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Four monster waves are about to crash onto the Fed’s beach party and sweep away the unwary revelers.

Hey, is the water in the bay receding? Never mind, free drinks are on the Federal Reserve, so party on, life’s a beach, asset bubbles will never pop, we’re safe. Of course you are. The Fed is all-powerful and would never let a rogue wave turn all its precious phantom wealth into broken detritus.

The water is fast receding and a wave is visible if you care to look, but nobody cares to look. Why bother? The Fed is invincible, that’s all you need to know to mint another fortune.

Just to keep life interesting, let’s look anyway. Gordon Long and I discuss four monster waves that are about to crash onto the Fed’s beach party and sweep away the unwary revelers:

1. Declining liquidity: while everyone is focused on the Fed’s ceaselessly repeated reassurance that the liquidity spigot will never be closed, never ever ever, so party on, asset bubbles will never pop, never ever ever, other central banks have already started reducing global liquidity while domestically, the Treasury General Account (TGA) is soaking up liquidity to fund the federal government’s monumental deficit spending.

2. Declining global growth: long before the pandemic swept ashore in 2020, global growth was faltering: the business cycle had not been abolished, despite Fed assurances that growth and asset bubbles will continue expanding until they reach Alpha Centuri and beyond (Dow one trillion, yowza baby!), growth by any conventional measure (PMI, ISM, industrial production, global trade flows, etc.) had stagnated or rolled over.

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Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living systems

October 7, 2021

Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living systems

Meanwhile, governments everywhere are talking about “supercharging our economy.” —

No 2784 by fw, October 5, 2021—

George Monbiot

“There is a box labelled ‘climate’, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named ‘biodiversity’, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are plenty of other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. But all these boxes contain aspects of one crisis, that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the Thing-in-Itself. They describe perceptual artefacts, rather than the world. Nature recognizes no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others…. What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see a full spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates that only 3% of the Earth’s land surface should now be considered ‘ecologically intact’. …We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we ramp down economic activity. Wealth must be distributed – a constrained world cannot afford the rich – but it must also be reduced. Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion – which should be central to a new, environmental ethics – is secular blasphemy.” —George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books.

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‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe

September 30, 2021

‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe

It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment

‘Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems.’ A dead North Atlantic right whale washed up on a beach in New Brunswick, Canada. Photograph: Nathan Klima/Boston Globe/Getty Images

There is a box labelled “climate”, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named “biodiversity”, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet’s lost property department. But they all contain aspects of one crisis that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the “thing-in-itself”. They describe artefacts of our perceptions rather than the world.

Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.

Take the situation of the North Atlantic right whale, whose population recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now slumping again: fewer than 95 females of breeding age remain. The immediate reasons for this decline are mostly deaths and injuries caused when whales are hit by ships or tangled in fishing gear. But they’ve become more vulnerable to these impacts because they’ve had to shift along the eastern seaboard of North America into busy waters.

Cutting machines developed for deep-sea mining.

Their main prey, a small swimming crustacean called Calanus finmarchicus, is moving north at a rate of 8km a year, because the sea is heating…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The value of a degrowth economy: Our planet would be richer for it

September 27, 2021

The value of a degrowth economy: Our planet would be richer for it

(Cartoon by Mark David | @MDavidCartoons)

Decades of economic expansion have come at the expense of developing nations and a tremendous cost to the planet. Degrowth is a healthier future option, writes Erin Remblance.

THE THOUGHT of a degrowth economy can be scary. We’ve all grown up in a society where growth is good and not growing – recession – is bad.

Recession means unemployment, financial hardship and increasing poverty. Why would anyone choose that? But degrowth doesn’t mean recession. Degrowth is a conscious set of policies designed to optimise human and planetary well-being while minimising inequality, poverty and environmental harm. It is recognition that “more” doesn’t mean better and that, despite decades of economic growth, on average we aren’t happier.

Degrowth acknowledges that economic growth in predominately western nations has come at the expense of developing nations and at a tremendous cost to the planet and its ability to sustain life — and now we are on the brink of an unimaginable catastrophe.

