Just imagine for a minute that you wake up one morning to learn that someone has stolen the arm off of the Statue of Liberty. And with it, her torch. No more will she “lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Instead, her great lamp is already shredded; it’s on a slow boat to China as we speak.
To be followed, soon after, by the Verrazano Bridge.
Farfetched? Maybe today. Maybe not tomorrow.
Earlier in the week, I toured a scrap metal business in the Northeast Kingdom.
In a startling way, the price of scrap metal has risen so high that people are selling everything they can get their hands on. Suddenly, that old washer and dryer in the side yard, the ones with the vines growing through them, are valuable. So are those old tire rims.
Scrap metal businesses are booming. In Vermont, metal yards are running two and three trucks a day to the ports of Albany, Montreal and Boston. I was told that in Montreal, they have a machine that can suck in an entire car and cut it down to “frags,” which can be packed into containers. The rest of the car — the insulation, plastic and padding, the “fluff” — gets blown by huge blowers into a different bin and trucked to the landfill.
It’s not surprising that the biggest buyer of American scrap metal is the world’s biggest consumer/manufacturer, China. Turkey is right behind, and other Asian countries with booming new economies are also following.
The scrap metal people are working overtime to fill the demand. They’re buying, shipping and selling like mad. While it’s nice to have a booming industry in Vermont, you can see that this one has its limitations.
Since we’re not a manufacturing country anymore, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that we could easily run out of scrap metal if this keeps up.
And even though America still needs metal for houses, cars and appliances, we’re competing for our own scrap with countries that can pay much more.
It reminds me a bit of drug behavior. When junkies run out of money, they still need their fixes. After they sell everything they own, they start stealing.
As resources in America become scarce and/or too expensive, as people need their new car fixes — or even when they run out money for food and beer — what will they do?
Will they do without? Not in America, where we’re all spoiled rotten and have the entitlement complexes of infants. We’ll just strip-mine the country. When we run out of junk in our back yards, we’ll steal it.
Already, second homes are being raided for their copper plumbing. Cars parked on city streets are having their catalytic converters cut out; they’re worth about $100 each because they contain platinum. Used car dealers are having a hard time getting inventory, because a car is worth more stripped and turned into scrap than it is driven down the street or used for parts.
What are some other good sources of metal? Well, the Statue of Liberty is an obvious choice.
Don’t get me wrong. Its great that we’re recycling — aluminum cans no longer dot the roadside, and rusted out cars are no longer eyesores on our neighbors’ lawns. A dump used to be a dump, but now it’s a resource. Besides generating methane for energy, we can mine it for stuff we threw away 10 years ago when it had no value.
Recycling is a good thing, but we’re not using the recycled material ourselves. Our trash is someone else’s treasure. We’re in debt. We have no industry. We’re spinning our wheels while the rest of the world is moving ahead.
We may have come to the natural and inevitable end of an unsustainable consumer society. Like the air we breathe, the water we drink and the fish we eat, the unlimited resources that we took for granted have turned out to have limits, after all.
There’s another issue at play here, as well. China may be our customer and our supplier, but it is also our competitor.
It’s interesting to note that before the start of World War II, as much as 75 percent of Japan’s scrap metal came from the United States.
In 1944, the poet e. e. cummings wrote a famous poem, “Plato Told,” about selling New York’s Sixth Avenue El to Japan: “Plato told him:he couldn’t believe it (jesus/told him; he wouldn’t believe it)…it took a nipponized bit of the old sixth avenue el;in the top of his head:to tell him.” (Grammar and punctuation his.)
Eventually, Roosevelt put an embargo on selling scrap metal to Japan. Then came Pearl Harbor, and America entered its last great metal scrap and recycling age — it went into high gear producing tanks and planes for World War II. The country was able to win that war because, from a standing start, it outproduced Germany and Japan.
I’m not suggesting that China will turn our junk cars into weapons that will come back and bomb us. The world is a different place now. It runs on money, not guns. And the easiest way to destroy America is to let us do it ourselves.
We don’t need an invading army. We can sell off our assets to the highest bidder, embroil ourselves in imperialist dreams on borrowed money, and say goodbye to the Statue of Liberty.
Piece by piece.
A collection of Joyce Marcel’s columns, “A Thousand Words or Less,” is available through joycemarcel.com. And write her at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
Much of that scrap is being used to manufacture basic hardware (nuts and bolts being a good example)that will be shipped to the US. It is doubtful that machine tools that make nuts and bolts still exist in the US, and nuts and bolts are but one example of many commodities that are now produced in very few nations thanks to unregulated global capitalism’s consolidation of manufacturing.
Meanwhile, the US is wasting billions of dollars each month on dubious programs, projects and widget purchases to allegedly “enhance security”.
