The Hames Report

Greek Mythology

A strategic foresight practitioner like myself cannot help but be mesmerized by the extent of disruption being caused today by the breakdown of the competitive, machine-like, model of human enterprise - especially when, even in its death throes, it still traps us in paralytic fear of alternative, more humane, possibilities.

The endgame of the industrial paradigm, typified by linear thinking, exhausted systems and wasteful practices, is rapidly giving way to a networked society. Here abundance will have ousted scarcity, distributed knowledge (shared in peer-to-peer networks and used collaboratively) will have liberated innovation far more effectively than the clumsy legal frameworks of the past, and a new literacy, networked intelligence, will have helped us surmount most of the limitations inherent within the old model.

Yet many of us, including elected leaders and their King Canute-like courts, vainly cling to a myth: namely that the industrial model of “free market” capitalism, braced by certain democratic principles, is the definitive peak of human achievement. In other words that better options are impossible to imagine and that we must therefore do everything in our power to prevent a collapse of the old order. Of course this is to deny the inevitability of evolution as well as the rules of nature.

Although I am no financial expert we can find a good example of predictable collapse in the way economic theory, typically favouring either “free” market principles or centralised government control, is applied. Regardless of the politics, what remain constant in today’s world are:

• a monetary scheme founded on compounded debt
• an economic orthodoxy increasingly driven by selfishness that limits the nature of value (and the value of nature) to mere utility while ignoring some costs as being relatively unimportant
• a global reserve fixed on a single currency thereby biasing the system in favour of that currency
• a limited range of fiscal responses nations are able to adopt in order to out-compete each other while maintaining social cohesion (through security, employment, education & welfare for example)
• a banking system overtly manipulating regulatory mechanisms to generate wealth for a surprisingly small number of individuals and corporations.

This is just one example of why systems that are supposed to support humanity are failing us. It is clearly unsustainable. Any structure with such intrinsic constraints is ultimately going to fail. We are witness to that inevitabilty right now in Greece. As the grand experiment we call the European Union staggers from one crisis to another, with past mistakes rationalised rather than resolved, the Greek economy is being allowed to fall into even more of a chaotic mess. Greece will run out of money in six weeks. So what is actually going on?

In early 2010, we discovered that successive Greek governments had been consistently and calculatingly misreporting the country's official economic statistics so as to keep within the EU's guidelines. Subterfuge had enabled Greek governments to spend well beyond their means, while hiding the actual deficit from Brussels. In May of that year the deficit was estimated to be 13.6 per cent for the year, which was one of the highest in the world relative to GDP. Total public debt was forecast to hit 120 per cent of GDP during 2010, again one of the highest rates in the world.

Now, after two bailouts (totalling €240 billion) Greece is indebted to other nations, mostly France, Germany and the UK, to the tune of €0.45 trillion. This is small in comparison to some European economies, and direct damage of it defaulting on its debts could probably be absorbed by the eurozone. However, the fear is that an Athenian default could trigger a financial catastrophe for other, larger economies, such as Italy. The ripples will be felt around the world.

Actually a default (accompanied by Greece's exit from the EU) is probably just a matter of time. There are good reasons for this, not least of which is Greece’s history in such matters. Whatever happens, the current debt (as well as some of the irresponsible commentary accompanying it) is causing a deep cultural malaise in Greek society and overwhelming the ability of other systems to cope. Unemployment figures are stuck at 21.7 per cent, including an incredible 50 per cent of all young people. Over the past two years public service salaries have plunged by 40 per cent and suicides have risen by 22 per cent. In Athens alone there are over 13,000 homeless people. The health system is in turmoil since there is no cash to pay pharmacies for prescriptions. Corruption is rife, the bureaucracy is bloated, competitiveness is poor and evasion of tax is estimated at 47 per cent. If all of that wasn’t crippling enough the country now faces increasing political turmoil and parliamentary dysfunctionality afer an inconclusive general election in which both mainstream pro-Europe parties saw a dramatic colllapse in support. It is highly likely fresh elections will have to be called.

As always there is an upside to be considered. After the most recent bailout the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund all insisted Greece find ways to make its economy more competitive - principally by cutting the cost of doing business in the country. That is undoubtedly a sensible call as it should attract overseas investment and international visitors. Since the early 1990s until fairly recently the nation’s growth has been higher than the EU average. In terms of economic complexity the nation is strong with a diverse range of embedded productive knowledge. Nor can the Greek work ethic be criticised: the labor force, which totals approximately 5 million, works the second highest number of hours per year on average among OECD countries.

If the drachma was still a valid currency this situation might not have arisen. Or at least, if it did, it would be within Greece’s jurisdiction to introduce measures to deal with the problem. Over the past century the Greek economy has often owed more than it produces. But now Greece is being intimidated by its European partners to repay loans faster than it can possibly manage and with no amnesty being offered.

At this point austerity measures, it is claimed, are vital. Austerity (the cutting of public spending to the bone) is the new global economic medicine prescribed for dealing with sovereign debt. Proclaimed with frenzied zeal by almost all the world’s leading financial institutions, austerity is being demanded of Greece by its eurozone partners, as if it were the panacea to everything. This is quite a dangerous strategy – not least because the chances of Greece defaulting are already quite high and more pain might simply push the country over the edge.

The logic of austerity is being driven by the custodians of the old industrial system - in whose opinion productive efficiency matters far more than social wellbeing or commonsense. Austerity means people suffer because many essential public services are reduced, or eliminated altogether. This undermines self-reliance and unravels the fabric of society still further. Economic shock therapy of this kind does not work because it destroys cultural cohesion. We have seen that before in pre-revolutionary Chile and in Cuba - where it was the US weapon of choice – as well as in Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s US - where it was a doctrine of faith. Yet we still blindly insist that it must work in Europe for there are no other “economically rational” solutions.

And here my economic naivety comes to the fore as I cannot for the life of me see the rationality in such partial, linear solutions. Of course economic austerity makes sense in theory, especially in terms of trimming what has become a bloated and inefficient public sector. But to rely just on austerity measures to save Greece is to wilfully ignore morale, motivation and empathy within the community – the very things that breathe vitality and meaning into innovation and entrepreneurship.

Greece actually has all the resources needed to be a thriving and prosperous nation. Unfortunately ordinary men and women in Greece are not sufficiently connected and their politicians, bullied by France and Germany, are mere slaves to their European partners. So while trimming the fat from government spending is wise, enduring solutions are going to come from elsewhere. But where should we be looking?

Once more an appreciation of context is important. As the world transitions to a more openly transparent, networked world, and systemic failures caused by the industrial paradigm continue to crop up, almost on a daily basis, the acquisition of new literacies becomes a critical factor in society’s renewal. Paradoxically the disruptive conditions enveloping Greece are now inviting an incomparable opportunity to seize the future by creating and adopting new literacies, and new values, that are already re-casting the basic patterns of human production and consumption.

Because a renewal strategy of such a wide-ranging nature will need to be multidimensional, strategically relevant and systemically viable, it will require imagination, foresight, courage and a commitment to the extraordinary cultural ethos for invention that Greece bequeathed the Western world ages ago – qualities that appear to have gone missing from today’s political leadership scene.

But if this leadership were to emerge, phoenix-like from the current disorder, what might a viable strategy for the future of Greece actually comprise? If the design challenge is to create the greatest benefit for the greatest numbers of people then the following points would at least need to be seriously considered:

1. People have lost faith in brand politics and celebrity politicians – particularly the three major families that have dominated politics in Greece for decades. Here is an opportunity to instigate far–reaching reforms to the system of political governance by adopting diversity and inclusion within an overtly egalitarian society. Greece, once the cradle of democracy could actually reconceive what demos means in an age of online interconnectedness. Greater participation from citizens, even in the form of new political coalitions and governance models, might also do a great deal to stamp out the nepotism and corruption that still haunts political life in Greece.

2. Governments cannot create wealth. But they are responsible for generating the conditions wherein wealth can be generated and shared. As we transition from the failed mode of fossil-fuelled industrial economism to a cleaner, more sustainable world of global business ecosystems, enabled by digital and bio-technologies and featuring community collaboration, open-source design and peer-to-peer relationships, new purpose and new wealth will be created by people being given encouragement to trade and use their talents and natural resources more effectively. Four things are evident in this context. Greece must:    

• invest in a reliable and speedy online infrastructure that allows all citizens to connect at any time and for any reason – or risk innovation being smothered
• increase economic complexity by supporting knowledge economy ventures and cleantech startups as well as providing targeted support for traditional industries such as tourism, merchant shipping, agriculture and fisheries
• encourage companies to grow around community - acquiring new knowledge and capabilities for the way goods and services are made, shared and consumed
• optimise an abundance of assets that are being ignored in the current context – assets such as sunshine, ancient sites, beautiful islands, good food and wine, etc.

