by frog
John Key has poured cold water on the APEC meeting’s joint statement, which expressed confidence that “we can overcome this crisis in a period of 18 months.” He was correct to do so, although he probably doesn’t arrive at that conclusion by the same path I do.
The fundamentals of the global economy are not sound. There is simply too much debt leveraged against highly inflated assets and the corrections continue. With 71% of the US economy driven by consumer spending, the current collapse in US consumer spending has yet to bite, as this assessment shows. While I don’t believe that the global economy is quite as dependent on the US economy as it used to be, globalisation means that no country is an island, including our own.
With the bubble well and truly burst, the inflationary pressures we have all felt are relaxing, particularly as essential commodity prices fall. However, despite their fall, many essential commodities are still at historically high prices, which will slow any recovery. Fears for job security mean that many folk are putting their cash against their debt rather than spending. I don’t think that John Key would have any problem with anything that I have said so far, but here is where we diverge.
While Key wants to stimulate us back onto an exponential growth path, pretending to balance environmental concerns with economic concerns, he fails to seee the true relationship between the environment and the economy. You cannot ‘balance’ two things when one is a subset of the other. As Jeanette loves to say, the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environement. What is bad for the parent company is bad for the subsidiary, and vice versa. To pretend to play them one off against the other is a false dichotomy.
The global environment is in freefall. This is mirrored in the global economy. In both instances we are living beyond our means, spending our capital frivilously instead of living on the interest only. Is the estimated rate of species extinctions (3 per hour) mirrored in failed businesses/livelhoods? Probably. Does the estimated rate of language extinctions (3 per month) mirror the loss of diversity in industrial design and architecture? Probably.
Does the annual loss of forest around the globe, estimated at between $2 and $5 trillion, dwarf or at least mirror the losses we have witnessed on Wall Street recently? It certainly does.
John Key can probably feel it in his bones. We are not going to bounce back from this economic turmoil the way we have in the past. This is not to say that we cannot recover and that all is lost. On the contrary. If we simply acknowledge that we are living beyond our means and that the planet and our children are paying the price, we will very quickly make the corrections required to sort this mess out. Unfortunately, where Key wants to lead us is down the same well-worn path that got us into this mess in the first place.
Only a green revolution can turn the fortunes of both the planet and the economy around. We already have all the technology, capital and other resources that we need. All we are lacking is the will and the leadership. I hope we come up with these two ingredients soon.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, November 25th, 2008
Tags: crisis, economy, environment, extinction, forest, john key, wall street
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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>>Only a green revolution can turn the fortunes of both the planet and the economy around.
Only a religious revolution can turn the fortunes of both the planet and the economy around.
>>We already have all the technology, capital and other resources that we need.
Please stop using your personal computer. I’m sure Values said much the same thing in the 80s.
When would you like technology to stop?
>>All we are lacking is the will and the leadership. I hope we come up with these two ingredients soon
Clearly it wasn’t important enough to you, else you would have been talking with National.
How can you lead from opposition?
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PS:
“Only a religious revolution can turn the fortunes of both the planet and the economy around”.
An equally vacuous statement…
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“IceBaby Says:
November 25th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
>>We already have all the technology, capital and other resources that we need.
Please stop using your personal computer. I’m sure Values said much the same thing in the 80s.
When would you like technology to stop? ”
I think you misunderstand Frog here. He/she is saying that we already have the technology that is needed to deal with the problem, we need not wait for it to be developed before we do something. He/she is not saying that the development of technology should stop.
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Indeed Johan. But IceBaby hasn’t learned how to converse yet. Still spouting sarcasm.
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My apologies. I read it wrong.
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Mayhap not a bad thing to have a Merchant Banker running things in these times – give the guy a chance? He got the Electoral Mandate (though I feel it was a Mantle cast down).
“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.” : Abraham Lincoln-
(1809 -1865) 16th US President
Well that’s how it was, in a state of ‘forfeit’ – changes need to be made. Our Public Institutions don’t work as they should – maybe a Vote for ‘Change Please’ was what we just had….
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So does what Abe said apply to just about every politician to ever be booted from office?
