If America was your 'company'...

Sheryl, you hold a masters degree in strategic planning. At some point the demand for oil will exceed the supply of oil. If America was your 'company' what would you do? Larry

Larry, if the U.S. was my "company," I'd board a plane to Canada and hope no one found me.

It disturbs me to think that 1000 years from now what will remain of me will be non-biodegradable junk (and toxic waste) in landfills or caves or wherever it ends up. Who knows? The aliens picking through our stuff may have to wear protective gear... I hope not.

I can imagine God holding my waste and all its consequences against me because, even though I'm sorry for my wastefulness and recycle and do the usual conscientious-for-the-semi-affluent-of-this-country things, I keep making more waste--showing a lack of true remorse.

[I suppose this is why I get so angry when I get junk mail. It adds to the tonnage of my sins! You can sign a petition for a "do not mail" law by visiting http://www.donotmail.org/article.php?list=type&type=8).]

As for supply and demand: you know (or knew long enough to take the final for economics 101), when demand goes up or supply goes down, the price goes up to compensate. Demand refers to how much people are willing to buy at the going price.

In other words, demand won't actually exceed supply, When supply falls, demand will fall because more and more people won't be able to afford fuel.

But the laws of economics will not stop the U.S. from "demanding!" cheap oil when supply shrinks and prices climb. A lot of people will be unhappy and making a lot of "demands!" if fuel prices get high enough so that we can't afford to get to work or heat our homes.

Capitalism is great--it gets more goods produced and distributed than any other system--but capitalism isn't democratic. Without regulation, we might all be working for $1/hr (or, if the fed keeps bailing companies out by printing money, we might be working for wheelbarrows of worthless money.

Some people are "demanding!" that the government find ways to supply affordable oil indefinitely--as if we were living in a fairytale where the magic purse of gold coins is always full, no matter how many you spend.

If they found me in Canada and made me run the U.S. economy, I'd want to do something about the labor side. We buy products that have been made by people in other countries--many of whom are working at subsistence wages, working in terrible conditions, exposed to toxic chemicals, employed by companies that take no responsibility for their toxic waste, etc. In a global economy, our willingness to do this means that--over time--our wages and working conditions will tend to fall to match the wages and conditions of the people who make the things we buy. Not to mention that we will continue to discover lead in our toys, toxins in our cookies and hydrocarbons in our air.

To get an idea of the breadth and depth of this problem, take a gander at this page:
http://www.nlcnet.org/news_room.php.

There is an alternative. Products that include any parts, materials or labor which are grown, mined or made under circumstances that don't meet acceptable standards for safety, working conditions, waste disposal, wages, product quality, etc. would not be sold in the U.S. Socially responsible companies that import products from overseas already do this.

The danger with the above suggestion if it was suddenly made law is that it might shut down a lot of trade and cause shocks to the economic system.

So another idea I like would be for the global community to set standards for a certificate of Global Super-Excellence in wages, working conditions, waste treatment, health conditions, product quality, etc. This would include all the parts, materials, labor, shipping, etc. that go into whatever product is being sold. A global organization would administer the award and non-affiliated organizations would do audits.

Corporations would pay for the right to earn the certificates because the more lead that's found in toys and the more poison found in cookies, the more value such a certificate would add to products if it were trusted. People are not going to need many more scares before they are going to want reassurances about the products they buy.

(Which, let me point out, is another example of the truth that public trust has a dollar value and governments, agencies, corporations and companies that forget that will pay in the end).

As for waste--we in the U.S. tend to have no idea of the real cost of waste. I was reading Barbara Walters' autobiography, Auditions, where she describes her visit to China with Nixon. Every time she and her roommate put something in the wastebasket, the hotel staff would wrap the item in tissue and politely return it to them (including, she said, empty shampoo bottles). She describes how, at the end of the visit, they dumped and ran--hoping to get out before being confronted with the pile of waste they'd left behind. I don't think it occurred to her that China probably had no system of public waste disposal in those days.

Imagine being responsible for your own waste. Instead of buying shampoo in bottles, would you go to the local store and get a dollop each time you wanted to wash your hair? Or would you keep your bottle and refill it? And why aren't left-over medications returned to pharmaceutical companies for safe disposal? If any more Prozac gets into the ground-water, the fish will probably stop biting--and then where will we be?

My mother-in-law grew up on a homestead that had no electricity or in-door plumbing--not to mention no waste removal--until she was in college. You will never meet a harder-worker. For years she kept up a gorgeous modern home without garbage service by composting, not subscribing to newspapers/magazines, avoiding meat (you can't compost meat scraps), etc. I don't know how she managed her shampoo...

I know a lot of people are trying to solve the problem of waste. But why don't we consumers hesitate to buy something that is going to create a lot of waste? Why aren't corporations charged for excess packaging? Could I reform or will my ultimate epitaph be: "Her life generated an astonishing amount of waste."? Sheryl

“The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable”--Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be