Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Energy Leveraging: An Explanation for China’s Success and the World’s Unemployment

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Energy Leveraging: An Explanation for China’s Success and the World’s Unemployment

Click here to access article by Gail Tverberg from her blog Our Finite World.

This dedicated specialist in all things energy provides two very disturbing observations: China's success is to a great extent based on their increased use of coal; and evidence all over the place, in spite of mainstream hoopla about new shale fracking sources, that these increasingly expensive and diminishing fossil fuels will place a huge burden on existing economies.

Unfortunately, she like many others, are unwilling or unable to imagine a different way of organizing our societies other than capitalism. The best she can come up with is questioning the current phase of globalized capitalism otherwise known as neoliberalism:

Does it really make sense to continue on the path to increasing globalization? We will need to quit a some point, either because of a choice to move away from fossil fuels, or because oil supply becomes even more constrained, and the ensuing financial problems cause us to cut back.

Policymakers and economists assume that the only path forward is increased globalization, and have not really examined any other path. In a world with limited resources, the path away from globalization is more sustainable one. The big concern is how much population it can support.