Austerity

In case you have not noticed, down-sizing has become part of 'the new normal.' My personal involvement this week was moving from a long board to a short board. The adjustment, however, like changes happening in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the UK (so far), was not of my choosing. It was imposed upon me by forces beyond my control.

In other words, a fiberglass patch job on my second-hand longboard reached the end of its useful life. Like many Europeans, I am not exactly sure what happened to cause the disruption in business as usual. But in both cases it is probably due to too many patch jobs on top of patch jobs...

Cutbacks, austerity measures, down-sizing: whatever you want to call it, the transition period is difficult. Switching from a 9 foot board to a 7 foot board in one day is a significant adjustment. Paddling is easier on a long board. Catching waves is easier on a long board. The fact of the matter is that life on the board became 'harder.'

But there are up-sides. Carrying a short board for over a kilometer to the beach and back is significantly easier. And, I suppose, you could save money by using less wax on a short board. Duck diving and turning are easier as well. So, with everything else in life and the universe, for everything you lose you gain something.

Like others in the strong sustainability movement, I believe the austerity measures will ultimately benefit people and ecosystems. Living beyond one's means is not healthy for individuals, municipalities, states, nations, or planets. While I always thought it would be ecological limits that humanity bumped up against first, it appears that financial limits have nosed to a win at the finish line. This, in fact, is good news.

Finance is a man-made disaster. Economics is a field of philosophy, not science. Nature bats last. Ecological limits are real. While we can speculate about them, 'speculators' do not profit from betting against nature. (Although I am sure some are trying.) It is my great hope that austerity measures imposed by the global financial crisis will aid the transition toward more severe austerity imposed by climate change, peak oil, devastated marine fish stocks, soil erosion, etc.

Money is a human invention. It is meant to be a convenient means of exchanging goods and services. Your personal wealth does not equate to the richness of your life.

I have lived at 1/2 the U.S. poverty level for over a decade. I have always lived in beautiful places and eaten healthy, organic food. I have enough to buy fair trade coffee in the morning and cheap wine in the evening. I have plenty of time to read, write, surf and grow more vegetables. I used to call my situation 'self-imposed poverty.' Now, in order to stay current, I think I'll go with 'voluntary austerity.'

By the way, NPR reported that the last Hummer H3 to be manufactured by GM rolled off the line in Shreveport, Louisiana last week. I guess things are tough all over.

Unleashed

Until it happened to me, I was fairly cavalier about breaking a leg rope. When it happened earlier this week, I began to take it seriously...after the fact. I was riding a beautiful right-hander that began to close out. As I came up over the lip, my body launched skyward as planned, but the board was caught in the breaking wave. I felt the familiar tug on my right ankle, and then...nothing.

My first reaction was to save the board. I did not want it to get damaged by washing violently up on the beach. My second reaction was, 'Shit, paddling without a board is really hard.' (A lovely Betty told me later that this is called 'swimming.') My third reaction was, 'Oh cool. Another wave. I'll just body surf in.' And my final reaction was, '%$&*! That did not work. Get me the @#$% out of here!'

The good news is that I reached the board before it reached the beach. The bad news is that the global financial system has come unleashed (again), and seems to have followed my four step process described above. The worst news is that this unfolding story won't have a happy ending like mine.

I hardly have to mention the cavalier attitude that governments and financial institutions have had about spending and debt and regulation and 'moral hazard' and the like. So let's get to the latest incarnation of the breaking of the leash. The leash, in this case, I will describe as an assumed level of security that, no matter how high debts become, will tether the debtor to a bailout. The belief in a safety line, or leg rope, emboldens financiers and governments to take higher and higher risks, surfing bigger and bigger economic bubbles as they roll in with the swell of so-called 'growth.' In other words, faith in the leash allows the belief in infinite growth without consequences. (Of course this is insane. In nature, only cancer and viruses grow exponentially, but each eventually kills the host.)

You are probably tired of hearing about Greece, but it does provide a suitable parallel to my recent aquatic episode. Predictably, Europe's first reaction to Greece was to save it before it hit the rocks. Next, like paddling without a board, Europe said, 'Shit, this is really hard.' So then Europe tried to do some body surfing on a wave of IMF money. And finally, we hear the cry of surrender: '%$&*! That did not work. Get me the @#$% out of here!'

The great unleashing is not confined to continental Europe. UK voters unleashed their frustration with the Labour government earlier this month, while American voters did so against almost all incumbents in primaries this Tuesday. The bears have unleashed on Wall Street in this so-called 'market correction' (By definition, doesn't that mean the market has been incorrect for the past year?), and it appears that the long anticipated landfall of oil in the Gulf will unleash a new wave of finger-pointing. And finally, Michael Ruppert (you know him if you know him) has unleashed himself to a wonderfully courageous level of blunt: http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/author-and-peak-oil-activist-michael-ruppert

I do not know where this is all going, but I do believe there is no leg rope strong enough to hold it all together. As Michael suggests, maybe I should trade in my surfboard for a lifeboat. But then again, my surfboard is my lifeboat.

Fear and...Loathing?

'Bombora' is Australian surf slang for a big wave that breaks far away from the shore. A combination of large swell, offshore winds, and underwater sandbars yesterday resulted in prime bombora conditions. The good news is that I rode some of the biggest waves of my life. The bad news is that I got blasted by some of the biggest waves of my life.

As a 4 meter wave broke over me, there was a moment when I did not know what was going to happen. My mind flashed to the death of a local surfer two weeks ago, and then to the MacGyver repair job on my leash. If my pulse were not already over 120 bpm due to paddling, I'm sure it would have shot up further.

