Monday, July 31, 2006



Ecological Regime


By Carl Golden
(Originally written: July 31, 2006)

Biospheric degradation has become the rule, so much so that outcries about ozone holes, global decline in amphibian populations, greenhouse effects, human overpopulation, habitat loss, species extinction, etc., have been reduced to environ­mental patter--clichés. Nothing is easier to forget than that which everybody knows, especially in America where fascination with what is new has taken on pathological dimensions. Recycling and contributions to various environmental organizations have become general acts of contrition in the industrialized world, granting us pardon from the need to know and get involved. People everywhere are sick of hearing about the environ­ment. News of various global crises meets with indifference, incredulity, denial, or despair. Who can blame them? Life, after all, must go on. Right? There are mountains to climb, rivers to fish, and horses to ride. There are classes to attend, career responsi­bilities, mortgages to pay, children to raise, dinners to cook, lovers to love, weddings to plan, marriages to nurture (as well as marriages to dissolve). There are deadlines to meet and dead relations to bury. There are, in fact, ten thousand things to do--things to which one can relate, understand, and reasonably expect to effect some desired change within the lifetime of one's children if not within one's own lifetime.

The irony, of course, is that as we endeavor to meet our respective agendas for fulfilling the ten thousand things we invariably promote the "doom and gloom" that has sickened our souls and stopped our ears. So, the litany goes on. We are caught in a positive feedback loop that portends one certain end–system wide breakdown of the biosphere, as well as human societies.

This is an end that is evident already in many countries and areas around the globe. Ethiopia, Brazil, the Four Corners region of the American Southwest (as with most ghettoized tribal populations the world over), Jakarta, and a host of other regions are suffering the ravages of ecosystem breakdown and the concomitant disintegration of the social fabric. The fisheries of both the northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans have been terribly depleted by the fishing industries' enormous disregard for the recuperative capacities of fish populations; consequentially, the coastal fishing cultures are deteriorating. The rainforests of South and North America, Thailand, and the rest of the world are close to coming to an irretrievable end as are the indigenous cultures nestled within these rich arboreal havens. Even the remote Arctic and Antarctic have not escaped the effects of our activities as they are flooded with dangerously high levels of ultra-violate radiation passing through the massive ozone holes located over these regions – holes caused by Chloro Flouro Carbon (CFC) production and use. The threat is ubiquitous. Those of us fortunate enough not to have suffered the rampant poverty of the Sudan surely have not escaped the insidious threats, presently or potentially, of climbing cancer rates, AIDS, or various other wasting illnesses, such as Systemic Candidiasis, which is a fungal based disease giving rise to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Environmental Illness. There is no place that has not been touched by the crippling effect of our pursuits for the ten thousand things.

These pursuits are trivial compared to the enormity of the crisis of biospheric degradation; nevertheless, we are engaged in them, because the rewards of security, family, love, community, as well as wealth, power, vainglory and pleasure play out according to millennia of human design. The ten thousand things are meaningful, even the most vulgar and vain; whereas, global warming is a monstrous conundrum in the minds of the majority of humankind. The problem is too big for most of us to appreciate and effectively address. So, we choose to ignore it.

Of course, biospheric degradation is not the problem; rather, it is the consequence of human imagination, desires, and endeavors grown beyond both human and ecological scale. Unbridled and ignorant humanity is the problem. To save the whales, we must save ourselves, because to focus the bulk of our resources on saving specific species and ecosystems while ignoring the institutions and attitudes that give rise to the threat is like treating the symptoms of an ailing person while ignoring the causes of the illness - the patient will die anyway and the doctors will bill the next of kin.

Addressing the problem is no small matter. Every sector of contemporary technological society needs reform along human and ecological parameters, and developing countries need to reorient along these same lines in order to avoid recapitulating the same mistakes that the industrialized North has made and continues to make. Of the many institutions that shape our attitudes and enact our intents, there are seven that are seminal – science, technology, mass media, religion, education, politics, and economics. Although I am very interested in the role of each of these institutions in both the problem and it's solution, the scope of this essay is limited to the role politics and economics can play in resolving biospheric degradation and creating societies worthy of our participation.

The way politics and economics are done today are inflated beyond the ken of most people. Trends in urbanization, political centralization, corporate globalization, and multi-national banking and credit institutions reflect the interests of roughly 40% of the world's people, while the remainder of the world’s human population is increasingly alienated by varying degrees. This is an extremely dangerous state of affairs for several reasons: first, when people are alienated from the means to effect control and change over their lives, they are disenfranchised and marginalized – a condition that fosters distrust, disillusionment, civil unrest, lawlessness, and violence. Examples of such alienation and their consequences are the recent popularity of militias throughout the United States and the associated Oklahoma City bombing, or the increasing hatred of America amongst the Muslim world and Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Towers. Second, insofar as political institu­tions are dependent upon the cooperation of the governed, they are liable to become unstable when the governed are significantly alienated. Third, when political institu­tions become unstable, they tend to resort to militant, often violent, policing of the governed to protect the status quo. Fourth, when political institutions have to resort to extreme measures to ensure cooperation of the governed, then civil war is on the horizon. Fifth, and last, environmental and social degradation will only increase in such conditions.

