The Global Economy and Environmental Realities
One day last November after the 2006 midterm elections here in the United States, during lunch at a local restaurant, Jim began talking about his past in the U.S. auto industry. In the later 1950s he had been a plant engineer in Pennsylvania, and then in the 1960s a sales engineer and sales manager with a large automotive parts manufacturer and supplier in Michigan. The big three U.S. automobile companies—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—had been some of his customers.
During lunch Jim started off by telling me about a conversation he’d recently had with someone who was upset about so many products being sold in our country that are made in China. She was wondering why more goods weren’t being produced in the United States. In response he had asked her if she was willing to pay possibly up to three times as much for what she purchased, to which she had replied, “No.” This lunch event took place the day U.S. President George W. Bush was meeting for the first time with executives of the big three automakers to discuss the prevailing global situation, which had also provided some impetus for Jim’s reflections.
He talked about his experiences with workers in a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania in the later 1950s, where as plant engineer he had fairly close relationships with many of them. He said he felt like he had some empathetic understandings of the views of both management and labor, without taking sides.
Next, Jim went on to describe what he saw happening over the years, where unions began to want more and more for their members and corruption within the unions increased. At the same time, management of U.S. companies became lax and somewhat arrogant with their success.
Then, in the 1960s when companies from Asia and elsewhere began to compete with products with lower labor costs and better quality, U.S. industry was in trouble. As he saw it, there was co-creativity in play, between both management and factory workers, oftentimes leading to the situation where if businesses needed and wanted to expand, they went overseas and south to Mexico and other parts of Latin America, where workers were paid less and environmental laws were non-existent or less restrictive.
Jim filled out his picture by talking about how the need to compete in the world had naturally led to pressures by multinational corporations for what is called “free trade.” As he sees it, free trade provides businesses with a framework wherein they can locate their operations such as manufacturing wherever the situations are most advantageous. Then they can ship the resulting goods anywhere in the world under a free trade agreement, without duties or excessive paperwork. It also opens potential new markets for those goods and services. Within the free trade structure China has become a powerhouse.
I added that what all this has resulted in for many U.S. workers who were making a good living wage along with benefits before they lost their jobs, is that they have been unable to maintain their standards of living. Many have had to take lower paying jobs, bringing about an increasing erosion of the middle class here in the United States. As a comparison, some workers in China make less than a dollar an hour.
In summary, Jim concluded that one of the main problems is that the overall designs of competition, lowest price, and ever-increasing productivity do not fit with sustainability and fairness-for-all.
We both agreed that the whole current-day economic system, with an ever-expanding global population and increased production of goods, within an unsustainable environmental context, is chasing the impossible.
As Jim was verbally painting his picture I wished I had a tape recorder going while he was talking, so after returning home that afternoon, on the computer I word-processed what I remembered of our lunch-time conversation, checking with him later for accuracy.
This was an unusual and unexpected emergence in our lives that day. Even though Jim keeps up with ongoing concentric circles of events by reading daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, during the past few years he has turned major portions of his attention to developing computer skills, golf skills, musical skills, and taking still-life digital photographs and digital video movies of the natural world. And he’s not very interested in lengthy conversations that don’t lead to effective actions. He feels much more balanced and fulfilled now with this mix, and I’m delighted with the beautiful music, photographs, and movies he brings into our lives. I also appreciate the conversations we do have about cultural events; I highly value his perspectives.
Jim and I have made the natural world, the home for all Earth species members as we see it, very significant in our lives, our studies, and writings. I would describe our involvement with the Earth’s environment for the past thirty-six years as being passionate participants! We have also spent a lot of time studying and understanding what we think is the underlying design of the Earth and what has happened to it and all of us who live here. It is from this background I am making the forthcoming observations.
Setting the stage. On December 5, 2006, Al Gore was the featured guest on Oprah Winfrey’s weekday television program, where he talked about the global warming crisis that has been and is being driven by a buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels. (Three key greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.) Gore had been vice president during the Bill Clinton Administration from January 1993 when they took office, to January 2001. In 2000, Vice President Gore had lost the presidential election to George W. Bush.
