads. Millions of acres of good
farmland are destroyed by car-oriented urban sprawl. But those facts are
not news or the basis of advertising revenue for corporations. A free
press supports life and justice instead of ecocide, mayhem on the roads
and dead-end jobs.

Jan Lundberg
Oil-industry analyst
founder, Culture Change
www.culturechange.org
Post Office Box 4347, Arcata, California 95518
(215) 243-3144

Only once have I gotten a letter published criticizing car-ad revenue,
and it was last year in the San Francisco Examiner; I was floored. We
shall see if the Times runs this.

In the Wall Street Journal's Environmental Capital blog on November 14,
none other than the status quo itself was handed a kind sacrifice, or a
suggested gesture of same, by peak oilist Robert Hirsch. It is his
report we have quoted so many times about the impossibility of
mitigating peak oil (which I believe is upon us).

TO THE PEAK OIL COMMUNITY:

The world is in the midst of the most severe financial crisis in most of
our lifetimes. The economic damage that has already been wrought is
considerable, and we have yet to see the bottom or the turnaround.
Against this background, I suggest that the peak oil community minimize
its efforts to awaken the world to the near-term dangers of world oil
supply. The motivation is simple: By minimizing our efforts in the near
term, we may not add fuel to the economic fires that are already burning
so fiercely.

Bob Hirsch didn't bother including me on the recipient list; he knows
where I stand. How does he think "the turnaround" can happen when cheap
energy is gone, gone, gone? Remember folks, the cheaply produced
petroleum is all depleted, and any low prices for recent fields' oil are
subsidized prices. Economic growth can no longer be supported. Growth
has stopped so we have lower nominal oil prices (without subsidies
showing). The price of oil collapsed, to a degree, reflecting financial
collapse and job losses. Peak is here, so economic fires have barely begun.

The present economy and its unimaginative defenders are just running on
hope. The addict hoping for a fix around the street-corner is running on
hope. Continuing our overpopulation's burning of fuels and forests while
imagining we are "greening" jobs in a consumer economy is running on
hope. To unplug the global warming machinery is productive hope we can
run with. Just as important is to start planting trees collectively,
billions per day - Albert Bates, author of Post-Petroleum Survival Guide
and Cookbook (2006), calculates that excess atmospheric carbon dioxide
can be removed in under a year. What are we waiting for, a GM paycheck?

Retooling car factories for more than bicycles

A Michigan peak oil meeting was just concluded, where Albert Bates
spoke. He reported the following after he saw my letter to the Times:

Lots of talk at this conference (Heinberg, me, others) about ideas for
retooling GM: streetcars, light rail, wind turbines, HPVs. GM is
crashing the economy of Michigan and the Governor here is pulling stings
with Obama to make sure they can get back on Plan A as soon as possible,
using funny money.

Hard truth: They need to skip the whole GM rebuild scene and let China
and India make cars for the world now. It is a dead industry. Want to
assemble something? Assemble biochar kilns, wave power devices, solar
powered tractors, algae oil presses. Fuck cars. If the USA has made its
last car it is none too soon. We have more than we need. As they die,
let them be recycled into parts and planters.

Tackling anti-environment, liberal Democratic Party doctrine

A new report in wide circulation, "A Pro-Growth, Progressive Economic
Agenda", should sound a warning to truly progressive people. This was my
reaction, sent to the authors and to Truthout.org that circulated the
report:

Growth is the problem. The Center for American Progress and other
Democrats appear to have more reasonable policy ideas than the Bushies,
but ecological reality and peak oil require that we abandon the idea of
economic growth. Understandably, job losses seem like they need to be
remedied by more jobs. But this leads nowhere if the cheap energy that
created those jobs is gone. The Center for American Progress and other
progressives including the Democrats stand for a national and global
economy; that is in opposition to the wonderful alternative known as
local economics which offers true sustainability.

The article said, "the new administration has the opportunity to
implement pro-growth, progressive economic policies to get the economy
back on track". On track means more of the same: more manufacturing,
toxic exposures, greenhouse gas emissions, and buying unneeded stuff.

The notion of green jobs is highly questionable when it hinges on more
consumer spending and creating energy systems for unnecessary,
destructive machines. It's too late to preserve the status quo with a
technofix even if peak oil were ten years into the future, as shown by
the Hirsch Report on peak-oil mitigation submitted to the US Department
of Energy in 2005.

"(G)rowing middle-class incomes" are touted to be the "solution" but are
really nothing more than the same old illusion of the bankrupt American
Dream based on nuclear family over-consumption.

The Center for American Progress decries "ineffective military spending"
but this does not mean they want to slash military spending. (Objecting
to the "conduct of the war" does not get our invading forces out of
other countries that were not going to invade us.)

It's the old order jiving us when the Center for American Progress says
the nation "must focus on policies that both raise the economic tide and
lift all boats - boosting productivity and our gross national product
while fostering the shared prosperity that defines our nation's values".
To justify trickle-down economics with the call for "green-collar jobs"
is green-washing and not true progress. But it sure fits in with the
goal of corporate profits at the expense of people and other species.
For more on the above, see www.culturechange.org

Conclusion

What is it like to walk away from bad employment? Answer: always better
than to wait for the axe to fall and finding oneself unprepared and
lacking useful skills. When is it best to leave a job that only
accommodates our overbuilt society? As soon as you can think of
something more productive to do that you enjoy: now.