Ready for Rationing? Why We Should Put the Brakes on Consumption if We Want to Survive

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/ready-rationing-why-we-should-put-brakes-consumption-if-we-want-survive-1367679490

Now the green future, if there is one, will parallel the wartime ‘40s in the sense that a large part of the economy will have to be diverted for a period of years, or in this case, decades. We won’t be using resources to pump up the consumer economy, because they will have to be shifted into vast projects needed to build non-fossil, non-nuclear energy sources; convert to a much less energy-dependent infrastructure; build or convert to more compact, low-consumption housing; rework agriculture; and rearrange living and working patterns to reduce the amount of transportation required. The economist Minqui Li has estimated for the United States that building the necessary wind and solar capacity alone would cost $120 trillion.

All of that production will be unavailable to the consumer economy. It may provide stimulus, but with a nationwide policy of leaving resources in the ground, bigger paychecks will serve to drive up the prices of goods that are available. If the past is any guide, the only acceptable solution will be price controls and fair-shares rationing. Indeed, in both the ‘40s and the ‘70s, there was popular demand for formal rationing. Next time around, as you say, we won’t have the consolation that we can look forward to a peacetime or post-energy-crisis cornucopia. For example, alternative energy sources, even at full capacity, will provide far less total energy than do fossil fuels today. However, we may still be able to anticipate better times to come, once the physical conversion of society has achieved its goals.

At that point, not only will most of the economic effort that had gone into the conversion become once again part of the “civilian” economy, but that new economy will be able to satisfy more real needs for each unit of physical consumption. I guess if there is any light at the end of the tunnel, that’s it. If the conversion is successful, there won’t be as much easy

[chervilant]

1. Well, now...

Finally, an economist is talking about the fundamental changes that are inevitable given our exponentially increasing population and scarcity of vital resources!!!

Oopsies! What?!? A plant scientist?!? I'd be soooo laughing over here, if this weren't so grimly ironic.

[Ikonoklast]

4. The population rate of increae is slowing dramatically, worldwide.

If it stays on course, we will see declining populations by mid-century.

[chervilant]

5. So I've heard.

Since our population has been increasing exponentially for several decades, the change in actual numbers of humans walking this planet by mid-century is unlikely to be significant.

[chervilant]

2. This...

We face an irresolvable contradiction: We all know intellectually that no kind of growth can go on to infinity, yet if we exist within a capitalist economy, our lives and livelihoods wholly depend on unceasing expansion of economic activity. A year, even a quarter, of slack or negative growth might reduce national carbon emissions but it also triggers widespread human misery.

This erudite and brave man is likely to become a pariah for writing about this inevitable change in our economic behavior...

[customerserviceguy]

3. Good luck getting that through

It takes a war footing for an economy to divert resources into a nonconsumer output, and when Jimmy Carter tried that with energy nearly forty years ago, he was ridiculed.

Not going to happen, especially with the discovery of expanded oil fields right here in the US. The plummeting price of oil in the early 1980's pretty much buried what little legislation Carter had been able to pass.