From our Regenerative Society Wiki, you can learn about thinkers like James Gustav Speth, who calls for a new operating system for American society in his book, America the Possible. Below is the entry from the Wiki, which provides an overview of Speths thesis and teases out the main points. We are looking for more writers and researchers who can review relevant material in fields from economics to urban development and add entries to our Wiki. The goal is to define a strategic and tactical path for a rapid transition to a resilient social system, before ecological collapse becomes inevitable. James Gustave Speth: America the Possible Once dubbed the “ultimate insider” by Time Magazine, Speth was Jimmy Carter’s economic adviser in the late 70s, helped started several major environmental groups in the US, and served as dean of Yale University’s environmental school. In 2011, he was arrested in front of the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, spending two nights in jail. He concludes that “working inside the system is insufficient. We have to step outside America’s broken system of political economy and begin the difficult job of transforming it.” In America the Possible, he argues that reform is not enough. We require a reinvention of our political and economic order - a new operating system for our civilization. He advocates that we build a broad-based movement of progressive citizens, using civil disobedience on a large scale to fight against the ruinous effects of our current system. In the US over the last decades, we have seen a massive transfer of wealth to a small, insulated elite. At the same time, global capitalism ravages the environment, potentially leading to climate catastrophe, in a never-ending search for new markets and further growth. Speth notes that the American system is failing its people. Among First World countries, America has the highest poverty rate, greatest income inequality, lowest social mobility, highest homicide rate, highest prison population (24% of the world’s prisoners are in the US), highest military spending in total and as percentage of GDP with up to a thousand military bases around the globe. The American “political economy - the basic operating system of our society - rewards the pursuit of profit, growth, and power and does little to encourage a concern for people, place and planet.” A system based on economic growth at all cost has become destructive to human society and threatens the natural world with decimation. “Today, the big banks are financing… the destruction of the planet’s climate.” Progressive efforts to enact reforms have failed badly. Reviewing the overwhelming power of the current order, Speth argues we need a “new operating system,” but does not believe this can happen right away. “The new values, priorities, policies, and institutions that would constitute a new political economy are not at hand and won’t be for many years. The truth is we are still mostly in the design stage of a new operating system.” This perspective contrasts with Speth’s accurate analysis of our current ecological plight, particularly the immediate danger of runaway climate change, which underlines the urgent need for rapid change. Without a rapid transition, he argues, our world will soon disintegrate into “climate chaos,” and “the wreckage of a planetary civilization run amok.” It is only a matter of time before a new movement emerges. “The persistence of our many problems will progressively delegitimize the current order,” he writes. People will eventually rise up: “Protests can quickly grow to become a national and global movement for transformation, demanding a better world.” He notes we are already seeing the development of many new and innovative models - “local living economies,” transition towns, social enterprises, and so on - which point in the direction of a new political economy: a new American Dream rooted in sustainability , community, solidarity, and respect for nature. Economic Inequality in the US Poverty is increasing rapidly in America. In 2008, almost one in every seven Americans lives below the poverty line. In 2010, close to one person in six. In 2010 the official poverty line was family income below $2249 for a family of four - but more than 40 percent of poor US families have incomes of less than half the poverty line. From 2000 - 2005, the severely poor grew by 26 percent. The poverty rate among blacks is almost three times that of whites. The reason for the high rates of poverty in the US is because the US does less than other countries to reduce it. According to Jacob Hacker’s The Great Risk Shift (2006), “more and more economic risk has been offloaded by government and corporations onto the increasingly fragile balance sheets of workers and their families.” In 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported that nearly half of Americans are “financially fragile” - unable to come up with $2,000 in thirty days. While a small proportion of the elite has seen a tremendous rise in wealth, average incomes have hardly increased since 1980, from $30,941 to $31,244 in 2008 - a gain of $303 in twenty-eight years. Speth writes, “What America has done in the past few decades, instead of addressing the needs of the desperately poor and its shrinking middle class, is to take the lion’s share of its impressive GDP and productivity gains and engage in a far-reaching project of income redistribution upward, to the rich.” Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans own 80 to 90 percent of all US financial wealth, assets such as stocks, bonds, business equity, commercial real estate, and trusts. CEOs earn more than 500 times the pay of the average worker, up from forty-two times in 1980. The effective federal tax rate for the top four hundred US taxpayers dropped from 42 percent in 1961 to 17 percent in 2007. Over the last decades, Robert Reich notes, the US government deregulated and privatized. “Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees… They busted unions and threatened employees who tried to organize. The biggest companies went global with no more loyalty or connection to the United States than a GPS device. Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses, turning finance - which until recently had been the servant of American industry - into its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking ig an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits.” The result has been grotesque inequality, endemic mistrust, social immiseration, debt, and retreat into denial. Rapid Environmental Decline “Half of the world’s tropical and temperate forests have disappeared, and a high rate of deforestation in the tropic continues. About half the wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predator fish are gone, and 75 to 80 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent are damaged or threatened. Species are disappearing about a thousand times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in 65 million years - not since the dinosaurs disappeared… We have pushed atmospheric carbon dioxide up by more than a third. The earth’s ice fields are melting almost everywhere.” “Emissions of greenhouse gases have already committed the planet to a global average warming of 1.4 degree Celsius over the preindustrial (1880) level. Even if all the emission cuts pledged by governments in Copenhagen in 2009 are met, it is estimated that global average temperatures will rise betwen 2.5 o C and 5 o C over the preindustrial level by 2100.” Other aspects of climate change include: extensive droughts - increasingly severe drought conditions over much of the world by 2030 a projected sea level rise of 2- 3 feet in this century, and possibly up to 5 feet. “Greenland’s ice sheets hold enough water to raise sea levels by seven yards. It is melting and its glaciers are moving much faster than predicted.” Extensive loss of forests - with four degrees temperature rise, “over 80 percent of the Amazon forests could be destroyed by 2100.” Killer heat waves - “long and extreme heat waves could be commonplace in thirty years” Millions of climate refugees - already happening in African region of Sahel, which is becoming uninhabitable More intense hurricanes and floods - “Category 4 and 5 storms which can do the most damage, are projected to double in frequency in the Atlantic in this century.” Decline in agricultural yields even as world population and demand for food grows Potential for abrupt climate change: “The possibility of abrupt climate change is linked to what may be the most problematic possibility of all - “positive” feedback effects wherein the initial warming generates more warming. First, the land’s ability to store carbon could weaken. Soils and forests can dry out or burn, thereby releasing carbon. Less plant growth reduces nature’s ability to remove carbon from the air. Ocean warming could also lead to a reduction of carbon sinks in the oceans. … the potent greenhouse gas methane could be released from peat bogs, wetlands, and thawing permafrost, and even from the methane hydrates in the oceans. Finally, the earth’s albedo, the reflectivity of the earth’s surface, will be compromised… All these effects would tend to make warming self-reinforcing, greatly amplifying the greenhouse effect.” Transition in Energy Paradigm Speth notes, “The scale of the energy transformation needed in the United States and globally is staggering.” He recalls that carbon dioxide pollution and global warming were recognized as problems all the way back in 1981. “The ensuing thirty years of neglect now weigh heavily on us and the world… We have failed so utterly to act at home and to give leadership abroad that the world is firmly on the path to a ruined planet in the lives of our children.” A New Operating System Speth proposes that the most benevolent possible future for America is a movement toward a steady-state and post-growth system based on local economies, which would engender a different way of living that is more satisfying than our current winner-take-all growth-at-all-cost model. Elements of this new paradigm include: Relocalization: “Economic and social life will be rooted in the community and the region. More production will be local and regional, with shorter, less-complex supply chains… Energy production will be distributed and decentralized, and predominantly renewable.” The commons will be extended through “community land trusts” and cooperatives. New business models: “Locally owned businesses, including worker-, customer-, and community-owned firrms, will be prominent.” Plenitude: “Consumerism will be supplanted by the search for abundance in things that truly bring happiness and joy - family, friends, the natural world, meaningful work.” More Equality: “measures will be implemented to insure much greater equality not only of opportunity but also of outcome.” Time regained: shorter working hours, more family and community time. New goods and services: “Products will be more durable, versatile, and easy to repair, with components that can be reused or recycled.” Resonance with nature: “Energy will be used with maximum efficiency. Zero discharge of traditional pollutants… Organic farming will eliminate pesticide and herbicide use.” Degrowth or Post-growth: Children’s education, health, and general happiness will be seen as measures of progress, not the GDP. Glocalism: Local connectivity and global citizenship Speth believes that it is only a matter of time before collective awareness develops and realizes the necessity of moving in this direction. Changes that seem unrealistic today will become practical tomorrow. “It will be clear before long that system change is not starry-eyed but the only way forward.” Systemic change will come when those who realize its necessity create compelling myths and narratives of a better future.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 14:02:10 +0000
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