Climate change solutions will help us avoid "debtpocalypse"

The answers to climate change, as dramatic as they are, will also help the world avoid the “Debtpocalypse” as suggested by Annie Lowery in the New York Times.

Edward Bernays.

Writing in a story headed: “Whether ‘Fiscal Cliff’ or Debtpocalypse, by Any Name, It Spells Austerity”, Lowery said, “Come January, the United States might careen off the fiscal cliff. Or start rolling down the fiscal slope. Or, in a worst-case scenario, find itself staggering amid the hot ashes of a debtpocalypse.”

Austerity is one of the things which English thinker and columnist, George Monbiot, argues no-one will ever riot in support of; instead they will riot when serious monetary disciplines are introduced.

Moving toward austerity, governments being what they are and only having control of public monies, can only make decisions that impact on services and process which it controls, and which, by implication,  affect most directly the people who can least afford the changes.

It is the elite who can most easily adapt to the societal differences that austerity brings and so that stratum of society needs to willingly embrace austerity and share the world’s wealth that always finds its way to the top, rather than trickle down, as the proponents of our market society suggest.

The world’s debt crisis, led by difficulties in the U.S., has arisen for many reasons, chief among them our consumerist ways.

Our consumer-driven behaviour, a way of living that has been the driver climate change, really took a hold when early last century when Edward Bernays, considered the “father of public relations”, set in motion a process whereby Americans, in particular, simply wanted more of everything.

Society is reaping the benefits of Bernays’ work now with a climate that is on the edge of becoming beyond our ability to live with.

Bernays died in in 1995, but his legacy is alive today as consumerism continues to the rock upon which society rests.

Consumerism as we know it is only possible because of our inordinate use of energy, most of which is produced using climate change worsening fossil fuels, and the production of ever depleting finite resources.

Should a “Debtpocalypse” ever envelop the world, then the ever compounding difficulties of climate change will be eased; just look for evidence of that by looking at how the world’s carbon dioxide emissions slowed noticeably as the world struggled it way through the 2008 global financial crisis.

The idea of “Debtpocalypse” is somewhat alarming, but maybe the only way to have the world understand the any adaptation to climate change is about significant changes to our way of living – sadly many people will suffer and, again sadly, it will be those who can least afford it.