Drought in the golden state

Here is another argument for establishing community gardens. 

"The almond orchards are beginning to bloom in California’s Central Valley, the vast swath of fertile, flat land that runs up and down the middle of the state. Bees are pollinating the rows of flowering trees, and the harvest will shape up over the coming months. But for many farmers, one crucial thing is missing from this picture – water.

The US Bureau of Reclamation, which manages water allocation in arid regions, announced last week it will not provide vital irrigation to Central Valley farmers this year because of drought, and the California State Water Project expects to meet only 15 percent of water requests.

“That’s unheard-of,” says Jim Jasper, an almond farmer in Newman, Calif. “We’ve never seen a zero allocation for water.” Many growers here are destroying older and less productive trees to conserve water for other crops.

The University of California estimates that the drought may cause 847,000 acres to go unplanted this year, with income reductions of more than $2 billion and the loss of 70,000 jobs" (Christian Science Monitor 2/26/09).

With climate change, the precipitous fall in all commodity prices, the flight of cheap immigrant labor and the difficulty in securing credit, relying on the agricultural pipeline to continue supplying our supermarket shelves with fresh produce, dairy and grain may be a mistake. It makes sense to begin appropriating community plots now and planning for spring planting. This can do three things immediately: 1) provide local food security, 2) improve local nutrition, and 3) provided your locality successfully bids for federal relief funds, community gardens can create paying jobs. For more information on community gardens see http://www.mrsc.org/Subjects/Parks/comgarden.asp

The end of the world as we know it, or cultural renaissance? You decide.

The paradox between the economic disaster of the 1930s-40s and the flowering of cultural achievement in that era has been often commented upon. We get writers like Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, TS Elliot, ee cummings, Langston Hughes, etc... And artistic movements from documentary realism to expressionism and surrealism. Not to mention the music, this was the golden age of Jazz/swing and the first time marginal genres like folk and country received much wider appreciation. And the same goes for Hollywood and theater in general. How did so much artistic creation rise out of the wide-spread poverty and despair of the first great depression?

There are many answers to that question. For example, there were WPA programs like the Federal Theater Project that funded local theater groups. There was no TV, so people were more likely to get out of their houses in search for entertainment. And 1933 saw the end of prohibition, making night clubs and dance halls possible.  

Beyond the misery produced by such economic downturns, there are other less negative effects as well. When business is slow, or non-existent, people may have more time on their hands. More time to think and create and/or more time to appreciate music, art, theater and writing--the former may also be encouraged by economic imperative, the latter motivated by a desire to escape the confines of their situation. 

Today, our cable TV and the internet are a mixed blessing. These are relatively inexpensive sources of endless entertainment, which can be a good thing when you are too broke to go out. But they are also easy, habit-forming options for unimaginative, and this could wind up being a detriment to the growth of our cultural resources, and a drag on the recovery of the economy as a whole.  But, who knows, perhaps folks will take their economic stimulus (in the form of paycheck tax reductions) and go buy a book, see a theater production or a band--supporting the artistic rebirth of the early millennium, an historical event that our great grandchildren will point to as evidence of our collective cultural sophistication and elan.  

Great Depression 2.0: time to get organized!

Freemarketeers are as obsolete as my old Commodore 64 (RIP). The "free" market, based as it is on speculation, exploitation and private ownership, cannot operate when the future is bleak, jobs are being lost by the millions, homes are falling into foreclosure and cars are being repossessed at historic rates (1.5 million cars and trucks in 2008, up 12% from 2007). From an social and economic standpoint, 2008 was a train wreck. To top off the dismal performance of the stock market, skyrocketing foreclosure rates and unemployment figures, it turns out that retail sales were down in December--double their projected fall to 2.7%. Retailers call the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" because this is the symbolic start of the holiday shopping season and the time of year when retailer first start to see profits (out of the red and into the black). With sales down 2.7% in December, it can be expected that many retailers would not have seen a profit in 2008--and with the credit markets still frozen, we should expect to see more stores closing up in the ensuing months. This leads to even more job cuts and the spiral downward continues. What is to be done?

1) Volunteerism: the more goods and services people are willing to donate to community projects, the better we'll be able to stave off the deleterious social and economic effects of the current crisis. People are already needed to staff food drives, soup kitchens and community shelters--the demand for dedicated individuals will only grow as the economy sinks.

2) Cooperative ownership of businesses: A business venture may be more feasible during economic turmoil if the rewards and risks more evenly spread across the business. This provides incentives for higher productivity in times of plenty and can entail greater job security in times of scarcity.

3) Community organizing: Government won't be able to assess or address the varied existential needs that will arise in the months to come in a timely enough manner. Communities need to organize and implement solutions to their problems. During times of economic uncertainty these issues will invariably include: unemployment, shortfalls in health care, poverty, homelessness, mental health issues, municipal transit, availability of nutritious food, crime and corruption in government... Community groups can form a bridge between a slow and possibly inadequate governmental response and eventual economic recovery.

4) Local initiatives to vie for government largess. If local government fails to address local needs, then community organizations can float initiatives for funding through other channels (state, federal, private, or through religious organizations).

Needs are only going to increase, as will the pressures of social disintegration--communities can and should take charge of these issues now. Check out http://www.volunteermatch.org/ to find organizations in your area to join. If you don't have any that meet your concern, organize one!

Destruction of wealth

Recent numbers:

1) According to a report issued by the Fed: In the third quarter of 2008, U.S. households lost $647 billion in real estate; $922 billion in stocks; $523 billion in mutual funds; $653 billion in life insurance and pension fund reserves; plus $128 billion in private business interests. 

2) The Treasury reports that $330 billion of the TARP have been allocated to banks, yet by far most of this money has gone into the "re-capitalization" of these banks. That is, this lump sum of taxpayer money has not worked as planned to loosen credit markets. 

3) The amount of household wealth destroyed in the third quarter alone amounts to $2.8 trillion--apparently the worst quarterly loss in recorded history (although sources don't claim to adjust for inflation).

4) Deflation is here. U.S. consumer prices fell at an annual rate of 12%; producer prices fell at an annual rate of 26.4%; commodity prices are down as much as 70% from their peak.

All of this indicates that we are about to witness depression era levels of unemployment, business closings, bank failures and scarcity in the coming year. 

What does this all mean? Things will likely be changing on an unprecedented scale. Make it a priority to create stability in your home, your community and beyond. Think about self-sufficiency and, beyond that, what you can do to make your community better able to withstand the shock of dwindling government largess. By all means, stock up on canned- and dry-goods, learn to bake and cook from scratch, put in a garden, etc., but also take time out of your week to donate time, money, goods and good will to community projects. Instead of "battening down the hatches" or "hunkering down," we'll get through this mess far better working together.

Global Depression

It has spawned many names: financial crisis, economic meltdown, depression 2.0, depression 2009, financial armageddon, economic catastrophe, TSHTF... you get the idea. I insist on the label "global depression," because one of the distinguishing features of this financial downward spiral is that it is the first of its kind that will touch each of the 7 billion people on our planet.

Globally, markets are linked together in an intricate web of trade and transaction, so much so that an event in one sector quickly spreads throughout the system. Early on, in September and October of this year (funny how that seems so long ago...way back when I had a retirement nest egg), there were some economists speculating that China, that dynamo of economic growth, might pull markets out of their tailspin--today there are few such optimists left. China's growth has come to a screeching halt: AFP reports that China's growth has slowed to a 20-year low and millions of urban workers are returning to the countryside in one of the largest outmigrations in the nation's history. Even for countries peripheral to global high finance the impact of the economic downturn if being felt. According to IMF reports, the financial crisis is severely impacting the countries of Africa.

The global extent of the coming depression is disconcerting in that social and political instability are sure to increase as markets and prices fall (as it turns out deflation can be more destructive than inflation). Today a full 50% of the world's population lives in urban areas. City dwellers are dependent on the currency for their very survival. As unemployment rises and money becomes scarce, what will these billions of marginally employed people do to live? The future could get very bleak very quickly for many. The depression of the 1930s was bad enough, but at that time the vast majority of the world's population lived an agrarian life where sustenance was not an issue. If you grew crops for your livelihood, your harvest might have fallen in value, but at least you had something to eat. If the global financial crisis does not turn around very soon there will be first a major shift in migration patterns for the millions who still have an option to move out of the cities (as noted above we are already seeing this in China), and then an unprecedented degree of social disintegration as our swollen cities convulse with violence and unrest.

