On Jim Bacons post “The Coming Green Boom – and Bubble” EMR noted something like the following (with corrected spelling and clarified intent):
Green Technology and the investment in Green Technology will just be another Bubble and Bust too without:
Fundamental Transformation in human settlement patterns;
Fundamental Transformation in governance structure, and;
Fundamental Transformation in the economic system.
And THAT means there must be a Fundamentally new way to get citizens the information they need to make INTELLIGENT decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth. See THE ESTATES MATRIX
There are a number of good observations following Jim Bacon’s post and they caused EMR to give further thought to the topic:
There MAY be a Green Technology Boom.
There MAY be great future benefits from Green Technology “Breakthroughs” that are not now even imagined.
There is no evidence at this point that there will be any “Breakthroughs” with more substance than cold fusion – or is it fission? Anyway, cold.
What IS known is that whatever form Green Technology takes, is will cost a lot of money, especially in the area of energy generation, transmission and distribution. There is NOTHING as cheap as digging up (and burning up) natural capital – unless nation-states and Regions have to fight wars to get it.
What is also known is that there are already a lot of expensive ways to replace cheap energy and there are millions of things to sell that will consume resources and occupy time – if citizens had time or money.
(For the record: Those things will not solve the Helter Skelter Crisis or the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis and even FREE energy for Large, Private Vehicles will not solve the Mobility and Access Crisis.)
The bottom line is that after 35 years of widening the Wealth Gap and the inevitable Global Financial Meltdown (Bust of the Household, Enterprise and Agency deficit spending bubble) there are not a lot of folks who can afford expensive energy or expensive Green Technology.
That means it will not be attractive to invest in Green Technology because the market will be small.
Those at the top of the Ziggurat – those who could afford expensive Green Technology – have demonstrated over and over that they would rather continue to ride on the Tiger because they make more money faster that way.
Over the past 35 years the US of A could have lead the World in creating a lean, educated, happy human population with an ever smaller ecological footprint and thus a sustainable trajectory for civilization.
The US of A has “prospered” by creating an obese, opinionated, antagonistic, human population with huge Mass OverConsumption driven ecological footprints. The growth in consumption, the growth in population and the growth in the Wealth Gap are not sustainable.
The net result of attempting to “enjoy” consumption based “prosperity” within dysfunctional human settlement patterns:
Over half the population is losing ground – economically and socially.
Most of the rest are Running As Hard As They Can and have no time or energy to understand why most of the benefit of increased productivity of the 95 percent is going to the top 5 percent of the Ziggurat.
The US of A ranks at the top in consumption and in an also ran in education, equity, health and happiness.
The Elephant Clan and the Donkey Clan have broken “politics” and gamed the governance structure so that one or the other – but not someone with new ideas – gets 50.5 percent of the vote.
They have done this by promising that a vote for their “principles” will allow everyone to continue to live a life based on Myth – forever.
Both the Clans try to out promise one another. It is all about short-term benefit / immediate gratification and nothing about cost long-term / cumulative cost or a Balance of rights with responsibilities.
Add to this the facts that:
The NRA (aka, gun lobby) and the individual rights advocates have armed and primed the “Deer Hunting with Jesus” crowd.
The alcohol lobby, the NRA and conflict generating agitators have armed and primed bros in the hood.
Let us not spend time creating another bubble to bust over Green Technology. Green Technology would be nice but what has surfaced so far is Green Greed. Even pure Green Technology is not what is needed.
How about creating a sustainable trajectory which requires:
Fundamental Transformation in human settlement patterns;
Fundamental Transformation in governance structure, and;
Fundamental Transformation in the economic system.
And, of course a Fundamentally new way to get citizens the information they need to make INTELLIGENT decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth.
EMR