I regret that I must be very annoying to many of you as I post so often about why I think we are in worse trouble than the pundits suggest. I do that because, they were wrong in the lead up to the crash in September but I see that most people still take their word as gospel.
LAURA TYSON, University of California, Berkeley: A
central lesson is that this is a kind of Greek tragedy, where the
explanation of the tragedy is human failings deep within what it means
to be human. And what it means to be human is sometimes to go to
excess, to basically not pay enough attention to risk. Humans make
those kinds of mistakes consistently, and it's led to some of the great
crises in history. It's also, frankly, led to some of the great
accomplishments in history, but it's all about us as people. PAUL
SOLMAN: The tragedy of underestimating risk takes us to the last stop
on the cable car line and for this piece, Market Street, scene of
another panic a century ago. ROBERT SHILLER: The earthquake of
1906 was preceded by many California earthquakes. And there were
architects and urban designers who were saying you needed to prepare
better for the next one. The reason it was so bad was because they didn't prepare.
The price of not seeing what was coming in September has been very high for many people. If I am right, and the financial crisis will lead to an energy and a food crisis - then the price of not being ready will be so much worse. Here is a brilliant case study of what could happen. (The Oil Drum - Jason Bradford) It opens like this:
It was common knowledge at the time that crude oil was the lifeblood of our economy, but little had yet been done to reduce our dependency on oil. The modern world was suddenly without sufficient transportation fuels and totally unprepared.
The specific numbers are staggering. Only a quarter of U.S. crude oil consumption was domestically produced in 2009. The trucking system was the key part of what was called the Just in Time delivery system. Warehousing and stockpiling were no longer practiced significantly and so no buffer existed when the trucks stopped. Our Just in Time system unraveled over a period of several weeks.
J-I-T now stood for "Just Isn't There."
As the flow of goods and services slowed dramatically and then in some cases stopped moving altogether, we were subject to cascading, compounding failures in key sectors of the economy. Just a couple of examples…Without constant truck movement, spare parts and basic supplies ran short. Electricity production relied on coal, which relied on diesel.
Most dire of all was that within three days of the halt to trucking, the grocery stores were out of food.
Looking back at historical records it is clear that, while shocking, this was no surprise. Community-based organizations had been warning of this exact possibility for years.
It is my curse to "see" this strong probability.I had been prepared and some of my friends too for the financial crash of 2008. But the possible systemic failure in energy and food cannot be prepared for by one person at a time. The larger community has to work together.
"But what can we do?" is what many ask. Feeling helpless is perhaps the worst part of all of this.
I do have a course of action that I espouse - and that is Local Resiliency - taking back our control over energy, food and credit. In essence it means ensuring that your place has enough energy to cover the basics and enough food being grown and sold locally to keep you going if the Just in Time system breaks.
This is hard to get going. How do you start? On PEI it is very hard - just a few of us talk to the issue. What we don't have here is a more powerful catalyst.
In St Louis we do.
In St Louis, the local public TV station is a great catalyst. Last summer we began the work to pull together more than 20 local agencies to help people who were at risk of losing their homes. This was the first step in a new role for a TV station - that of being a social convener.
On Jan 27, we start the next phase and as the layoffs and the financial stresses build we will begin to widen and deepen the work to help St Louisans take back their power to help each other. Here is our opening shot:
I promise to talk more about what we can do to help each other and to find ways of reducing the fear and pain. I will do my best to show you what people are doing to take their power back.
