Can you spare a dime? Why we could….but won’t

…Klein, without a full analysis of the energy implications, has grasped the basic economic reality – that our next “bubble” will be/is the scavenging of wealth from the ordinary poor people (most of us) by the comparatively fortunate (mostly corporations), as we privatize the cleaning up of the messes we’ve made and pass their costs out upon the rest of us. In fact, one could describe the massive growth in much of the housing industry as an early version of disaster capitalism, offering a fantasy of security to the poor who were bound to lose their security and homes. Bottom feeding is the new black, I guess. As those who can afford it (or who in desperation can secure credit when they can’t afford it) pay privately to fix the consequences of the terrible things we’ve put in motion, the rest of us will be stuck.



Klein quotes, among other figures, the observation that it would cost 1.5 *trillion* dollars in five just to get America’s basic engineering infrastructure up to speed – just to keep the bridges from falling down, the sewers from backing up. Since that’s a bit less than we intend to spend in Iraq, according to Joseph Steigletz, do any of us really believe that our heavily leveraged economy is going to allow us to spend trillions to fix up the existing infrastructure, much less to engage in the vastly more expensive project of adapting that infrastructure to a low energy, renewable dependent future?

That’s why the gentlemen over at The Oil Drum who reply to every thread with “But all we have to do is….” and then offer some lengthy proposal about electrified rail, 500 new nuclear plants, wind farms everywhere or covering up Arizona with solar panels, so amuse me. And it isn’t that I don’t think that we’ll ever do any of those things. Yes, we will almost certainly build new nuclear plants, wind farms and lay some new rail track. But what we won’t be having is a (successful) Manhattan project for renewable energy, or any universal system that allows all of us to spend the next 35 years comfortably adapting our lives to better houses, a renewably powered grid and electrically powered cars.

Demonstration projects will be built, some states and communities will adapt more than others, we’ll do some piece work in infrastructure, but ultimately, the money isn’t there. Bottom feeding is never going to be as profitable as our previous economic mobilizers, simply because it depends on eternally extracting tinier and tinier sums from more and more desperate people. As there are fewer wealthy, the folks who now offer hurricane evacuation on luxury cruises will find fewer customers. So not only will we have a security apartheid, but also a shrinking class of those who can afford it.

Energy Bulletin