The wasted billions may make Americans FEEL more secure, however, losing control of nut and bolt production will negate all of those “security enhancements” if trade impediments arise or if the sources of strategic commodities become enemies of the US.
What the author describes is a fitting end to the nation that launched the ‘War on Drugs’. May it end with a wimper, not a bang.
Hey, I know. Let’s just gradually replace each metal part on the Statue of Liberty with plastic! Nobody would know the difference and eveybody wins!
We could rebuild the Statue of Liberty in fiberglass, couldn’t we?
An America stripped of its
Statue of Liberty
is a just another junkie;
lacking grace and dignity.
We can sell the Statue of Liberty to China to finance another hour of war in Iraq.
With all due respect, I disagree with Ms. Marcel. The world runs almost exclusively on guns, as the arms manufactureres, in all their guises, keep a state of constant war going in order to constantly increase their profits. Yes, their profits take the form of money, but it’s weaponry of all sorts, and war, that is at the bottom of the profits.
Very insightful/interesting piece.
They’re ripping off manhole covers across the country, too. Be careful when driving or walking the streets.
As if that Statue of whatchmacallit would be missed, given how meaningless it’s become.
What the author calls the “Junkie Nation” can also be called the “Lowcrawler Nation”.
Right now people will steal copper and aluminum for money. They strip siding from houses when the occupants are away, they steal bags of aluminum cans from recyclers in an effort to re-sell them.
This has created a NEW business. Now, manufacturers are putting “tracer elements” in metals to determine their origin. The lowcrawlers now are making their own refineries to process their own materials.
There is a song out there called “Lowcrawler” which describes this very thing in Lewis Counry Washington.
http://english.ucsb.edu/faculty/cpaster/courses/scroll/lowcrawler.MP3
There has already been reports of lowcrawlers dismantling highway guardrails to sell as scrap. It’s only a matter of time until we become like the Russians after the end of the cold war. People will start dismantling our railroads for scrap.
Our country is just like a giant piece of junk sitting in a junked car lot waiting for the next lowcrawler.
It runs on money, not guns. And the easiest way to destroy America is to let us do it ourselves.
Thatès Joyce Martelès
Now here is yours :
The world runs almost exclusively on guns,
You zeroed in three words , money not guns , and completely È forgotÈ the whole point that Joyce was making that rest of the posters figured out . There may be a zi8llion guns large and small across USA and you are right aside from drugs they are the biggest industry in the world but the theft of one man-hole cover on Broadway , NYC or pirated parts of Second Narrows Bridge in Vancouver , BC , Canada might have more effect than a nutbar on a shooting ramqapage
There was a vacant rental house here in Surrey, B.C. that exploded because someone scavenged the hard copper gas pipe.
The house filled with natural gas until it found an ignition source.
Boom.
No more house. And the OCCUPIED house immediately behind the exploded one was shoved off it’s foundation.
And Japan has already started mining (scavenging) it’s old dumps for steel and copper.
Fun times ahead, people.
It just seems like more and more karmic debt is coming home to roost in America. God is not smiling on America. Weve too much blood on our hands. From aborted babys to Iraqi children. And I don’t care what your slant on abortion is. Maybe just maybe, the God that claims to have “knitted them into the womb” and knew all there features before they were born and went to the trouble to number the hairs on their head might be taken back when a pair of scissors is jammed into the brain of his new creation a couple of million times a year. But, anyway, I didn’t want to dwell on such a controversial subject. I just wanted to say were sick people. From the guy that gives you the finger on the road to the American soldier getting his first taste of blood in Iraq to McCain saying bomb,bomb,bomb…..Iran. To Hillary talking about obliterating Iran to you name it. America is getting her just desserts. Shame too. It could have been so different. If only we were the country we often profess to be. The country we could be. Instead of the bloody country we really are.
frank1569 3:57 pm:
LOL
Why am I imagining a world starkly resembling those post-apocalyptic, Blade Runner-esque movies where 99 per cent of the over-populated planet is reduced to some horrid, scavenging, scrounged meal-to-scrounged meal petty existence, with the exception of the soldiers and mercs who hire out to the elite 1 percenters to keep the rest of us oppressed, at each others’ throats, and away from their Blackwater-protected, gated, armed enclaves?
dear dudley………I am human first, American second. I do not wish for just deserts for my country because IT CAN BE BETTER. its your leaders, and your christ, who are leading you and your County to dispair. WE as humans, and Americans, dont want blood. its YOUR LEADERS, YOUR LEADERS, YOUR LEADERS. Find hope in your neighbor and see how many of us there are,who want change.. we will NOT be led to peace and freedom by gods and polititions. so have faith in yourself. when the people lead, the leaders will follow.
power2thepedal,
I second your remark to dudley. Very good.
