Transition Vashon

For any number of reasons, most of us are pretty dissatisfied with the status quo, at least outside of our little island paradise. During this election season, we are mostly pointing our fingers at our elected officials at the national level. Whatever the problem, we expect that enacting the right laws and policies will solve it.

I recently spent much of ten years working to enact public campaign financing of campaigns at the local, state and national levels. My feeling was that it was the reform that made all other reforms possible, that it was a no brainer, and that it would not be that difficult to make people of any political stripe see that it was in their interest. Imagine: for just $6 per person, we could pay for all the campaigns for Congress and the president! There would be no race for funds; campaigns would be about ideas, not dollars.

You know the result. The influence of money in campaigns is far worse now than it was in 2001 when I started working on it. I wouldn’t say that my idealism was dampened so much as redirected. My decision to devote my time to our local community was based on triage. I felt that if we, and other communities across the country, became more aware of how our choices decrease our resilience and increase our dependence, we could reverse that and begin to shift power back to us.

First of all, I think that corporate consumer capitalism not only owns the government, it also provides goods and services that we can’t do without. The occupy movement recognized that overturning corporate hegemony is going to require a massive grassroots campaign. The trouble is that we are not ready to do what it takes to gain power over them. We have come to love the high-energy consumer fantasyland that corporations have sold to us. If Exxon Mobil and Shell are the enemy, isn’t it ironic that you find yourself at the gas pump on a regular basis? If corporate agriculture is the enemy, are you prepared to buy no products that have been directly or indirectly produced by them? How many of us hold jobs at or own stock in these corporations? Our dependence indicates clearly who is in control.

Don’t get me wrong; change at the national level could make a huge difference. Climate change disaster might be averted by a massive national reallocation of resources like the one mounted for WW II. The current consensus is that that is what it is going to take to avoid disastrous overheating.

However, it is abundantly clear to me that our national government has been hijacked by for profit corporations. Obama’s administration has many former corporate personnel, and most in Congress are anxious to do corporate bidding in exchange for campaign funds and/or a cushy corporate job after their term of "public service". However, not all are "bought" and all are sometimes subject to public protest that can’t be ignored. I still hink it’s well worth the time to sign the letters and petitions on the odd chance that they will produce results.

A current local/regional action illustrates where change needs to happen. The Sierra Club is promoting a campaign here in Washington to close down the one coal plant in Montana that supplies 36% of the power we get from Puget Sound Energy. That makes it the single largest source of power for us; hydropower is about 29%. Wind and Solar are about 2%. If our hydropower is pretty much tapped out and other renewables are only 2%, how can we even contemplate shutting down that dirty coal plant? Right now, there is only one choice: conservation. Eliminating inefficiencies will gain back some of that, but if we want to eliminate 36%, we will need to contemplate lifestyle changes. To keep that in perspective, you may remember about a year ago I mentioned that Europeans use 50% of the energy per capita that we do; we can reduce our energy use 36% with some planning and ingenuity. The more I looked into these sorts of things, the more I came to realize that it isn’t just corporations that need to change. It’s us as well; in fact, I think it is primarily us.

Lifestyle change can’t be legislated. It is we who have to make those changes in our personal lives and in our community.

Another dynamic that drives me to work at the local level is the all powerful and enveloping paradigm of growth economics. You will not find a single media or government source that dares to even question the dogma of growth. An endlessly growing economy on a world with finite resources makes no sense. Yet, complex stable state and even shrinking economies have been postulated and are theoretically sound. I highly recommend Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein for a good explanation of how these systems work. In it you will find that localizing and diversifying the economy is key to having prosperity without growth.

Only when we can really withhold our business from corporations will we be able to exert any control over them, and regain control of our government. On the other hand, if we fail to exert control over the ruling corporations, climate change may put them out of business, and we will have to depend on ourselves anyway.

In the end, for me, it’s just more satisfying to take matters into my own hands rather than wringing them as my elected officials have let me down once again.

Comments? terry@vashonloop.com