AmericanConscience

AmericanConscience

A conscience reminds us of difficult truths we might prefer to ignore. This site,
AmericanConscience, is intended to be a principled gadfly on the challenges confronting the
world, to stimulate an American conversation about possibility, and to inspire and incite
citizen participation in a shared dream of a realizable and sustainable future.

An Open Letter to America

Overview

Never before in history has so much been at stake -- and
yet the people so inappropriately still.

America, the richest and most technically advanced
country in the world, is failing to lead (economically,
socially, scientifically, diplomatically, and spiritually) when
she absolutely must find a path for the world through the
perils of our shared global challenges.

Instead of leading, America is squandering her wealth and
her opportunities even as she races aimlessly toward a
dangerous future. She is engaged in an unplanned and immoral war of her own choosing,
recklessly endangering her economy (and the interdependent world economies), dismantling
her productive capacity, paving over her farmland, reversing decades of effort to prudently
steward her endangered natural inheritance, inhibiting the growth of her intellectual capital,
shrinking her middle class, tinkering with already fragile instruments of governance, toying with
the benighted forces of a theological counter-reformation, nurturing a dangerous rise of
immoderate (and potentially fascist) inclinations, debasing her eth ics, and saturating her
senses with marketing turned to propaganda.

Numbed by obsessions of her own manufacture, America is immorally indifferent to the
heavy suffering of the world (including occurrences of genocide, see Rwanda here, and
Darfur here), and purposely indifferent to her place of responsibility. She even ignores the
light burdens she has accepted formally and voluntarily, such as her promised support of the
U.N. Millennium Development Goals (read sadly here).

We benefit more than any people from our vaunted place as world citizens -- and we consume,
the rich bounty of every nation far more rapaciously than any other people in history. To take
the gift is to accept the responsibility. We are world citizens and we are accountable for every
man as our brother -- and we are culpable when we make war; read here).

The relevant spiritual truth is easily expressed -- the more you have and the more you know,
the more is asked of you. And conscious life requires more from us than gentle musings from
the sidelines on being peaceful. Just as one cannot exercise without breaking a sweat, one
cannot do serious inner work without bravely facing painful realities. Carl Jung expressed this
brilliantly:

"Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light,

but making the

darkness conscious."

The challenges enumerated here may seem daunting, but only because we do not confront
them with our full powers. There are billions of us and we make One complete voice. We
cover the world. Angels walk among us. The very stars fight on our side.

We are stewards and cocreators of a poignantly beautiful world and this is our time. We all
hear the longing of the music within us, aching that we awaken from insouciant dreams, that we
step onto a higher path, that we take up our holy tools and accept our place of sacred
responsibility.

We are older than we can imagine. We were present during a movement of music over the
waters of the universe long ago. All that is asked of us now is but a small recapitulation of that
glorious shared experience. We are not tasked to create a universe, but one pearl in a
cosmos, only one small glistening blue world.

The 400,000 Foot View

Sir Fred Hoyle in 1964 put the issue before us bluntly.

It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it

here

on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the

sense of

developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon

will have,

exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this

planet is

concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores

gone, no

species however competent can make the long climb from

primitive conditions

to high-level technology.

This is a one-shot affair.

The 200,000 Foot View

[A] America is adrift on the wrong path.

Half of the wealth of the richest country in current history belongs to fewer than 2% of her
citizens, and each year that 2% amasses even more. Today, the wealthiest 1% of American
households earn 20% of all income, hold 33.4% of all wealth, and own 44.9% of all stocks by
value (see Economic Policy Institute, report on wealth, here).

If we divide America's 300 million people into five equal portions of 60 million each and order
their membership by wealth, the middle portion (where the middle class should be) holds only
3.9% of the nation's wealth. Incredibly, the bottom 90% of Americans own barely more than a
quarter (28.5%) of America. (Again, Economic Policy Institute, report on wealth, here).

If two people owned half of a mall, we might expect that they would be paying for about one-
half of the mall's security and infrastructure support costs. But in our system of taxation, the
2% that owns half of the country have persuaded us that they should owe almost nothing on
accumulated wealth, irrespective of the looming needs of the nation and the hunger of the
world for American example and leadership. Moreover, they are adamant they should pay the
same flat tax on income as even the poorest among us. Such is the burden of America the
wealthy are willing to share.