Sometime in 1993 or 1994 I read portions of Al Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, that was published in 1992 when he was a senator. By the time I watched Oprah’s December 5, 2006 program, I had also received the DVD of Gore’s recent documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, that I had ordered from the One Spirit book club. Before watching the DVD, I went to our bookcases in the basement and brought Earth in the Balance back into my life to refresh my memory about what he had said. In it, Gore had laid out ideas for a Global Marshall Plan.
After reviewing Earth in the Balance I realized that it wasn’t until I had explored, in recent years, how various design matrixes were formed within which one then experiences the results, and had delved into the complexities of each person’s shifting psychic structure, was I adequately able to contrast the me of those yesterdays and today. The me of the early and mid 1990s, was still operating to a considerable degree within my own self-created version of the DCBA reality as primarily an experiencer, albeit an expanded one, with some transitional and transformative designs included. That was during the period of time Jim and I had our own business and needed to fit in well-enough with our society to be financially successful, without compromising our central beliefs and integrity.
Back to the present. After seeing Al Gore’s presentation on Oprah and watching the DVD of An Inconvenient Truth, I think his grasp of the dynamics of global warming is, indeed, well researched and clearly presented. Whereas the film was made in 2005, the DVD also includes a global warming update by Gore in 2006 that I highly recommend.
Even though there have been criticisms that the film is extreme and exaggerates the existing reality, from my extensive studies and understandings, I think it paints a composite picture of today’s global warming situation, and what can happen in the future, if we continue to do “business as usual.” One of the film’s themes is “waking up.” Another emphasis is showing how interconnected everything is on planet Earth.
Jim and I both greatly appreciate the part Al Gore and his colleagues are playing in the current-day global drama. And at the same time, we see global warming as just one result of the designs humans have used and are using in relationship with our own species members, other species members, and the Earth system itself.
Additionally, there is overfishing in oceans, the ecological destruction of ocean life overall, the poisoning of fresh waters, diminishing water reserves such as in aquifers due to irrigation practices, the increasing loss of soil fertility, the use of toxic chemicals for multiple purposes that have been intermixing for decades everywhere, the cutting down of forests, an increase in the human population, and other interrelated current-day realities such as more and more people worldwide wanting their share of “the good life.” Then, there are the people around the world who are struggling just to survive amidst wars and other difficult current-day realities. I’ve also been reading that many people here in the U.S. feel torn about what they are doing in their jobs that is contributing to what is happening environmentally.
In summary, I think there are multiple and interrelated dynamics to what’s really happening with the Earth system today. And certainly it will help the existing overall situation to enact conservation measures such as Gore and others are advocating!
One day when Jim and I were discussing the environment and the economy again, he observed, “When you start to add up the numbers you begin to realize that the answers don’t lie within the system in which the numbers lie. You can’t fix the current economic system. You have to replace it. That’s really the answer. For me, adding up the numbers as we tried to do with our manuscript (Something Different) led to the realization at that time, the system can’t be fixed … you have to replace it. That’s still how I see it.”
Jim and I agreed that we both have continued to have a perspective that is similar to one we read Albert Einstein state—something along the lines that current-day problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
In 2003, Lester R. Brown’s book, Plan B, Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble was published. In 2001 he was the founder of Earth Policy Institute. Brown's thesis is that Plan A—business as usual—is no longer a viable option because it is failing environmentally and, as a result, it will eventually fail economically. He thinks the environmental bubble economy created by overdrawing the Earth’s natural assets will burst unless we deflate it. He too talks about another Marshall Plan.
Brown's Plan B challenges us to restructure the global economy, to build an eco-economy. (Italics mine.) He says the key to restructuring the economy is the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth, especially about indirect costs and future deficits. He says we can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth’s people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. He adds that it is entirely doable.
As background: For many years Jim and I carefully followed materials that came forth from the Worldwatch Institute, an organization Brown founded in 1974 and headed for decades. On a yearly basis they published the most accurate environmental information they could of what was taking place around the globe. I have a lot of respect for Brown, for his continuous diligence, and for his grasp of the connections between the various parts of the overall ecological and economic picture. I think his current-day ideas can be used as both food-for-thought and as stepping stones for wise changes in the present and on into the future, to move us beyond our current-day realities. And then as the process evolves and we become more consciously empowered, we can expand our visions.
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