As our financial system is not localizable, the political unrest due to poverty will not be contained within national borders. It will have effects here as well. Take a walk around downtown Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City (just beyond the gentrified sections of the city)...the millions living at the margins are in a precarious position. With no savings, no jobs and dependence on a bankrupt state, their options are few. As Bob Marley so aptly put it: "a hungry man is an angry man."

One way to avoid potential social collapse is to support poverty fighting measures in your own backyard. Speculate on worst case scenarios for the next few years. As jobs become scarce and state largess evaporates, how can your community put those most at risk in a less precarious position? I suggest developing or radically expanding community agriculture projects that would at the very least ensure a local supply of fresh food for the most at risk families. If the downturn turns around, and the darkest of outcomes is avoided, you have contributed to the development of a diversified local economy (mixing agriculture with other industries), added to your region's green cred and created jobs to boot!

Speculation, thy name is Ponzi

A Ponzi scheme, named after 1920s financier Charles Ponzi, is an investment operation that offers high returns to investors based on an increasing influx of money from new investors. It is a classic pyramid scheme based on speculation, greed and naivete. Since the Madoff scandal a few days back, this term has been thrown around a lot (Bernard Madoff apparently lead an investment firm whose Ponzi investment strategy began to fall apart in the face of the financial meltdown--some 50 billion dollars evaporated). But, really, the Ponzi strategy is not all that different from what was happening in the housing market, the financial sector and even in the average American household these last 15 years.

Based on speculation, rather than economic fundamentals, we all have been deluding ourselves that a) the stock market can only go up, b) the value of our homes can only go up, and c) we can live on credit indefinitely. But when the economy goes in the tank, our savings and the equity in our homes vanishes, while the bills keep rolling in. This crippling delusion is connected to all boom/bust cycles and underlies the vast social devastation that occurs when the bubble pops.

There are other kinds of value that do not decline with the markets and we might start investing in those rather than placing our savings with the running dogs of Wall Street. What, other than the almighty dollar, has value? you may ask. Let offer a few examples:

1) personal talent: invest in your inner musician, artist, architect, gardener, inventor, tae kwan do master, sculptor, etc...
2) education: nothing can enrich one's life more than broadening one's mental horizons
3) experience: a rich life means an active engagement with world around you
4) vital communities: support your community institutions, festivals and businesses with your presence as well as your wallet
5) local arts scene: work to support or develop a regional musical/artistic/theatrical identity--know who is who on the scene and attend and/or sponsor events
6) local cuisine: support local restaurants, bakeries and chefs
7) world travel: not everything worthwhile is local, get out of your town or, better, country to know the world in which you live
8) the commons: support efforts to conserve local forests, wetlands, mountains, rivers, etc... quality of life is inseparable from our natural environment (most of us, I think, would rather live on the edge of a forest than on the edge of a strip mall or sub-division)
9) end poverty: actively engage with the causes of poverty in your area and support organizations that address these issues
10) get religion: support, through your attendance and wallet, a religious organization of your choice. Church, temple or mosque, many of these organizations gather local resources and invest heavily in items 1-9 -- even the non-religious can recognize the positive effect of local religious organizations on soup kitchens, food banks, scholarships, global initiatives and environmental stewardship.

But, some may contend, money must be made to support most of the above items. And I heartily agree! Communities cannot be supported on good will alone. The modest suggestion being made here is that instead of throwing good money after bad into speculative industries, allocate some of that (we can now call it for what it is) gambling cash into endeavors that will enhance the quality of our lives and the lives of those around us. So, reject your inner Ponzi and support the vitality that flows from personal accomplishment and active and supportive communities.