3. There is no denying the Greek bureacracy has become bloated, costly and inefficient. But it needs to be trimmed slowly (through natural attrition and the suspension of obsolete programs, for example) in order to avoid an even bigger crisis. Unfortunately, institutions that sell credit are generally impatient. Not giving Greece the time it needs to repay and rebuild could result in an upsurge of corruption that quickly spins out of control – as occurred in Russia when Mikhail Gorbachev was denied adequate time to develop a post-soviet economy by the World Bank and IMF.

4. As adaptiveness to contextual volatilility becomes essential for investors, entrepreneurs, corporate strategists and government policy makers alike, we need to use new information and communications technologies, including the new social media, to speed up the learning metabolism within society. As proven by Stafford Beer in pre-revolutionary Chile, but mostly forgotten today, equality and responsiveness to shifting realities can be transformed through instituting an "electronic nervous system" that links voters, workplaces and agencies in a single interactive national communications network. Such an investment would serve Greece well at this juncture as well as providing a prototype for Europe as a whole.

5. Liberating the untapped wealth of the people while avoiding unnecessary hardship must be part of any strategy going forward. That probably required Brussels and other creditors to give Greece some slack, including allowing extra time for the debt to be repaid. If Europe declines then Greece should simply default and find new trading partners. As my colleague Ivor Kellock recently reminded me - there are always people willing to do deals….

 

Scuttlebutt - The Dirt on Brown Coal

Last week the state government of Victoria in Australia announced its intent to release more than 430 billion tonnes of brown coal for export to energy-hungry countries such as China, India and Japan. Located in the La Trobe valley, east of Melbourne, these reserves are some of the largest deposits of brown coal in the world.

At face value it makes sound economic sense for these reserves to be unlocked and used to bolster the local economy, especially at a time when other industries are in trouble or face a slow decline. But there are traps for the unwary. 

In the resources pecking order brown coal is regarded as little better than peat. It is a sludge-like substance containing about two-thirds water, one-third carbon, and some ash. Extracted from huge open-cut mines it is used primarily in steam-electric power generation. While none of Victoria’s brown coal is currently exported, around 65 million tonnes is mined each year. Over 90 per cent of Victoria’s electricity is fuelled by brown coal, making Victorians among the most greenhouse polluting people per capita on the planet.

Fifty years ago investing millions of dollars in mines, processing and infrastructure might have been applauded as a visionary way of boosting the local economy and creating new jobs. Today it seems like a sick joke. For this is not merely an economic question but a moral one.

Brown coal is roughly three times more greenhouse intensive per kilowatt hour of electricity than natural gas. Abundant it may be. Clean it is not. In any sane society we would agree to leave it where it is. In the ground.

Let us agree then that we are not sane and move on! If additional brown coal is going to be mined for export there are inherent difficulties that cannot be ignored. The most obvious is its transportation over long distances. This has primarily to do with the high moisture content of the coal, requiring it to be dried or turned into diesel oil or gas prior to export. Setting aside for a moment the fairly crude centrifuge technologies currently used to extract moisture and to compress the coal into briquettes, the technologies needed to convert brown coal into a commercially viable and environmentally-friendly product at scale still need to be developed.

Any corporate investors would need to take this into account. Of course it is feasible that a commercially viable method of transforming one of the world's dirtiest energy sources into a clean form will eventually be found. But I would not bet on it. Clean coal is still a myth. But there are other, far more disquieting factors, which also need to be considered.

Firstly we need to think through the impact on local farmers and landowners. The viability and security of the current food system in Australia is increasingly under threat as the effects of climate change are felt. The Gippsland basin in eastern Victoria happens to be one of the richest dairy farming areas in the whole of Australia.

Even so there are many farms on the eastern and western side of the Latrobe Valley which have a mining licence hanging over them. Freehold titles are not exempt from acquisition should the state demand access to minerals underground. This creates massive uncertainty in the minds of the farming community, compromising planning and contributing to the exodus of farmers from badly needed agricultural production.

Secondly it is misleading to believe that many new jobs will be created by such a move. As mining technologies become more sophisticated fewer jobs are needed in the sector in absolute terms. Out of a total population of around 23 million people less than 200,000 work in mining.

Thirdly Australia cannot continue to be complacent about the role resources will play in future economic wealth. Not that overseas demand for coal, gas and minerals is likely to collapse in the near future. In my opinion such claims are merely a distraction. When mapping strategic paths to future prosperity the underlying economic complexity of our industries – or rather the lack of it – is of far greater consequence.

Economic complexity refers to the amount of knowledge embedded in the productive structure of an economy. It is amplified by the social connectivity inherent in markets, networks and business ecosystems that makes us collectively intelligent.

Recent research points to economic complexity as a key factor in the development of nations. Countries whose economic complexity is greater than what we would expect, given their level of income, tend to grow faster than those that are “too rich” for their current level of economic complexity. In this sense, economic complexity is not just a symptom or an expression of prosperity. It is a driver.

In the first Economic Complexity Index [ECI] published this year, Australia ranked 79 out of 124 nations; behind Sri Lanka, Egypt, Indonesia and Vietnam and just ahead of  Pakistan, Cuba and Uganda. In other words the apparent wealth of our nation (as measured in GDP per capita) is too dependent on the export of minerals than on tangible productive knowledge. At a time when the Australian currency is strong and many industries, particularly manufacturing, are struggling to survive, greater efforts need to be channelled into investments and policies that (i) augment and diversify embedded knowledge and (ii) expand tradeable activities in that knowledge.

Countries with a large natural resource assets like Australia can be relatively wealthy without being economically complex. But that wealth can only be sustained as long as those natural resources are there. Something else needs to take up the slack in the long term.

ECI research demonstrates countries tend to move towards an income level that is compatible with their overall level of embedded knowledge. Australia may well have a smart workforce but it is of little value if it is not being continually diversified and used to provoke and sustain industrial renewal.

Logically it is strategic innovation, the invention of new industries and markets, and the deliberate expansion of  diversity in Australia’s export product space, that are ultimately far more critical in creating a robust and enduring economy than short-term windfalls from mining.

It stands to reason that policies aimed at inceasing economic complexity must point to a far greater emphasis on, for example, distributed and open-source manufacturing; e-commerce; micro-engineering; healthcare; bio-agriculture; professional, employment and child care services; clean energy such as solar and wind; management, scientific and environmental consulting; digital arts and broadcasting; gaming; biotechnology; and higher learning, than on the export of mineral resources that add little economic complexity to that which currently exists.

So much for the economic factors. Most conversations instigated by politicians and specialist business interests would end right there, as if the economics of any situation (i.e. investment, productivity, employment and wealth creation) is the only thing that really matters.

Unfortunately this is not unusual. At least since the industrial revolution our society has tended to value only those assets we can see, grow, construct, assemble and measure. Indeed the Western cultural mindset currently driving the majority of global production and consumption as well as international trade, has systematically cheapened and eroded most other aspects of a unique and sacred gift: what it really means to be human.

In all economic debates there remain unspoken, complex, yet usually unresolved issues hiding in the shadows. Topics of consequence that go to the heart of the crises facing a human family of seven billion people. Such is the case with the issue of mining brown coal in Victoria for it is not just, nor even primarily, a simple economic issue.

I have briefly mentioned one of my concerns, namely the sense of profound insecurity being generated by mining leases on struggling farming communities. Such uncertainty is viewed by governments as an adverse yet unavoidable side effect resulting from legal distinctions between private property ownership relative to the assumed superior authority of the state. But it also relates to the sacred duty of any elected government to foster community wellbeing by conserving and protecting the wealth of the commons rather than kowtowing to the whims of sectoral interests.

Such duties are arduous in this day and age for there are many conflicting needs, and at many levels, expressed by the citizenry of any state. Yet it is vital to grasp this particular obligation in the longer term: ensuring the health and prosperity of future generations is as critical to humanity as safeguarding today’s wealth. Perhaps more so. As scientists and economists gather overwhelming evidence that we must combat the toxic impacts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as soon as possible in order to avoid what could become an unavoidable collapse in our quality of life, the ethical question of how long we can go on subsidizing dirty industries fuelled by coal becomes ever more acute.

