This time from And the Cow Goes Moo, who dares to ponder what will happen after the recession.
If we can spend a billion here to save a billion in the future, that seems like a great deal to me.
If we can spend $10 billion modernizing our infrastructure to reduce energy loss in transmissions for the next decade, great!
If we can spend another $10 billion creating an alternative-energy infrastructure for transportation, to save billions in oil imports as well as mitigate environmental damage, even better!
This recession has to end eventually, right? And the US national debt has to be reduced eventually, right?
Careful now, such giddiness will have the Disaster Chic police all over you. They’ll not tolerate outbursts of optimism, however guarded it may be.
We resent being referred to as the “Disaster chic police.” We prefer to be called… Disastronauts!
“If we can spend $10 billion modernizing our infrastructure to reduce energy loss in transmissions for the next decade, great!”
Oh that we would! Not that $10 billion would be enough, but the savings would more than pay the cost. It would be an excellent investment.
Unfortunately, the $700+ billion bill commits a piddly $3.75 billion to modernizing the grid. Oh, well: business as usual (at least in the pre-W sense).
It’s a major step in the right direction. Others will follow. Well, in the case of cleantech, they aren’t just following, they are way in the lead, and happy the government has finally gotten on the clue train.
The most rampant and manic Perkypantism anywhere can be found in cleantech, which is busily inventing the future and not interested in the possibilities of doom. Disastronauts take note!
What do we do after the evolution?
I think at the heart of this is the concept of change. Change is painful– even the transition from adolescence to adulthood, while necessary and good, is not without sometimes excruciating pain.
Rampant debt-fueled consumerism needs to be replaced by adult behavior and responsibility. That transition, like any other, won’t be painless. That’s only “doom” if we think what we’ve got is so terrific that we aren’t willing to risk some pain to move to something better– or if we resist until the inevitable change becomes violent. (What happens when an adoslescent refuses to grow up?)
I think we agree. Change will come.
However, the change will happen much easier if people try to invent the future rather than doing nothing or, like Jim Kuntsler, actively cheerleading the decline of the economy because that mean those rich bastards in the Hamptons will have gotten their just deserts. Or like this comedian, http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/02/18/diversions_worl.html
As I mentioned, I’m struck by how cleantech is out there doing things, not whining, inventing the future.
I third that, though I fear the pain we’ll experience will manifest itself in violence. Preparation is the key. We need to ask ourselves what we can do, and start doing…