Community Gardens

I was listening to This American Life the other day and they were playing recorded interviews conducted by that ethnographer of the common man: Studs Turkle. These recordings were of people recalling Depression Era America and how they coped and what they experienced. I was struck by one lady who said something along the lines of "Well, we lived in the country, so food wasn't a problem for us..." Most of our impressions of the 1930s are of soup lines, children selling apples for a nickle and long lines of men queuing to interview for a few available jobs--all in an urban setting. Except for the Okies heading out of the dust bowl for California, we really have little idea of how rural folks experienced the depression. Provided that you could pay the mortgage, farmers probably avoided many of the deprivations that were rampant in the cities. Unfortunately for us today, the US population (largely rural in the 1930s) has ballooned in urban areas, making basic food security an issue should the economic crisis wreak havoc on our food systems (a situation that is altogether likely in the case of either inflation or deflation--and it is clear that we're going to get one or the other).

To hedge against the worst possible outcomes of this crisis (i.e. food scarcity), we should look to the "victory garden" movement in the 1940s. People from all over America rallied during World War Two and planted millions of vegetable gardens to ensure food security for the US and its troops overseas. As budgets get tight, job losses mount and unemployment grows, we will need surplus food in every locale. The government may or may put out the call for all red-blooded citizens to take up the hoe and begin sowing the seeds of our future recovery. Regardless, we should be look ahead toward a dark couple of years and act in our own collective interests.

We would be wise to begin a similar movement today to have arrangements ready for planting in spring 2009. Backyard gardens are a good idea for those who have a backyard. For the millions of apartment dwellers in the US, and those of us who have really tiny backyards, community gardens could serve to bolster household food production and slash grocery bills while creating an opportunity to connect with other people in the area. So, start a community garden today and look forward to a bountiful 2009. The American Community Garden Association is a very good organization that promotes the creation of community gardens at http://www.communitygarden.org/. Their website has tutorials on all the steps involved in organizing a community garden. Also check out http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/ for good tips on how to optimize your yard or patio space for household gardens.

Keep it local

Now more than ever we should be investing in our own communities. When jobs were plentiful and wages were stable it was easier to ignore the fact that local business were closing shop. They could not beat the prices at the local big box retailer, so in the Darwinian marketplace they went under. Your local coffee shop, bookstore, hardware store or pharmacy were likely plowed under in recent years. This did not affect us much. It was a loss in a purely nostalgic sense--the same goods could be purchased for cheaper elsewhere and who needs local "flavor" when you can save more at the Walmart?

Well, times have changed indeed. The chain stores that siphon off local dollars to far flung places (including insanely high CEO salaries) will be "restructuring" in the months and years to come. That means either lower salaries for workers or layoffs. I suggest taking a second look at local businesses. In many cases the owners of these businesses have a stake in the community in which they operate. Their kids go to the local schools, they have friendships and other kinds of connections that are place specific, and often they will sacrifice a bit to avoid having to layoff their workers. When a critical mass of people begin to invest in community businesses, we all reap the benefits of their success: more jobs, higher wages and ultimately lower prices.

It is time for relocalizing our financial activity. We have seen what happens when we buy from overseas exporters--the precipitous loss of high wage manufacturing jobs. We have seen what happens when we put our savings in the hands of Wall Street finance wizards. And we are just now seeing what happens to our low wage service sector jobs when big companies have to recoup their losses--job losses total 1.2 million this year alone (half that since August!). To create the durable communities that we will absolutely need in the years to come, we must begin investing in locally owned and operated businesses now. Seek out a local bank, bakery, grocery store or food coop, a community agricultural organization, bookstore, restaurants, etc... Support local arts by going to a community theater production instead of a Hollywood movie, or go see a band at a local pub. Begin to relocalize your spending now and when your company managers in Los Angeles decide to close your office, you may well have viable options just down the street.

Tinfoil hatters part 2: on civilization's thin veneer

This is just a follow-up to yesterday's argument against the common survivalist mentality. One of the linchpins of the eat-thy-neighbor survivalist ethos is the idea that societal collapse is inevitable because our society is deceptively civil. The phrase you often hear is that it would not take much of a disruption (peak oil, war, pandemic, etc...) for the thin veneer of civilization (which under normal circumstances holds things together) to give way to howling mobs and general barbarity.

