(Photo: BlackRockSolar / Flickr)Recently Karen Rybold-Chin interviewed Nate Hagens, former editor of The Oil Drum and former Lehman Brothers vice president, questioning him about a future economy without growth and an environment suffering climate change. Nate Hagens asks whether ultimately – contrary to our animal nature – we are willing and able to plan for future generations by reducing our own energy consumption and economic growth.
Dr. Hagens’ full lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison synthesizes concepts from economics, finance, energy, the environment and human behavior into some first-order principles that apply to our current world situation.
His basic message is that the primary drivers of historical economic growth – the inexpensive substitution of human labor by fossil labor, and recently, the explosion of available monetary credit – are no longer available, and this will spell the end of global growth.
Hagens explains that energy – specifically the cheap energy from the already found and burned fossil fuels – accounts for the majority of our past productivity gains and economic riches. It is thus not our lack of hydrocarbon resources that is the problem, but rising extraction costs – for example, 17 percent higher annually for oil since 2002 – that are making continued global growth from these levels unattainable.
Hagens suggests that a renewables-based economy, as promoted by many in environmental circles, is possible and even desirable, but will require far lower living standards. Ergo, wind and solar are part of the answer, but not to the question of “how can we continue growth.”
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As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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