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In praise of the financial meltdown
A bit of belt tightening after years of over indulgence will do us all some good
For years, apart from the very poor, we all knew there was something worrying about our self-indulgently extravagant way of life which was devouring the world's limited resources.
Every morning when I throw away all those unwanted newspaper supplements, I have a twinge of guilt and fury. Likewise every time I feast my eyes on the boggling scale of goods on display in the shops. All those luscious sandwich mountains which remain unsold. Ordinary meals are often on a scale previously reserved for feast days.
Of course, it was a comfort to know that 4x4 drivers live lives of even greater irresponsibility. But in our hearts we all knew that our own lives are not much better.
So when the crash came, it was not altogether unexpected; not entirely unwelcome, leaving us no choice but to tighten our belts; to live lives less offensively wasteful.
Best of all, the cutbacks essential to prevent global warming will now become unavoidable. Good news indeed, for Heaven's sake. True, politicians will no longer be able to announce every six months that the gross (my italics) national product has gone up yet again, but speaking personally, that was always a boast that, ever so slightly, turned my stomach.
None of the politicians on either side of the Atlantic are daring to articulate this self-lacerating mood, preferring to pour hot coals of blame on the heads of City slickers.
Politicians are missing a trick. A period of austerity, if it is fairly shared and it is up to the politicians to ensure it is, could prove challenging, giving the bulldog breed a long overdue opportunity to show they can still take it. ·
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Mr Simmons, I agree with most of what you have said there, and would wholeheartedly embrace a far less wasteful regime, but I feel that I have to add to your final point:
"The rich will suffer more as they have more to lose, which is how it should be as they are more guilty than most for environmental destruction."
That one is a little over simplistic and not entirely correct, the rich may have more to lose, but they also, in the main, have the resources, power and industrial control to soak those losses up more effectively than anyone else. The real losers in this situation are going to be the ordinary public who will be forced to pay ever increasing rates and prices on essentials simply because the 'rich' elite in charge of industry (a generalisation I know as not all of the wealthy act in the manner I describe here, but is it not always the minority that tar everyone else in a clique with their own brushes?) feel that they are owed their current lifestyle, no matter who it grinds down in the process.
Excellent Peregrine, couldn't have put it better myself. I welcome this slide into recession, less over-consumption, less truck, boat and plane journeys trekking 'goods' thousands of miles, less motorists idling their cars unnecessarily, less food wasted; sounds like good news to me. Having lived a deliberately restricted-consumption [green] lifestyle for the past four decades, I welcome the opportunity the recession offers for everyone to downsize, to stop flying abroad for holidays or stag/hen nights and all the other inane reasons people dream up to over-consume the planet's resources.
The rich will suffer more as they have more to lose, which is how it should be as they are more guilty than most for environmental destruction. Bring it on!