Antler Up
Submitted by cfm on Mon, 2009-01-26 02:41.
Never so many broken windows in town, the police say. The glass people are three weeks out. The guy who broke the window is standing there patiently, waiting for the police to take him in for an overnight. Room and board. He's cold. Snowflakes dotting melting on his jacket. Snowflakes spitting wetting his feet.
Crow reminds me again. That "The Fed will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability." That the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement in Washington. "Weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time." [1]
| From the thrice-bent branch of an elm in my yard, Crow shadows me a daily widdershins swoop at the door. He'd flown over hot Three Mile Island well in advance of the Presidential helicopter. That during the reign of Jimmy Carter of Earth. A smoky moult and he refeathered like a sprung umbrella. He flew north to watch my farm. Crow hears the voices from the whispering winds and the offended leaves, from other crows spreading the news, from the chatter of his human enemies on the phones, on the radio, on the Internet ether. Voices. Meaning that infuriates him. He sinks his warped claws into my left shoulder and caws his neutron rage. He caws the infuriating voices into my ear, he caws them at me. Haywire cranky Crow - and I'm slow on the uptake. |
Crow whispers something about Obama bonds. [2] Obama bonds that our children have to pay back so we can party on. Crow starts singing some mangled 70's song - a cannibal lullaby:
"Eat your children well.
Feed yourself their dreams.
And know they love you."
"I don't know that I'm ready for this," souperman2 says. [3]
The costs of economic growth exceed the benefits, writes ecological economist Herman Daly, pointing out that there is nothing sustainable about economic growth. [4] That Obama offers only false hope of recovery.
Diminishing marginal returns to society:
revving the economic engine digs us deeper into the ditch.Diminishing marginal returns to society:
the cold and hungry break plate glass windows for dry bunks and hot meals.
Because the costs of economic growth exceed the benefits, everything that has been successful in the past to "fix" a recession now only makes this recession worse. Short the ability to understand that context, it would be better were our government to go home and stay there. [6]
"Obama bonds," Crow says. "False hope."
As if the Easter Island tribal elders decided to borrow from future generations of Easter Islanders to subsidize their logging industry because the logging industry was in trouble. Just so we subsidize automakers that should build no more cars and banks that should make no more loans. We make matters worse thinking we can get back to the good old days.
For it's not only climate or only climate and energy or only climate and energy and finance. We've used every resource of every kind to put ourselves into economic and ecological overshoot.
"Get off this fucking horse and try a mule," my friend Michele says.
I think about the polar ice caps and the Greenland ice sheets. "Surely the entropy of that crystal water exceeds the value of your human economies," geek Crow says. He's right - he always is - we're happy to melt all that ice with our careless shopping trips back and forth on Payne Road and our endless visits to mortgage and refinance agents. The ice caps, the species of life, the oceans, the mountaintops. Oil, food, topsoil, geology. Positive feedback and accelerating destruction. The Invisible Hand has pushed Gaia - according to Every Day's news - beyond recovery.
"We dig coal to light your tree," the coal industry advertises.
I don't know that I'm ready for this.
Whatchagonnado, fox number ten-million-and-one. The floor is dropping away. There are only ten-thousand-and-one rabbits. Whatchagonnado, plant more rabbit food and call it "sustainable"?
"Your move," Crow says.
Dick Cheney would advise me to "antler up" like the Irish Elk on St. Martin's island.[5] He would advise me of the need to take out a few million foxes so we can have more rabbits for ourselves and our tribe. Maybe start with all the Palestinians in Gaza. I don't have the stomach for it. Competition - it didn't work for the Elk.
We have extracted "FIRE" from the ice - Finance, Insurance, Real Estate - and we cannot put the ice back. Not with all the king's horses and all the king's men. [7]
"Your move," Crow says.
I don't know if I'm ready for this.
The guy who broke the window lets himself into the police cruiser's warm back seat.
--
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/15/news/economy/credit_market/index.htm
[2] http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-7-2009-name-is-bonds-obama.html
[3] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4951#comment-457434
[4] http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4899
[5] http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/artio/irishelk.html
[6] http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/schiff/2009/0107.html
[7] http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/analyzing-obama-plan/11181