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I Knew I Had Read This Somewhere Before! Last time though it read as
“Where THE CHANCELLOR wants to lead us is down the same well-worn path that got us into this mess in the first place. Only a NATIONAL SOCIALISM (NATSI) revolution can turn the fortunes of both the COUNTRY and the WORLD around.”
Adolph Hitler, election speech 1930
Shame on you frog.
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Off topic
Do the Greens really think this guy is deserving of a tax payer handout every week?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4772473a11.html
Second point, Can I expect to see a post from Frog distancing the Greens from the actions of the no doubt unemployed thugs who disrupted the Solid Energy conference?
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He won’t get a handout cos he’ll be in jail, duh
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Do you believe this bit though?
>He (the judge) asked for a report on his suitability for home detention, even though Dey has no home address>
Pardon? What? Eh?
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Stephen
Really? more like home detention and a group conference as per the Greens justice policy.
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Didn’t think the Greens were the issue here
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Strings – wow. Got a link for that? Populist rhetoric springs eternal. No, I don’t feel any shame because I didn’t rip it off and I don’t have any positive sentiments towards Adolf either. It doesn’t make my statement any less true. Until we recognise that the economy is part and parcel of the environment, and adapt our policies accordingly, we are headed for more suffering.
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Sorry Frog – I sometimes use a device called a non-magnetic, power-free, data storage and retreival device (in non-geek speak that’s a book). The source is “Hitler Speeches and Proclamations” by By Max Domarus.
Errata – I typed 1930 above but keyed (in my mind) 1933. Sorry.
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On topic Frog old bean.
The problem with your rhetoric is the word “Only” in the phrase ‘Only a green revolution can turn the fortunes . . . ‘
For instance, from Gaia’s perspective, a cataclysmic event, such as Noah’s flood (caused by global warming?) would do just as well. There are many solutions to any challenge, in this case a ‘green revolution’ is one of them as long as it is a Green revolution, not an extreme left wing social democrat (or right wing national socialist for that matter) green revolution!
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Strings – fair critisicm. The word only does change the tone significantly. I withdraw and apologise. I did put the word green in lower case intentionally, to distinguish it from a Green revolution, in which case my ‘only’ would have been truly disgusting. In my logic I figured that if I capitalised Green, folks like BB would assume I meant the complete overthrow of the world system and the installation of the Green party caucus at the head of some new world disorder. Perish the thought!
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Frog,
Well, I do and if you dont then oviously you let your moralistic bulls*^t cloud your judgement; dont worry though, it is a common ailment in the greens and among the religious.
The deeds commited by hitler were indeed atrocities by our standards (though britian, japan, and the US followed pretty close behind) and gruesome by most but that does not in any way change the fact that he was a brillient orator and very skilled at mass manipulation. And whats more, he was seemingly doing what he thought, though misguided, was in the best interests of his people, something that is the most one can ask from anybody and i might point out is little different than what the greens strive to do.
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I was proud to say I was not a member of any organized political party, I was a Green – to paraphrase Will Rogers.
Abe also liked change. “If this is Tea please bring me some Coffee, but if this is Coffee please bring me some Tea” – is also ascribed to him.
Frog… I don’t agree about the “all the technologies we need” either… even with the limiting statement *to solve this problem.
If we had CATS we’d not be worried near as much about climate change and resource depletion. Not for a couple – ten more centuries at least. Ocean acidification would still be a problem, we could still scru the planet up quite intensely but it is easier to take on such problems if others are controlled.
It is a technology we NEED as a species, but don’t have… and given the hole we’ve dug for ourselves over the past 20 years of useless yammering from the right we aren’t going to get out of this without being hurt. Heckfire… we’d do some better even if doing some of the work with EXPENSIVE access to space.
Sorry to disagree…
respectfully
BJ
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Frog
are you drinking at the Back-Bencher tomorrow night? If so I shall buy you a drink for a well worded retraction!
You will have to identify yourself to everyone in the room in order to find me, but what the heck, it will be worth it!
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bjchip – I have to agree that a tremendous amount of damage has already been done, and what damage is already in the system, hidden in the lag, is probably just as big. I still hold that if we put our collective minds to it, we could arrest the decline with little more than the technology we already possess. Given that this is not likely to happen, I readily concede that CATS is a necessary but as yet unrealised technology.