Naturally this dilemma is excruciating for governments caught in a limbo between the exploitation of resources for commercial gain and their environmental responsibilities. Options seem predetermined when the former tactic allows an incumbent government to appear less reckless than the opposition and thus stay in power longer. It is a delusion of course. But such has become the paucity of political vision, aspiration and integrity in much of the developed world, regardless of political persuasion or explicit cultural legacy.

Another concern relates to ecocide – a reference to any large-scale destruction of the natural envioronment, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment of that territory by the inhabitants is severely diminished.

Because previous generations supposed the planet’s resources to be infinite, that growth was unlimited, ecocide routinely occurs on a massive scale and is getting worse by the day. Proposals to mine the extensive brown coal reserves in Victoria are only one example of ecological devastation occurring around the world; from Canada to the Antarctic and from Bolivia to China. It can be stopped by making ecocide a crime against humanity. Even now serious proposals are being considered by individuals in the UN seeking to create an international law of ecocide that would make CEOs and Heads of State legally responsible for the Earth.

Even if a universal law of this kind is some years off, an assumption I would personally be reluctant to adopt, intensifying public sentiment that environmental conservation is essential to our future health and wellbeing implies an awakening to the blind ecological destruction currently being undertaken by some governments and corporations on our behalf. It would be a courageous government indeed (or an act of sheer stupidity) to ignore such early warning signs of shifting societal values.

But even that should not be the end of the debate. Putting environmental concerns to one side, we should also consider the Victorian government’s proposals for industrial development in the La Trobe valley in the light of our values and culture. In this case public compliance with the case for industrial development as put by government (which has become the agent for big business) amounts to collusion to defraud future generations of their rightful legacy. Effectively we are giving our consent to people who have never been on the land and who have no history or connection to the countryside, legally securing the right to come in and by the very nature of their enterprises leave in their wake a cultural and physical landscape utterly devastated and transformed.

Furthermore, by placing no cultural or market value on the landscape itself we help to destroy a natural asset without comprehending its inherent worth if left intact. As long as there is a promise of money and employment it merely requires permission to proceed. Usually we give this not a second thought. We take it as a given. It is, after all, the foundation of a system in which commerce extracts value and profit in a resource-driven economy. From an indigenous perspective, moved and inspired by quite different visions of life and an orientation utterly removed from the Western tradition in terms of ecological space, any behaviour in which natural beauty can be reduced to a commodity at whim appears to be anomalous in the extreme.

When British explorers landed on the shores of Australia they were totally unprepared for the sophistication of the place - unable to fathom the subtle philosophy and profound intellectual, cultural and spiritual achievements of those early inhabitants. Two hundred years later and we are still unprepared, still utterly incapable of embracing our country’s timeless wonder, ignorant of its songlines and blind to its cosmological resonance as potential future wisdom.

Mining brown coal in Gippsland is an ill-informed folly dreamed up by deluded advocates of an industry that is in decline for more than one reason. But that is not what should really concern us here. My disquiet has much more to do with the inherent lethargy and lack of ingenious alternatives being expressed.

If Victoria is to prosper in a manner that is strategically relevant and enduring, all future pathways must provide a greater degree of economic complexity in our productive capacity than currently exists. Innovation in terms of rural development is important. But the constant digging of holes in the ground is equivalent to playground games.

Australia’s current wealth came from the exploitation of natural resources. Our future prosperity is reliant on a paradigm shift enabled by strategically sophisticated innovation, creativity, diversity and, above all, industrial renewal.

I would like to thank Alain Ruche of the EU for alerting me to the work of Ricardo Hausmann and his team who have been researching the economic complexity of nations for several years. Their work can be found in the Atlas of Economic Complexity at http://atlas.media.mit.edu/book/

The Self-Attribution Fallacy

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1 per cent make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill. Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.

 So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgement, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses’s scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact on these criteria they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family you’re likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family you’re likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. CEOs now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they’ve captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are the chosen ones, possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed upon the earth’s natural wealth and their workers’ labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world’s common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Thatcher and Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I’m sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattoed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119 per cent, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122 per cent. But between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80 per cent, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4 per cent. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1 per cent rose by 270 per cent.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12 per cent between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10 per cent rose by 37 per cent. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots’ labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses’ self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, think tanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people’s wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the Corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the Corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

This article was written by George Monbiot and reproduced here with his permission. The Self-Attribution Fallacy was first published in The Guardian on 7th November 2011 (see www.guardian.co.uk). George's blogs are online at www.monbiot.com

 

 

Please Mind the Gap

I am normally wary of statements such as this changes everything. But there is something distinctly attractive about the Occupy Wall Street movement - especially if it is seen as a single thread in a tapestry of increasing social and civic unrest aimed at systematically deconstructing and challenging the more damaging aspects of our civilisational world-system.

The ground swell of civil upheaval we are witnessing around the world (admittedly for a variety of differing reasons) seems to offer the potential for a profound global awakening to the human condition that is probably unprecedented in modern times.

Before Occupy Wall Street any serious conversation about the negative aspects (misdirected power, corruption and discrimination) locked into the global financial system occurred rarely, and only then at private gatherings of cognoscenti or during off-the-grid brainstorming conclaves within left-leaning think-tanks. With little public discussion of the outlandish power of Wall Street and its links to the diminishing fortunes of the middle class it was fair to assume a deeply ingrained and pervasive public apathy. That assumption was wrong.

What had not been fully appreciated was the power of digital information and communications tools, and especially the new social media, to connect and ferment resentment among those who were doing it tough; people who were already feeling the pain from unemployment or from working in a system where senior executives could earn up to 450 times that of the average employee. Couple these factors to an increase in political inertia and corruption and the existential issues of a planet under threat from extreme weather events and climate change and we immediately have a recipe for revolution.

Occupy Wall Street is giving a voice to ordinary men and women who are victims of a world-system that is unsustainable. In fact, it may represent the best hope in years that "we the people" will step up to take on the critical challenges of our time. Sarah van Gelder (editor) and the staff of YES! Magazine claim that the Occupy movement is already "changing everything". In their new book, Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement, they name ten factors to support their thesis:

1. It names the source of the crisis
Political insiders have avoided this simple reality: The problems of the 99% are caused in large part by Wall Street greed, perverse financial incentives, and a corporate takeover of the political system. Now that this is understood, the genie is out of the bottle and it can¹t be put back in.

2. It provides a clear vision of the world we want
We can create a world that works for everyone, not just the wealthiest 1%. And we, the 99%, are using the spaces opened up by the Occupy movement to conduct a dialogue about the world we want.

3. It sets a new standard for public debate
Those advocating policies and proposals must now demonstrate that their ideas will benefit the 99%. Serving only the 1% will not suffice, nor will claims that the subsidies and policies that benefit the 1% will eventually "trickle down".

4. It presents a new narrative
The solution is not to starve government or impose harsh austerity measures that further harm middle-class and poor people already reeling from a bad economy. Instead, the solution is to free society and government from corporate dominance. A functioning democracy is our best shot at addressing critical social, environmental, and economic crises.

5. It creates a big tent
We, the 99%, are people of all ages, races, occupations, and political beliefs. We will resist being divided or marginalized. We are learning to work together with respect.

6. It offers everyone a chance to create change
No one is in charge. No single organization or political party calls the shots. Anyone can get involved, offer proposals, support the occupations, and build the movement. Because leadership is everywhere and new supporters keep turning up, there is a flowering of creativity and a resilience that makes the movement nearly impossible to shut down.

7. It is a movement, not a list of demands
The call for deep change (not temporary fixes and single-issue reforms) is the movement¹s sustaining power. The movement is sometimes criticized for failing to issue a list of demands, but doing so could keep it tied to status quo power relationships and policy options. The occupiers and their supporters will not be boxed in.

8. It combines the local and the global
People in cities and towns around the world are setting their own local agendas, tactics, and aims. What they share in common is a critique of corporate power and an identification with the 99%, creating an extraordinary wave of global solidarity.

9. It offers an ethic and practice of deep democracy and community
Slow, patient decision-making in which every voice is heard translates into wisdom, common commitment, and power. Occupy sites are set up as communities in which anyone can discuss grievances, hopes, and dreams, and where all can experiment with living in a space built around mutual support.

10. We have reclaimed our power
Instead of looking to politicians and leaders to bring about change, we can see now that the power rests with us. Instead of being victims to the forces upending our lives, we are claiming our sovereign right to remake the world.

