Month 9, Day 19: POTUS

Everybody’s talking about the Elizabeth Warren appointment. As a Warren myself, I think it’s fine news. And it provided me with a hook for another “capitalizm iz teh suck”-type letter. Yippee.

Dear President Obama,

Your recent appointment of Elizabeth Warren is good news for all of us normal people who have been hoping against hope that your administration would follow through on its promises to help America’s suffering middle class citizens.

There is another promise which needs to be kept and built upon. The rescue of our middle class won’t amount to a hill of beans if the environmental wealth of our country and the world is so depleted and damaged that it can no longer sustain our population. Although it is not usually framed that way, climate change is as much an economic issue as an environmental one; it is obvious to anyone who’s paying attention that market capitalism is based on profoundly and fundamentally flawed assumptions. At first, the ethos of naked and unrestrained greed merely damaged our nation’s financial systems — but in the years to come we will increasingly see its effect on the natural world which makes our lives possible.

If greed is good, then short-term profits outweigh long-term sustainability; to hell with our grandchildren and their grandchildren, as long as we have a good quarterly profit! But contrary to the thinking of your economic advisor Mr. Summers, a finite planet cannot support infinite growth. We cannot continue to lay waste to the environment in the name of economic instant gratification!

This is why it was so terribly disappointing that your advisors turned away Bill McKibben and his small group of student activists when they tried to get you to reinstall solar panels on the White House roof. There are responsibilities that accompany citizenship in a world superpower — and your determination to turn the White House green would have helped all of us understand them. Instead…well, it’s just another opportunity lost in the name of a “deliberative process.”

Too bad. Especially since we don’t have another decade in which to procrastinate. We must act immediately if we are to have any impact. And not only must we stop burning coal and oil, we must rethink the economic models that have led us to this pass. Whether we like it or not, market capitalism has been a disaster for the planetary systems upon which all life depends. If we don’t end our reliance on this deeply flawed way of thinking, we may, instead, just end.

Yours Sincerely,

Warren Senders