I do have a stubborn streak of optimism that keeps the truly gloom and doom posts at bay!
And don’t apologise for disagreeing with me. If we didn’t disagree there would be no point in a blog forum, would there?
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Dave S – In your dreams! I know that some of the parliamentary staff are going over, but an appearance from the frog is not in the cards….
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So frog let me get this straight, John Key is the only world leader at apec to realise the gravity of the situation, and yet you are still preaching doom and gloom on his potential leadership through it?
Perhaps if JK is capable of seeing what others obviously haven’t at apec, he is also capable of seeing that the Greens supposed solution would likely collapse the economy before any progress was made!.
I dont think JK is particularly anti environment, he just understands a stable country is the best platform to tackle sustainability from.
Only blind idealism would advocate any other way.
The efforts of NZ with either the world economy or the environment are not going to make a scratch of difference to the global situation. Why should we shoot our selves in the foot for some idealistic crusade?
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Shunda
The economy would, under the current system, collapse if vonMises himself were to come back to supervise the efforts of Hawking and Einstein and Keynes, with the resources of Croesus backing them.
respectfully
BJ
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bjchip, I think you maybe right, I don’t like it but everything within me says the world is or soon will be in serious serious trouble.
We need a leader that can do what they can to navigate through these potentially very difficult times. I personally believe John Key may be our best bet.
With carefull leadership, NZ could come out of these times in a very good position and I don’t think anyone on the left at the moment has that leadership potential.
Whether you like it or not JK is our best bet.
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I agree Shunda JK(John Kirwan) is the best bet for NZ right now.
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I do my little best to stimulate debate about these matters in the wider community by writing regularly to the Dominion Post. However, since I wrote to them earlier this year, about their global warming stance, stating at the end of my letter: “the Dominion Post is certainly predictable, with your selfish and immoral stance on global warming arising from your smug and egotistic parochialism.” they have been noticeably reluctant to publish my letters!
However I continue to write in the vain hope that someone in the editorial office might actually learn something, but so far, it hasn’t happened. This is one of my more recent efforts, following the comment by John Keys that forms the basis of this blog.
Dear Sir / Madam
At last, a degree of realism from John Key today, who doubts the world economic crisis can be solved in eighteen months. But in failing to recognise this economic turmoil’s fundamental cause, his realism is only superficial. Ultimately, this economic crisis is an environmental issue. The clue is the huge increase in industrially vital raw material costs, especially oil, over the last few years, which the recession has partially but only temporarily reversed. It was the pressure of these costs, in a resource depleting world, that caused world finances, grossly inflated by unreasonable faith in growth expectations, to deflate catastrophically when this promised growth faltered. Understanding this, one can see that most solutions proposed to deal with this crisis are self-defeating. In particular, policies to stimulate purchasing and “growth”, including tax cuts, are pointless; if they were to work, which is doubtful, the world will find itself quickly back to where this crisis started.
The world is facing a momentous political, economic and social revolution, due to the fact that perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is impossible. Failure to understand this revolutionary concept dooms our society just as much as Tsarist Russia or Imperial Rome.
Yours faithfully,
The well-known Gareth Morgan, economist and motorbike enthusiast, recently wrote a three-instalment article published in the Dominion Post, about the global financial crisis. He didn’t mention oil even once. As I said in another letter: “Gareth Morgan is definitely an economist when he can write 4000 words about the global economy and not once acknowledge the physical reality that lies behind it”. Even economists and commentators I have some regard for, such as Rod Oram here in NZ, or Paul Krugman in the USA, seem to have failed so far to cotton on to this fact, that this economic crisis is, at its heart, an environmental crisis.
If anyone was listening to Nine-to-Noon this morning there was an interesting interview by Kathryn Ryan with Thomas L Friedman, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner. He too talks about a “Green Revolution”, an energy revolution, dependent on cheap, abundant and clean electrons. You can listen to it by visiting the Radio NZ web site, and clicking on the link “Listen Again” in the top left corner of the web page and following the appropriate links. He says a lot of sense, though when the discussion turns to the West’s relationship with the Moslem world, he rather spoils things by his unapologetic support for the war in Iraq. At any rate, he’s published a book called “Hot, Flat and Crowded” which goes into a lot more detail.
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