The trends of centralization, globalization, etceteras inevitably lead to this chain of conditions, because these trends are born of attitudes oriented towards ends that are beyond human and ecological scale and design – ends that can only alienate. The enormity of the environmental crisis is born of the enormous messes that are the leviathans of centralized governments and globalized economies. Not only are people in a stupor about biospheric degradation, they are equally stupefied by the political and economic trends. It's all just too damn big!

Case in point: the American Empire – a very big problem, indeed. The government of the United States of America and its corporate affiliates have an insatiable need to control and exploit natural, social, technological, and intellectual resources in order to exist because the overhead incurred in maintaining the complex infrastructure of our national and imperial necessities and ambitions is exhaustive. The fact that Americans represent 5 percent of the world’s population, yet use 80 percent of the world’s resources dramatically speaks to the point. The lifestyle of Americans – an imperial lifestyle – is completely unsustainable. We generate 45 percent of the world’s carbon-dioxide and drive 30 percent of the world’s automobiles. Yet, most Americans struggle to make ends meet. If our lifestyles are so imperial, then why aren’t most of us living like kings?

The answer is found in following the trail of resources consumed by the Military Industrial Complex. The United States' comprehensive military budget, including unbudgeted expenses arising from the invasion of Iraq and previous military debt related expenses, is 1.1 trillion dollars, which is a little less than half of the US budget, which is 2.57 trillion dollars. The following list is a breakdown of the current comprehensive military budget according to analysis of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2007:

BUDGETTED: Current Military, $563 billion:


  • Military Personnel, $110 billion

  • Operation & Maintenance, $162 billion

  • Procurement, $90 billion

  • Research & Development, $72 billion

  • Construction, $8 billion

  • Family Housing, $4 billion

  • Department of Defense (DoD) misc., $4 billion

  • Retired Pay, $49 billion

  • Department of Energy nuclear weapons, $17 billion

  • NASA (50%), $8 billion

  • International Security, $8 billion

  • Homeland Security (military), $27 billion

  • Executive Office of President, $2 billion

  • other military (non-DoD) $2 billion

  • UNBUDGETTED: Iraq & Afghanistan Wars

  • $100 billion (est.): Most of the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is not included in the President’s Budget but the Administration will seek supplemental appropriations later this year as it has in the past three years. This is likely an underestimate.

  • PAST MILITARY ACCRUED FISCAL RESPONSIBILITIES, $439 billion:

  • Veterans’ Benefits $76 billion
  • Interest on national debt $353 billion (80% est. to be created by military spending)

  • This is a monstrous budget, and it continues to grow while the majority of Americans pay outrageous costs for housing, higher education, and medical attention! Now, in order to gain an even greater perspective on this monster, consider the following international observations based on research done by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

  • The comprehensive US military budget is more than the rest of the world's military budgets combined.
  • The comprehensive US military budget is more than 75 times larger than the Chinese defense budget and almost 25 times more than Japan’s defense budget, the world’s second largest defense spender.
  • The comprehensive US military budget is more than 76 times as large as the combined spending of the seven “rogue” states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) that spent $14.4 billion combined last year.
  • The seven potential “enemies,” Russia, and China together spend $116.2 billion, which is 27.6% of the U.S. military budget.

    Got the picture? The US Military Industrial Complex is sapping the financial strength of the American people and, consequentially, generating a great deal of stress both in America and abroad.

  • Now, what could happen if our military budget was reduced by one third, which would still leave us way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of military spending, and that reserved amount, which would be approximately $366,500,000.00, were seeded into the US economy responsibly? It could translate into affordable housing and universal healthcare. Of course, in order to do this, American leadership would have to abandon its ambitions for worldwide economic hegemony, and re-embrace the vision of our founding fathers to create a democratic republic – a republic that has no place for the Military Industrial Complex.

    The design of imperialism is fundamentally flawed. In order to exist, empires must forever grow because they are locked into a cycle of ever shrinking returns in real wealth, all the while subjugating both the human and non-human communities for their labor and resources. Obviously, such a condition is offensive and injurious to the subjugated, creating great disparities in wealth between the centralized political and economic hubs and their colonized rims. Furthermore, it is totally unrealistic in terms of natural limits - carrying capacities and the like. The imperial regime is unsustainable, as history has born out time and again. The former USSR is an excellent example of the fate of all empires. The US will follow suit unless fundamental reforms occur.

    The world needs the discipline, humility and wisdom of­ communities premised upon a human – humane – scale and design that is ecological as well. True human sensibilities are rooted in an organic history – a natural history – that evolved within the context of complex, interrelated communities of similar and dissimilar species. This history has endowed us all with ecological sensibilities – sensibilities that know when a thing is fit and when it is not. Scale and design that is sensible, fits both human and ecological sensibilities and necessities. Such communities might be regarded as ecological regimes born of politics and economics pursued on a human and ecological scale and according to sustainable designs.