Can anyone believe God endorses such greed? A nation this unfair in its governance, and
this immoral in the disbursement of its gifts and opportunities, may expect little support from
above.

Sadly, we have embraced a corporatist philosophy that has reshaped our language, distorted
our most basic notions of equity and equality, and made us partner in our own
disenfranchisement. For the past several decades America has been blessed every year with
increase, yet more and more we concentrate her treasure in the hands of the few. Even as
our economic policies encourage the flight of our jobs and cause the dissolution of our middle
class, our corporatist philosophy makes us feel personally responsible for failing in a rigged
game to share in the wealth our labor has created.

By way of example, corporate profits grew 40 percent in real terms between the first quarter of
2001 and the second quarter of 2004. Yet, in the same time frame, the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities reports, wages and salaries grew by only about 0.3 percent in real terms (see
report here). (Archive of economic resources here, economists online here.)

After four years of serial tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, this year's income tax cuts
alone will amount to an unfunded $47 billion gift to the richest 1% of earners, people whose
incomes average about $1 million a year (read here). For a few months the nation found itself
arguing about how "stingy" it might appear to be in response to a disastrous tsunami -- and
thus made a disreputable international display of increasing its giving to an amount that might
eventually total $1 billion.

What is horribly awry in this scenario is that America doesn't have $1 billion for the
tsunami victims, or even the $47 billion that it is giving to its own wealthy. It must
borrow both sums from Japan and China and apply those debts to its current
national deficit (charted here). The interest on the debt for these two "gifts" will be
paid by the next generation of Americans, and the base debt will remain until the
nation has the intellectual honesty to overturn this generational theft.

Are America's corporatists a bunch of self-indulgent, hypocritical thieves? Because they
borrow from the nation's children to give themselves an additional $47 billion a year and make
a "Christian" display about a one-time gift of another $1 billion they won't even be paying for?

The question answers itself.

Corporatists increasingly own and control a consolidated media (see here). They have won
control of the presidency, the Senate, the House, and the lobbying engines of "K" street. Their
philosophy of private ownership extends to schools and education, and their successes at
deregulating competition have resulted in "income inequality ... at levels not seen since the
Gilded Age, around the 1880s." (As the Economist reported here in December 2004.)

When corporatists own government (which is what privatizing government entails),
will any other political party be possible? Consider the magnitude of corporate
gratitude and campaign funding that would result from privatizing social security, a
program that manages billions of dollars every year. Whatever else might happen,
we can be certain that privatizing Social Security will transfer significant wealth from
retirees to Wall Street brokers and Republican coffers.

When corporatists own the schools (which is what privatizing education entails), will
any philosophy but corporatism be taught?

The dissembling language and false values of the money changers have blinded us,
bewildered us, turned us against one another in misdirected political rhetoric, and distorted our
most cherished values of freedom, self-reliance, and spiritual responsibility to each other.
Corporatist-driven national policy, the flagrant commercial greed of a few, and the stifling of
other peoples' national dreams and aspirations -- not democracy or freedom or Christianity --
have made our country and policies the target of foreign powers (see Defense Science Board
study, here) and earned us the disdain of foreign opinion (international BBC/PIPA poll here).
Our national narrative of equality, freedom, and liberty is not supported by our actions at home
(where we are stifling freedom) or abroad (see here). It does not help our case that we spend
$500 billion on our military (see here) -- an annual investment larger than the entire economy
of Russia -- and only $5 billion on the Department of State in support of diplomacy (see here),
a ratio of 100 to 1. We spend more from the International Affairs budget on Foreign Military
Financing than we invest in diplomacy. Our real priorities are very clear.

Now we have turned America into an endless race in which most struggle just to survive,
because almost everything belongs to the few, and the rules support the already wealthy.

In defense of freedom we have turned our military into torturers and rewritten its
mandate to create an armed CIA with diminished Congressional oversight. We ignore
professional reporting of Iraqi casualties while making our own casualties invisible. In
defense of civil liberties we have embraced the Patriot Act and empowered a
secretive imperial executive to trammel individual rights. We have a plan for social
security that would turn America into an investment club. Our notion of an ownership
society is a sham that would reduce our claims in America to pieces of paper, mere
stocks managed by professional gamblers.

