Paul Sheehan, and we're all doomed and it's all the fault of the baby-boomers ...

It's one of the favourite memes of the commentariat that greenies, those who accept the evidence of climate science, and such like folk are in the grip of a kind of apocalyptic rapture.

You can find that meme at full stretch in Gary Greenberg's piece for Harper's Apocalypse, Now What? Climate change comeuppance, as he considers works by Bill McKibben and others (well you could if you can get behind the Harper's paywall). Here's a taster:

... the ending that Douglas and the other climate prophets must reveal is not of nature - which will surely find a way to clean up after us, although perhaps not one that retains a place for our species - or of humankind, but of a very particular human world: the social arrangements built on what Skrimshire calls "the modern ideology of limitless growth." The planet is finite, nowhere more so than in the capacity of its atmosphere to absorb carbon without consequence. We're choking on the fumes of progress; the climate prophet's job is to teach us how to breathe in the end times.

But the end times and the apocalypse these days takes all kinds of forms, and there's no one better at conjuring up the apocalypse week after relentlessly gloomy week than that thunderer from Fairfax down under, Paul "Field Marshall Grumpy" Sheehan.

In the recent past, Sheehan has predicted an economic conflagration, an apocalyptic catastrophe, brought about by cheating shifty Greeks, or lazy welfare addicted Celts ruining the British economy, or Islamic hordes flooding Europe with their strange ways, and this week in Greed of boomers led us to a total bust, he finds yet another target ... himself.

Well himself, and others of a similar age:

Ich bin ein Boomer. The most privileged, most profligate generation in human history - my generation, the baby boomers (most often defined as those born 1946 to 1964) - drove the world for the past decade to this moment of reckoning, running up a gigantic bill that has now come due. Responsibility for this bill lies mainly with the boomer-and-bust generation, but the cost will be borne by all.

Uh huh. Of course in previous days, there was a tendency to blame another generation, the one responsible for the most profligate world war in human history, with bonus nuclear fire crackers.

The point is, when in the grip of an apocalyptic fever, full of fire and brimstone, any target will do in the storm of disaster bound to ensue.

So this week, forget the Greeks and the Celts, it's us - or perhaps Sheehan's desire to fork out thirteen bucks for a tasty alluring sourdough loaf (go on, you know you want to read all about its succulent deliciousness at A flour blooms - and a family classic is toast of the town).

Yep, it's the concupiscence of the west for goods and lifestyle and wealth that dooms us all:

The three great economies of the advanced world - the US, the European Union and Japan, with their 940 million people - did not get to the level of debt stress and wealth destruction we are witnessing without being made to pay a real price. That price is structural change, a decline in expectations and lower living standards.

We will see a return to the more frugal times of previous generations, when expectations were lower, houses were smaller, and consumption was fuelled by what we could afford, not what we could borrow.

This sounds remarkably like the future envisioned by Bill McKibben and others:

... the big problem is that we've always been promised (by "every politician who ever lived") that "'our best days are ahead of us.'" "But they aren't," and the result - not the end of nature, but the "end of growth" - would be "the most terrifying and strangest change." To live on Eaarth requires us to abandon the hope and optimism and belief in a better tomorrow that made life on Earth worth living and to replace it with "hunkering down, holding on against the storm." Where once we sought to soar, we must now "manage our descent" and "aim for a relatively graceful decline." Sully Sullenberger and not John Glenn, says McKibben, is the right hero for our new planet. (Sully Sullenberger is here).

The good news, presumably, is that living in a village like Quechee in Vermont, it might still be possible to have an epiphany over a loaf of sourdough bread.

The next step, you see, is to flee the cities before they collapse, and head to the hills or perhaps the farms, and bunker down.

Hunker with plenty of firearms (to fight off the marauding masses), and with enough dried and canned food to last a couple of decades, and with all the other appurtenances necessary for a decent survivalist lifestyle (yes, you too can be an Aussie survivalist, or at least brush up on survivalism generally. You'll quickly begin to understand there's more problems facing the world than the reliability of the public transport system in your town).

It seems we're all doomed:

All because of procrastination, denial and dissembling by the political class in the US, the EU and Japan - the class which benefits most from big government.

Well at least it's a change from the cheating Greeks and the lazy Celts. This week it's not just old farts, it's the politicians.

But what, you might ask, of the greed is good capitalists, and the free market blatherers and the pillagers and the bankers that made Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room such a fun documentary to watch, as the traders did over Gray Davis and the grannies of California? (Okay, so you know what the pond watched last night on the telly).

Well here you have to tread a very careful line, lest your conservative, pro-capitalism credentials be called in to question by other members of the commentariat:

Though this is a crisis of capitalism and consumerism, it is not caused by the systems themselves, which have been dynamic wealth-generating forces improving the living standards of billions of people to levels not seen before. This is a crisis of consumption and self-absorption, a desire for more than was needed or expected by previous generations. It is a crisis of moral and economic obesity.

