The Party Never Ends ... Cartoon Lemonade

The Story of Stuff tells a story about the Material Economy, documenting its five stages: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption, and Disposal. All that transpires to help us live the way we do is something we scarcely stop to think about here in the US, even as we remain extremely focused on our HyperConsumer lifestyles. The trash man comes on Friday morning and carries away my garbage..."For all I know (or care), it gets zapped by a ray gun," most seem to say by their inattention to the details and what they mean.

Yet the message of this little cartoon was so compelling, and so in line with my world view, but at the same time, such a downer, that I quietly filed it in the stack of to-be-published-later blogs. I also wanted to give it some time to stew and to chew on how to put it into context. But look what's transpired in the days ahead...

The very next day, author Jared Diamond penned this piece in the NY Times, What's Your Consumption Factor?, which echoes the sentiments expressed in the animated video.

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1.

The population especially of the developing world is growing, and some people remain fixated on this. They note that populations of countries like Kenya are growing rapidly, and they say that's a big problem. Yes, it is a problem for Kenya's more than 30 million people, but it's not a burden on the whole world, because Kenyans consume so little. (Their relative per capita rate is 1.) A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans. With 10 times the population, the United States consumes 320 times more resources than Kenya does.

"Is the universe/God trying to tell me something?" I wonder.

At some point, the rational actor stops to ponder, one would think, whether or not our current lifestyles here in the USA are sustainable. But, let's face it, who wants to be killjoy that delivers this message. Who wants to play the role of Eeyore, the sad sack who turns off the lights and sends everyone home, shouting "PARTY'S OVER, FOLKS, TIME TO GO HOME." I seem to remember a certain speech by Pres. Jimmy Carter, delivered in his trademark cardigan sweater, urging us all to conserve. That sure worked out well for him - NOT. We're not good at this.

Let's face it, Jimmy's National Malaise diagnosis never stood a chance against Ronnie's Make America Great Again message. Nor, did Mondale's candidacy, whatever it was about, have a prayer against Reagan's Morning in America.

Looking back, was it the message, or the messenger? When is optimism misplaced?

Now it's 2008, a generation later, and we still face the same issues, punted down the road from president to president. Will it be Mitt Romney who speaks straight talk to us all? Probably not.

In his speech at the Detroit Economic Club, Mr. Romney took Washington lawmakers to task for being "disinterested" in Michigan's plight and imposing upon the state's automakers a litany of "unfunded mandates," including a recent measure signed by President Bush that requires the raising of fuel efficiency standards.....

Drawing a rare moment of enthusiastic applause from the students, Mr. Romney said, "I will not rest if I'm president of the United States until Michigan is brought back." McCain and Romney Battle for Lead in Michigan, January 14, 2008

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Hello, Mitt, I have a Honda Civic Hybrid that gets 40+ MPG today, and 35 MPG is a low bar and 2020 is a full 12 years away. That's not a tough enough goal. The fact is, the Big Three auto makers chose to make SUVs with high profit margins years ago and killed off efforts to make hybrids, and to make matters worse, killed off efforts to raise the CAFE standards. They made their bed, so to speak. So now, they're losing market share and heading the way of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Do Do bird - to oblivion, in other words. But are they going to sleep in the bed they made for themselves and their shareholders and employees? No, when viewed through the pandering lens of the candidate, the problem was not the Free Market at work, no, the problem was, and is, government regulation. Give me a break. That's called an Excuse, it's called Denial, and it shouldn't have a place in a conservative's speech. That strikes me as Cognitive Dissonance. I'm confused, or maybe "conservative" doesn't mean what I think it means, a la Princess Bride.

Fezzini: Inconceivable!
Inigo: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also in today's paper, Americans Cut Back Sharply on Spending We are restructuring and undergoing major shifts. Is this just a temporary phenomenon, or a sign of things to come?

And consumer confidence, an important barometer of economic health, has plunged. Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, says consumer satisfaction with the economy has reached a 15-year low, according to the firm's polling.

"People are clearly concerned that we are headed into a recession," said Stephen I. Sadove, the chief executive of Saks Fifth Avenue, the upscale department store whose runaway growth throughout much of the year slowed markedly in December.

Clearly, the presidential candidates must do something to "get the economy back on track!" But what if a rail has gone missing?

The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

So what will scaling back look like, when it happens? Will we ever stop consuming? Can we do that and not have a catastrophic economic consequence? Can our country ever put itself on a diet and exercise program without the threat of a coronary to motivate it? I haven't had a whole lot of success in my life at personal discipline, so I'm not optimisitic - I think it runs counter to human nature, and I think that America's expanding waistline is a better indicator than anything...and I don't see too many leaders stepping up to give us the medicine we so desperately need, the truths we need to listen to.

I think that more and more we'll have to look at different ways to do things.

But I'm afraid that election cycle after election cycle will give the advantage to the snake-oil salesman who preaches that we can have our cake and eat it too. "We can be great again," will always have resonance in a campaign, because an aging beauty likes to hear she still has what it takes to rev a guy's engines. A guy likes to know he can still compete against the younger studs on the soccer field, despite his bad knees. "We don't have to scale back" will always have resonance, because, in this country, we like to eat our cake. It's one of the things we've gotten terribly good at doing. And people like to do what they are good at, especially when it's so much fun doing it. We're going to need a bigger more immediate threat than global climate change to get us moving, I'm afraid.

We need a different party to replace the one that seems to be ending needs to be ended. (here I don't mean a different political party, which we probably do, BTW, but a positive rewarding lifestyle with a different set of motivations - we need something new, constructive, and meaningful, because just taking away our current consumer lifestyle is not going to work).

My hope, and I cling to it, is that we'll be able to focus on the positive and focus on something else we're good at besides consuming. We'll be able to gain efficiencies through technology - like metropolitan broadband - that end up buying us some time to restructure our economy away from reliance on ever expanding consumerism, which has zero chances, I believe, in being sustainable.

We're hitting real limits and the past seven years, no, make that the past 50 years, start to seem like the party that would never end. But after this party does end, and all parties must end at some point, so if even the Post WWII Economic Boom is in decline, we should imagine that one, folks - the hangover that follows is going to be a doozy for us all. We need something better and different to replace what we are losing.

And that, I'm afraid, is one helluva basket of lemons to be handed. Lemonade, anyone?

I'll take mine with a little Jack Daniels, thanks...let's start a new party to replace the old one. Let's reshuffle the deck.

UPDATE JAN 27.

The Story of Stuff is getting broader exposure, it seems. Daily Kos, a highly popular website for progressive politics, has just posted a discussion and came to many of the same conclusions I did. But they are more optimistic than I was in this original post. The comments at the end of the post are especially interesting (357 as of this update). Recommended reading.

With the help of producer Louis Fox and artist Ruben DeLuna at Free Range Studios, Annie turned her one hour talk into a twenty minute film. A film that's been watched by more than one million unique viewers. A film that's available on line and which you can watch by clicking the picture above. If you haven't seen the film go now. Seriously. Right now. You'll be glad you did. Because this short film is as direct, effective, and eye-opening on consumer society as An Inconvenient Truth is on climate change.

But if the first part of Annie's film is devoted to describing the problems of our current unsustainable culture of disposable goods, it's the final part that deserves special attention. Rather than stopping with the bad news, Annie shoots straight on into the good -- we can change. The most engaging part of her description of our society is that everyone can find their place in the flow, and the same dynamic means that everyone is positioned to help change how things work. Environmental issues, social justice, and economics all play into making the change toward a fair, sustainable society. There are as many ways to insert yourself into the process as there are products on the shelves of the local big box store.