Prepare for an incremental, immediate and steady decline in our standard of living, converging on a global mean.

Prepare now for a transition to times when we have to get by on less. When we take less of the global commons to fulfill our local needs.

Prepare for a fitter, more physical future. Prepare for a more just, more equitable future. Prepare to participate as a citizen empowered in the community rather than a consumer manipulated by the corporates.

Get off the Boston - Berlin axis!

A meme went through us like an axiom of common sense, that we lived on a cultural and financial tightrope on the Boston – Berlin axis. It was a classic fallacy from the bubble times. Truth is we co-exist in a web that stretches from Botswana to Bangladesh, from Bolivia to Bratislava, Baltimore and beyond.

On the Boston - Berlin axis, the cultural yardstick we measured ourselves by, was mostly American. This was readily assimilated by saturation of US television input, movies and State News political dramas. Not only did we understand our deep kinship with our cousins in America, we understood that we deserved to enjoy the same material lifestyle that Americans seemed to enjoy. The fact that the per capita US citizen was by far the grossest consumer of resources on the planet didn’t seem to matter, if it was known at all.

The Europeans showered us with money and laws in exchange for our acceptance of a succession of treaties. But our mass media have yet to show a single French or German TV drama, even though we’ve been officially aligned since 1973. The collective ignorance about our fellow States in the Union is a national disgrace.

But bless them, they gave us motorways, sewerage schemes, education funds, small business start up funds, farmer funds and forestry funds. Lots of casheesh for hookahed Ireland. And laws. Directives as they’re known. Ireland had bugger all environmental protection before we signed up to the Union. Ask the workers from Cork harbour’s pharmaceutical plants in the ‘70s what the health and safety provisions and emission abatement strategies were back then. But the Union helped with that, and with rights, responsibilities and regulations.

The national morale wouldn’t be so f***ed if the tools weren’t bombarded with consumer messages all the time. God love us, we're susceptible to suggestion. We're saturated with devious consumer marketing and advertising messages that foster illusions about our status and well being.

Depression, mental health stuff, people on legal pills, people on smuggled pills. Anxiety, fear and uncertainty. The growing pains of a serpent shedding its skin before slithering off anew unto the ends of Eden.

There is a social and a cultural narrative around these concerns, as surely as there is a uniquely personal one. That meme went through us like an axiom of common sense. We could entertain the notion that we existed on the Boston – Berlin axis. It was a classic fallacy from the bubble times. Truth is we co-exist in a web that stretches from Botswana to Bangladesh, to Bolivia, Bratislava and Baltimore. And beyond.

On the Boston – Berlin tightrope we performed many neat conjuring tricks. But we would have prospered better if we had perceived ourselves the material equal of fellow global citizens in the whole world web of peoples, tribes, their settlements and habitats.

In any case, the parliament is close to passing a law limiting our carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050. I ask you to imagine yourself or your off spring in the year 2050 getting by with 80% less foodmiles, 80% less wine miles, 80% less holiday miles, 80% less home heating emissions, 80% less electricity emissions.

in this scenario, we prepare, not for the rest of the world to achieve a standard of living akin to our own, but instead we prepare for an incremental, immediate and steady decline in our standard of living, converging on a global mean.

less cash, less consumption