Say what? Capitalism is a dynamic wealth-generating system and is good, but consumption of the wealth it generates is bad?

It's about that point that you realise that in another life the apocalyptic Sheehan might well have become a preacher man, spouting doom and gloom and ruin and damnation, blathering about a crisis of moral and economic obesity until the cows come home.

Since his photos show a man inclined to portliness, perhaps this flagellation arises from his desire for a more perfect sourdough bread, a kind of cheese eating surrender monkey French, or European, indulgence. It's a sickening desire for more - at thirteen bucks the throw - than was needed or expected by anyone living outside the rich, dandified world of the eastern suburbs of Sydney ...

But enough of this Freudian analysis, or the next thing you know we'll be recommending the story of Freud and Halsted and cocaine in The New York Review of Books, Physician, Heal Thyself part 1 and 2, and sadly both parts are behind the paywall, and then you'll be asking should I pay to get behind upcoming The Australian's paywall, or pay for decent reading material ...

Oh the dilemmas of the high end dedicated consumer. But while we've been off contemplating Freud deluding himself and others, Sheehan has found another mob to blame:

It is also a crisis for the bureaucratic class, the principal beneficiary of government spending and control. The International Monetary Fund is a classic example. In 2007, when the IMF was run by the socialist satyr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, it issued a World Economic Outlook which said that the risk of any systemic failure in the global economy was extremely low. Within months, the US banking system fused, jolting the global economy.

Yes, and how clever to shift the blame from the US banking system, and its 'greed is good' run amok madness to the bureaucratic class.

And right there and then, Sheehan drinks the free market kool aid before our disbelieving eyes:

The present malaise, far from being a crisis of markets, shows just how well markets do their job. They are injecting reality into the global financial and political grid. They are challenging the wishful thinking coming out of Brussels, Washington and Tokyo.

Well it takes some doing to imagine that the Enron stuff-up or the the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy shows just how well the markets do their job, as this quote reminds us, only to be lost once again in all the blather about how well the markets do their job:

If Murphy’s Law were written for a market approach to electricity, then the law would state 'any system that can be gamed, will be gamed, and at the worst possible time.' And a market approach for electricity is inherently gameable. Never again can we allow private interests to create artificial or even real shortages and to be in control.

And if Murphy's Law was written for a commentariat approach to unregulated free markets, then that law would state that any scribble by Paul Sheehan would ignore the many ways any system can be gamed and will be gamed, often at the worst possible time ...

As for the rest of Sheehan's piece, it's doom and gloom for Germany and France and the US sharemarket and China's debt bubble and the Australian sharemarket and consumer confidence and the Labor government and debt mountains and unsustainable welfare states and massive military adventurism and toxic debt, and it's only at the very end that Sheehan manages to discover that perhaps free markets might shoulder a little of the blame:

All weaknesses were exploited and exacerbated by casino capitalism, the largely unregulated financial derivatives markets designed to keep the financial system honest but in effect betting on everything and building nothing.

That's sounding alarmingly socialist, even perhaps with a hint that some larger regulation - by politicians and bureaucrats - might have come in handy.

Surely there must be a way out:

In the centre of all this was the baby boom-and-bust generation, fattening its world with debt. Much of that debt will be left behind for the generations next in line. The bill has only now arrived.

Thank the lord for the baby boomers. Move over lazy Celts, make way shifty cheating Greeks

It seems greed only came into the world with the wretched BBs.

But hang on, isn't there a baby boomer bubble only because the generation before that began fucking like rabbits once the biggest war the world had ever seen came to an end?

So really it's all their fault.

But hang on, didn't that generation arise from a generation which produced the world war to end all world wars, and then let their hair down in the jazz age, and then produced the greatest depression the world has ever seen, followed by the worst world war the world has ever seen.

Where were the baby boomers then? Slacking and shirking, waiting in tummies before tumbling out to do their thing, and make previous generations look like ponces and poseurs, it seems ...

Well there's one thing that's for sure. A capacity for apocalyptic visions is a fine business for a commentariat scribbler, and it's come in handy for these past few thousand years:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Hang on preacher man, what makes you think the sun's going to keep rising?

And why no mention of welfare states and fat cat bureaucrats and baby boomers and cheating Greeks and lazy Celts?

But it leads to a final thought. Does Sheehan lie awake at night, heart pulsating and panicking, thinking of the cataclysms and catastrophes about to befall the world?

Or after a hearty bout of doom-saying in his now bi-weekly column, slaying all the ne'er do wells that have brought to the world closer to apocalyptic disaster, does he head off for a nice coffee and a slice of sourdough bread, in the best possible spirit after spreading the good news a little further?

Who knows, and in the end who cares, provided no one actually takes what he says seriously, or looks to him for insights as to what might be done as we career on down the crooked road clutching our crooked sixpences ...

(Below: which one is Paul Sheehan, that's the thing to stay awake at night worrying about).