The consequence of an ownership society is clear because the concept of risk management
within the discipline of capitalist competition is clear. Those who own more have a greater
stake in any outcome affecting their stake because they have more at risk. Consequently,
they reason, their say should be commensurate with their ownership. Since the richest 2%
own more than the bottom 97% of the country, in an ownership society the interests of the
wealthy rule. Our current path leads from elitist meritocracy (where talent and labor are
rewarded) to corporatist plutocracy (where only money matters).

One's class position really matters: it greatly determines your health, how

long

you live, where you live, your exposure to crime, your success in school,

and

the likely success of your children. The extent of inequality also has

tremendous

ramifications for the type of society we share. A task force of

the

American

Political Science Association

has concluded recently that

inequality in income

and resources translates into inequalities in participation

and effectiveness in

our democracy. As we shape the economy and the

resultant income

distribution we are also shaping the very nature of our

democracy.

ViewPoint May 19, 2004

Unfettered markets, income inequality, and religious values

Lawrence Mishel / President

Economic Policy Institut

Misled by corporatist values (in which only the wealthy benefit briefly from a laissez faire
ownership society), we continue to dismantle our government, disarm our lawyers (see tort
reform), allow the plunder of our heritage to enrich the few (see onslaught), and slowly banish
the institutions (Unions) and weaken the agencies (CIA, HUD, Interior, EPA, etc.) that reflect
our collective voice and protect us from the tyranny of the powerful.

God makes no mistakes. Because we have been indifferent and blind to the suffering of the
world, we are now oblivious to our own peril. We are held transfixed by an immutable
psychological law -- God cannot help us until we help others.

Freedom was not intended for the service of self, and the music of democracy cannot be
imposed on a whim. Wealth does not serve the wealthy but only the poor, and where wealth
fails in its obligation it will be swept away. Food feeds the hungry, not the full. America's
freedom is intended for the service and freedom of the world, or like talents that have been
buried unused, it too will be taken and given to others.

[B] America is asleep on the run.

We have built a frenzied culture that demands so much time to sustain, we now have no time to
reflect on our lives, nor hear the silent cacophony of suffering all around us.

Half of the world's population lives on the equivalent of $2 a day, a child dies of
malaria every 30 seconds, a billion want for clean water, Darfur still slides into
oblivion, and the dragon's teeth of war are sowed around the world in our name.
Here at home, 25% of our workers make less than $8.70 an hour, 22% of our children
grow up in poverty, 24.7% of our elderly live in poverty, household debt exceeds 85%
of the size of our $11 trillion economy, 45 million are without health insurance, and
(with a $420b national deficit and a $650b trade deficit) we must borrow $2.9 billion
every day (or $2 million every minute) to continue running our country.

We are borrowing $10/day for each American (five times the $2/day that three billion people
actually live on), not because America is poor, but because all the wealth is tied up in the
hands of a few. The problem is not government spending (as asserted by corporatists), but
national policies that enbrace plutocracy (for the benefit of corporatists) and lead us to believe
in national scarcity.

As long as we worship the cruel god of unbridled capitalism and honor free markets and
machine efficiency as secular religious values, we can never have a sustainable human
society. The American "freedom" of unregulated competition ensures continuous destruction
for the profit of a few, and it can never substitute for a mythos with human values in it.
Machines were made for man, but we are so unconscious we have given corporations
human rights in law, and now serve them on behalf of corporatist masters who have become
the unchallenged priests of our time.

A theme that will be developed here is that our nation is simply a projection of our national
heart. America reflects -- with perfect fidelity -- our philosophical obsessions, our substantive
impatience, our callous vigor, our brutish capitalist opportunism, our strange insecurity, our
embarrassed selfishness, and our increasingly mean-spirited winner-take-all cultural ethics.
Our governance mirrors -- as it should in a democratic republic -- the American soul.

Both our soul and our governance are darker than we want to know, so we deliberately look
away. We have not yet embraced Jung's great truth, "The brighter the light, the darker
the shadow." America has a huge beautiful light, but a light carries more responsibility than
entitlement. And un-confronted, an equally dark shadow now overcomes us from behind.

