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Doing Democracy by Bill Moyer
Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: New Society Publishers; 1 edition (August 1, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0865714185 ISBN-13: 978-0865714182
Link to Amazon Books    Link to New Society Publishers

The Great Turning by David Korten
Hardcover: 402 pages Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (April 7, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1887208070 ISBN-13: 978-1887208079
Link to Amazon Books    Link to Berret-Koehler Publishers

The Limits to Growth - The 30 Year Update by Denis Meadows and Team
Paperback: 368 pages  Publisher: Chelsea Green (June 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 193149858X  ISBN-13: 978-1931498586
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Collapse by Jared Diamond
Hardcover: 592 pages  Publisher: Viking Adult Books (Dec. 29, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN: 9780670033379
Link to Amazon Books    Link to Penguin Group

Bill Moyer -- Doing Democracy

MYTH -- The international system of growth and prosperity will end poverty, hunger, disease and create political democracies around the world.

REALITY- Instead of being helped by the modern era's corporate globalized system, the majority of people in Third World countries experience increasing poverty, hunger, disruption of traditional culture, loss of land, unemployment, oppressive or dictatorial governments and warfare. While decades of record-setting worldwide economic growth has created tens of millions more middle and upper-class consumers, it has produced even more poor people. The capitalist market system inherently continues to distribute most of the benefits of growth to the affluent minority and most of its costs to the poor majority. Consequently, the growth of the market economy has produced a widening gap between rich and poor, both within nations and between the already rich and poor nations, as well as creating additional environmental devastation.

Additionally, the foreign aid programs that purported to help the poor in the "developing" nations have created mountainous debt and dependency relationships, and enable the imposition of "structural adjustments: that benefit international corporations and investors. Both of these have also forced the curtailment of social services and other benefits to the poor, thereby increasing the poverty and suffering of the majority. This strategy does not work for the poor even in the United States, the world's leader in economic growth and prosperity, where the top 1 percent of the population owns as much wealth as the bottom 95 percent, and where 10 to 15 percent of the population still lives in poverty.

MYTH - Everyone can live as Western levels of consumption. The advocates of world-wide globalization raise up the ultimate vision of a future time when the rising tide of continuous economic growth and prosperity will have lifted all "developing" boats.

REALITY - It is not only impossible to achieve the promised growth and prosperity for the world's poor, but it is even impossible to sustain the current level of growth and prosperity because it is destroying our environmental life support systems, depleting natural resources, and leading to ecological disasters and economic collapse. These problems exist today, just when the nations with the majority of the world's people - China, India, the former Soviet states, and many third World countries - have adopted concerted policies to start participating fully in the era of economic growth and prosperity and achieve the goal of becoming developed. This is a flawed dream. A research project that measured the effect of humanity's "ecological footprint" reports that it would take from five to six Earths to bring everyone up to the level of today's U.S. economy. The researchers conclude that the process of developing more nations will simply speed up the current race to ecocide.

Jared Diamond - One-liner Objections from Collapse

The environment has to be balanced against the economy -- This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the long run and often in the short run as well. In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed.

Technology will solve our problems - Underlying this expression of faith is the implicit assumption that, from tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to solve existing problems and will cease to create new problems. Those with such faith also assume that the new technologies now under discussion will succeed, and that they will do so quickly enough to make a big difference soon. But actual experience is the opposite of this assumed track record. Some new technologies succeed, while others don't. Those that do succeed typically take a few decades to develop and phase in widely. Also, new technologies can create unanticipated new problems. … All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. (ie. automobiles and power generation by cheap fossil fuels, CFC's)

If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other resource meeting the same need - For example switching to renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, may solve the energy crisis. These take time to implement, and there may be issues that the substitution will meet the need satisfactorily. This approach distracts attention from all the obvious measures needed right now to decrease driving and to decrease consumption by fossil fuel generating plants.

There isn't a food problem; there is already enough food; we only need to solve the transportation problem of distributing food to places that need it - First world citizens have shown no interest in paying on a regular basis (via their tax dollars that support foreign aid and subsidies to farmers) to feed billions of third World citizens on a chronic basis. If that did happen but without effective overseas family planning programs, which the U.S. government opposes on principle, the result would just be Malthus's dilemma, i.e. an increase in population proportional to the increase in available food. Population increase and Malthus's dilemma also explain why starvation is still widespread in the world.

As measured by commonsense indicators such as human lifespan, health and wealth (GNP) conditions have actually been getting better for many decades - Billions of Third World citizens, constituting about 80% of the world's population still live in poverty, near or below the starvation level. The prosperity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital (non-renewable energy sources, fish stocks, topsoil, forests, etc.) . We are depleting our capital stock, not living off the interest. It makes no sense to be content with our present comfort when it is clear that we are currently on a non-sustainable course.

Look how many times in the past gloom-and-doom predictions of fear mongering environmentalists have proved wrong. Why should we believe them this time? - Some have been wrong, but many have been right. Sure, there will be some false alarms, but for how critical many problems have become, it is better to err on the side of conservation. (Better safe then sorry). Also, making a small adjustment when the problem is small makes more sense than letting the problem grow, ultimately costing several times more to resolve. (A stitch in time saves nine)

The world can accommodate human population growth indefinitely. The more people, the better, because more people mean more inventions and ultimately more wealth - It is a fact that more people and a higher population growth rate mean more poverty, not more wealth.

