Economy & Environment: It's Time to Embrace Inconvenience

Are we being undone by our disdain for things deemed inconvenient - public transport, recycling, reusing, conserving, not overspending?  

If you turn on the radio, the TV, read the paper or talk to your fellow man, all is doom and gloom.  Seemingly, forces beyond our control have conspired to give us the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  As a result, job losses are mounting, home foreclosures are surging, banks are universally suspect - as no one knows what they are worth or when/if they will hit the front page (for all the wrong reasons) - and there is very little confidence in anything having to do with the economy, the currency or the immediate future thereof.

Why?

I don't know the exact answer, but I have an idea.  If you agree with my idea, then after reading this you may be a) more anxious than when you began reading, and b) [hopefully] more energized to practice some obvious solutions and make them a vital part of your agenda.

Last weekend I was recycling a bunch of old magazines that had taken roost in odd places around the house, and I came upon a December 2007 article entitled "Being Green is Inconvenient".  It's a perfect title for our times.  I re-read the article, and while some of it was tongue-in-cheek, the author articulated a frightening lack of mid or long term perspective.  What made the article sticky is that I realized that I hear versions of this argument often and from a variety of sources, mostly along the lines of "why bother", or "it's a hassle" or "I'll do it later".   And so, this particular article, revisited at this particular time has set me to thinking, and as a result I find myself trapped in an epiphantic cycle of worry.   

Because we have spent the last 20+ years avoiding things that are inconvenient - that aren't easy, purely pleasurable or which might demand a little sacrifice - we are now on the precipice of multiple, vastly "inconvenient" crises.  First and most visible today is the economic crisis.  How did we get here?  I'm sure there are many tangential reasons, but it all boils down to one thing: we have borrowed too much money.   I recently listened to an economist from Columbia Univ. discuss the current US consumer debt load.  Historically consumers - collectively - have carried total debt loads of between 30% - 50% of GDP (mortgages, credit cards, car loans, etc).  This was true from the 1930s, -1980s.  However from 2000 to today, the collective US consumer debt load has grown to 100% of our national GDP or $13 Trillion!   Once again, at only one other time have we found ourselves with a national debt load equivalent to 100% of GDP - yep, the Great Depression.  

What happened?  Why do we have so much debt, and why did we think it made sense to take it on in the first place?  Two words:  "Ease" and "Convenience".   It's inconvenient to wait to buy that shiny iPod, plasma TV, car or 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house, especially if some bank will let you borrow today so you can own today.  We are all consumers; our culture is geared towards growth and consumption.  We are all guilty of erring on the side of buy now not later; there's no sense arguing.  We have all been surprised that the concept (over-borrowing) caught up with the reality (bankrupt), and instead of ignoring the historical cause and effect, we should be learning from this epic error.  

It will be hard and economically painful to right the US economy and the broken banking system.  However, I am confident we will get it done.  We as a people are good at solving problems that are before us.  If motivated, we can suck up short term [economic] pain to get to a more stable and economically viable future.

Now I didn't start this piece with an eye to fixing the economy.  We have bigger fish to fry.  I mentioned multiple crises.  There is another, larger problem that faces all of us.  And when the economy is righted, perhaps we'll have more time to focus on it - we'd better.  However, it is more insidious.  It moves slowly, rears its head in fits and starts and can be ignored by those who champion the avoidance of inconvenience.  It's too big to put in a box.  It's too complex to "fix" with a silver bullet, and it's too easy to put off known and needed solutions because there is no immediate feedback loop that punishes us for taking the position that it's too inconvenient - too costly, too difficult, too unmanageable - to do it today.  Of what do I speak?  Of course, it's the environment, stupid.

We have spent 100 years consistently and impressively extracting, depleting, burning and misusing our energy resources to the detriment of our climate, our planet and our health.  The evidence of this has only recently reached our collective conscience, and as a result we are slow to change our approach to growth, transportation and planet stewardship.  Just as importantly, over the past 100 years our approach to energy extraction and use helped create some colossal agents of the status quo whose substantial business enterprises are built around keeping things the same - read Big Oil and Small Detroit, among others.  For these players, change equals costly "inconvenience", and so they spend money to thwart change, change that is essential if we are too avoid, or at least manage through, an environmental crisis that will dwarf today's mortgage meltdown.  I have written in the past about some of the inexcusable positions taken by these players (http://www.springboardbiodiesel.com/detroit-dinasour-must-evolve), and I see no evidence of their ability to adapt to a new energy model.  They will not change unless forced to by either regulatory policy (regulatory receptivity is likely higher when they are begging for billions) or "the market", which is you and I exercising commercial choice.

I am not a luddite.  I don't believe we have to go back to the horse and buggy to avoid environmental collapse.  I do believe that we can have our cake - our iPods, plasma screens, cars and homes - and eat it too - without despoiling the planet.  However, to achieve that balance will not be easy.  It may be inconvenient.  If we are to succeed, one of the major drivers will be the successful development of an alternative energy infrastructure.  New, sustainable, alternatives to petroleum must be discovered, developed, nurtured and commercialized.  Success on the alternative energy front will greatly help our economy, as it will create new industries, new jobs and substantial waves of wealth.  It will mitigate the pollutants with which we are spoiling our atmosphere, and it will help free us from dependence on external, often volatile trading partners who demand an ever increasing amount of our national wealth.

Just like our economic crisis, solving the environmental/energy crisis will not be easy.  It will demand a new approach to problem solving, one that doesn't begin with a whine, "but this is hard and will cost money" (this is how Detroit has historically reacted to every single one of the governments environment regulations), but rather recognizes that even if it's difficult at the outset, there is gain - environmental and economic - in every advance that weans us further from our petroleum-only present.

Ignoring the problem no longer works and is guaranteed to wreak havoc on all of us.  We should all ask ourselves an essential question: what good is a strong economy, if the benefits thereof - money, material items, security - exclude a healthy planet, exclude a clean climate and exclude unspoiled places of natural beauty?  Being rich in an air conditioned, phosphorescently lit bunker just doesn't seem like a good goal.  

Yes, solving the problems will force us to move out of our collective comfort zones.  In fact, it will definitely be an inconvenient process, and so it's time to embrace that inconvenience!

Start your change with biodiesel!