American leaders have a circular and deliberate relationship to public

opinion.

It is circular because public opinion is rarely if ever aroused

by foreign crises, e

ven genocidal ones, in the absence of political

leadership, and yet at the same,

American leaders continually cite the

absence of public support as grounds for

inaction. The relationship is

deliberate because American leadership is not

absent in such

circumstances: it was present regarding Rwanda, but devoted

mainly to

suppressing public outrage and thwarting UN initiatives so as to avoid

acting.

Samantha Power

(writing

here

)

[C] America's National Myth (and dominant art) has a motif of Catastrophe

When we meditate or pause for even a moment we can feel a deep unease. We vaguely
realize that everything around us is unsustainable. We know we're using up the world because
we can hear it groaning from our touch. We can feel a clock is ticking somewhere and that a
disaster is approaching.

The particulars remain unconscious. But the narrative is numinous for us and we're drawn to
art that hints at a life-or-death struggle in which time is running out and only a handful of
competent detectives or reluctant warriors understand how to save everything.

What we are drawn to in artistic expressions of catastrophe (and follow in our media) is our
own epic story struggling to become conscious. The wise detective is the small part within us
that knows we are the hostages at risk of losing our very lives.   And this part of us is thwarted
by the other energies within us that distract and cripple our powers. The art to which we are
drawn reinforces our own efforts to become conscious. The mythical efforts that resolve the
story's conflicts are always related to the real efforts required in conscious and worldly life.

The story says a heroic effort is required and that most people will remain unconscious of the
challenges and even hinder the hero's efforts. The story is right.

Civilization really is in a life-or-death struggle and demands focused and sustained
investments in the competencies and capacities that will be required to harvest energy and
steward sustainable agriculture in the future. And time really is running out.

Few people believe our political mistakes don't matter, that we can overcome lost time, that
when America finally changes its mind about this path we will suddenly awaken and do all the
right things and prevail. The reason for this is that we have two huge challenges and both are
resistant to emendation.

Firstly, the world is running out of cheap energy in any form and there is no known
replacement. This is the clock that's ticking. We live in a culture of thoughtless consumption
that will end like Cinderella's enchanted visit to a beautiful castle and ball. Midnight is coming
soon, and just as depicted in the fairy tale, everything around us based on the magic of cheap
oil will vanish. Our engineering challenges are staggering, but we aren't even aware of them.

Secondly, we live in a rapid-paced self-satisfied dream. We will be unable to confront
our engineering challenges until we wake up from the enchantment that holds us like an
addiction. And because our governance reflects our own laziness, greediness, and
indifference to the world -- in short, our own willingness to ignore until tomorrow what we don't
feel like confronting today -- it cannot change until we do.

In the stories we watch of the brilliant detective thwarted by the masses and cultural rigidities,
we are also the masses. What thwarts us is us. That's why these stories are recurring
nightmares that draw us to them again and again.

In more complete terms, our lives are both personal and embedded in the collective. We
belong both to ourselves, and to our time. We must render unto each appropriately. The art
that draws us hints at elements in both our personal story and our collective epic.   If we do not
achieve consciousness during our own brief interlude on earth, we have wasted our life. The
clock is ticking and the detective works without our assistance. At stake is what the story says
is at stake -- our own enlightenment -- our own death. And if we do not solve the threats to the
collective civilization, we will lose civilization. The lights will slowly go out all over the world.

100,000 Foot View

[1] Finding and developing energy to power the world in the future dwarfs every
other physical challenge of this generation.

The world currently consumes a billion barrels of oil every twelve days. Its appetite
for oil increases by 2% every year. Unfortunately, oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s and oil
reserves have been diminishing at an increasing pace ever since. The current estimate of the
year in which oil and gas liquids production throughout the world will peak (and then begin to
fall) is 2008 (see here).

With the emergence of China, Asia, and India as high-growth economies (see IMF figures
here), worldwide demand for oil has recently surged and equilibrated with available supply.
After 2008, the worldwide availability of oil and gas will begin to fall and the world will have to
live on less -- no matter how much it is willing to pay. [For detailed analysis read he re. Main
oil page here. Archive of USG energy-related resources here, non-USG resources here.]

