Obama's Choices: The Planet’s Demands (2)

(Continued from Part 1)

So what to do?

As war is politics by other means so too is politics economics by other means. And the political problem that CO2 reduction presents is no small matter. Every reputable economic study on the subject of energy and economic growth shows the same thing. I.e. A greater than 1% reduction in energy use is always associated with a slow down or even contraction in economic growth. Russia saw a 5% drop per year in emissions during its economic collapse, not to mention a die-off of 11 million of its inhabitants, and a plunging longevity rate. This is hardly the stuff of winning electoral campaigns.

So yes Mr. Conason's p.o.v. about Obama's picks is legitimate from a limited perspective. A perspective limited by current economic orthodoxies be they progressive towards labour, neoliberal or corporatist, and the priorities that emanate from this orthodoxy. Unfortunately our challenges are not similarly limited. What is fortunate, or at least can be made so, is that the Bush agenda has failed so utterly and so spectacularly on every front. If there was ever a time that demanded great changes in the course of human history this is one. And if the last eight years have done anything positive it has been to increase the appetite for meaningful change. So yes, there will be change. But of what kind?

The problem before us is that economic growth is measured in such a way as to ensure that success on the economic front ensures failure on multiple far more substantive fronts. This problem was inadvertently perhaps best illustrated recently by the American writer Tom Friedman, who has made a bit of a specialty of inadvertent wisdom over the years. Perhaps most famously when he said in his 1999 “Manifesto for a Fast World”, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

More recently he has penned a book detailing the necessity for a green energy revolution and the perils of climate change, "Hot, Flat, and Crowded." In it he states the health of the planet is essential to the health of the economy. A not unreasonable proposition. Despite this in the face of the current global economic slowdown he also felt compelled to pen a more recent piece titled "Go shopping to save the economy" http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_10996371 Such is the schizophrenia of our times.

This praise of shopping, along with the more meaningful economic stimulus measures being enacted around the world, perfectly exemplify the rock and the hard place between which we now are caught. To wit. Any politician in a modern economy who fails to foster significant economic growth, for whatever reason up to and including impossibility, will soon be fed to the media wolves.

This is true notwithstanding the fact that spending our limited financial reserves on "kick-starting" the global consumer economy will ultimately prove a pyrrhic victory. Not to mention a victory as short lived and economically costly as the economic "success" provided by the real estate boom, and the yields generated by the alphabet soup of mortgage securities. Every great crisis generates at least one perfect oxymoron. In this case it’s “securitizing debt”. Some security, some debt. According to Bloomberg news the numbers flying fast and furious out of the U.S. Federal Reserve now add up to over 8 trillion dollars.

The obvious answer to our conundrum is to change the way we measure economic success and to uncouple economic activity from hydrocarbon consumption. The less obvious answer is how to achieve this outcome. As to Obama's team if there is anything that we know for sure it is that Geitner, Volcker and Summers are very unlikely agents of this kind of change. It is doubtful that they can even conceive of such a change much less opt for it.

For such a revolution in basic economic theory things will unfortunately have to get worse before they can get better. This does not mean that a great many essential preparatory steps cannot be taken between then and now. To my mind there could be no better place to start this process than with the dismantling of the permanent wartime economic footing of America. Something we would all do well to remember was enshrined by America's last great charismatic president, JFK. Though to be fair this process was started by Truman, NSC 68, and the cold warriors, and it was LBJ, McNamara, and the escalation of the Vietnam war that sealed the deal with this particular devil.

Because of America's fundamental economic contradictions the demilitarization of its economy is guaranteed to happen sooner or later. Debtor nations cannot maintain military empires. Full stop. History is never repeated but it does contain lessons. It would be much better for us all however if this change was brought about within the next four years. This is unfortunately almost certainly not what is going to happen. Obama’s administration will instead to try and rescue the broken system they are inheriting. Military industrial complex and all. The re-launching of Camelot so to speak. This should come as no surprise. One need only look at the media coverage of the Kucinich and Paul campaigns to understand how the apostasy of demilitarization is still viewed in the U.S.

Which means the final irony and unintended consequence of the Bush Presidency could well be as follows. They will have done more to guarantee the end of the American empire and the military industrial complex than any other administration.

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