It’s assumed, it’s a given, it’s sacred. We all have understandably bought into the belief, as so many generations before us have done, that our career choices after graduating college will be aplenty, that our college education will serve us well and that in the years to come — after accumulating wealth and rising up in corporate, academic and creative institutions — we will be able to provide for our children, ensuring that they will have it better than we ever did. Our experience as students, our investment of our time and money into the University of Texas is based on this belief. The American dream will be upheld, and in the long run, things will keep getting better. But what if we’re wrong?
Prior to our current recession, a debate about the vulnerability of capitalism, extractive economies as a whole and endless growth would have fallen upon deaf ears in mainstream discourse. But today, with U.S. households having lost $13 trillion and real unemployment rates heading to pre-1940 levels, the fringe voices that have long criticized the limitations of the current system are beginning to be heard. Professor Robert Jensen in the School of Journalism is one of those voices.
Jensen is no stranger to controversy. After proclaiming that the attacks of Sept. 11 were “reprehensible and indefensible” but were “no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism — the deliberate killing of civilians for political purposes — that the U.S. government has committed during [his] lifetime,” Jensen was subject to an onslaught of criticism from students and faculty alike. The professor held firm to his beliefs, however, and asserted that the war on terror was truly “a war about geopolitical strategy.”
As we approach 2010, Jensen’s views, which appeared to many in that jingoistic moment to be literally insane, are by the day more believable than ever. So what other insights might Jensen offer us that challenge conventional attitudes and beliefs?
During an interview for KVRX student radio, the professor ominously said, “Reality is going to force college students to often reconsider career choices when we see that certain assumptions will no longer hold.”
Why will these assumptions not hold? “The ecological crises,” Jensen said. “And I use the plural quite specifically — crises, multiple crises, not just global warming but levels of toxicity in the air and water, loss of topsoil, the reduction in biodiversity, all of these things are part of a global pattern that is marking one, I think, uncontroversial fact, that we are reaching and probably are long beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, and we are drawing down the ecological capital of the planet at a rate that is increasingly threatening, not just in the long term and centuries from now, but in decades.”
If Jensen is correct, if the system is unsustainable not just in the long term but in the short as well, we might all be in for a rude awakening.
Pondering over such topics isn’t fun, but it is necessary. Jensen urges us to think about the larger issues at hand, like when all of our consumer waste will catch up with us (the average American throws out 1,500 pounds of it a year), what energy sources will replace fossil fuels and how we are going to maintain agricultural production when phosphates and aquifers are scarce.
Whether or not Jensen’s view that these ecological limitations will restrict economic growth in our lifetime is correct, the fact remains that our current course cannot be sustained forever. Our economic system is based on unlimited growth. We live on a finite planet. This fundamental flaw cannot be avoided, and it might end up altering our post-college lives.
We would be unwise to label the professor’s dire warnings “insane,” especially considering the inaccuracy of such slander in the recent past.
The insanity of today might prove to be the reality of tomorrow.
Sloan is a government junior.
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