Joyce Marcel,
Always enjoy reading your articles. This one is rather poignant.
Comment to dudley:
God is not smiling on America because America lost its soul - the night the Supreme Court gavel fell on the 2000 presidential election!
l used to vacation to third world countries, now l just stay home and wait for us to become one.
Heck, there were stories about criminals stripping copper wiring out of buildings and not even shutting off the power first. You might say that is an indication of a stupid criminal or you might say that those folks were mighty desperate. Either way it is madness and a sign of the times we are in.
Simmins
Unlike actual Third World nations, the US doesn’t posses a large quantity of folk artisans or folk musicians.
In addition, we don’t have much a landed peasant class who still grow traditional crops or animals for local markets.
We also don’t have indigenous- and peasant- based social movements that generate new expressions of their folk culture and while fighting for water, land and local market rights.
Thus we are becoming increasingly Third World without any of its benefits based on an authentic culture, craft tradition or relationship to the land.
Most people click away on their computers, video games, watch TV, listen to US mass-produced pop culture on their Ipod, etc.
In fact, I see many US citizens sitting, walking and driving with a cell phone in their ears, Ipod wired to their heads, and thumbs texting or playing video games.
They are passive consumers of unexamined mass produced cultural products.
These activities aren’t the usual in Third World nations except among the “Americanized” spawn of the elite.
The Third World non-elite still many who make and grow things.
You can direct resource allocation to serve the society or you can let the producers plunder all to serve themselves. If you’re serving the society, the scrap materials are recycled into new products at the local level. The advantages are numerous: 1.) minimizes transport costs, 2.) avoids the destructive externalizing of toxins, 3.) keeps the economic/political power local, minimizing waste, plunder and enslavement, and 4.) enables closed industrial cycles and installing full costs at the retail price to align the people’s economic interests with their social/environmental interests.
Closed cycles eliminate the destructivity of open cycles, the putting out fire after fire created by the “free market” industrialist running his material and chemical rampages, plundering/polluting the biosphere, externalizing all of these costs onto people/planet, addicting the people to his wares. Closed cycles eliminate this crap. Before the industrial revolution, everything was closed cycle. When the added costs of closed cycles over open cycles are pushed into retail prices under the full costs policy, then the people are able to choose with their economic interests the production that is least destructive and most beneficial to people/planet.
Marcel sez: “…the easiest way to destroy America is to let us do it ourselves.”
Unfortunately, the pace of that project has accelerated since Cheney/MIC exchanged Reagan’s sledgehammer for a wrecking ball.
Balakirev- There are some of us artisans around. I know. I am one. And a I am quite good friends with several others. And many of us are gardeners. So we -should- make out all right.
It’s the other 95% of the population who are little more than fleshy robots who will be in catastrophic trouble.
Western Society has VERY little in the way of ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’ or ‘folk ways’ and heritage knowledge to fall back on. Three generations are now utterly accustomed to technological life and it’s ‘conveniences’.
Many children have no idea where their food comes from other than the local supermarket. I have even met a growing number of people who have no idea that the meat they consume comes from another living creature. One girl even stated although she knew it came from an animal called a cow, it was removed from the cow without harm, and the cow just grew more ‘meat’.
Western, and especially North American society can not be rightly said to have a culture. What we have is an advertising campaign that has reached 100% saturation.
Galen
There are a few Western societies that attempt to keep their heritage and folkways alive; they tend to be in Scandinavia.
Almost any person can receive training at one of many folkschools in one or more folk arts or folk music. After graduating, they are usually subsidized by the state in order to continue their pursuits.
(Many soviet-style societies also attempted to keep these traditions alive, at least in the musical-based arts, via folk-oriented music and dance schools.)
Within Scandinavia, private commercial and public enterprises closely follow the design trends of state-sponsered and trained folk artists in order to get new ideas for their own new product lines.
However, that being said, most Scandinavians are usually content to rely on the cultural products cranked out by the US-dominated mass-production pop culture industries to “satisfiy” the audience’s trained need for non-involving “entertainment”.
The people of the USA have been so ill informed as to what a change would really do and mean to this country and the change in leadership that is necessary, they have forgotten that no one could be worse than George Bush . . . No one, not even a dogcatcher, at least the dog catcher has compassion for
Animals!
The future leaders, Obama or McCain, should discuss the problems America and the world faces. The problem of public ignorance of the issues caused by the media is serious. In the heat of elections the media panders to voter ignorance. The emphasis, as we see on nightly, so-called news, is constant repetition of candidate’s miscues. The result of the media sensationalism becomes, the wrong problem and the wrong message at a crucial time in world history. The emphasis on having the politicians address a credible platform of ideas based on an American and global interaction in the world is critical.
