Boom And Bust

It's pretty easy to blog about solar subsidies, poor urban design, bad American culture...pretty easy when times are good. Back in 2004, at the height of American culture, we couldn't give a rat's ass about health care for all, climate change, public transportation; we were happy enough with our electric grid, wind and solar were still decades away, life was good on a debt-fueled binge of ever increasing home values and cheap gasoline.

Now we are wondering -- how are each of us gonna pay back the $80,000, more or less, that the federal government has snatched to keep this economic house of cards standing, to fund all future unfunded liabilities...on top of the $9,300 of perpetual individual debt that each Merikan already owes forever?

In that regard, my bitching about how SMUD pays my excess solar generation seems trivial, to say the least.

At what point will we collectively say "no to universal health care, we can't afford it." Or "no to climate change, we can't afford it." Or "no to renewables, they're too expensive?" We might be at that point now, only a few short months into our depression economic downturn.

Bad times or good, we will have to push through mandates for renewable energies. We ought to find a better solution (whatever that might be) to our health care system. These aren't things that can be pursued only during boom times. we have to push through now.

This is an impossible task in my Merika, methinks. The biggest obstacle, in my humble opinion, is that we are going to attempt to sustain the unsustainable at all costs. That's exactly why we have Cash for Clunkers. That's exactly why we are throwing billions to stem foreclosures to stop housal unit prices from falling further. Why a massive chunk of our stimulus is to build more fucking roads. Fundamentally, we haven't had any Change to Believe In. We are doing all we can to keep an unsustainable Way Of Life. All we're wishing for is for our "consumers" to start consuming consumables once again, and once we do that then we're back on the unsustainable track again.