Degrowth economy: The climate solution no one is talking about

The time is upon us to consider economic degrowth and stop exploiting our planet’s finite resources for personal gain.

So, what could a world not obsessed with gross domestic product (GDP) growth look like? In his book, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World, Jason Hickel advocates for many policies, including:

ending planned obsolescence on products such as household appliances, technological devices, furniture, houses, cars, etcetera;
cutting advertising;
shifting from ownership to “usership” — think of all of the “stuff” we own that spends most of the year idle, especially cars;
ending food waste;

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the economy must grow

September 26, 2021

Why the economy must grow

There are three main reasons why our economy grows:

• because it is easier to make money in an economy that is growing
• because we all, individuals, companies and governments, borrow money
• because we pay interest on the money we borrow.

Because it is easier to make money in a growing economy

Many people, particularly business people and people in governments, want the economy to grow continually because it’s easier for people to make money in an economy that is growing in size, because a growing economy means an ever-increasing supply of money and an ever-increasing opportunity to get some of that money and the products and resources that it represents.

Those products and resources may provide mere survival, acceptable comfort and security, or the maximum possible excess of luxury. The individual’s drive towards survival, material gain, comfort and security, or luxury, drives the economic system. Of itself, that drive doesn’t mean that the economy has to grow, or even that it will grow, but it is a strong supporting force for economic growth: it supports a positive attitude towards economic growth and a resistance to anything that limits economic growth.

Because we borrow money

Most people in developed countries borrow money for the things they want to own. This money usually comes to us through our home loans, car loans, credit card loans and other forms of credit.

We are able to borrow that money because of our promise to work in the future and to repay it; we spend it now, promising that we will earn and repay it later. This money is available to us as a result of our assumed and promised economic activity (jobs, or other income) in the future.

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The Tragedy of Growth

September 26, 2021

THE TRAGEDY OF GROWTH

To protect wellbeing and avoid ecological disaster we must abandon GDP growth and transform our economic system

Critiques of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of economic progress are widespread. However ‘beyond GDP’ narratives often seek to complement the dominant indicator with other measures of progress, aiming for ‘inclusive’ or ‘green’ growth, instead of truly moving ‘beyond GDP’.

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Contrary to the mainstream narrative, we show that GDP growth, regardless of the form it appears to take, does not enhance life satisfaction, alleviate poverty, or protect the environment. Calls for better kinds of growth do not fully recognise the failures of economic growth, and therefore provide no viable vision for the future.

However, absence of growth in capitalist economies generates strong tendencies toward unemployment and deepening inequality. These structures – referred to as ‘growth imperatives’ – currently present a barrier to reaching a society that prioritises human well-being and environmental sustainability. Focusing on the monetary and financial system, we show a tension between financialisation and growth in high-income countries that prevents an easy shift to a financially stable non-growing economy. We highlight interest-bearing debt as a growth imperative, and put forward transformative monetary policies as a necessary contributor to escaping the growth paradigm.

A universal basic income issued via central bank digital currency, a direct clearing facility, public banks and modern debt jubilees all feature on this agenda for a post-growth money and finance system.

To protect human wellbeing and avoid environmental disaster, we must escape the growth paradigm once and for all. This requires stopping the publication of GDP figures and focusing instead on dashboards of alternative indicators, such as life expectancy, carbon emissions, and education. To support this reorientation of policy goals, decision-making guidance must be made fit for high uncertainty in a crisis-prone world.

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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXX

September 22, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXX

Today’s post has been prompted by some thoughts regarding the inability of our political systems to respond in a timely manner to our plight of ecological overshoot penned by Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace, and posted by Alice Friedemann of energyskeptic.com.