There is not enough time left for civilization to focus on rubbish. The energy and environmental issues for example or food and health care are the problems the media should be focusing upon. But to use the Rev, Wright issue for one week, to try and hurt the candidacy of Obama is a travesty. The issues most pressing are once again avoided, those really important issues that must be put before the congress; the environment, continued funding of Iraq, energy issues, education, health care and so many others not dealt with, all impacting upon the economy, the failure of public dialog is outrageous!
The issue of this election will impact on the environment, economy and the future of the USA as no others. Still, if more than 50% of eligible voters cast their votes it will be a miracle, as a result of regressive US election laws and media obfuscation. It is compulsory for everyone to vote in Australia it should be so in the USA as well. Few of the candidates are really talking about the major points, even those who are the most erudite. The environment in association with the economy or health care and elections reform, to name some, are kept out of public dialog as a result of the nonsense punditry hours on end. The world looks at America and its “star struck reality” in wonder.
The political discussion rests on the complete lack of talking points in isolation, such as, Clinton’s health package or the nonsense gasoline tax rebate and it’s cost, rather than what is really at stake with energy issues, human survival. The candidates for the US presidency rarely talk about the complete interrelated package of the issues combined. Obama alludes to this deficiency in the media and public issues. When he asks for this to occur it lands on deaf ears because the media and special interests do not want this to occur.
The media reduces the public debate to its most simplistic level with pundits arguing about one inconsequential issue or another rather than the truly important issues of our time. The American people are kept from hearing and understanding the relationship of the entire package of issues, which a true leader must address and deal with for the very survival of America in the world within a global economy. The costs for the war would pay for every single need from health care to American infrastructure repair and education, as well as the alleviation of world hunger and energy research this is what is what is at stake.
The media deals with Rev. Wright and American Flag lapel pins instead.
The media keeps the public dumbed down for obvious reasons they represent the moneyed people. As a result the public becomes unable to talk about moving radically toward change and the related issues affecting their very life and the future. The issues of climate change, energy issues and the global economy not only American economy is the part of the mortgage crisis created by the “free market” system. All the other issues like people losing their homes as a result of Wall Street manipulation are tied to these fundamental problems. These is the first and major issue which affects all other issues and is completely related to the economic changes which must take place.
The media board rooms instruct their so-called journalists (news/opinion readers) to stay clear of those subjects that would attack advertising, consumption, tied together in the media collusion with special interests to maintain the consumer system killing the world. Media in collusion with government does not want the change that would result in the decline of their hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
All environmental problems are in one way or another associated with the Western world’s consumption based lifestyle led by the USA. These issues are affected by consumer advertising much of it coming from the millions spent on advertising of irrelevant product and campaign advertising. The media should be dealing with true American and global issues in this campaign affecting the very basis of the so-called American Dream, fast becoming the global nightmare. This is what the next president of the USA must address!
Malaysia, where I spend a good bit of my geezer time, can’t really be counted as a “developed” country yet since the corporate loggers and their follow-ons the oil palm plantation corporations (busily wasting the land for our “green” energy) aren’t complaining of a shortage of land for primary exploitation. On the other hand, too many people live too closely in thoughtlessly designed, constructed, and organized housing, oil driven private vehicles are a virtual necessity, consumption and media are the chief preoccupations, families are literally spread all over the world map, traditional multi-culture and skills are disappearing rapidly, and much rural life is collapsing at least in part due to deliberate government programs.
Another sign of “development’ in this in between place is that the scrap metal trade is booming. Junkies and other opportunistic theives mostly do metal. Our neighbor had an empty LP gas container taken in broad daylight. Away for a few days, we returned to find two rusty metal wash tubs and an obsolete Land Rover starter gone, tho a decent collection of tools including power tools was untouched. Friends returned from an evening out to find all the gutters on their house gone. But some folks are more serious. A taxi driver we know, like, and have hired has a side business in scrap. Seems he arranges for the truckers hauling the metal from Kuala Lumpur to stop here, unload some of the metal in his yard, replace the weight with sand bags, and go on to Penang with rather more than the pittance they’re paid in their pockets. The taxi driver then jobs the metal about several local yards. They are so itchy for stock they ask no questions of him anymore than they do of the junkies. Eventually the metal will make its way to Penang. From there, it will go, surprise, surprise, to China.
Occasionally, my parents would lay the blame for my unacceptable behavior on buddies who were a bad influence. Perhaps my country deserves its accelerating decline, not only for the heedlessly profligate ways many of you have noted, but also, maybe especially, for being such a horrid influence.
l just saw a production of “Three Penny Opera” amazing how contemporary after 80 years.