Note that we have only 20 to 30 years to finish building the infrastructure requisite to supplant
oil in all its manifold uses. And understand that today there isn't even a recognized solution on
our technological horizon to resolve simply the energy component of this challenge. As K.
Aleklett and C.J.Campbell warn (here), "With oil providing 40% of traded energy and 90% of
transport fuel, peak is set to represent an historic discontinuity, affecting virtually all aspects of
life on Earth including agriculture." A substantial perturbation in our way of life is imminent.

In brief, what matters toward the end of the oil extraction life cycle (of a well or oil field) is not
the dollar cost of retrieving the next barrel, but the energy cost. When it costs a barrel of oil to
harvest a barrel of oil, no more will be pumped. People led by uninformed notions of
economics believe that when oil costs $500 a barrel, this will result in more aggressive and
technologically complex methods of "ever more efficient" extraction from "ever less productive"
sources. Unfortunately, no. No one is going to spend $500 on the mechanical work (fed by
some form of energy, perhaps gas or coal or solar) to lift $500 worth of oil energy. When the
energy costs of extraction and production equilibrate (not the economic costs, which
inefficiently lag true energy costs), extraction will stop.

Richard Manning writes (here): "In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for
every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process
returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers
and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq."

What matters economically (controlling the volatility of price) is who owns the remaining
reserves (see OPEC here), and if those reserves are reported accurately (see here).

[2] The alternatives to oil and gas look bleak.

America uses 20 million barrels of oil every day (DoE Country Analysis Brief) for which she
must find a practicable, scalable, clean, and renewable alternative.

gas resources will be exhausted at the same time oil runs out; counter-intuitively we
are still investing heavily in gas-fired power plants (which produced 9% of America's
electricity in 1988 and 16% in 2003); we should be reducing our reliance on gas for the
nation's critical electrical infrastructure, not increasing it (which is DoE's current plan,
here).

coal is relatively abundant but it is also getting more difficult and more expensive to
mine (we currently mine a billion tons a year, see here, enough to change our
landscape and remove whole mountaintops, see here); it is "dirty" (containing significant
amounts of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury, particulates, and other noxious
pollutants) and expensive in terms of energy to clean; coal harvesting generates millions
of tons of waste and toxic debris that must be managed; and at best coal is no more
than a stopgap, as known reserves will only add a few decades to the running
of world civilization (analysis here).

nuclear energy is also in short supply, not only because we have far too few power
plants to cover our energy needs (currently 104 reactors for 21% of our electricity, or
8% of our total energy basket, see here), but because we are running out of uranium
ore from which we extract fissionable fuel; we've already mined three-fifths of our proven
uranium ore reserves and estimate these reserves will last 50 years at current
consumption rates (see here); and nuclear power is extremely dangerous and
comes with management burdens that include 2,000 metric tons of radioactive
heavy-metal spent fuel waste every year (see DoE/EIA data here).

solar panels, over the course of their useful lives, do not even replace the energy it
costs to make them (see here).

hydroelectric and wind power generators will be important contributors in a diverse
national energy portfolio, and they will help remedy some distribution problems, but they
will remain marginal players in the delivery of substantial electrical power the way we are
accustomed to using it.

no solution is so simple, cheap, clean, and scalable that it makes sense to think about
making fuel to waste in millions of individual cars (such as hydrogen for fuel cells, see
here), so a huge replacement infrastructure for mass transportation will be required at
the same time we retool our infrastructure for power generation.

Civilization as we know it is going to change drastically in a few decades, yet much of our
current national agenda seems designed to aggravate rather than acknowledge and
courageously confront our challenges. Oil and gas comprise 63% of America's total
energy basket. To replace the energy contribution of oil and gas at today's level of energy
demand will require America to triple the amount of coal she mines (from 1 to 3 billion tons per
year), triple the number of coal power plants in operation, and triple the number of nuclear
power plants she has (from 104 to 312). And triple the current contribution from all other
sources.

Without oil and gas we don't have cheap energy. In addition, we don't have rubber, plastics,
complex polymers, pesticides, a host of important industrial products, or lubricants. Without
alternatives to these things (and energy and transportation infrastructures based on these
alternatives), we are on our way back to a civilization based on wood, stone, and grass twine.