Like all human endeavors, Occupy Wall Street and its thousands of variations and spin-offs will be imperfect. There have already been setbacks and divisions, hardships and injury. But as our world faces extraordinary challenges, from climate change to soaring inequality, perhaps our best hope is the ordinary people, gathered in imperfect democracies, who are finding ways to fix a broken world.

Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement, Edited by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2011, 96 pages. $6.95 (30% off the cover price when you buy from YES!. All royalties from this book are donated to the Occupy Wall Street movement)

Thinking for a Change

The dilemmas facing humanity have become so complex they can only be resolved by comprehending the situation from a higher level of collective consciousness. Once that new state of awareness has been reached, however, we will be able to choose a profoundly different evolutionary path to that recently pursued with such self-interest and short-sighted enthusiasm.

Disruptions to the way planet Earth works, particularly those induced by the ingrained habits of seven billion people all aspiring to similar levels of affluence, can no longer be ignored. At some stage myths must give way to truths if disaster is to be averted.

As Paul Gilding points out so eloquently in his recent book The Great Disruption there is plenty to be positive about. But only if we think differently and more deeply about the human condition and rise above those beliefs and practices that have become an impediment to genuine progress.

Three priorities have surfaced from the fog of scientific evidence, propaganda (and sheer mischief) surrounding issues like climate change. First, policies aimed at putting a stop to unsustainable activities must be scaled up. Second, smart technologies must be applied to the underlying causes of our problems rather than to their symptoms. Third, we must reframe our thinking to embody entirely new possibilities for reimagining what we do (that is both socially desirable and economically feasible) and how we do it.

These priorities are as relevant for business as they are for governments and civil society. The time has long since passed when business could simply mind its own business. Indeed many of the institutions and practices conceived within the 19^th century model of industrial economism, a model that initially brought such affluence to so many, appear now to be steering us down a path to ruin. I am aware that it is impossible to prove such a thesis. But nor do I intend waiting until I have evidence I am correct.

There are many alternatives available to us, ranging from cleaner, adaptive industries and smarter, benign practices to fewer toxic raw materials and biomimicry as a model for organizing and innovating. Most of these alternatives are preferable to what currently exists. However we need to let go of old prejudices and fears that the future will inevitably be worse than the past if such new options are to be implemented quickly. This is the prime lesson informing Gilding’s thesis.

All of which is easier said than done of course. Tackling any one of these imperatives would be difficult enough. Finding ways to adopt all three presents a formidable challenge, not least because the customary ways for administering human affairs have shifted responsibilities to others. Deliberately reframing our thinking to escape the gravitational pull of the past will demand an expansive emancipation of mind, liberation from obsolete ideologies and dogma, and a collective, progressive and audacious awakening to higher levels of consciousness concerning our shared purpose.

Changing behavioural patterns is relatively easy. We do it all the time. Government policies, corporate marketing and public relations campaigns all effectively play on our desires or fears in order to manipulate how we behave. But whereas most present-day marketing efforts are commercially orientated, using psychology to escalate consumerism - even where prosperity without economic growth would be a more sane goal in today’s circumstances - we are failing to use those same mechanisms to endorse the reduction, re-use and recycling of our most precious resources. Clearly much has still to be done even in that regard. But changing our underlying beliefs is far more difficult.

Ultimately though, permanent behavioural change will stem from the structural redesign of our most life-critical systems – particularly those in which human beings interface with nature and with each other. It is often forgotten that all systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get. That is why natural systems remain so resilient.

The problem is that none of our social systems have been designed to consciously evolve. We are, quite literally, trapped in the past. That is precisely why our thinking has to change. In effect we must become architects of our own evolution rather than pawns in a game we assume to be controlled by others.

The inevitable transition to cleaner, low-carbon sources of energy (like solar and hydrogen for example) together with the use of smarter, more efficient, distributed networks that reduce the amount of energy we use, will eventually enable the complete eradication of toxic fuels. At the same time the industries spawned from this transition will generate untold wealth. Designing a sustainable and secure food system capable of providing nourishment for seven billion people or more is also desirable – and readily achievable. Re-engineering the fundamentals of the global economy to eradicate waste, promote equity and protect the resources we all share is also realistic.

But there is a catch. Before the trapeze artist leaps into space he must step off the platform on which he is standing. Systemic reinventions of this nature requires a strategic, emotional and “transcendent” commitment to the new story in addition to an appreciation of systemic design that is rare, so devoid of integral intelligence has our conditioning become.

In terms of systemic design and renewal there are two crucial keys to success. Both rely on our capacity and willingness to reframe our notions about what really matters, to boldly step into new ways of knowing and being, and to openly engage with others in that metamorphosis.

The first key is the ability to imagine and communicate an alternative social “meme” (together with compelling narratives) that supersedes more utilitarian goals – at least encompassing happiness, love and compassion in healthier balance with material wealth and well-being. This key unlocks hope and restores fairness. The second key is the ability to elude the curse of knowledge that traps us in an industrial past and allows us to make significantly different choices about the future. This key unlocks a sense of new possibilities and restores trust.

Unfettering an economy based on value exchange in the context of abundance (rather than one of compounding debt in a framework of financial scarcity, for example) could emancipate new forms of enterprise employing many more people than today’s sunset industries. Using renewable sources of energy to establish industrial ecologies that transform and adapt to a warming planet is far wiser than defending the past in an attempt to protect that which could destroy us. [Industry lobbyists take note!] Likewise, accessing peer-to-peer digital media to invite the collective expression of policies and even constitutions (instead of putting our faith in the increasingly detached whims of a few elected representatives) might provide a platform for a far more democratic and empathic society. And so on…

Such strategic choices become possible because of the most fundamental shift in human history: the emergence of a mode of inventiveness (comprising intelligence, foresight and wisdom) that allows new ways of being, thinking and doing to be envisaged and, through cooperation and invention, to be attained.

No doubt humanity can flourish. But only if we learn to transcend obsolete beliefs and fears to engage in deeper conversations that (i) include all salient features of the system we desire to create, (ii) anticipate the intended and unintended consequences of those desires, and (iii) lift the human spirit out of the mire of believing the past cannot be surpassed and that our situation is dire and will only get worse.

In facing a range of complex dilemmas it does us no good to continue to deny the truth. The global outlook is tense. Natural disasters, the spiraling cost of food, geo-political conflict and the collapse of natural systems all seem to herald an end-game in which the extinction of our species is conceivable. We are witness to cascading failures in the systems that support life. Family incomes are being squeezed. We try to do more with less. Politicians focus on trivia. Simple things seem not to work as well as they once did. We fret about how best to survive the present even though we care passionately about the planet and our children’s future.

Yet the solution is in our own hands. Burying our heads in the sand and ignoring reality will not help. Quarantining ourselves from reality we begin to lose the thread of affiliation that otherwise nourishes and sustains us. We cannot isolate ourselves from the truth however hard we might try. It only aggravates our anxieties.

Over a century ago an ambitious geo-engineering project was implemented. Responding to a major planetary issue of the time two German scientists, Haber and Bosch, made nitrogen-rich fertilizer available to farmers, thus significantly increasing the annual amount of nitrogen fixed on land. The unintended consequences were catastrophic: the human population mushroomed exponentially.

But having created the problem we must live with it. By participating in the actuality of our predicament we can restore hope while exploring practical pathways into the future. Our starting point is not the changing of a light bulb nor the purchasing of a more fuel-efficient car. On the contrary renewal begins with a sense of responsibility to each other and to the planet. Re-envisaging a new purpose for humanity must now become our prime goal. We must think big for a change.

Forget the Facts

The sea hare is a gelatinous lump ordinarily found grazing on coral reefs, home to many far more eye-catching creatures. Nonetheless, the one captive in the aquarium at Heron Island Research Station, on the Great Barrier Reef, provides a mesmerising spectacle as it chomps through great bouquets of red algae plucked from the reef flat and delivered fresh each morning by a young marine scientist.

''We used to have two hares in the tank,'' she explained, ''but when there are two, they just shag continuously, fail to eat, then they die.'' We conclude that herein lies a powerful warning about the risk unrelenting pleasure-seeking poses to any species aspiring to long-term survival.

I've been thinking a bit about the sea hare this week while observing the fallout from the Climate Commission's report, The Critical Decade. Wondering, too, about primitive human biology, about what factors interfere with our survival instinct - fear, fun, greed, legacy, even good old distracting lust.

The report is a powerful enunciation of what science now knows about climate change and the risks it poses. That the atmosphere and the oceans are warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and ice caps, sea levels are rising and the biological world is changing. ''We know beyond reasonable doubt that the world is warming and that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the primary causes.''