It is true that, in the immortal words of Bob Marley, "a hungry man is an angry man," and desperate people will often commit unthinkable acts during times of crisis. But these acts occur not because the elements of civilization are not present, they occur because people with the means and disposition to commit violence are themselves not civil. Civilization has nothing to do with infrastructure, architecture or political power, rather it arises through the regularity of civil (as opposed to barbaric or malevolent) transactions between people, often within a certain locality. It is carried in our hearts and minds and manifests through mutual attitudes of trust and benevolence. But, for survivalists, civilization merely is an impediment to their fantasies of heroism (or merely consequence). The intense individualism of some of these folks is not now, and certainly not in times of crisis, conducive to civil social intercourse. If we are lucky these people will crawl into their bunkers and leave the rest of us in peace to get by together, to repair our communities and to safeguard our collective livelihoods.

If the global financial crisis manifests itself in the most dire possible terms, we will need heroes, that is, people willing to work together for the betterment of all. As we have seen in Iraq, social disintegration can indeed lead to the rise of tribalisms and the rule of the most savage and well armed elements of society.

It doesn't have to be that way. For example, post-war Japan could have easily become the third world country we tried to bomb it into, but the people worked together to recreate communities, companies and neighborhood associations, and in 30 years they became the world's second largest economy. I don't know if, in 30 years, we will be able to say the same about Iraq. It really is up to us, to how we respond during these critical times.

So, adopt a survivalist today. Get him out of his bunker, take him for a walk around town and cancel his subscription to "guns and ammo" or "soldier of fortune." Introduce him to people and teach him that, even in troubled times, together we can create sustainable communities and a durable future.

This has been a Public Service Announcement brought to you by SGDT.

Not just for the tinfoil hat crowd anymore

I admit that I hold a prejudice against the separatists, the guns-beans-band aid hoarders, the end-of-days fanatics, anyone the owns or wants to build a "bunker," and any group that looks with that weird titillating anxiety toward a future apocalypse. These people have always been around and with every crisis they come out of the woodwork to pronounce with satisfaction--"the end is finally here!" We saw this with the Y2K-ers, the Revelationiacs, the nuclear holocaust survivalists, and now with the financial meltdown we hear again the warnings from paranoiacs of every stripe (stay tuned for the 2012 crowd). Many of these folks already live on the margins of society and project their personal failures and sense of alienation into a reactionary stance in relation the rest of the world. They, many of whom tend to be conservative men, deal with their loss of control over their lives, their families and their future with a narrative in which they become heroic leaders in a post-apocalyptic world. Most of these people are harmless and truly hope to contribute in the case of societal breakdown. But some are dangerous and, with their stockpiles of weapons and ammo, look forward to a day when they can enact their own predatory impulses.

This being said, I have to admit to some discomfort writing a blog that takes as its premise the same kind of future social disintegration as many of these wing nuts. I recently looked back over my past few posts and found that I begin each with a short discourse trying to justify my own alarmist tone with facts and figures from the real world. Ultimately, the fact that no one seems to know what the full effects of the global financial crisis will be, indeed we are in a period of history without precedent, urges me to err on the side of caution. So, the idea behind this blog is that things may well fall apart in near future and everyone should be 1) capable of weathering the storm for as long as it takes for boring, beautiful normalcy to return, and 2) prepared to reach out and participate, even as things get serious, in creating durable social networks to ensure that we all make it through in one piece. In the first instance I agree with the survivalists: we must be able to keep ourselves and our families clothed, fed and safe during the crisis. But in the second instance, I insist that we do not barricade our doors, sit on our horded goods and view everyone as a potential threat. If things get as bad as they could, we all need to work to build up our local economies (for example, through a local business alliance http://www.billmckibben.com/pdfs/introduce-residents.pdf); work to keep the most vulnerable in our communities clothed, sheltered and fed; form neighborhood cooperatives in which resource donations are pooled, properties joined to build large gardens, and "neighborhood watch" programs stepped up to combat the probable rise in crime; and work through larger organizations such as faith communities to export donations to other parts of the country and the world.

By reaching out and establishing viable local communities we can mitigate the presence of the gun-toting "mad-max" element which, despite their best intentions, desire the chaos that will be unleashed by the coming global depression. So, get out there and start meeting your neighbors, join a faith community, volunteer at a soup kitchen and/or join a local coop. Get out, multiply your social connections each day and fight the urge to turn inward--it's spooky in there!