Illadvisedly our leaders (dominated by short-sighted corporate interests) continue to
discourage conservation (while giving lip service to it), ignore the dominant scientific view
regarding man's dangerous interference with the planet and atmosphere (see here), promote
wasteful growth (i.e., subsidies and policy incentives for large car purchases in lieu of
substantive support for electric rail), and encourage frivolous consumption (as if we couldn't
make useful things and still have growth). At the same time, our leaders resist open
governance, prudent economic policies, necessary education and energy initiatives, detailed
national planning, honest collaboration with the international community on shared challenges,
and the substantial national investments necessary to prepare for a future without oil.

[3] National Energy Planning

A recent Republican notion of prudent national energy planning was to place the Department
of Energy in the charge of Spencer Abraham, who as Senator was noted for proposing a bill to
abolish it (leaving national energy planning to industry and market forces).

The notion that America can safely rely on secret discussions held by corporate interests to
define and steward the nation's energy future (via Mr. Cheney's National Energy Policy
Development Group) is dangerous, and frankly, secret governance is un-American. Industry
(which benefits economically from scarcity because scarcity pushes up prices and profits) is
not noted for either its long-range planning or its largess.

The self-serving interests of industry (and the Administration's blatant corporatism) are
exemplified by the Republican plan to open up the last 5% of Alaska to oil drilling in order to
harvest a USGS estimated 7 .7 billion barrels (even though 2/3rds of Americans oppose selling
off this national treasure). This quantity of oil (spread out in ten small finds over the pristine
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) is barely enough to power America for one year -- if the oil
were to actually stay in America -- but the plan is to sell the oil under contracts to Japan,
China, and Korea (see here). This appears to be a short-sighted money plan, not an energy
plan, that reflects both ignorance of America's national challenges and disregard for America's
strategic energy interests.

[4] Fundamentalist and intolerant counter-reformative fantasies are fighting
science, engineering, and reality-based governance.

Now, when the very survival of civilization depends upon critical thinking, scientific rigor,
engineering creativity, and coordinated national investments of truly staggering magnitude, we
are fighting with religious intolerance for the governance of our country. Worse, academia and
educated "elitists" are actually losing this battle; irrational faith-based hopes influence the
national agenda and pose a worldwide threat to modernity (see here). David Baltimore (the
President of CalTech) writes sagely, "[In America] we have more people who believe in the
devil than in evolution" (reference here). We rank 14th out of 15 industrialized countries in per
capita education spending (see here), we are cutting investments in basic research and
engineering (see NSF funding here), we are discouraging foreign engineering students (see
here), and we are architecting a reverse brain which will leave America incompetent to address
her daunting engineering challenges (see here). On March 3, 2004, Senator Max Baucus (D-
Mont.) addressed a Forum on Offshoring at the Brookings Institution and commented, "We
train only half as many engineers as does Japan or Europe. We train less than a third as
many as China." (See here.)

[5] Addressing the imbalances in our national economy is critical to making the
investments necessary in alternative energy.

The United States' current account deficit, which encompasses annual

trade

as well as the balance of financial flows, has gone from zero in

1990 to nearly

$600 billion this year. The United States' accumulated

debt to foreign

investors is $2.6 trillion, or 23 percent of the annual

output of the economy.

Kenneth S. Rogoff

Professor of Economics at Harvard University

Former Chief Economist at the IMF

New York Times / 2004.11.16

Economic Analysis / Edmund L. Andres

In the dance of global macroeconomics, the U.S. in not leader, but led. Let us

be blunt about it. The U.S. is now on the comfortable path to ruin. Politicians

wait until crises hit. Statesmen foresee and then act to

prevent them.

Martin Wolf

Financial Times / August 18, 2004

The American dollar is in slow free fall on the world currency markets and has (as of January
20, 2004) lost about 50% of its value against the euro since June of 2002 (from $.88 for a euro
to $1.30, see historical Federal Reserve data here; current analysis here). We're becoming
poorer -- without doing anything -- and we seem oblivious to the impact a devalued currency
should have on the ancillary fundamentals of our economy.

With America's goods effectively half-priced for foreign buyers, we should be concerned by the
fact that we set a record trade deficit of $60.3 billion in November 2004 (an astonishing $20.3
billion increase over November 2003; details here). If we can't sell now -- at half price -- at
what point will we be able to sell? Do we know?