In the nuanced language of science, it doesn't get much stronger. As the American scientist Naomi Oreskes has observed, ''History shows us clearly that science does not provide certainty. It does not provide proof. It only provides the consensus of experts, based on the organised accumulation and scrutiny of evidence.'' And here we have it.

So how do you respond to such confronting news? Do you weigh the credentials of the speakers, study the evidence? Or do you switch it off, turn the page, scream and shout? According to psychological research by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, your reaction either way will have little to do with the strength of the arguments or the calibre of the science. It will have everything to do with whether it gels with, or offends, your deep-seated views about morality and how the world ought to work.

Yale law professor Dan Kahan's ''cultural cognition of risk'' theory attempts to explain public disagreement about the significance of empirical evidence by plotting individuals on two scales of cultural belief: individualists versus communitarians, based on the importance people attach to the public good when balanced against individual rights; and hierarchists versus egalitarians, based on their views of the stratification of society. Simply explaining the science to these audiences, he finds, will only serve to wedge the two sides.

The sliding scales are not unfamiliar. Think Tony Abbott as the archetypal suit-and-tie individual hierarchical - values clustered around free-market enterprise, personal achievement, industry, regard for authority (though not, it seems, scientific authority), traditional family, personal freedom; and Bob Brown is out there as your sandal-wearing communitarian egalitarian, protesting that pretty much everything Abbott cherishes damages all he holds dear.

Put a scientist in front of an audience of individual hierarchicals saying that global warming is high risk, and only 23 per cent of the audience will buy the speaker as trustworthy and knowledgeable. Same message, same scientist, and 88 per cent of egalitarian communitarians nod their heads.

Have the same author change tack to argue that warming is no great drama, and the Abbotts now lap it up (86 per cent), and the Browns wander off (46 per cent). The well-oiled machinery of manufactured denial knows how to push all these buttons.

Yale's audience testing finds the only factor likely to interfere with our psychological gatekeeping is if someone within our ''camp'' - someone we perceive as sharing our world view - says something unexpected. (Hence the reverberations in industry and markets when BHP chief Marius Kloppers last year urged rapid action to put a price on carbon emissions.) In short, evidence from someone you identify with will sway your view; science - facts - won't.

Same as it ever was, maybe. But new media helps us contrive a self-affirming information bubble, an echo chamber in which only our own beliefs are broadcast back to us. Debate in the US on the Yale findings prompted the reflection that our instincts in this regard mean - as one political scientist observed - ''we are not well-adapted to our information age''.

The findings also confirm that for all our modernity, tribal leaders remain critical. Leaders of all persuasions - political, religious, industrial, social - have immense power in influencing responses to the most diabolical of problems.

In the foreword to a new book debunking scepticism of science - Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand - Oreskes argues that fear is the major driver of denial. ''Fear that our current way of life is unsustainable. Fear that addressing the issue will limit economic growth. Fear that if we accept government interventions in the market place … it will lead to a loss of personal freedom. Or maybe just plain old fear of change.''

As economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed, all great leaders share one common characteristic - ''the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time''.

This guest blog was written by Jo Chandler. It was first published in the Melbourne Age on Saturday 28th May 2011 and is re-printed here with the author's permission. Jo Chandler is a senior writer for the Age and the author of Feeling The Heat, which tracks climate field scientists.

 

Second Chance

Today President Barack Obama announced the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. After eluding capture for almost ten years, and following months of top-secret surveillance and detailed planning by the Pentagon, he was killed by a member of the US military's SEAL Team Six - with some reluctant assistance (or perhaps none at all) from the Pakistani government. Reaction to the news of Bin Laden’s death (at least in the West) appears to be one approaching almost total euphoria. That is understandable. For many people justice has at last been done. But it is not quite as simple as that.

Before we get too carried away we should take stock of a global system in which little has fundamentally altered. While the iconic value of Bin Laden’s death is self-evident it is by no means a strategic game-changer. In some respects it is irrelevant. Like the many-headed mythical Hydra of Greek mythology Al-Qaeda has spawned a global network of agile affiliate enterprises hell bent on disrupting lives and causing havoc wherever they can. While this ideologically networked group of fanatical offspring may still pledge symbolic allegiance to the Al-Qaeda “brand”, myriad smaller cells increasingly act autonomously, receiving nothing in terms of financial or logistical support from the parent organisation.

The death of Bin Laden may well provide an emotional setback for some of these terrorist groups and their interests. But to a great extent his messages and influence were already discredited, even in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Indeed the most radically anti-Western polemic (even from Muslim religious leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran) categorically rejected the Takfir doctrines pursued by Al-Qaeda’s conservative leaders years ago. Far more pertinent are the peaceful protests currently sweeping across the Arab world. These uprisings have shown young people everywhere that liberation from persecution and serfdom is in the hands of those who seek it. The so-called Arab Spring has made Bin Laden’s darkly doctrinaire views utterly irrelevant to all but a few hardened zealots.

The genesis of terrorism goes back centuries of course. It has been part of the human condition throughout recorded history. On September 11, 2001, however, human progress seemed to descend into an altogether darker void.

But as most of the Western world watched in horror at the scenes being played out on the East coast of the US a far deeper tragedy was unfolding – a tragedy which some of us are still trying to express and from which recovery is by no means certain. For the tragedy to which I refer is the folly of man’s inhumanity to man, the utter futility of conflict and the mindless calls for vengeance. This is the deeper tragedy, arising from our most primitive instincts, we must all ultimately confront.

The images of 9/11 are incised into the mind. Like the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, everyone has a story of where they were that fateful day. Yet now, when one chapter closes and we look with hope towards a future where we can all live together in peace, the real legacy of 9/11 hangs like a shadow over our civilisation.

Ten years ago Al-Qaeda's high profile figurehead provided the US administration with the pretext to commence its calamitous hostilities across the greater Middle East. Predictably Washington's wars provided terrorist outfits everywhere with new recruits and burgeoning support as well as prolonging a cycle of violence that appeared to know no end. Today, once again, Osama Bin Laden presents us with the pretext to think again - but to do things differently this time.

Fresh opportunities have emerged and we must seize the day. The choice is stark. We can persist in our bloody and humiliating way to continue prosecuting this so-called “war on terror” – a war without end, executed in a mood of compounding fear and desperation and from which the most sane among us accept it will be impossible to extract victory. Or we can reimagine our collective purpose and the relationships we most desire with our fellow human beings by celebrating the integral nature of what it means to be compassionate human beings.

If we set our minds to it we can envisage a far less violent and more tolerant future. For example we could enter constructive dialogue with those whose views run counter to our own, seeking to include and transcend differences, rather than waging war as an economic imperative and as a knee-jerk reaction to difference. We could build schools and hospitals rather than expand our arsenals. We could make innovative technologies and medicines available to those less fortunate than ourselves rather than continuing to deny them the most basic of life’s necessities.

I recognise that will take courage and a spirit of generosity that we will need to consciously nurture. But surely that is what leadership is all about? Besides there are far more serious, potentially catastrophic, failures we need to attend to with a similar level of passion and commitment: food and water shortages, climate change, pollution, declining oil reserves....

Of course to pursue peace rather than conflict is not solely our decision. Similar opportunities to think differently and to change direction have been afforded others, particularly those in countries like Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been ravaged by war. It is quite feasible, for example, that leaders of the Taliban may now be more receptive to negotiating some form of power-sharing arrangement in exchange for closing terrorist training camps and curtailing the use of their lands for the export of terror. It is equally possible that the focus of the powerful US industrial war machine will shift to Pakistan, especially given the level of support and protection Bin Laden possibly received from certain sectors of the Pakistani intelligence and military communities.

Whatever happens Bin Laden’s name, his aura and his perceived martyrdom will continue to resonate for a few years yet. In the long term, however, it is not the hunting down and slaying of one man that matters but rather the various autopoietic transitions taking place across Arab and Muslim societies. The most effective power is that wielded through peace. Ordinary people protesting peacefully against oppression and injustice will eventually close history’s page on Al-Qaeda’s particular brand of terror.

In the meantime we have a profoundly important role to play. We must do our utmost to ensure these transitions occur peacefully and compassionately, even if our own current “brand” of democracy is not the end result. Putting an end to the excessive waste, collective insanity and moral failure of endless conflict by eradicating the militarisation of democracy is the most important challenge facing us. If we cannot change our priorities there can be no hope for a brighter future. The war-mongering of old empires will continue to impede real progress by turning the world upside down.

