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Towards a just & healthy democracy in the Commonwealth... and beyond!
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Thu Jun 24, 2010 at 10:12:32 AM EDT
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(Another Amherst Is Happening - promoted by eli_beckerman)
The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place. (Will Cuppy, How to Become Extinct, 1941)
What makes the town of Amherst what it is? First, it is the presence of UMass and the two colleges. That is what makes the area the largest source of employment in western Massachusetts, bread and butter for many households, and that is what makes it a culturally stimulating life style desired by many-some fleeing urban anomie. Students clamoring for living space make it a landlord's paradise. Adding the bucolic remains of a previous agricultural setting has attracted gentrifying upper middle class families and retirees, turning it into a real-estate bonanza for banks, invested property owners and overrated Wall Street securities. Finally, the town's well-regarded public schools attract many. |
| robc :: After Amherst |
| Much else follows from this minimal list. But contemplate the whole even better by imagining what might cause the collapse of Amherst. Recall that we are in a major financial meltdown nationally, narrowly avoiding (perhaps) something like the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover-style state budget cuts have ensnared government aid to towns, while profligate inducements to globalizing corporations cost Massachusetts $1.7 billion in revenues. The Provost has outlined a staggering $71.2 million state cut to UMass-with unknown consequences for the town.
What has made it possible for Amherst, in the first place, to be a Shangri-La for higher incomes? Cheap carbon fuel makes distance disappear. Upscale housing, sprawled over the remaining landscape and serviced by big box shopping malls connected by SUVs, is expensive to obtain, wastes energy, and is ecologically unsustainable. Investing in them has required bubble economics for both owners and bankers-great, for some, during the boom and bad for human life during the bust. Even the quality of education in Amherst is good for inflated real-estate.
Today, boom and bust life-style is rapidly reaching environmental and social limits while financial meltdowns expose the impossibility of a growth economy without limits. Early meltdowns occurred with the Panics of 1819 and 1837. We are reminded of Andrew Jackson's Bank War, the history of which sounds so much like our own time. Addressing the Congress and denouncing property acquired through government favor, Jackson said:
...when the laws undertake to add to...natural...advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.
These words uncannily describe our current economic crisis-and 173 years after them we have expanded the scope of bubble financed consumerism with kleptocratic credit cards, credit default swaps and home equity loans. Financial meltdowns are an American tradition-to which we have added deadly heat of another kind: Climate change. Is this a recipe for extinction?
Some questions need an answer: Should Amherst survive as an island of gentrified housing? Should it have a level of public education not available generally? Will more commercial development provide the taxes required to go on as before-and should we? It is now clear that the carbon based and energy intensive consumer lifestyle many devote their life to is changing the climate in which urban civilization evolved. World oil production is peaking and prices will rise dramatically.
It might be advisable to provide for the end of the current Amherst and create a new Amherst in a new nation. To make a transition, we need national and state government assistance-such as a single-payer health care system-saving our bodies, saving the town the cost of expensive private health care, and saving the nation the cost of one more source of private financial speculation-for-profit health insurance companies. We must un-sprawl and re-localize farming and industry. The Age of Oil is ending because it has gone on far too long and it was all a mistake in the first place. It is too late for business as usual.
Steve Randall, Larry Ely, and Rob Crowner lead the Pioneer Valley Relocalization Project, which is advocating and developing projects in the relocalization outlined by E. F. Schumacher, Richard Heinberg, and Bill McKibben. |
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Green Mass Group is an online forum for Green thought and collective action in Massachusetts. It is a community forum for justice, sustainability, democracy and health in the Commonwealth and beyond.
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| Quotes |
"Now, is this the deal I would have preferred? No. I believe that we could have made the tough choices required - on entitlement reform and tax reform - right now, rather than through a special congressional committee process. But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need and gives each party a strong incentive to get a balanced plan done before the end of the year. Most importantly, it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America."
--President Barack Obama on the debt ceiling "deal"
"Despite Democratic control over the White House, despite Democratic control over the Senate, despite overwhelming opposition from the American people, a small minority of the members of the Republican-controlled House have successfully pushed an extreme right-wing agenda onto the American political landscape. It is an ideology which believes that despite the fact that the rich are getting richer, the middle class is shrinking, and poverty is increasing, all - all of the burden for deficit reduction should rest on working people."
--Independent Senator Bernie Sanders on the debt ceiling "deal"
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Then and Now
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Then...
"Last year Evergreen, a Massachusetts company, agreed to establish their first-ever United States based manufacturing facility here in Massachusetts. They did so, or are doing so, at Devens. They have now agreed and chosen to triple their size at Devens. Their next phase of expansion, right here in Massachusetts, a signature company in a signature sector, and we congratulate all of the folks at Evergreen and look forward to continuing to work with you...
We made a personal commitment to Evergreen for the sake of Evergreen, but also because we wanted to show that there are ways in which state government, in working together with private industry and with the utility companies, could begin to create a different kind of environment, a different kind of business climate here, to grow that sector, and it is happening. It's happening. Evergreen is one of the most prominent examples, but there are a whole host of examples."
--Governor Deval Patrick, April 7, 2008, boasting about state investment in Evergreen.
and Now...
"Evergreen Solar Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, completing a stunning reversal of fortune for a high-flying alternative-energy company that once seemed to herald a new era for the Massachusetts economy... At its peak, Evergreen employed roughly 900 people locally and attracted more than $50 million in state support, as its stock price soared above $100 a share.
Yesterday, Evergreen's stock closed at 18 cents. The company shuttered its manufacturing plant in Devens earlier this year and now has only 85 employees left. Massachusetts is one of its top creditors, owed $1.5 million in rent."
--Erin Ailworth, Boston Globe, August 16, 2011
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