* * *

I agree with virtually everything Rex argues, especially the role of self-interest by our political class for their apparent rejection of the notion of ecological overshoot and what needs to be done to address the negative impacts this predicament will have on our societies (we can’t avoid these impacts but we might be capable of mitigating their worst outcomes somewhat). My experience with government (I spent many years involved with unions/federations/councils and their political action committees, including chairing some and being directly involved in negotiating contracts, thus having to deal directly with senior administrators and politicians) and readings pertaining to various sociocultural areas (e.g., economics, geopolitics, political systems, pre/history, etc.) have solidified for me the notion that our sociopolitical institutions are for a variety of reasons the last place we should be looking to ‘correct our course’ and attempt to confront the many complex issues of our overshoot and that are beginning to become more obvious. In fact, it is likely (I believe guaranteed) that our ‘ruling class’ will continue to do the exact opposite of what is needed.

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The case for contingency planning

September 21, 2021

The case for contingency planning

LONG-ODDS BET OR A PORTFOLIO OF SCENARIOS?

An intelligent investor – as distinct from a gambler – doesn’t put all his or her money on a single counter. He doesn’t stake everything on a single stock, a single sector, a single asset class, a single country or a single currency. The case for portfolio diversification rests on the existence of a multiplicity of possible outcomes, of plausible scenarios which differ from the investor’s ‘central-case’ assumption.

This isn’t a discussion of market theory, even though that’s a fascinating area, and hasn’t lost its relevance, even at a time when markets have become, to a large extent, adjuncts of monetary policy expectation. The concept of ‘value’ hasn’t been lost, merely temporarily mislaid.

Rather, it’s a reflection on the need to prepare for more than one possible outcome. Sayings to this effect run through history, attaining almost the stature of proverbs. “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst” is one example. Others include “strive for peace, but be prepared for war”, and “provide for a rainy day”. There’s a body of thought which has always favoured supplementing hope with preparation.

Dictionaries might not accept the term “mono-scenarial”, but it describes where we are, working to a single scenario, with scant preparedness for any alternative outcome. The orthodox line is that the economy will carry on growing in perpetuity. Obvious problems, such as the deteriorating economics of fossil fuels and the worsening threat to the environment, will be overcome using renewable energy and the alchemy of “technology”, with “stimulus” deployed to smooth out any economic pains of transition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Leaked report of the IPCC reveals that the growth model of capitalism is unsustainable

August 28, 2021

Leaked report of the IPCC reveals that the growth model of capitalism is unsustainable

The second draft of the IPCC Group III report, focused on mitigation strategies, states that we must move away from the current capitalist model to avoid surpassing planetary boundaries and climate and ecological catastrophe). It also confirms our previous reports, covered by CTXT and The Guardian, that “greenhouse gas emissions must peak in the next four years”. The new leak acknowledges that there is little or no room for further economic growth.

The undersigned scientists and journalists have analyzed a new part of the Sixth Assessment Report, which has been leaked to us by the same sources as last time—Scientist Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion Spain. In this leak the usual more timid positions can be found, but also prominent statements that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

To contextualize, let’s just remember: In 1990, the First IPCC Report stated that, “the observed increase [in temperature] could be largely due to natural variability”, and although subsequent reports put this position to rest, this Sixth Report eliminates any possibility of doubt, and leaves no room for the climate denial arguments which have been historically and amply financed by those who had the most to benefit from maintaining this narrative: the fossil fuel lobbies.

The leaked report mentions that indefinite growth must be renounced. Since radical transition is required, the key question is how can a shift away from models of perpetual growth be understood as a benefit and not merely relinquishment? …

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Grappling with growth

August 18, 2021

Grappling with growth

Synergies and tensions between degrowth and people’s movements

We live in an age of converging crises. Only days ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a damning report on the state of the environmental crisis. At the same time, while a few countries are recuperating from the pandemic, an on-going third wave of Covid wreaks havoc across the Global South. In both crises, the economic imperative overrides other concerns and appears to render necessary changes illusory. Even among staunch proponents of our current economic system, calls for reform grow louder.¹ The health and environmental crises are illustrative of broader tendencies: environmental disasters, rising global inequality, political polarization, a strengthening of right-wing extremism, anti-immigrant policies, and accompanying human misery.

