Notes on Sustainability

I had coffee with a great mate of mine who is a retired senior banker…he is 48 years. Clearly this guy has great insight.  His passing remark to me was “well maybe this is the great test of our generation…”.  But what is the “Test”.

I think the test facing us is multifaceted:

1     Collapsing banking system and world Wide financial collapse.

2     Consequent breakdown in accepted world order – “we are too linked together to  go to war..” – HMMM lets hope so.

3     Lack of real money to feed, water, clothe, house and provide utility to people all around the world….including many who previously were better feed, clothed, housed, and serviced with utiility.

4     Lack of funds to create the climate mitigation projects to slow climate change due to collapsing carbon prices and lack of liquidity for project developers.

I am no financial sage but I am sure that none of the current financial sages have any idea where we are headed.  I recently spoke with a another banker, the chief economist for another emerging markets bank, who said he felt that the only course of action open to the United States was to print more money.  There would be benefits of more local jobs but hyperinflation and loss of international standing would be mean the end of the current world order.  Needless to say anyone outside the US who bought US treasuries would suffer immensely.  I cant see China being terribly happy about that.  It would be a body blow to world trade.

From a sustainability point of view, the days of the huge carbon mitigation projects are finished.  The small scale local action projects will drive the debate in the next two years.  The funds simply aren’t there.

I suppose it will be a matter of who is left standing in the fight against climate change…..But wars are like that.

S

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.