I’ve been thinking about the name I’ve given to this blog, and whether or not it’s a good one.

One of my recent posts received a comment from someone who writes another blog called ‘Surviving the global crisis’, and I’m not sure whether I support phrasing the issues in those terms. There’s always a risk of being melodramatic about the potential of global economic collapse (it’s often better to take a more light-hearted approach: my housemate recently told me that he’s decided to hoard milk and cheese in order to survive if the price of food dramatically increases). Also, apart from increasing job losses, and the bailing out of the banks (which has manifested itself in a very abstract way to most people who aren’t geeks like me), calling the current situation a ‘crisis’ does seem a bit exaggerated.

The reason I originally decided on the title ‘dealing with the global crisis’ is because of the fact that when the wheels that started creaking into action in 2007 with the sub-prime mortgage crisis, policy-makers had a chance to pro-actively decide how to respond. I thought it important to make clear that tackling the issues head-on is the best approach, rather than continuing the vicious circle of reacting to markets and trying to prop-up failing economies and trends within them.

Interestingly, since 2007 a series of events have unfolded that in retrospect seem quite obvious (boom and bust capitalism and all that). Now we are entering another phase of the process, and as the Bank of England reduce interest rates to their lowest level ever, politicians are still reacting by attempting to stimulate spending. Because of the lack of imagination and decisive action to change the design of the systems that have led us to this situation, it seems that we will continue down a similar path that will make the crisis worse, neglecting to consider the need to de-materialise our society and value happiness over shopping.

This is a long-term crisis, and one that needs calm consideration, not panicky retreat to the safe haven of consumer spending. Head of Selling Development at John Lewis today described the fact that the department store has increased its sales by 27.4% on this time last year as a “truly inspirational result”. If there is anything I am not inspired by, it is sales figures. I would be dismayed if the way our handling of this crisis is assessed continues to be based on whether or not we can get people to spend money.

Obama recently fleshed out some of his plans for the US economy, and whilst I continue to advocate his plans for a ‘green new deal’, it is slightly disappointing to witness the very conventional language he is using. He makes some valid points about how the economic situation could get “dramatically worse”, but there’s nothing particularly new about trying to get consumers to spend their way out of the crisis. The potentially doubling of the budget deficit to $2 trillion is staggering, and whilst I completely endorse some of the spending (on clean energy infrastructure and energy efficiency), there needs to be a wider vision on what a new economic system will look like.

In the Guardian today, Simon Jenkins writes about how “economic forecasting has collapsed in ignominy and if there were any justice the profession would be sacked en masse”. However, when he says “this recession will pass”, he fails to discuss how, and is essentially playing at being an economic forecaster himself. Where is the vision from these commentators on what we actually need to do about the crisis as it continues to unfold? Do we want to be back where we were two years ago when unbridled capitalist growth was not making us happy and was most certainly destroying the eco-system that sustains us? There is criticism of the politicians, and derision of those over-reacting to the situation, but there is little past cynical commentating from those writing in the mainstream media.

We need to work to fill the void that is continuing to expand as policy-makers fall back on conventional (redundant) wisdom. We need to look closely at the economic and political structures required to deliver a more stable low-carbon economy into the future. Otherwise we will oscillate between blind panic on the one side - despite most of us not being impacted by the ‘crisis’ in our daily lives - and on the other side we’ll continue to look for comfort in the spending cycles that have got us in the mess in the first place. The closest I have seen to this kind of analysis is recent comparison of the fiscal approaches of the spenders (Brown, Obama) and the savers (Merkel in Germany being the most prominent). More on this later.

We need to be bold and decisive in deciding what to spend money on (I’m talking about public spending here), and how it relates to the wider system of capitalism (or a new alternative) that we tacitly endorse through our behaviour, both as consumers, and more importantly as part of our global society. Unfortunately, without flagging up the threats that face us if we continue to react short-sightedly it’s unlikely many people will take notice to the kinds of suggestions people like me are making. And so whilst I don’t want to be melodramatic, dealing with the crisis is the best thing we can do at the moment.