Open Letter to Warren A. Johnson And Obama Warren A. Johnson is not known in Europe, at least in the francophone world. It's unfortunate. The academic geographer, who is now 73 years old, has long been a professor of environmental geography and natural resources to
San Diego State University, California. Now retired, he lives in a secluded valley four-hour drive from San Francisco, where he cultivates the land and lives with a footprint that is trying to minimize.
In 1978 he published an amazing book prescience and accuracy: Muddling Toward
frugality: A New Social Logic For a Sustainable World (San Francisco, Sierra Club Books). This book, which fortunately has just been reissued
, from the fact that fossil resources are becoming scarce, that renewables are not enough to maintain the current pace of economic growth, and we must therefore accept that individually and collectively entering an "age of scarcity." Johnson concludes including a defense of basic income that seems fruitful, and which I draw in part to my own reflections on the transition to post-capitalism.
Recently, Warren A. Johnson wrote an open letter to Barack Obama. This letter is public and posted on various sites
. It offers an interesting argument about the challenges we face and about the collective solutions that we could make. Johnson is a moderate, certainly not a capitalist and not even an opponent of the market economy (the opposite), but at times it indicates that the transition should take place in a pattern that reminds me of my own argument "double trigger". The market should be framed in the right way, so that it transmits to citizens the right signals to them, with the help of government, radically reorient their lifestyles. Johnson is American and you can feel in his arguments. You do not share maybe not all, but they will help you (like me) to think and possibly see his writings to go further. So I wanted to offer a French translation of this open letter. Here it is:
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Covelo, July 20, 2010
Mr. President,
I tried to send you this letter before, but now it really has become crucial given the challenge we all face: having to maintain the health of the economy when making risky debt measures stimulation of growth. Given my background in natural resources, I would add another obstacle to growth: the stabilization of oil production since 2005, which would increase the price of crude oil prices if new jobs were created. What we need is a way to create jobs at a lower cost and using less oil. This could be encouraged by creating sustainable livelihoods through support given to those who wish to lead lives more simple and cooperatives that can be supported by renewable energy. The niche industry is becoming more crowded, even though we consume it by exhausting the fossil fuels that were initially made possible the Industrial Revolution. Opening before us is that of sustainable niche that has supported human life before the industrial era, and the remake once that fossil fuels are gone, with larger amounts renewable energy that modern technology allows continuous generation.
The cost of assistance to those who want to develop sustainable niche will be small compared to that of job creation in the economy growth. This is reflected in the cost of stimulation efforts that have helped counter the deflationary spiral, but could not put the economy on a growth path - in part because each change was accompanied by an increase price of a barrel that was killing the recovery in the bud. Now, the potential growth declines because of the efforts pursued within decades, to bias in favor of economic growth in every way imaginable. However, sustainable niche remains wide open for individuals, families and young people wishing to create sustainable livelihoods that will gain value over time as energy availability decreases. The more Americans who will do that, unless they grow the dangers of mainstream economics, because there will be less unemployment and less debt. To me, this offer of assistance is similar to the offer of land made under the Homestead Act , one or the other offer attracting those looking for ways to use their energies can also benefit the nation. In this case, this would be done through decentralization towards renewable resources, rather than the delivery of industrial resources to urban areas in super-tankers or semi-trailers. Debts and high oil prices that will grab the growth economy are market signals that show us the way towards sustainable livelihoods that will be available once all the industrial resources have melted. This proposal is detailed in a manuscript that has been the victim of partisan division in this country and the vacuum it creates. It was different in 1978 when the publisher Sierra Club Books published my book Muddling Toward
frugality, which won a pretty good success and eventually sold 50,000 copies. I've been a Democrat all my life, but now I think of myself as a humanist / modernist disillusioned as politics becomes more a means of protecting its own interests to promote the common good. This state policy that has made me one of the many people who supported your election, but it also He then made your work difficult because so many people persist in seeing that their interest. The new manuscript entitled The Gift of Peaceful Genes and the Sustainable Revolution , and it highlights the value of cooperation rather than competition in the long human advancement. My hope is that the transition from growth to sustainability will appeal to both Conservatives and Liberals [in the North American sense of the term: the Democrats], since this transition we would move away from anger and insecurity that characterize a competitive lifestyle. We would go towards increasing importance of cooperation within families and communities, through the ways to be more localized, more decentralized that characterize sustainability. There also in [my book] general references to altruism which we call the major faith traditions, and a handful of phrases that reflect biblical wisdom. A central theme, however, is that the shift towards sustainable lifestyles can be performed within the market forces that are familiar to us in this society. These forces can guide us through the new economic territory, as citizens take common decisions that are best for them in changing circumstances. However, for this to work, you must skew the economy towards sustainability rather than growth, the main priority is to preserve the current health of the dominant economy in which we all depend. This means that the amount of assistance will vary according to the needs of employment, profitability and fiscal balances. It also means that oil imports will decrease gradually to ensure the development of renewable energy without federal subsidies, but also without that we should all military spending before. Markets have proven their ability to encourage change, but only if they are shaped by higher values; sustainability is the value that will propel us in the right direction - rather than growth, triggering anger and fear when it ceases to be possible. Sustainability can move towards stability and continuity - these conservative values that the modern era has lost, but will return in force when sustainability will become the most realistic goal. This will end the large percentage of which Américians feel that the nation is going in the wrong direction. All this assumes there is someone with the ability and courage to put these issues on the table and submit them for discussion, what is your quality. This will be essential if we are to overcome the understandable fears surrounding the end of growth, especially if we want the transition to be initiated by those who welcome the opportunity to do so without the whole society is forced to take the same direction.
(...)
With my greatest respect,
Warren A. Professor Johnson
Emeritus of Geography
San Diego State University ************************************* ********
Admittedly, the term basic income is never mentioned explicitly, and the idea of a transition to dual trigger remains very discreet, but it's good that this sub- behind the proposal from Johnson: to encourage a capitalist economy (green) solid and profitable, while puncturing it on the revenues necessary to fund (through redistribution) public support for alternative lifestyles dramatically. By their
moderation and sense of balance and post-market capitalism, the work of Warren Johnson deserve a big audience in Europe, where we face (especially within the EU) to the same difficulty in thinking at the same time the recovery growth and transition to post-growth. We can find some compromises that naive Johnson moved, but they have the merit of forcing us to argue more.
