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On
30 November, Tom Vilsack, the current governor
of Iowa, formally confirmed his intent to seek
the presidency of the United States of America.
This is how veteran WaPo political reporter Dan
Blaz introduced Vilsack’s candidacy in
paragraph one of a story filed in Mount
Pleasant, Iowa:
Iowa
Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) launched his campaign for
president here Thursday with a jab at
President Bush’s leadership, a warning that
America’s way of life is threatened, and a
pledge to overcome the country’s challenges
with big ideas on energy, education, the
economy and health care.
What
could be wrong with this?
As
readers of this column know, we love big ideas.
Citizens need leaders with big ideas about
energy, education, the economy and health care.
However, they also need leaders with ideas about
how to evolve functional human settlement
patterns so that goals within the categories of
energy, education, the economy and health care
as well as others like mobility and access and
affordable and accessible housing can be
achieved.
Further
it is very clear that the “America’s way of
life” (aka, the “American Dream”
lifestyle) is threatened.
What
Vilsack, Blaz, WaPo and most others are
failing to tell citizens is that
“America’s way of life” is primarily
threatened by “America’s Way of life.”
“America’s
way of life” is not sustainable. Period.
Each
day that citizens perpetuate the current, over-
consumptive life style, the harder it will be to
salvage the desirable and sustainable attributes
of contemporary life. As readers of this column
know, we measure “desirable and sustainable
attributes of contemporary life” by what the
market documents are the most desired
characteristics of contemporary life. These
characteristics are determined by the settlement
patterns, goods and services chosen by those who
are high enough on the economic food chain to
make choices where an array of choices are
available.
Politicians
must reverse course from the past 50 years and
admit that “America’s way of life” is not
only “threatened” but that the
Business-As-Usual, least-common- denominator
life style must undergo Fundamental Change if
the citizens of the US of A are to achieve a
sustainable society.
The
citizens of the US of A consume far more
resources per capita than any other nation. For
this reason, those who seek to be leaders in the
US of A must convince citizens to lead the way
on a global scale in order to evolve a
sustainable trajectory for civilization.
On
this note we have revised our last two columns
“Bread and
Circuses,” 6 November 2006, and “Moldy
Bread and Lame Circuses,” 20 November
2006, to constitute a Backgrounder to
entitled, “A New Metric for Citizen
Well-Being.” This new Backgrounder will be
further refined to become the introduction to
the section of TRILOGY on PROPERTY DYNAMICS.
Let
us review the obvious:
-
Dysfunctional
and disaggregated human settlement pattern
wastes land, pollutes air and wastes/
pollutes water.
-
Dysfunctional
and disaggregated human settlement patterns
lead to vast over consumption of all goods,
services and resources both renewable and
nonrenewable.
It
is not just the gasoline, diesel and
kerosene burned up in an attempt to achieve
mobility and access that is a problem. A broad
range of renewable and nonrenewable resources is
consumed for construction, heating and cooling,
food production and almost every other element
of “America’s way of life.” They all
contribute to wasted land, polluted air and
polluted/wasted water in addition to economic
stagnation and social conflict. For quick survey
of these issues see “Whale
on the Beach,” 28 August 2006.
What
is missing from Tom Vilsack’s platform, and
from the platform and stump speeches of other
politicians is a willingness to articulate in
detail the need for Fundamental Change. It turns
out that an extreme reduction in citizens'
cumulative ecological footprint can be derived
from relatively modest, market-driven changes in
distribution of human activities to achieve
functional human settlement patterns.
Current
settlement patterns make a few people rich in
the short term and impoverish society in the
long term. A significant amount of the excess
profits from Business-As- Usual goes to
political campaign contributions. For this
reason statements like Vilsack’s are
meaningless.
Few
disagree that least-common- denominator
settlement patterns waste resources. Those who
take the opposite view are making or hoping to
make profit from Business-As-Usual.
Ironically,
it is not necessary to over-consume resources
to maintain most of the important, as opposed to
least-common-denominator, aspects of
“America’s way of life.” If resources were
conserved by evolving functional human
settlement patterns, most citizens could
live the kind of lifestyle preferred in the
marketplace today by those who have a choice and
can afford it.
We
are always looking for politicians who have
honest, useful messages. Four of the last five
presidents were governors before they became
president. Two were largely unknown outside the
states of Georgia and Arkansas two years before
the year in which they were elected. Perhaps
some other governor will step forth to provide
leadership or perhaps Vilsack will rewrite his
stump speech. I am not holding my breath.
--
December 4, 2006
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