Journal of the mental environment
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”
The Real Crisis is Ecological
The current financial meltdown is small in comparison to the ongoing ecological disaster.
- Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:42 am — Posted by Abdul
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Photo: Gunter Rambow.
BBC’s environmental correspondent reports:
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
“It’s not only greater but it’s also continuous, it’s been happening every year, year after year,” he told BBC News.
“So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today’s rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year.”
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into the political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their policy choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will lay open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the slide in biodiversity.
“The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to reality,” said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest preservation.
“Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we run by not valuing it adequately.”
A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade, although it is clearly very early days.
Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of the services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that decades of trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic worth of nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.
Whether Mr Sukhdev’s arguments will find political traction in an era of financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection are the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review.
But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.
“Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago, their eyes would glaze over.
“Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so how do you calculate this, how can we monetize it, what can we do about it, why don’t you speak with so and so politician or such and such business.”
The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the date by which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological Diversity to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.
Repower America
Yet another example of corporate America flexing its grip on our airwaves. This spot from the Alliance for Climate Protection was recently rejected by ABC.
- Fri, 10 Oct 2008 9:09 am — Posted by Trevor
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Islamic Finance and the Possibility of Rebirth
We’ve never really grounded our financial culture in solid principles, other than the sole one of making as much money as possible.
- Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:58 am — Posted by Joel Myers
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With the financial markets in the gutter, and the trickle-down effect starting to be seen in many of our daily lives – friends and neighbors losing jobs (I especially see it around here in New York) – now seems like a good time to reflect on our financial culture here in the West.
A lot of us probably hate the idea of finance, think it’s a sleazy profession motivated by greed. But in many ways the developments in finance in Europe over the past five hundred years have been a crucial part of our development, helping to make possible a huge array of innovations, from the first clothing factories in England at the end of the 18th century, to the development of the iPod at the end of the 20th. Despite the gains facilitated by finance, the benefits to society have always been coupled with a wild irregularity, a boom-bust cycle, which Marx described as part of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, contradictions which would eventually lead to its demise. We’ve never really grounded our financial ideas in solid principles, other than the sole one of making as much money as possible.
Perhaps there’s another way. A shining example that has come out in the past fifty years, one that casts serious doubt on the Western no-holds-barred style, is the recent development of the principles of Islamic Finance. Based on Sharia law, which derives its authority from the Holy Qur’an, the principles of Islamic Finance have provided a beacon of clarity and common sense in good investment practices which are desperately needed here in the West.
What is at the core of the philosophy of Islamic Finance is the idea of money a measure of value, and not a real asset in itself. According to the principles of Islamic Finance, profiting from money–including charging interest on loans–is regarded as riba, or non-permissible investing activity under Sharia law. Instead, what Islamic Finance emphasizes is the idea that the investors should share the risks involved in whatever projects they are investing in, and that they should be investing in real things, whether it’s land improvement projects, housing, or helping start up a new business. This represents a glaring difference from daily activities of investment firms in the West, who get huge returns by hacking variations in currency exchange rates, legally manipulating stock prices, and engaging in the kind of risk-spreading and avoiding activities (through an ever-increasing range of derivatives) that have created the huge mess we’re in now.
We have to learn to differentiate between the legitimate function of finance, which is to provide money to start and expand a wide range of projects, and the activities that are really disconcerting: the hacking of the markets, currency trading, calls, puts, the entropic soup of Western instruments many of which do nothing, absolutely nothing to help start projects, nothing to help businesses stay afloat during the hard times and expand during the good, nothing to help people buy their first homes or first cars or, yes, even go to college. These do nothing at all except fatten the pockets of the financiers that carry them out. They’re like skimming off the top of a huge pot of resources made from the commonwealth, from the work of people who make an honest living. And at the end of the day this “skimming” leaves everyone a little bit poorer, with a little bit less left in the pot, and it’s a practice that really ought to provoke outrage.
At a time like this we need to start thinking about how to put real principles into the world of finance, ideals that are at the core of Islamic Finance and at the core of human decency.
In my idle time, I dream of the day when I can walk down Wall Street and see coffee shops, music halls, see kids busking on the street, see the hideous cigar store on Broad Street turned into a hangout space for artists and philosophers where they talk about the latest ideas and ideals while on break from the tedious job of handling finance. I dream of the day when flower vines grow over the grotesque naked buildings of the financial districts here and in London and in Tokyo and in Dubai, for the day when finance is again the pulsing heart of the coming Renaissance. I dream of the day when—as one of my friends put it—a tree grows from the New York Stock Exchange.