In light of this, movements are mobilizing. Beyond reform, they argue that systemic changes are needed. Their struggles take a holistic view, emphasizing how the individual crises are entangled and driven by underlying structural factors. A question moving increasingly to the center of attention is growth itself as a driver of social inequality and unsustainability. Critics of growth argue that reckoning with environmental devastation and social inequality is directly tied to leaving behind the growth-paradigm. Among the frameworks and movements criticizing growth, degrowth is especially prevalent.

Degrowth argues that environmental sustainability and social justice necessitate transitioning beyond growth-reliance. In order to address social and environmental issues, we have to transition towards societies that are not just smaller in size but also operate according to a different logic – a logic that is not determined by the market sphere.²

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Buying our way out of pandemic malaise is hurting the planet, experts say

August 16, 2021

Buying our way out of pandemic malaise is hurting the planet, experts say

Some say the emphasis should be on well-being rather than economic growth

People line up to shop in Toronto. As COVID-19 cases eased in recent months, provinces have relaxed restrictions and encouraged people to spend again. But the emphasis on economic growth can come at the expense of environmental health. (Sam Nar/CBC)

Back in the spring, Canadian politicians spoke optimistically of a “two-dose summer,” signalling that a robust COVID-19 vaccination rollout would enable people to fully enjoy the warmer weather.

As COVID-19 infection numbers eased in recent months, provinces have relaxed restrictions and encouraged people to spend again.

While this was meant to provide a collective boost in the middle of a stubborn pandemic, this summer has put on another horror show of extreme weather — including a deadly heat dome and rampant wildfires in British Columbia and northwestern Ontario and drought in the Prairies.

Earlier this week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire report that stated unequivocally that climate change was human-made and that some of its catastrophic effects were already on view.

The destruction we’re seeing now is fuelled by decades of environmental harm, but it is also coming at a time when politicians and marketers alike are prompting us to spend — whether it’s at the mall, at the car dealership or on so-called revenge travel.

Mass consumption inevitably adds stress to the natural world, in the form of resource extraction and carbon emissions.

“There is always discussion that we should as consumers spend money to fuel up businesses,” said Bengi Akbulut, assistant professor of geography, planning and environment at Concordia University in Montreal.

“But I think the broader tension [right now] is whether we can grow our way out of the ecological breakdown.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Crisis hiding in plain sight

August 7, 2021

Crisis hiding in plain sight

Putting a positive gloss on the news is especially important as we attempt to recover from a pandemic. And if that positive gloss is green in colour, so much the better. And so yesterday we were treated to the news that:

“More electric vehicles were registered than diesel cars for the second month in a row in July, according to car industry figures. It is the third time battery electric vehicles have overtaken diesel in the past two years.”

That is surely great news. But as is usually the case in matters green, we are starting from a very low position. Much more will have to be done to raise the number of battery-only EVs from the current nine percent of registrations in 2021 to the planned 100 percent by 2035. Moreover, the current nine percent is a share of a dramatically depressed new car market… which is the real headline news in this story.

Nobody is actively covering this up; but they are playing it down. According to the BBC piece which celebrates the rise in EV sales:

“However, new car registrations fell by almost a third…”

Insofar as the wellbeing or otherwise of the car industry has been a measure of the health of the wider economy throughout the oil age, a 29.5 percent collapse in new car sales ought to have been given far more prominence. This is particularly true insofar as this year’s decline comes on the back of the massive lockdown-decline in 2020:

Instead we are treated to several implausible explanations for why this is nothing to worry about. First, we are told, the decline is the result of people no longer wanting to buy diesel cars. Certainly, there has been a collapse in demand for diesels in the wake of the Volkswagen scandal and government increases in tax on diesel vehicles…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Beyond the Growth Imperative

August 6, 2021

For 30 years, environmental economist Tim Jackson has been at the fore of international debates on sustainability. Over a decade since his hugely influential Prosperity Without Growth, the world is both much changed – reeling from a pandemic and with unprecedented prominence for environmental issues – and maddeningly the same, still locked in a growth-driven destructive spiral. What does Jackson’s latest contribution, Post Growth, have to say about the way out of the dilemma?

