As Good As It Gets

News Bunny came down with a dose of myxamotosis but hopes that readers will be happy to hear that he is still alive, if not kicking, at this point. Unhappily the hospital does not provide rabbit adapted internet terminals, so readers will have to be content with relays of News Bunny's thoughts through interviews taken by friends and relations.

News Bunny was particularly cheered by seeing the Bank Of England follow his advice to print shedloads of money. As welcome as this is, news of 'green shoots of recovery' seems completely deluded and News Bunny wondered if some commentators had been stealing his medication. Our poorly Leporid explained that two uncomfortable facts seem incontrovertible: exponential growth is an inherently unsustainable phenomenon and climate change is going to be a major feature of the lifetimes of anyone born this century.

With the human population growing at 1.2% per year any economic growth below this figure means that the average punter is getting poorer. Policy makers, journalists and other commentators continue to see economic growth of around 3% as the norm and anything less as some kind of 'problem' requiring remedy. Voters are happy to hear that it is the responsibility of their representatives to make them a little richer every year. News Bunny pointed out that there is nothing in the laws of nature saying that humans have to get twenty times richer every century, as this assumption implies, indeed nature's laws rather mitigate against this as a steady state.

Through a hoarse whisper my favourite rabbit explained the world we have woken into. In California, the leading edge of most trends, one in every fifty homes is in foreclosure. Banks will either charge their customers or taxpayers for these losses. Working people will be encouraged to pay down debt, pay taxes, pay bank charges and spend less. These virtues, inevitably, will put other working people out of a job and some of them into foreclosure. The end of this year will see a surge in UK repossesions as the first wave of redundancy cheques run out, in turn this will kick off a second wave of economic pain. Europe is going the same way and Japan has been in this place since middle aged people were teenagers.

This self reinforcing cycle of falling property prices, falling debt and rising unemployment will continue through the next decade by the end of which climate change will not be a theory but a fact evidenced by rising sea levels. With his nose moist with ardour and his eyes red with earnest, News Bunny proposed that at this point the world will stop bickering about how to share the cost of protecting ourselves from environmental catastrophe and start to divert resources into actually doing so. This may be good for the construction industry but it cannot imply economic growth as it essentially involves rebuilding the house you already live in further uphill. Rich people will still have somewhere to live but they will be much poorer for it. Poor people will die.

News Bunny was exhausted by this explanation and I crept away as his heavy lidded eyes closed, however he called me back as I turned the door handle to leave. "Tell them there is no 'recovery'" he implored me "This is as good as it gets". Carrying an untouched tray of tired lettuce leaves out with me, I left News Bunny, hoping that 'recovery' was still on the cards for him personally, at least.