Dark Age America: The Senility of the Elites | John Michael Greer

[Tace]

Sept. 24, 2014 (Archdruid Report) -- Regular readers of this blog will no doubt recall that, toward the beginning of last month, I commented on a hostile review of one of my books that had just appeared in the financial blogosphere.

At the time, I noted that the mainstream media normally ignore the critics of business as usual, and suggested that my readers might want to watch for similar attacks by more popular pundits, in more mainstream publications, on those critics who have more of a claim to conventional respectability than, say, archdruids. Such attacks, as I pointed out then, normally happen in the weeks immediately before business as usual slams face first into a brick wall of its own making.

Well, it’s happened. Brace yourself for the impact.

The pundit in question was no less a figure than Paul Krugman, who chose the opinion pages of the New York Times for a shrill and nearly fact-free diatribe lumping Post Carbon Institute together with the Koch brothers as purveyors of “climate despair.” PCI’s crime, in Krugman’s eyes, consists of noticing that the pursuit of limitless economic growth on a finite planet, with or without your choice of green spraypaint, is a recipe for disaster. Instead of paying attention to such notions, he insists, we ought to believe the IMF and a panel of economists when they claim that replacing trillions of dollars of fossil fuel-specific infrastructure with some unnamed set of sustainable replacements will somehow cost nothing, and that we can have all the economic growth we want because, well, because we can, just you wait and see!

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http://worldnewstrust.com/dark-age-america-the-senility-of-the-elites-john-michael-greer

[malthaussen]

1. With resolute will, they ignore the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

As insightful as some of the more popular economists can be, they all seem to think that the "solution" involves going back to the economics of the '50s, with unlimited growth and unlimited waste. It's a rather appalling blind spot, IMO.

-- Mal

[AverageJoe90]

2. And, unfortunately for you, Johnny, Paul Krugman happens to be right. nt

(P.S. "post-growth economics" is a pipe dream.)