Tim Jackson’s new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism (Polity Press, 2021), follows his ground-breaking Prosperity without Growth (2009, updated in 2017). Whilst the previous work reflected, partly, the austerity-driven answers to the Great Recession, Post Growth falls into a different world. It is a world where the recognition of climate change as the greatest challenge facing humankind is moving towards consensus. In the United States, even the Republican Party’s younger members are looking for ways out of the corner into which the party has manoeuvred itself. It is also a world where the Covid-19 pandemic has not only taken many lives and destroyed many livelihoods, but – via the need for state intervention – has also dealt a blow to the gung-ho neoliberalism that is one of the main culprits of financial chaos and the looming breakdown of planetary life-support systems.

US President Joe Biden’s rescue plan as well as the EU’s Next Generation pandemic recovery fund are questioning the free-market paradigm that has held sway the since the Reagan-Thatcher area, and that had trickled down into centre-left politics as well. In parallel, from the Paris Agreement to the European Commission’s European Green Deal, environmental concerns that were condescendingly smiled upon until recently have now moved centre stage. The newly discovered role for the state and the emerging environmental consciousness might not be discussed at length in Jackson’s new book, but they are the backdrop against which it is to be read.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About

August 1, 2021

The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About

For all the talk of renewable energy, electric vehicles and plant-based diets, there’s a gaping hole in the way we’re trying to solve accelerating climate change.

We will not stay below 2°C of warming while pursuing economic growth – yet barely anyone talks about it.

Since the end of World War II Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has been the metric of human prosperity in Western nations – the idea being that if the productivity of the economy increases so will the wellbeing of the people within that economy. And for a while that was the case – but since the 1970’s increases in GDP have, on average, failed to translate into increases in wellbeing and happiness.

It is not surprising. Research has shown that once a certain GDP threshold, or level of wellbeing, has been met people gain little from consuming more ‘stuff’ – a necessary requirement for continuous GDP growth.

Robert F Kennedy eloquently summed up the inadequacy of GDP as a metric of wellbeing at a speech he gave in 1968:

[t]he gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

What’s more, GDP has never been, and can’t be, decoupled from material footprint, including energy[i]. This means we cannot roll out renewable energy fast enough to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement – to keep warming below 2°C – if we continue growing our economy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our World Is Dying Because We Don’t Value Un-Making Things

July 25, 2021

Our World Is Dying Because We Don’t Value Un-Making Things

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

I talk a lot about how we’re destroying our environment with a global system where human behavior is driven by the pursuit of profit, how the power structure which dominates that system does so by violence, exploitation, oppression, and the threat of nuclear war, and how we’re all going to die if we don’t change this system.

Whenever I say this I get a bunch of capitalism cultists bleating “You just don’t understand economics bruh,” which is the line they’ve been trained to say to anyone they see criticizing capitalism. It’s silly for a number of reasons, among them the fact that nobody who regurgitates that line understands economics themselves, and the fact that one’s understanding of economics has nothing to do with the death of the ecosystem our species relies on for survival.

The claim that anyone who opposes capitalism “just doesn’t understand economics” is premised on the notion that unfettered capitalism is the best way for a civilization to attain economic growth, which is arguably true; governments like China saw their economies explode when they started implementing elements of capitalism for pragmatic reasons. If you want to create a bunch of stuff and generate a tremendous amount of wealth, a good way to do that is by giving the capitalist class the protection of the state so they can rake in billions of dollars exploiting the global proletariat without being guillotined.

Problem is, that only looks like a valid point if economic growth is the only value by which you judge a system’s success. If you value quality of life, overall happiness, health, average lifespan, education, eliminating poverty, homelessness and hunger, and many other possible metrics, nations like the United States are far from ideal…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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