Ripples

Even if we were rather expecting it, at least sometime, it is still surprising that the ripples disturbing our calm, comfortable lagoon are coming apparently from different directions, but all at the same time. Is it a coincidence, a conspiracy or the varied effects of a common cause?

As the post-cold war period draws to a close, one rather blood-coloured ripple reaches us from Iraq, possibly the harbinger of larger waves to follow. Indeed in the US the ripples are already a storm surge that threatens to swamp the White House. You would think sandbags would be in order, but instead - and in pursuit of what Alan Greenspan now says is "largely about oil" - we are getting preparations for a strike on Iran, as if what is now thought to be more than a million deaths has not been enough.

Then along comes some choppy climatic water to add to the queasiness. As Southern Greenlanders graze sheep for the first time in centuries, and grow broccoli for the first time ever, their hunter neighbours to the north face catastrophe as the ice sheets melt at an ever-faster rate and the animals they depend on disappear. Fires in Europe and floods in the UK suggest our time is coming. Already tens of thousands of homes are uninsurable: trust the insurance industry to spot a growing risk. This time the ripples are not so metaphorical.

Then apparently from nowhere comes an economic tidal wave, at least for the unlucky small investors in Northern Rock (the big institutions disengaged months ago). The rest of us wait to see if the Barsetshire Provident Mutual International Banking Corporation will go the same way, and wonder whether our cash if we have any would be safer in a tin in the wardrobe. Bill the Burglar rubs his hands, but as demand leaks out of the economy his is one of the few secure occupations.

So what links together these increasingly unruly currents? It's pretty obvious really: our economy runs on short-term profitability. By inundating the world with unsecured debt someone keeps their job and their CEO probably earns a fat bonus. The always unstated assumption is that in ten, fifteen or twenty years' time the world economy will have expanded enough to sustain the repayment of all those debts and all the interest on them. Meanwhile the bonus earner has "moved on", and the bonus with her. Government does this too, but on the grand scale with its overhanging mountain of PFI contracts. No matter if it would take 1.4 earths to support an economy consistent with debt repayment.

The assumption is always the same: the future will not only absorb the consequences of the decisions we take now, but will do so while remaining essentially the same as it is today. Hence the West will always be the dominant military power, the global economy will continue to grow indefinitely and the ecological consequences of our headlong expansion will be deferred into a permanently indeterminate future. Nothing will disturb the tranquillity of our lagoon.

The paradox is that by making this assumption we ensure its falsity.