New Zealand TV News Takes the Global Economic Meltdown Mainstream

This morning I posted a link over at the News Room (credit urbansurvival for drawing my attention to it) for a New Zealand television news report by an investigative news show called Close Up. They interview "British financier and multi-millionaire Jim Mellon" (who I'm not familiar with) and it seems he has a book out which claims the U.S. is about to enter a major depression which will drag the Western world down with it. You can watch the full segment at the above link, which runs about 10:30 minutes and is interesting not so much for "what" it says but "how" it says it--they maintain a sincere and legitimate seriousness in their treatment of the message, especially in their post-segment discussion.

I'll emphasize, in case you can't catch the video, that Jim essentially says: 1) the U.S. is bankrupt and the world knows it but is delaying actually owning up to the fact, 2) U.S. citizens will see their way of life devastated, 3) Housing in affluent countries is overvalued and could fall 50%, and 4) people need to be preparing by buying gold and silver, by getting out of debt and by generally deconsuming their lifestyle. He makes no mention of Peak Oil at all.

But after reading this comment over at (deconsumption referer and New Zealand resident) Village Blog I felt driven to move the link to the front page here.

"I ran into a friend downtown this afternoon who runs a hardware store, well, it a kind of combination hardware store and drop-in centre for guys. Because of this he tends to have his finger on the pulse of out little town and apparently the talk all week has been about a couple of items that were on TV. One covering the decrepit state of the US economy and the other about James Lovelock's message of doom. Apparently they've been the two major topics of discussion all week. The consensus from Raglan, like everywhere else, is; We're fucked.

What's really interesting though is that this stuff is starting to penetrate the mainstream media in a serious way (in New Zealand anyway). Of course I have long stopped watching TV - especially the news - so I didn't have a clue that it had happened. I wonder if it will be enough for people to start acting on it. My personal experience is that I need to hear about something several times over before there's even a chance that I get off my backside..."

And that's about all I wanted to say. Just that this is the first straighforward and sincere TV treatment I've seen that fully acknowledges how dire our future is, and by early word of mouth it seems people were receptive and ready to hear it. Of course I could also say that there are now dozens of books out about the coming period of crises we're entering, and I even noticed Jared Diamond's Collapse featured prominently on the end-cap at my local Target store. But so far TV coverage of our issues (which is all that well-over half our population pays any attention to) has so far been muted, ambiguous or non-existent.

New Zealand is showing us why it has become a beacon for the world's progressive intelligencia (as well as scads of rich real-estate investors).

Comments

[Peter]

So how does one avoid sinking into depression over all these predictions of economic meltdown and the collapse of civilization? I've always been a pretty optimistic person by nature but some days all this doom and gloom does pull my spirits down.

[montysano]

"New Zealand is showing us why it has become a beacon for the world's progressive intelligencia", while here at home, we've degenerated into a nation of rubes and rednecks, seemingly proud of our ignorance of and contempt for the world around us.

What caught my eye in the post was that the New Zealand news report maintained "sincere and legitimate seriousness in their treatment of the subject." It's been quite some time since I've seen any "sincere and legitimate seriousness" on TV news here.

Case in point: CBS 60 Minutes does a report last Sunday on oil sands in Canada. What an incredble find the oil sands are! Huge reserves! Never a dry hole! The output? 1M barrels per day now, 3M bpd by 2015. What? Huh....? In a world that is using 80M bpd, that doesn't seem so grand.

Now, Bob Simon is a veteran correspondent. He must know this. Did he tell us? No, he didn't. Why didn't he tell us? Well, there's the real question, isn't it.

As to your question, Peter: "So how does one avoid sinking into depression over all these predictions of economic meltdown and the collapse of civilization?" I think that the range of possible futures is large, varying from a total meltdown, population dieoff, economic depression, etc, to a return to a more local, simple, meaningful way of life. Is the former more likely? Maybe. Is the latter possible? I've got to think so or I couldn't get out of bed in the morning.

[Smckinley]

IIRC, 60 Minutes did a story on the Tar Sands or at least Shale Oil back in the early '70's oil crisis. So they're even that much more deceptive.

As far as getting out of bed in the morning, well I've never been the world champion at that anyway, but...

Seriously, I'm pulling for collapse on the more rapid and complete end of the spectrum. A huge part of what we're talking about is not really civilization, or the totality of economics, but strictly the MONEY economy. We here in the US have just gone to such ridiculous degrees of shunting every human productive activity into the money economy, that we think that's all there is.

