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I have been stewing a lot about this the last few days, and reading a lot, listening to a few lectures and the like.
Maybe it has more to do with how we live in cities, than almost anything else. Maybe "green jobs" is a concept that shouldn't be talked about just in the standard context of technology, but in taking back some of the influence over our cities, and regional planning, which may in the end, save much more energy than any "green" technology.
Which is, I think, a lot of what we discuss here on CU.
So, now I am formulating in my mind, new parameters for how things could be made better, and I think it would largely grow out of just the kind of community we have established here. Support for nature preserves, support of small and local businesses and farms, reworking of our urban structure. Taking back our "right to life", so to speak, from large centralizing entities and stultifying culture that would steal the very dirt out from under our feet while we are too busy watching TV.
Unfortunately, if I am to be realistic, I have to say that I do not think this will happen. Not enough of the right kinds of people will be harmed by what is in motion, until too many people have been harmed and we are largely rendered powerless. So my next best choice is to best protect myself and mine, and do as little harm as possible.
I was feeling kind of crummy today, and so I watched TV. They had an interesting show on Oprah today (you'll never hear me say that again). A few families who were very, very wasteful with electricity, gas, recyclables, garbage, etc etc, took a 7-day challenge to live with less. They all found it very close to drug withdrawal at first, but after several days, they noticed the patterns of their family lives becoming richer and more rewarding, and didn't feel the need to return to their old patterns of consumption. They variously described it as feeling like "waking up from a daze", "finally feeling alive", "checking in", etc.
Despite this all seeming very off topic, it is very much all the same topic. Politicians, taxes, corporations, technology, none of that stuff is going to change in our favor. Even with the current crisis, capital is still being funneled up and away from us, into fewer and fewer hands. Marxists often like to portray the proletariat as being at the bottom of the economic foodchain. Well it isn't. What's under the proletariat? Dirt, and water. The very ground they stand on. Not too many people cared when it was just the dirt and water being treated, as Wendell Berry would say, as "a nigger". Not too many more people cared when it was just poor people being treated this way, or even lower-middle class people. But start foreclosing on large numbers of middle-class white folks' houses, and then people sit up and take notice.
Trouble is, that very dirt and water, and those very poor people were what we've been ratcheting our economy up on for the last few decades. But now the fund has run dry, and it's our turn. It's only a one-way flow of money, and most people I know are on the wrong end of the flow.
Just some more thoughts, feel free to rip away derogatorily! Or just be like, "That's gay, dude. Somebody's on their period!"
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus.