Say good bye to the good old days

Randall Denley explains why we’re going to look back at the past 20 years and wonder at how good we had it

Here’s what we know for sure about the latest energy crisis. The cost of virtually everything is going up. Our freedom to roam anywhere we want by car or by plane is being curtailed sharply by fuel costs. As rising prices force us to buy less, jobs will be lost, possibly our own. Interest rates are going to go higher, squeezing our finances. At the same time, the economic turmoil is shrinking our RRSP nest eggs. And no one really knows how bad it’s all going to get.

It’s difficult to see the upside, and that’s where I have to hand it to my colleague Dan Gardner. The Citizen columnist has been telling us for some time that we needed to break our dependence on oil, and now he’s whistling happily at the fossil fuels funeral. In a column this week, Gardner pointed out all the good that will come from high oil prices. The list is substantial. The odious suburbs will shrivel and commutes will be shorter as we flock to the centre of our cities, greenhouse gases will go down, airplanes will be less crowded, Chinese goods will cost more, oil producing countries run by thugs will suffer and we will all live happily ever after in the new world of public transit and energy produced by other, unnamed sources.

Gardner concluded “Like an addict kicking a habit, we will have to go through a period of painful withdrawal. But the good news is that, in time, we will all agree it was for the best.”

I’m not so sure. Our economy is based on consumerism and constant growth. Consumer spending makes up 56 per cent of our gross domestic product. An economic model that relies on people buying things they don’t really need runs into trouble when the price of things they do need, like food and heat, goes up. A lot of our jobs depend on the idea that people will continue to buy unnecessary goods and services, but if money is tight, do we need financial planning, electronic gadgets, travel or fancy kitchen renovations? The media business is particularly vulnerable, drawing most of its revenue from advertising meant to persuade people that they do need the stuff they are now going to have a difficult time affording.

It’s easy to argue that this particular house of cards should be replaced with an economy based on thrift, prudence and limited consumer spending, but we have no model for such an economy. To be blunt, a lot of what we do for employment is unnecessary. If the money to pay for it dries up, jobs of actual value aren’t just going to pop up.

Ottawa Citizen