We seem bereft of leadership, unnecessarily arrogant, and surprisingly incompetent. We can't
plan a 6-month war, a 10-year economic strategy, a 40-year energy position, or even think in
terms of an integrated national human resource capital plan. The philosophy that we should
shrink government even further -- presumably to ensure the disutility of even less national
planning -- is indefensible and culpably negligent.

Complete absorption in the present is both a cause and a consequence of

living a precarious and disorganized life.

George Will (

here

)

To render strategic planning at the national level almost impossible, we're using macro-
economic progress indicators (such as the GDP instead of GPI; read about here), which mask
self-destructive investments and ignore real wealth building. Our economy measures and is
designed to reward "consume, dispose, and replace" behavior. The destruction of the Twin
Towers at the World Trade Center is tabulated as a larger contribution to America's
economy than the productivity of almost any corporation.

Failure to plan and to measure progress toward execution of that plan is equivalent to planning
to fail. Every moment and every dollar not invested in durable elements of this nation's future
needs (which include energy, infrastructure, a sound economy, an educated population,
healthy diplomacy, expanding civil rights, religious diversity, and the promotion of global
spiritual values) are treasures lost.

If we believe that our economy will suffer from doing the right things the right way,
then we are measuring the performance of our economy the wrong way.

Available data aren't exact, but a quarter century ago the federal

government's

expenditures on schools and job training equaled about

1 percent of domestic

product; now, they're under half of a percent.

Spending on roads, highways,

bridges, airports, and water purification

systems was .8 percent of domestic

product then; today, it's under .3

percent. And investment in basic research

went from over .5 percent

of GDP to about .2 percent today.

Robert Reich

We Need a Debate on Deficits, Not Party Dogma

Financial Times

September 21, 2004

[6] America "lives" like an island

Under the banner of free trade, America has spent the last three decades dismantling and
offshoring basic but strategic manufacturing infrastructure to take advantage of low labor costs
(abroad) via artificially depressed energy resource costs (worldwide). We are finally beginning
to realize that something was wrong with free market pricing that made it appear cheaper to
ship tons of steal and rubber and glass from America to Japan in return for cars, rather than
building rational transportation here in the first place.

America is now a net importer of food, too. As a consequence of corporate agriculture efforts
and poor national planning, small farming has been almost eliminated in the United States.
The tax incentives, subsidies, and protections that agribusiness wants go almost exclusively to
the large corporate farms. Many of these work to actively discourage (i.e., render
unprofitable) small farming.

America, a continental nation that covers 9.6 million square kilometers, now lives like
an island -- importing most of its energy, most of its food, and most of its
manufactured goods. And it does this on a lot of imported (i.e., borrowed) money.
While the structural incentives for this "consume and discard" economy may have benefited
short-sighted commercial interests in the past, it has resulted in a systematic betrayal of this
nation's future.

[7] We have a daunting portfolio of challenges ahead

Our challenges are not limited to an energy crisis, a slagged economy, a crippled
manufacturing capacity, and an inability to grow our own food or pay our own way. We are not
alone in the world and our huge import/export imbalance and mountainous debt argue we can't
go it alone -- even if our imprudent efforts at discrediting and dismantling the agencies of
international diplomacy (like the United Nations, see here) suggest we think so.

If we can't solve global hunger, forward human rights and rational development, promote clean
air and water, and resolve medical challenges (like AIDS, TB, Malaria, and the provision of
basic health care for our citizens) with virtually free energy, what are we going to do when life
gets expensive?

For half a century, we could stick a straw in the sand and virtually free power would
bubble out. We were so oblivious to oil's innate value and real cost that we would
transport it halfway around the world, refine it in gleaming multi-billion dollar
engineering facilities, distribute it all over the country in special transports, and sell
it for less than water, which is not only renewable, it falls from the sky.

For decades we have known that the availability of free oil money acted as a brake on the
development of the oil-rich countries. We called free oil money an economic "curse," even as
we became more addicted to free energy ourselves. This powerful projection is now
withdrawing and we can see that it was America that was enthralled.