Trailer "Slacker Uprising"
As the Presidential Election draws nearer and nearer, we would remind young people to make use of their privilege to vote.
- Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:50 am — Posted by Trevor
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Strike, Collapse, Rethink
A general consumption strike is behind the coming economic collapse. Culturejammers must use this opportunity to usher in a new world.
- Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:37 am — Posted by Micah M. White
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For years, culturejammers have been warning that the logic of capitalism is unsustainable and that sooner or later a system based on limitless, ever expanding consumption will fail. Not content to merely whine, we embarked on social campaigns, such as Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, to demonstrate that a decrease in consumption means an increase in the enjoyment of life. And we witnessed, with growing satisfaction, that each year our movement grew — until even the mass media could no longer ignore our advances.
Taking the lessons of Buy Nothing Day one step further, many culturejammers began advocating a General Consumption Strike as the appropriate tool for reshaping the basis of our economies. Two years ago, Paul Ariès wrote the Manifesto For General Consumption Strike. In his manifesto, Paul called for a collective refusal to be consumers that would contrast the “bulimic economic logic with the goal of living with less goods but with more relationships”. He then went on to say:
We’ll go on strike to get free public transportation, to get free social housing, to get different pricing depending on consumption levels, to give everyone a universal existence income so all can live in dignity, we’ll go on strike to have those who ruin the planet pay more, to have advertisements limited to a few spaces, to redistribute wealth according to a maximum permitted income, etc. Thinking this strike would be a hunger strike is understanding nothing about what is consumption. A consumption strike means refusing to be a consumer, the kind of human being who belongs to the system. The goal is not to threaten our lives, our hyper-consumption society does that very well without us. On the contrary the goal is to learn how to fully exist, to live as a user in control of his use and no longer as a labor and a consumption convict, no longer as a capitalist market slave.
Let’s trust collective intelligence to rediscover long-forgotten use. Let’s think right now of our consumption and try to consume much less adopting a minimalist way of life. However we must watch out for purists who could turn this citizen action into a religious, moralizing, or authoritarian posture. Let’s trust the collective sensitivity to allow this action to grow in size and consistency.
Of course this general strike will require the boycott of some products vital for the hyper-capitalist system (not only economic products but also ideological products like TV news or most newspapers). A consumption strike wouldn’t make much sense if the strikers keep shopping (even for necessities) in those capitalist temples (supermarkets).
The manifesto circulated widely: it was printed in the pages of Adbusters, emailed to friends and discussed in cafes. And now, at the brink of an economic collapse, increasing numbers are joining the Consumption Strike. Already our actions are having profound consequences. The New York Times reports that consumer spending is down sharply, the first quarterly decline in two decades link and that consumer borrowing fell for the first time in a decade. And according to the Wall Street Journal our general decrease in consumption is putting retailers out of business and pushing mall vacancy rates to their highest level in seven years.
The mass media would like to write off the widespread decrease in consumer spending as uncoordinated fear and irrational behavior, but the truth is that there is a growing movement behind this conscious consumption decrease, and we won’t stop saving our money until the whole system is rethought.
Ours is not a purely nihilistic campaign, we do not revel in economic collapse out of spite but instead because we believe that only after an economic decline will it be possible to bring about the necessary changes to capitalism that will assure a sustainable future. We are also taking steps to insure that the money we save by decreasing our consumption goes to organizing mutual aid societies that will provide services to our needy compatriots.
To join the General Consumption Strike is easy: spend less, live more. Consider doing without your high-speed internet, cell phone service, beer or wine, restaurants, gasoline, new clothes, fancy electronics and tourism. Think of the money you will save, the fewer hours you’ll need to work, and the more time you’ll have to live. Tell your friends that you are consciously taking part in the General Consumption Strike and prepare yourself for the moment of truth: when the corporations will fall and the local communities will thrive. But beware, as Paul Ariès warns, “the system will react. It will use blackmail with employment, it will threaten with firing; the shopkeepers will cut prices and manipulate consumers.” Stay strong, this is a once in a hundred year opportunity!