For instance, when you hire somebody to take care of your kids, you've taken what's always been an expected human productive activity and put it squarely in the realm of money. I'm not picking on that arrangement - believe me, I know how essential it is to so many people - it's just an obvious and clear example. Others would be the services that pick up and drop off your drycleaning, dog-walking services, or restaurant dining. Even public schools could be in this category.

The alternatives to the money economy are 1)doing for yourself and family, 2) barter, 3) local or community currency.

Oil's not in any danger of disappearing, it's just perhaps about to get expensive enough that it'll be such a drag on the monetary system that the monetary system's contradictions and fallacies will bring it down.

Start thinking about how extremely-expensive fuel could still be used to provide things like consolidated food delivery, ambulance runs and the like. Think what you could make of your life if the dollar ceased to be a medium of exchange. That's what at least the nearest crash will look like.

People often lived very full and happy lives without money being most of their lives. It's only been since WWII that a price tag has so effectively been hung on absolutely everything.

[Cornfed]

"So how does one avoid sinking into depression over all these predictions of economic meltdown and the collapse of civilization?"

Depression? This is wonderful. The crazed lickspittle supporters of this circus-barge society are about to get their comeuppance, most of the teeming legions of sheeple worldwide will finally be released from their state of living death and the rest of us will be free. I just hope that complete collapse happens while I'm still young enough to roam the ranges clobbering wild pigs and ravishing hairy-legged unwashed maidens.

[Aaron]

Steven wrote:

"New Zealand is showing us why it has become a beacon for the world's progressive intelligencia (as well as scads of rich real-estate investors)."

I'm sorry Steven, I love your site and think your analysis is fantastic but this comment made me laugh out loud.

Then just in case, I checked the atlas to make sure there wasn't another New Zealand somewhere that I didn't know about.

I am actually staggered that this was aired on our TV and I was even more staggered to learn that it was Close Up that aired it.(My friend wasn't aware of this piece of information when he talked to me). Close up is probably the most useless current affairs show on TV down here preferring light weight pretend-serious to anything else - or at least that's what I see when I visit my parents - who always prefer the least challanging of the channels.

Of course being well away from the centre of power it doesnt really matter if our mainstream media forgets it's main role in life is to suppress important information but usually it is unecessarily rigorous about this. By comparison the British press is much, much more informative. There are no Robert Fisks or George Monbiots over here. It's been this way since we became the first nation ever to VOLUNTARILY undertake a program of economic liberalisation back in the 80s. Normally it takes the IMF or a CIA-installed dictator to make this happen but here it was done by the Labour Party! I could go on...

The only reason I can think that this happened on Close Up is that a competitor show on another channel (Campbell Live) is hosted and run by a guy who has distinctly left wing tendencies (He even read Chomsky!). So much so that the channel that employs him won't let him talk about who he votes for. He has been going for about a year and may be changing the media landscape a bit. For instance he has done at least two pieces on Peak Oil in the last 12 months.

That sounds like I am beginning to undermine my own arguement but believe me there is no progressive intelligensia here. The reality is more like we are in the running to become the 51st State - a long way behind Australia though.

You're right about the real estate though. If we hadn't bought land 5 years ago there is no way we could afford it now.

Aaron
New Zealnder and Village Blogger

[Aaron]

Oh God, I can't even spell the name of my own country correctly. That should be New Zealander :-)

[nulinegvgv]

montysano,

Yes I thought the 3M bpd comment should have been put in context but it was another series of statements that really caught my ear. I can't remember exactly how it went but Simon started to talk about how much energy it takes to get oil out of the sands (I think he even mentioned specifically fossil fuel energy) and I thought maybe, just maybe he'd talk about the eroei but no. He went straight to the issue of pollution in the form of greenhouse gasses. There was no mention of the return on investment in the form of energy. I’ve seen figures that put it at 1 to 1.5- a far cry from the current return on middle east crude. Then it got crazier as the program did discuss greenhouse gass emissions but not the amazing amount of water the process pollutes. Sometimes I think bad journalism is worse than no journalism at all.

[Chris]

"...clobbering wild pigs and ravishing hairy-legged unwashed maidens"

...is definately Semiotic Flare #2!

[anton4]

Hey guys dont believe what Anton3 says.
There will not be really a WW3.
So go back inside your coccons and live ; continue with your dreams; sex,drink,food,cars,cloths,furnitures,homes,travel and toys.There is no need for panic.
We gave to Anton3 new glasess.Now he see the world different. A New Civilization is planed and a Final Project is ready for it, but the Old World and Cilization, in east and west, are not ready yet. So some boiling and cooking is needed first.
Be patient and dont be scared. We need you guys to wake up and get out the coccons later, so we can build the New Civilization of the New Millenium. For now just sleep.