Views from the Road

Entry Number One

A few years back, the blogger heard a man who had just bought an 8-mpg Chevy Suburban being interviewed at a New York City auto show. The interviewer asked if the buyer thought that was a bit irresponsible. The man emphatically replied, “No, I’m an American!”

America has 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes 25 percent of its energy and is responsible for 22 percent of global GDP according to Wikipedia’s World Energy Resources and Consumption site. The US Department of Energy says America is the world’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide. The US accounts for 23 percent of energy-related carbon emissions worldwide. The irony is we consume to survive and prosper, but our consumption is killing the planet and, potentially, us.

Besides 307 million Americans being dependent on the US economy, our consumption contributes greatly to many foreign economies. Where would China and Japan be, for example, without Americans buying what they manufacture?

But the US economy is in deep trouble. Unemployment nationally is approaching 10 percent, the budget deficit for 2009 is projected to be $1.75 trillion, and the national debt is $11.6 trillion and growing. That’s a recipe for disaster.

To broadly restore US prosperity, we must create a new, fossil-fuel-free manufacturing economy to replace the one we shipped overseas during the past 20 years or so. An economy the size of America’s cannot maintain or grow based on services, trading paper and illusions. We have to make and sell tangible stuff. And we have to do it in such a way that lets us pay wages Americans have become accustomed to. Otherwise, the middle class will wither, the ranks of the barely-making-it will grow, and the nation will be headed for second-world status. That might benefit WalMart and the “gaming” industry but not much else.

The world as a whole is in grave economic and environmental danger. Some have said both problems are rooted in the same thing—excess. Too much greed, too much gluttony, too much waste, too much living beyond our means. But excess has been our mode since we became humans. The difference now is there are too many of us indulging in excess.

Up to a certain population level, the consequences of excess weren’t so devastating. With world population at 6.8 billion, Earth can no longer survive our excess. While cutting back is good, it’s inadequate because it doesn’t address the root problem. Earth simply can’t have so many people messing it up. And cutting the messing by whatever small percentage won’t do because, as our numbers increase or even stabilize, there will still be too many people messing.

The only way to save the planet from almost certain global catastrophe is to embark on a crash program to radically reduce the population while deeply cutting the pollution we spew. Birth rates must be greatly reduced so the net effect is rapid and huge population decline. And it should be done selectively because, as a woman friend of the blogger says, “The wrong people are reproducing.”

Without very serious reductions in population and pollution, we on Earth are heading for a Mad Max scenario.

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