Middle East Protests & Oil Addiction

Gasoline prices have been rising this winter in the US even though we are well outside the summer driving season with its traditionally highest price level. Among the reasons for today's higher gasoline and crude oil prices is the high demand for heating oil during this extra cold winter, as heating oil in some northern parts of the world is a life-and-death commodity. This can put some pressure on gasoline supplies as refineries might attempt to maximize heating oil output, although refining requires producing a constant balance of light, medium and heavy products, at fairly high utilization of capacity.

Crude oil prices have been moving toward the $100 per barrel mark. The actual price for crude and petroleum products is much higher in some nations due to subsidies (direct and hidden), keeping prices artificially low. But the official price of oil seems on the way to break the $147 / bbl record from July 2008.

Whether the emerging economic powerhouses China and India are the main reason for higher oil prices is academic, when the whole world is affected by developments in price and supply anywhere. The stability of countries such as Egypt and other Arab states has been proven illusory. When the right geopolitical event in the Persian Gulf (perhaps connected to the Tunisian, Egyptian and Yemeni trends now in play) interrupts oil supplies by as much as 10% or more of global demand, the effect on the oil market may well be as if Hubbert's peak oil bell curve became a cliff that we have already jumped off.

A revolution in Saudi Arabia has been my favorite example for years, in terms of illustrating what can spark a return to the 1970s' skyrocketing oil prices, panic buying and hoarding. As grocery shelves will be emptied in a few days when a major oil supply crunch hits, as the late Matt Simmons reminded us, what difference does it make how many billions of barrels of crude are really off Brazil's coast?

Now, when people didn't expect it but should have, we see that Arab peoples have indeed been chafing under dictatorship for decades. Arabs, as in most places, have been biding their time for liberation. Whether certain regions can soon attain it is another matter, when many have far outstripped their besieged ecosystems' carrying capacities. In Middle Eastern countries the water and soil situations are generally poor and getting worse. Food shortage and food riots can flow from ecological deterioration, especially as new weather patterns (or non-patterns) have been increasingly disruptive for agriculture.

This is one argument for activists in Arab lands to remember there is no liberation or equality on a dead planet. Although the Egyptian uprising or revolution is hundreds of miles removed from the Persian Gulf, where 18% of the world's total trade in crude its shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, a common spirit of rebellion has spread in the region. It can take a sharp anti-American or anti-corporate turn and thus affect oil exports to the U.S.

In Saudi Arabia where the monarchy is extremely repressive, demonstrators have dared come out of the woodwork after Tunisians sent their dictator packing. International emphasis on military security in the region has been on huge ships and the Persian Gulf itself, but numerous facilities on land in Arab countries and nearby nations are vulnerable to attack and closure. Also, the Suez Canal sees one million barrels of oil pass through each day from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean.

The number of separate but linked oil facilities, extent of damage, or days of closure do not have to conform to some arithmetic model for there to be a massive reaction in the world oil market. The perception of supply shortage, with real instances affecting deliveries, is what drives oil prices on the world market, much as the stock market sometimes has a herd mentality. So far we are talking about what most observers would consider a temporary oil supply disruption resulting in a price spike. However, if the disruption and spike are strong enough, severe effects can shut down much of the global economy and simultaneously stop much local activity.

Petrocollapse - the exacerbated and lasting failure of the world oil market to meet demand, and the paralysis and collapse of most of the economy's infrastructure relying on petroleum - does not need to follow a formula or specific pattern of oil industry breakdown or a certain depletion schedule of oil reserves. We will only be sure when petrocollapse hits. Because peak oil has been attained, we can say that the petrocollapse process has begun and just needs a catalyst to tip the whole economy and trigger famine on a scale as large as some future climate disaster.

I don't believe the "Transition Town" or less-known "Stair-case slow collapse/catabolic" viewpoints take into account adequately the extreme vulnerability of and to the oil market. The Transition Town and Stair-case adherents' views, hopes, dreams and assumptions may actually refer to social change from civilization collapse, when they may think they are referring to the post-peak oil downslope, or vice versa. But this may make no difference as events may accelerate, and collapse and die-off throw theory and wishes out the window.

In my oil analysis career at Lundberg Survey, we accurately predicted the Second Oil Shock based on our finding that in March 1979 there would be a 9% shortfall of gasoline for U.S. demand. It was a time of billions fewer humans and rising oil production (extraction). The world also seemed poised to follow through with stringent conservation and development of alternative fuels. After Jimmy Carter's failure to catch fire with those strategies, energy efficiency actually reversed direction with the SUV phenomenon. But any slight per capita gains, had they been consistently in the right direction for conservation, are offset anyway by growth, while efficiencies paradoxically end up adding to more consumption.

Since 1979, aggregate energy demand has not been tamed in the least, and growth of the global oil infrastructure has dangerously proliferated. Peak oil extraction happened worldwide around 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, although "peak" is not a single year due to the advent of nonconventional crudes and biofuels over time. Peak oil is the main reason we are living in very different "oil times" since 1979: growth of crude supply has turned a corner, starting downward. Compared to past years, even conventional crude (light, sweet, easily extracted) - besides unconventional and expensive, extra-polluting oil replacements - is far more expensive to exploit, with lower net energy obtained for newer fields.

Petrocollapse will not be limited to the U.S., as we shall see when dominoes fall. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. The popular faith in renewable and other alternative fuels to "save us" from dwindling oil reserves or from a loss of Middle Eastern or OPEC oil ought to be shattered prior to the rude and crude awakening from a significant supply crunch. The alternatives are not ready on a large scale, and generally only provide electricity rather than liquid fuels or petrochemicals or other materials. We will only wake up en masse when chaos starts to rapidly unfold - as if it hasn't already.

One is constantly cautioned to never conclude on a sour note. So I will point to the silver lining of collapse as a liberator far more fundamental than regime change. This is because basic relationships in society will be radically altered by extreme lifestyle change brought about by the loss of petroleum and by having to painfully face the recent separation from natural cycles that modern technological societies have achieved.

The U.S. is still thought to be the richest country in the world, but increasingly this fact requires the caveat of a greater and greater gap between the rich and poor. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the US is ranked as the 42nd most unequal country in the world. In contrast, Tunisia is far better off, ranked the 62nd most unequal country. Yemen is ranked 76th most unequal. And Egypt is ranked as the 90th most unequal country! And inequality in the U.S. has soared in the last couple of years.

The New York Times published on 31 January that in Egypt "long-simmering resentments have burst into open class warfare." As poor as the Arab peoples are who are rioting and replacing regimes, and as important as this is for Arabs and all people under oppression, it is even more urgent for US citizens to focus on questioning their own circumstances vis-a-vis petroleum dependence.

Fossil fuels do not make us safer or healthier. Besides getting soft from sitting in our cars, before the TV and under the influence of many pharmaceutical drugs made from fossil fuels, US citizens seem to still want to believe all is more or less well. As to energy, many still believe "they will think of something." But some of us would rather "Imagine" and create now a radically more liberating and equitable world and way of living, as John Lennon did with his song of that name.

This article was written by Jan Lundberg and was first published in Alternet on 1st January 2011. It is reprinted here with Jan's permission. Jan is founder of Culture Change and was an oil industry analyst at Lundberg Survey before joining the grassroots environmental movement in 1988.

Terrifying Revelations

"Try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them."
                                                                        Julian Assange, 2007

Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of US leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America (from Indochina to Iran to Iraq) do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "un-American" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit US Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home.

These two issues became officially linked for the first time when former US Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal explicitly stated that the murder of civilians increases rather than decreases the numbers of those committed to killing Americans, and actually implemented policies, since reversed by General Petraeus, to reduce US murder of civilians. McChrystal said that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." By so doing he made it clear that killing civilians is not only a moral and war crimes issue but, in today's interdependent world, also threatens US national security.

As important as is the issue of free speech, it is the question of whether the US Executive is in fact protecting the American people through its mass murder abroad that really lies at the heart of the Wikileaks controversy. Executive Branch officials justify persecuting and threatening to murder Assange on the grounds that he has damaged US "national security." If McChrystal is right, however, it is the past decade of US Executive mass murder in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, now revealed beyond any doubt by Wikileaks, that is the real threat to US national security.

The chilling fact is this: whether you believe that September 11th 2001 was due to incomprehensible fanaticism or genuine grievances, it seems likely that US leaders’ murder of countless Muslims since 2001 will cause the next 9/11 should, God forbid, it occur. The recent suicide-bomber in Sweden who came perilously close to succeeding taped a message saying "so will your children, daughters, brothers, and sisters die, like our brothers, sisters, and children die." Similar sentiments were voiced by the Times Square bomber and it is likely that those responsible for future American deaths will also be motivated by revenge for the hundreds of thousands of Muslims for whose deaths US leaders are responsible since 2001.

This is not, of course, to justify such attacks. Any attacks on civilians, whether by the Taliban or General Petraeus, are totally unjustified and crimes of war. But if the issue is how best to enhance US national security, it is critical to rationally discuss the most prudent and sensible means of preventing further attacks, which in this case is to stop creating huge numbers of people who want to kill Americans. If General McChrystal is correct, every American should tremble at the long-term danger to America caused by the last decade of US war-making in the Muslim world. If only 1/100th of 1 per cent of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are moved to want to attack America because of America's post-9/11 killing of Muslim civilians, for example, the US Executive will have created a pool of 160,000 Muslims devoted to murdering Americans.

Nothing is more emblematic of the service Assange is doing Americans than the July 25the New York Times headline announcing its publication of the Wikileaks Afghan War Logs: "View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal Of War In Afghanistan."

The New York Times thus not only acknowledged that Wikileaks had supplied Americans with vital information about the war that its own government was denying them, but that this information had not been provided by the US mass media. If it had been doing its job, after all, America’s “newspaper of record” not Wikileaks would have long ago revealed that the Afghan war was "bleaker than official portrayal of the war." The Guardian newspaper's headline on the same day drove the point home: "Massive Leak Of Secret Files Exposes Truth Of Occupation," – i.e. the truth as opposed to US Executive lies.

These Afghan War Logs, like the Iraqi war logs after them, and much material in Wikileaks' recent release of diplomatic cables, reveal above all that US Executive war-making is marked by massive deception of the American people - particularly lying about (i) the enormous civilian casualties the US is causing and (ii) its claim to be pursuing a "counter-insurgency strategy" designed to install a democratic Afghan government. The Times and Guardian stories describe how these official US documents reveal constant US Executive Branch lying to the American people.

US MURDER OF CIVILIANS: "A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents," (The Guardian) "Incident by incident, the reports resemble a police blotter of the myriad ways Afghan civilians were killed - not just in airstrikes but in ones and twos - in shootings on the roads or in the villages, in misunderstandings or in a cross-fire, or in chaotic moments when Afghan drivers ventured too close to convoys and checkpoints". (New York Times) "The NATO coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed "black" unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial… The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path." (The Guardian)

REGULAR COVERUPS OF US CIVILIAN MURDER: "The dead, the reports repeatedly indicate, were not suicide bombers or insurgents, and many of the cases were not reported to the public at the time." (New York Times) "War logs show how marines gave cleaned up accounts of an incident in which they killed 19 civilians… There would be no punishment." (The Guardian) "The logs detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a `high-value individual' was hiding, after `ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area'. A senior US commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died." (The Guardian)

US AND A CORRUPT AFGHAN GOVERNMENT ARE ALIENATING AFGHAN CIVILIANS AND LOSING THE WAR: "The documents illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001... The reports paint a disheartening picture of the Afghan police (who) are often described as distrusted, even loathed, by Afghan civilians. The reports recount episodes of police brutality, corruption petty and large, extortion and kidnapping... The toll of the war, reflected in mounting civilian casualties, left the Americans seeking cooperation and support from an Afghan population that grew steadily more exhausted, resentful, fearful and alienated... The expanding (US) special operations have stoked particular resentment among Afghans - for their lack of coordination with local forces, the civilian casualties they frequently inflicted and the lack of the accountability." (New York Times)

When the Iraqi war logs were published 3 months later, they revealed even more shocking information, particularly that US soldiers had handed over Iraqi civilians to Iraqi police, knowing they would be hideously tortured employing electric drills, acid and other devices before being savagely murdered. Ellen Knickmeyer, the Washington Post Bureau chief in Baghdad in 2006, wrote that these revelations meant that US officials had been lying daily to the US media, and American people, by saying they were not aware of this mass murder. U. S. leaders also lied constantly in claiming they were not tracking civilian casualties, when in fact they were. Since international law made US leaders responsible for providing law and order in occupied Iraq, these Wiklileaks cables thus also revealed that US leaders bear a major responsibility for these war crimes, among the worst since the end of WWII.

Both the Wikileaks Iraqi and Afghan War Logs, in short, have revealed that the entire US Executive is a "vast lying machine", as journalist David Halberstam described the US military in his affidavit for the CBS vs. Westmoreland trial. It must be understood that “truth” vs. “lies” is not even an operational category within the Executive Branch or military. The purpose of communicating with the public is not to provide them with truthful information but rather to advance “the mission”. People who communicate with the public obtain their jobs and are promoted on the basis of their ability to mislead, deceive, “spin” and lie. There is no recorded case where Executive Branch officials have been rewarded for telling the truth to the American people, and many where they have been punished or lost their jobs for doing so. And nothing so epitomizes the degradation of democracy in America that the fact the public expects Executive Branch officials to lie to them, and that mass media journalists even betray their profession by defending Executive secrecy and excoriating those who reveal their lies like Julian Assange.

It is thus impossible to overstate the importance of the Wikileaks documentation of these lies to the American people. When a journalist reports a US government misdeed, government officials automatically deny it and many Americans are unsure whom to believe. But Wikileaks has revealed official government documents that prove US leaders’ lying and commission of crimes of war. The fact that the US has covered up its mass murder of civilians, and that this is contributing to its losing the war, is thus no longer open to serious question. The callous and careerist politicians and journalists who daily ignore US mass murder, while calling for Assange's arrest or execution, shame themselves, their children, and their profession by their indifference to non-American human suffering and obsequious toadying to illegitimate Executive power.

And the Wikileaks documents reveal something even more important: the entirely bogus nature of US claims that Assange has damaged US "national security", e.g. by revealing information that could help the “enemy.” It is obvious that the "enemy" knows whether those murdered by the US are civilians. The US Executive clearly claims it is only killing “insurgents” to keep its murder of civilians a secret from the American people, fearing it would face protests that could tie its hands if it became known. The Wikileaks documents, though they date from 2009 and before, also shed important light on what is occurring today under General David Petraeus.

It is important to remember, after all, that the Wikileaks controversy is not primarily about the past or abstract legal issues, but what is happening to actual human beings today. As you read these words countless Afghan and Pakistani villagers are huddling in their homes, terrorized by US war-making, as General Petraeus's brutal offensive into southern Afghanistan, met by an increase in the Taliban's resort to roadside bombs and assassination, has caused the Red Cross to issue an unusual alarm saying that conditions are at their worst for Afghan civilians in 30 years, i.e. as bad as during the Russian invasion. A Canadian press report indicates that Kandahar's main hospital is overflowing with civilian casualties, and that "on some days, the floor is red with blood".

Petraeus has tripled air strikes, brought in 9,000 US assassins who are conducting round-the-clock murder, and introduced an unprecedented number of night-time raids recalling Nazi movies from the 1940s - as screaming US soldiers break into people's homes, terrorize women and children, and kill, wound, torture or imprison men indefinitely without a trial or any chance to prove their innocence. Even the US-installed Afghan President Hamid Karzai is so appalled that he has begged the US to curtail its airstrikes and night raids, saying, “the raiding homes at night. Terrible. Terrible. A serious cause of the Afghan people's disenchantment with NATO and with the Afghan government… How can you measure the consequences of it in terms of the loss of life of children and women because you have captured Talib A. And who is this Talib A? Is he so important to have 10 more people killed, civilians? Who determines that?”

Petraeus has firmly refused to end what this Afghan leader describes as the General’s responsibility for civilian murder, making a further mockery of his claim to be bringing “democracy” to Afghanistan. Particularly significant are the many first-person reports in the Wikileaks Afghan War Logs of US murder of innocent civilians at US checkpoints - which flesh out McChrystal's March 2010 admission that "we have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

For this raises a basic question about Petraeus's vast escalation of US airstrikes. If US forces have murdered countless innocent civilians at checkpoints, where they can at least see those they are killing face-to-face, how many more innocent civilians is Petraeus killing from the air, in bombing raids where those below can barely be seen?

And these Wikileaks documents also shed important light on how Petraeus's massive escalation into both southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has dramatically escalated both US drone and ground assassination, is weakening rather than strengthening long-term US national security. Just as the Taliban is far stronger today after the US has wasted $300 billion and thousands of American lives over the last 10 years, Petraeus's tactics are strengthening not weakening America's enemies over the long run. If he murders enough people in southern Afghanistan, the General may be able to claim some short-term successes there. But there is no serious question that his tactics are sowing a long-term whirlwind which not only threatens the stability of the Afghan and Pakistani governments, but pose a long-term threat to Americans at home.