Environmental concerns are a luxury affordable just by affluent First World yuppies, who have no business telling desperate Third World citizens what they should be doing - People in the Third World know how they are being harmed by population growth, deforestation, overfishing and other problems. They know it because they immediately pay the penalty, in forms such as loss of free timber for their houses, massive soil erosion and the inability to afford clothes, books and school fees for their children. The reason the forest behind their village is nevertheless being logged is usually either that a corrupt government has ordered it logged over their often violent protests, or else they signed a logging lease with great reluctance because they saw no other way to get the money needed next year for their children. Often poor families want contraception, but they can't afford or obtain them, due in part to the refusal of the U.S. government to fund family planning in its foreign aid programs.

Also, rich people do not secure the their own interests and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.

Our totally unsustainable consumption means that the First World could not continue for long on its present course, even if the Third World didn't exist and weren't trying to catch up to us.

If those environmental problems become desperate, it wil be at some time far off in the future, after I die, and I can't take them seriously - In fact, at current rates most or all of the dozen major set of environmental problems will become acute within the lifetime of young adults now alive. Most of us who have children consider the securing of our children's future as the highest priority to which to devote our time and our money. We pay for their education and food and clothes, make wills and buy life insurance all with the goal of helping them to enjoy the good life 50 years from now. It makes no sense for us to undermine the world in which our children will be living 50 years from now.

There are big differences between modern societies and those past societies that collapsed, so we can't straightforwardly apply lessons from the past - There are far more people alive today, packing far more potent technology that impacts the environment than in the past. The risks are even greater today because we have over 6 billion people using much more productive technology (can harvest fish, forests, oil, minerals faster) and destructive technology (nuclear bombs). Today, our most environmentally stressed and over-populated countries are the world's most troubled spots - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Rwanda, Somalia. Countries that are environmentally stressed, overpopulated or both become at risk of getting politically stressed, and of their governments collapsing. The people blame their governments, they fight each other over land (and soon, water), They kill each other. They start civil wars. They figure they have nothing to loose, so they become terrorists, or support terrorism. The result can be genocides like in Rwanda, Burundi, etc. Rapid population growth, a high percentage of unemployed teens and 20's without job prospects and ripe for recruitment into militias. Those pressures create conflicts over shortages of land (Rwanda), water, forests, fish, oil and minerals. They create not only chronic internal conflict, but also emigration of refugees and wars between countries when authoritarian regimes attack neighboring countries in order to divert popular attention from internal stresses.

The problems of all these environmentally devastated, overpopulated, distant countries become our own problems because of globalization. Societies today are so interconnected that the risk we face is of a worldwide decline. (This has happened in the currency markets, where a decline in a small country currency can set off a chain of events , i.e. Thai baht decline led to Asian currency crisis.)

D. Meadows and Team -- Limits to Growth - 30 Year Update

Not - Change is sacrifice, and it should be avoided
But - Change is a challenge, and it is necessary

Not - Stopping growth will lock the poor in poverty
But - It is the avarice and indifference of the rich that lock the poor into poverty. The poor need new attitudes among the rich; then there will be growth specifically geared to serve their needs.

Not - Everyone should be brought up to the material level of the richest countries.
But - There is no possibility of raising material consumption levels for everyone to the levels now enjoyed by the rich. Everyone should have their fundamental material needs satisfied. Material needs beyond this level should be satisfied only if it is possible, for all, within a sustainable ecological footprint.

Not - All growth is good, without question, discrimination or investigation
Not - All growth is bad
But - What is needed is not growth, but development. Insofar as development requires physical expansion, it should be equitable, affordable, and sustainable, with all real costs counted.

Not - Technology will solve all problems
Not - Technology does nothing but create problems
But - We need to encourage technologies that will reduce the ecological footprint, increase efficiency, enhance resources, improve signals, and end material deprivation.
And - We must approach our problems as human beings and bring more to bear on them than just technology.

Not - The market system will automatically bring us the future we want
But - We must decide for ourselves what future we want. Then we can use the market system along with many other organizational devices to achieve it.

Not - Industry is the cause of all problems, or the cure
Nor - Government is the cause or cure
Nor - Environmentalists are the cause or the cure
Nor - Any other group (ie. economists) is the cause or the cure
But - All people and institutions play their role within the large systems structure. In a system that is structured for overshoot (expansionism), all players deliberately or inadvertently contribute to that overshoot. In a system that is structures for sustainability, industries, governments, environmentalists and most especially economists will play essential roles in contributing to sustainability.

Not - Unrelieved pessimism
Not - Sappy optimism
But - The resolve to tell the truth about both the successes and failures of the present and the potentials and obstacles in the future.
And above all - The courage to admit and bear the pain of the present, while keeping a steady eye on a vision of a better future.