[8] Capitalism's "Free Market" Failure

The pithy epithet that unbridled capitalists know the price of everything and the value of
nothing touches upon a truth. Civilization will soon stumble badly, and the resulting fall will be
directly attributable to the failure of free market pricing mechanisms. For all the hubris of the
corporatists at their rapid rise to global dominance, their victory -- based on the ephemeral
illusion of wealth derived from free energy -- will be short lived.

A system that allows you to put 1 barrel in to get 100 barrels out is equivalent to a
magic box that lets you put $1 in to get $100 out. But energy isn't free and there are no
magic boxes and the religion of free markets has always been a dead end.

[9] The American Legacy

In a very real sense, America sits at a Last Supper. She pours her own wine and she drinks
the world's own body. The portion of oil she will take this year alone is almost eight billion
barrels. How will she possibly repay the world for this priceless gift?

One path available to America is to continue consuming the world's resources like a prodigal
son -- and to be remembered in the end as the nation that consumed a third of everything
within reach to feed the appetites of a handful of careless and extravagant people.

The other path is for America to marshal her talents and her will, to engage and organize a
united mankind in the face of our shared perils, and to lead a search for inexhaustible and
clean energy, sound methods of sustainable resource use, repeatable practices of eco-
friendly agriculture, and true spirituality for a world community.

I know that given a chance, we will choose the second path.

The United States possesses unprecedented -- and unequaled -- strength

and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principles of liberty,

and

the values of a free society, this position comes with unparalleled

responsibilities,

obligations, and opportunity. The great strength of this

nation must be used to

promote a balance of power that favors freedom.

U.S. National Security Strategy

[10] Energy and International Politics

Access to oil and gas is now the major driver in international balance of power politics. We
may expect more nations to nationalize their dwindling resources (like Russia), and we may
expect more alliances between regional powers and oil rich states (like China and Iran) . We
may expect regional conflicts over resources and increased difficulty supporting the dogma of
nuclear nonproliferation. America should be planning now for her strategic role in a world of
diminishing resources. It is time for America to help credential and strengthen the United
Nations as an instrument of international governance, collaboration, and coordinated
planning. America must make it clear to every nation that she will bring all her powers and
stand firmly, as one among equals, with the voices of light in the world.

Several decades ago, America established strategic relationships with Middle East regimes to
ensure unhindered access to cheap oil. We need to become conscious of what those
partnerships have cost us, and to what those partnerships blind us, before we become mired
even further in inept, immoral, and incompetent policies that will continue to squander our
national energies at the same time they obscure our own role in sustaining the forces we think
we are ameliorating.

The time for coordinated international energy planning is now. America is invited by her
position of wealth, strength, and influence to accept a leadership role in crafting and
articulating, through her instruments and agencies of diplomacy, a path through this century
for a united world community.

50,000 Foot View

World metrics -- see here.

European Union metrics

United States metrics -- see here.

The View From The Ground

The impact of 9/11 shocked America from a deep complacency. Psychology teaches us that
when we are suddenly exposed to a powerful stress, we may react by reaching unconsciously
for the comfort of old patterns of behavior, even though we've outgrown them and we know
they can't work. After 9/11, America lurched to the right toward the immature tools of brute
power and arrogance to solve her problems. And this, of course, exacerbates them. An
enemy knocked down two buildings, and in response we have knocked down our whole
country. Soon, I pray, America will come to her senses and deeply regret these lost years.

As world citizens, we must help heal her. But we cannot heal in others what we have not
healed in ourselves. We must become more responsible. We must be more conscious.

The opposite of power is not weakness but love, and eventually love overcomes everything.
With love, we will enjoy a longer view, take delight in being more involved, find spiritual food in
taking less, and experience true wealth in using less.

Our governance is a projection of ourselves, and the tide is already turning. We do not need
leaders who claim to speak with the voice of God. We will have leaders who speak with the
voice of love. Leadership is not followed because it commands. It is followed because we
would choose no other place. I choose the path of love and life.

The Music

I ache. Sometimes all that sustains me is the continuous whisper of the music in the wind. The
music breathes me, softly and profoundly. The promise of America is closer than my own
heartbeat, more real than my own blood, and more alive than the rich valley soil of my native
Missouri. Our country and the world need us. Join the music. Do what you can.

None of us can do enough. But all of us can do something.

Thank you for reading here.

And please forward this on.

ehj2