But that's probably nothing compared with the bombora that hit the markets last Thursday as the Dow dropped nearly 1,000 points. The CBOE volatility index is also known as the Wall Street 'Fear Gauge.' It rose 25% on the week that saw all markets give up year-to-date gains. The financial bombora built through a combination of concerns over Greek debt, uncertain but key UK and German elections, allegations against Goldman Sachs, and probably another thousand factors both known and unknown to the general public.

I spent a lot of time in the water this weekend thinking about what Monday might bring. The UK has a hung parliament, exit polls show Angela Merkel's party may be in trouble, more riots in Greece, and...oh yeah, the BP techno-fix big box containment plan seems to have failed in the Gulf of Mexico. The worldwide sentiment that seems to be shifting rapidly from fear to loathing is clearly demonstrated in the North Rhine-Westphalia regional election in Germany. Essentially, the Germans seem to be sending a message: Fuck the Greeks.

But there's no time for loathing here. Monday has dawned blue sky and sunshine. The swell held overnight, and the winds remain offshore. The weekend crowds have left. See you later.

Wax, Oil and Greece

After carrying a nine foot board for a kilometer to the beach and paddling out through the breakers, it is extraordinarily frustrating to slip on the first wave. First I curse myself for not checking the wax before coming down, then I resign myself to a compromised session. But in truth, there is no such thing as a bad day surfing, and I can be thankful that our coastline is not covered in oil.

While the first day of the fifth month offered me only minor inconvenience on the board, significant "Mayday" calls were issued elsewhere around the world. The historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico made landfall today, and riots erupted in Greece over proposed austerity measures. On the surface these two events may appear worlds apart, but they have much in common. For both, the impact is sudden and severe. For both, external forces wield much of the power. And for both, the sudden trauma lands upon systems already compromised by years of erosion.

For those familiar with the Exxon Valdez, or other more recent spills, the sudden and severe impact of crude oil on coastal ecology is easy to recognize. In Greece, the rapid onset of the crisis has been exacerbated by European Union officials and in particular German politicians keenly aware of a key upcoming regional election. Governments worldwide have taken on an unofficial policy of 'extend and pretend' that can essentially be described as the 'Emperor's new fiscal policy.' While this approach has proven effective for short term politics, the inevitable crash, when it comes, is all the worse as a result. Greece, it can be said, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Along with the EU and Germany, Greece must also answer to the IMF, which has a long history of imposing austerity measures and policy reforms on loan recipients which result in the further loss of sovereignty. Austerity measures inevitably result in spending cuts on social programs, health care and education. All of these disproportionally hurt the poor. Policy reforms result in opening up markets to global competition and the ensuing race to the bottom for wages, worker's rights, and environmental policy. Resilience and sustainability, particularly in the areas of food production, are systematically dismantled leaving nations all the more vulnerable to price volatility caused by distant forces. This is called a downward spiral.

The coastal wetlands and estuaries of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are also at the mercy of outside forces. Of course the Obama administration wants to avoid another Katrina, and is acting quickly and decisively. Although Washington D.C. now wields considerable power over the response to the crisis, let us ask what were the external forces that caused it? Why was a rig that cost 350 million dollars to build 10 years ago (estimated to cost twice that to build a replacement today) drilling a hole 18,000 feet deep while floating atop 5,000 feet of water? With a full operating cost of about 1 million dollars per day, aren't there other, cheaper ways to get oil?

No, the light, sweet, easy to access oil on the planet is nearly gone, and oil companies are now forced to take greater risks at greater expense for lesser returns. Deepwater drilling and tar sands will produce oil, but only at greater and greater expense and higher and higher environmental costs. Many mysteries can be solved by following the money. And when you follow the money backward from the Deepwater Horizon it leads to your wallet and my wallet. We are the greatest external force that has influenced recent events in the Gulf of Mexico.

Finally, these twin tragedies fall upon systems whose abilities to offer resilience have been compromised by years and years of mismanagement. Greek tales of corruption, concealing debt, and largesse have reached epic status. They are well documented in the press. The cumulative effect, however, has been to strip the mediterranean nation of its ability to respond robustly. It's fiscal immune system was so weak by the time the final virus struck, there was no alternative to swallowing a bitter bailout pill.

Similarly, gulf coast ecosystems have suffered from decades of fertilizer runoff, over-harvesting and misguided water engineering projects. The result is a compromised immune response to additional external impacts. In this case the system is ecological, not economic. How appropriate that the words economy and ecology share a root in the Greek oikos. It reminds us that everything really is connected, and that in order to understand our world we might consider paying more attention to the connections.

In the case of oil and Greece, May 1st, 2010, simply represents the tipping point, or straw that broke the camel's back. These Romulus and Remus of newsbytes flashing across television screens both suck at the teet of a she wolf called 'Modernity,' who preys on the unquestioned belief of infinite growth without consequences. It would be nice to think that these twin tragedies share the maternity ward with no others, but the fact is that we stand at the brink of the great birthing of crises. While governments have been effective for a year and a half of extending and pretending, the duct tape is losing its grip. We can see daily the myths of modernity crumbling around us, and even if we are cursed like Cassandra to foretell the future but not be heard by others, it remains our duty and obligation to prepare and protect our communities from powerful external forces beyond our control.

Even though my wax has worn thin, I am still able to manage some fun rides on the day. Catching a beautiful right to finish the session, I can see the wave standing up before me. I carve left, crouch a bit, center myself on the board, and ride the whitewater all the way to the beach. While external forces may be unimaginably powerful, but recognizing their approach, bracing ourselves, and rebalancing, we can weather each storm and ride a sea of change.