Not - The World3 model, or any other model is wrong
But - All models, including the ones in our heads, are a little right, much too simple and mostly wrong. How do we proceed in such a way as to test our models and learn where they are right and wrong? How do we speak to each other as fellow modelers with an appropriate mixture of skepticism and respect? How do we stop playing right-wrong games with each other and start designing right-wrong tests for our models against the real world?


David Korten -- The Great Turning

We hear the powerholders stories echoed so often is so many different contexts that we come simply to accept them as statements of reality. The narratives become prisons of the mind that confine us to the lower orders of consciousness and possibility. To liberate ourselves we must first recognize these narratives for what they are.

Imperial Prosperity Story - Stories that affirm the importance and legitimate the privilege of the owning class. "The more the wealthy investor class can invest, the faster the economy grows and the faster the lives of all improve. To achieve prosperity and end poverty, we must free the wealthy from taxes, regulation and trade barriers; sell off public assets and services to private investors and eliminate the disincentive of public welfare programs. Global integration, market deregulation and privatization are inexorable and beneficial historical forces that advance the wealth-creation process. Economic globalization is inevitable, there is no alternative, and resistance is futile. It is the mission of the Bretton Woods institutions - the World Bank, the IMF and WTO to facilitate the orderly advancement of these processes. (The Washington Consensus - or neoliberalism)"

The Reality - Assumes that prosperity can be measured solely by goods and services available for purchase in the marketplace. It takes no account of many of the essentials of a healthy life, such as clean air and water, mutual trust, job security, safe neighborhoods, etc. that unregulated markets cannot provide. The unregulated market has a persistent bias for financial values over life values, short-term private profits over long term public good, inequality over equality, and rich people over poor people. It ignores claims that these policies actually destroy wealth, take from the poor to give to the rich and accelerate environmental destruction.

To work efficiently, markets require impartially enforced rules to assure honest dealing, limit monopoly power, place the costs of pollution on the polluter, secure the health and safety of workers and maintain a living wage. It ignores progressive voices calling for the redistribution of existing wealth to help the poor and save the environment. Stories of how we could create new wealth in environmentally sustainable way are ill formed and rarely communicated in the corporate-controlled media.

Imperial Security Story - A military and police establishment must be maintained sufficient to secure the system against dissent and rebellion. This story centers on the cultivation of FEAR. The story goes like this; "We face evil enemies who hate us for our freedoms (not true) and our righteousness and who seek to destroy us with weapons of mass destruction. We must have strong leaders who will use the full force of the police and military power of the state in preemptive action to destroy them before they can do us harm. The war against evil is perpetual; war is the natural state of humankind. Peace and order prevail only when imposed by the military power of a righteous nation. It is the responsibility of such nations to bring peace, liberty and prosperity to the world by eliminating evil rulers and bringing democracy and free markets to oppressed peoples. There can be no compromise in the war against evil. Those who do not stand with us stand with evil and we must deal with them accordingly. Imperials portray progressives as traitors who hate America, side with the terrorists and criminals, and pose a security threat. (An old imperial story)

The Reality - This story draws attention away from the economic injustice and justifies the suppression of all forms of dissent to protect the imperial status quo. The emphasis on loyalty and obedience to a strong ruler minimizes the role of responsible citizenship and the essential role of the citizen in holding those in positions of power publicly accountable for their actions. It draws attention from the threats of climate change, growing scarcity of freshwater, the consequences of peak oil and skyrocketing trade deficits. Terrorists hate the U.S. because of the frequent use of economic and military power to arbitrarily oppress and humiliate other nations and peoples. This approach undermines the system of international cooperation needed to identify and bring actual terrorists to justice, squanders military resources in no-win conflicts, and swells the ranks of terrorist organizations with rage-filled recruits.

The Imperial Biblical Meaning Story - Supports creationism. It claims biblical scripture as its source of authority. Yet it presents an interpretation of scripture that dishonors the life and teaching of Jesus, who chose a life of poverty, urged compassion for all people and preached a gospel of peace and justice that challenged the defining premises of Empire. Most religions have their equivalent extremists who twist the teachings of their scripture to support programs of domination, exploitation and violence wholly contrary to the messages of love and compassion that are foundational to every major religion.

Much of the violence in the world is neither the work of a righteous God nor some law of nature. Rather, the violence is a self-fulfilling prophecy of cultures based on imperial stories that legitimate injustice.

Once the debate is framed in terms of what will best drive economic growth in the GDP (answer: more growth), or what measures will most effectively protect us from evildoers (answer: more military and police) the debate is effectively "closed" and it is simply a matter of working out the details. Whatever policies are forthcoming will serve to further the concentration of power in elite hands.

As these stories are propagated by intellectuals, think tank spokespersons, politicians and religious figures, corporate-controlled media amplifies their voices far out of proportion to their numbers in the population - and sway the impressions/beliefs of swing voters. As these stories become embedded in culture, they systematically diminish our collective sense of human possibility, undermine our commitment to public interest politics, and limit political debate to choices that strengthen the dominator relations of Empire. Individually and collectively these stories legitimate imperial rule, deny our humanity and lead to the material and spiritual impoverishment of human societies.