A UN map just published by the Wall Street Journal has revealed that the Taliban, using classic guerrilla tactics, has moved into northern and western Afghanistan as Petraeus has moved south, giving them control of more territory than ever. “Internal United Nations maps show a marked deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan during this year's fighting season, countering the Obama administration's optimistic assessments of military progress since the surge of additional American forces began a year ago”, the Journal reported.

The New York Times has reported how various insurgent groups in Pakistan have responded to Petraeus's tactics by coordinating and cooperating for the first time, vastly increasing the threat they pose to the Pakistani state. It is also obvious that Petraeus cannot possible]y kill more "insurgents" than he is creating if he continues to provoke the 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the Afghanistan Pakistan border to want to fight America. The population of North and South Vietnam combined during the Vietnam war was only 31 million, after all, and provided a manpower pool large enough to outlast 500,000 Americans.

In the end, however, the most profound questions for Americans raised by the Wikileaks documents go far beyond the Muslim world. If we can free our minds of a lifetime of official propaganda identifying the US Executive with the American people, the evidence is overwhelming that in foreign and military policy the US Executive Branch is an undemocratic institution that does not represent its own citizens. It operates largely independent of Congress, the Judiciary or a mass media which has largely become an arm of Executive power, broadcasting its lies far more often than it exposes them.

A few months before President Obama's December 2009 decision to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, for example, only 24 per cent of Americans wanted to send more and 43 per cent wanted to decrease the number. Their wishes were ignored, as are the opinions of Americans today who, by a margin of 63 to 32, oppose US war-making in Afghanistan. And, Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” revealed, even the President is largely a figurehead when it comes to Executive war-making.

Woodward documents how the military thwarted Obama’s clear desire to begin a major pullout from Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. Last month, Obama was humiliated by being forced to endorse a hypothetical 2014 pullout date.

Most Americans would agree with the statement in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." But the governed can only give their consent if they are informed as to what they are agreeing to. This is obvious in our daily life. I cannot be said to have "consented" to buy your laptop if you deceived me by not telling me it was broken. One of our most basic legal principles is that a contract is null and void if it was obtained under false pretences. By revealing massive US Executive deceit Wikileaks has thus revealed that it does not legitimately represent the American people.

These Wikileaks documents thus raise the most fundamental question citizens can ask themselves: to what extent to citizens of a democracy owe their allegiance to autocratic leaders who obtain the consent of their citizens through massive duplicity? And to what extent can they trust either their judgement or their decency?

Americans may find themselves increasingly pondering such questions in coming years, as economic decline and future terrorist attacks cause US elites to bring home the authoritarian mindset that has caused so much damage abroad. It seems certain that American democracy will face greater challenges than at any time since the country's founding.

But that is a long-term question. The key question now is whether Americans can hear the sound of suffering their leaders are causing abroad, as at this very moment innocent men, women and children are being murdered and maimed in what the Red Cross describes as the greatest civilian carnage since the Russians invaded 30 years ago. Julian Assange should be applauded not persecuted for hearing the sound of their suffering. Do we?

This post first appeared in Alternet. It was written by Fred Branfman and is reprinted here with the author’s kind permission. Fred exposed the US Executive's Secret Air War in Laos, which illegally and savagely murdered tens of thousands of innocent Laotian peasants. He has written frequently on Executive war-making for Alternet in recent years. See www.trulyalive.org for more information on Fred’s activities.

Time to Call Our Bluff

An invitation to withdraw our consent from current economic leadership and do what needs to be done

The news is filled with stories of nations on the edge of economic collapse, going with a begging bowl to the financial markets, European Union and International Monetary Foundation for billions of dollars of “rescue package”. Should the markets or institutions be gracious enough to lend them the money (which must be repaid with significant interest), the countries must introduce a package of “austerity measures” to get their economy “back on track”. To please the High Lords of the global economy, funding is cut to public services, people are made unemployed, subsidies for the environment and international development are slashed – all in the name of “getting our economy back on track”.

But what are we actually talking about here? Do we need to go along lemming-like with the commands of the current economic priesthood? Or could we start questioning the consensus reality, testing its integrity and authenticity, seeing if the emperor really has any clothes?

Although it may seem and feel like an unthinkable course, it is my belief that if we did choose to withdraw our consent and asked ourselves what we really needed, the world would not fall apart around us, our lifestyles would not plummet to the depths of a depression. The good people of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others “in need” would know exactly what they needed to do to ensure that their societies functioned well, people who needed care were cared for, the natural environment on which we depend was looked after properly, and that what we really needed to provide in terms of goods and services was provided in a way that nurtured people and planet. We have abdicated our responsibility for the running of our household (economy from the Greek oikos, a house and nomos, a law) to people educated in abstract mathematical models that have become increasingly detached from the realities of people’s lives. It is time to reclaim that responsibility and break the consensus trance.

Imagine…

Imagine what would happen if instead of going along blindly with the demands of our outdated agreements and concepts of how we should run our households, communities and countries, our leaders were simply to refuse. The people and governments of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and others simply said “No. We don’t want your money and we don’t want your conditions.” Before we go any further, just feel for yourself what that would feel like... When I imagine that, I feel tension first, but then an enormous relaxation and sense of groundedness in my body.

So here we are. We stand in our own power. We have a current situation that by the old paradigm looks like our economy and country are going down the plughole. But what if we were to refuse to judge the beauty of our society, culture and people any more by those criteria? What if we were to look at the real value of the contributions people make in their daily activities, the value that our creativity, dedication and innovation adds to people’s well-being and our planet’s vitality? What if we were to decide to stop doing stuff that clearly is not aligned with the best of who we are and to start doing things that are truly meaningful and gainful for the demands of our times?

Would this mean the end of our civilisation? Would this mean world war? Would this mean armageddon? Of course not! It would simply mean that we simply do what needs to be done, regardless of the economic rules that most of our current leadership say we should follow (simply because they see no other option). In fact, it is my belief that it is precisely the continued enforcement of our outdated beliefs about economics and society that will plunge us into greater darkness and despair.  We just need to accept that times have changed, the solutions and models we created to solve problems of the past don’t work any more, we need to let them go, look again at who we are, and start to re-organise.

One step at a time...

So, I hear voices crying, where is the big plan? If we don’t have a big plan of how to organise everything differently, how can we let go of the old? Well, maybe we don’t need a big plan. Maybe we just need to continually connect to reality as it is in the present moment, take decisions that seem workable for the current reality, address new tensions one at a time as they arise, and dynamically steer our way into the future.

In fact, if you study the science of non-linear transitions (and we happen to be in one right now), there is no other way to do it. From the old paradigm that we are still immersed in, even as we sense its demise in every cell of our being, we simply cannot see the future that will emerge out of this transition. The best we can do is stay as close to present reality as possible, keep sensing into the general direction we want to go, listen deeply to what resonates and what creates tension, act to the best of our ability, prototype and learn, while letting go of any attachment to pre-conceived outcomes.

These unstable yet hugely fertile times require a very different approach to organisation and leadership. Do we know how to do this? Yes, small organisations and civil society initiatives have been experimenting with this for years. As is the nature of these kind of transitions, we now need to look to the fringes, where people have broken free of the old consensus reality, find the things that are working, experiment with them ourselves and keep learning – step by small step.

It is much simpler that we think. Our highly intellectual civilisation has created complex models around the basic realities of exchanging value, rooted in ways of seeing the world that believe in a reality of strident individualism, a world made up of lots of separate parts and an over-glorification of the mind and the measurable, at the expense of the heart and the immeasureable. Yet biologists and physicists increasingly describe a reality of interconnectedness, collaboration and mutual care.

Let us let go of all the models and theories that we hold of how people should be organised, look closely at ourselves and those around us, ask ourselves what really needs to be done, and start, one step at a time, to re-organise ourselves in a way that honours the best of what it is to be human, that assumes a fundamental interconnectedness with the rest of life around us and that releases that mysterious spirit inside us we call Life. Can we do it? Of course, it is simply who we are.

This blog was written by Peter Merry who is founder and Chair of the Center for Human Emergence in the Netherlands (www.humanemergence.nl) and Director of the new Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence. He is a founding partner of Engage!, a fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology and a member of the faculty of Wisdom University Europe.