Dismantle Civilisation

Reprinted from Energy bulletin.
by Jeff Cox, author of The Organic Cook’s Bible.

It’s vitally important to know your growers and suppliers. Here are several correlates if you want truly great-tasting, fresh food. Like all generalizations, there are exceptions, but for the most part these rules hold true:

The Smaller the Farm, the Better the Food
Chances are that at small family farms, more care will be taken with the produce, the meat and milk animals, and the farm itself. At very large factory farms, produce and animals are commodities. There’s a machine designed expressly to machine-harvest every crop. Things are done by a schedule, including the application of agrichemicals. Small farmers, on the other hand, are much less regimented. They get “up close and personal” with their crops and animals. Their chickens are more likely to live in a pen by a henhouse, eat vegetable scraps and insects they find by scratching in the soil, and enjoy their lives than to live crammed together into cages under round-the-clock lights like agribusiness chickens. Which eggs do you think make the best omelets?

The Closer the Farm to Your Table, the Better the Food
The more local the food, the better, for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s going to be fresh and in season; it’s going to exhibit all the flavor it’s capable of. Because it doesn’t have to sit in trucks and railcars and on supermarket shelves for weeks, it can be one of those delicious but fragile varieties that doesn’t ship well. It can be picked ripe, instead of harvested hard and green and then gassed into obtaining color (but not flavor) on the long journey to the supermarket.

Also, the shorter the distance from the farm to your table, or at least to the market, the greater the chance you’ll meet the person who actually grew the food. You’ll be able to ask him or her questions about how the food is grown.

The Smaller and Closer the Farm, the Better the Effect on the Environment
There are environmental benefits to shortening those supply lines: Less fuel is used in transporting and storing the food. And local small farmers tend to be organic because they’re farming their own land, and they don’t want to expose themselves and their families to noxious chemicals. They also tend to be your neighbors and can be held accountable for their practices by their fellow citizens. If your neighborhood dairy is polluting the local creek by spreading raw manure on frozen soil (which allows it to run off into the local watersheds), you can do something about it. If your milk comes from cows penned on a thousand acres a thousand miles away, you won’t even know about its environmental problems.

Small farmers who own their own land also have a deep relationship with that land and a regard for it. They know where the pheasants nest and may decide not to plow there during those times of year when the birds are raising their young. They can see the effects of their husbandry on the ecology of the natural world and the farm world as these worlds intertwine and affect one another. Factory farms tend to plow every inch that can be plowed, from fencerow to fencerow, without regard for the niceties of nature. Small farmer can be held accountable if there’s something wrong with their produce. If there’s something wrong with the crops from factory farms, and you try to talk to the person responsible, you’ll be passed up the ladder of command until you reach someone who’s either unavailable or surrounded by platoons of PR people to smooth-talk you or lawyers to sue you if you get too close.

The Shorter the Time from Harvest to Eating, the Better the Food
Although you may want to age your beef, cheese, and wine, and hang your game, most foods taste best and have the most nutrients when they’re just picked or freshly killed. They taste better and have the most nutrients when it is allowed to develop fully on the plant it grows on. If you could graph the flavor development of a tree-ripened peach on a bell curve, the very highest point of the curve would be the moment it’s picked dead-ripe from the tree. If that moment closely coincides with the moment you bite into it, well, it doesn’t get any better than that. This doesn’t hold true for every food. But we all know from experience that vine-ripened tomatoes taste better than supermarket tomatoes, and people who plant tomatoes in their gardens know that a tomato picked ripe and eaten on the spot tastes even better than a vine-ripened tomato from the store. Consumers put a premium on freshly picked corn because the moment an ear is snapped off the stalk, it begins to lose sweetness and flavor.

Enzymes are the catalytic agents in fruits and vegetables responsible for these swift changes in flavor after picking. But enzymes are evanescent molecules without a great deal of persistence, especially after their work is done. One of the reasons fresh food tastes so bright and complex compared to food that’s been trucked around for many days is the presence of enzymes, phenolis, and other plant substances that will wither away with every passing hour.

One of the best ways to shorten the distance and time from the farm to your table is to visit local pick-your-own operations. In Connecticut, a typical northeastern state, about 30 percent of the state’s fruit and vegetable growers have pick-your-own plots. The crops from these plots are usually sold at reduced prices because the farmer doesn’t have the expense of picking the crop. Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a gradual move by small farmers away from sales to wholesalers, who offer low prices for their crops, to direct-to-consumer marketing, where the growers get a fairer price (although higher for you, the consumer). A recent survey by the Connecticut Department of Agriculture identified about 560 state growers who market their produce through farm showrooms and roadside stands.

Of course, you can’t get smaller or more local than your own back garden.

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A terrifying article from Alternet.

Meanwhile, overfishing has created some 150 “dead zones” — oxygen-free patches of ocean that can sustain no life — around the world: Some of these patches, Grescoe tells us forebodingly, “are now as large as Ireland.” In search of seafloor-dwelling species such as the trendy monkfish — long ignored, then popularized singlehandedly by Julia Child in 1979 — bottom-trawls weighing more than 26,000 pounds each rake and flatten wildlife-rich undersea peaks, leaving a paved-looking flatness in their wake. Oh, and a large percentage of coral reefs worldwide are dying or already dead. Oh, and those bluefin tuna and halibut steaks you like? Say it with me: Mercury. Those jumbo fried shrimp battened on pesticides and antibiotics in bacteria-riddled Chinese farms, their decomposing flesh treated with borax? How’s your health insurance?

It is happening right this minute but not quite right before our eyes. This is exactly the sort of thing our species prefers not to think about. What kind of catastrophe is it? Take your pick. Ecological. Medical.

If we wanted to, we could bombard our readers with stories such as this. Corporate industrial civilisation is bad news for the planet. In this culture environments and habitats are destroyed for short term economic gain.

“This kind of attitude lies at the heart of the problems facing the oceans,” he seethes. “It is the ongoing plunder of the seas, done in the name of keeping a boat afloat for another season, and multiplied a hundred thousand times in all the ports of the world …. If this were still the age of inexhaustible cod mountains and endless salmon rivers, such a display of spirit might be admirable. It is the essence of the indomitable, short-sighted, buck-passing Atlantic fisherman: an independent, almost lordly working-class hero, romanticized to death in our culture. As long as there is a single jellyfish left in the ocean, he will be ready to go out and catch it.” And jellyfish, down at the foot of the food chain, will be the last edible species out there in a not-too-distant future when our great-grandchildren, Grescoe half-jokes, will eat “peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches” and “jellyfish and chips.”

Peanut butter, only if they are able to grow peanuts where they live. And jellyfish? Only if they live near the coast (as the seas rise more of us will be near the coast!).

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Interview with Vandana Shiva on Alternet.

Vandana Shiva: One aspect of the inconsistency is between the principles of Gaia, the principles of soil, the ecology, renewability, how the atmosphere cleans itself and the laws of the global marketplace. The global marketplace is driven by the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the illogic of so-called “free trade,” which is totally not free. [The result of this incompatibility] is the current food crisis: The more agriculture is “liberalized,” the greater the food scarcity, the higher the food prices and the more people will go hungry.

Never has there been this rate of escalation in food prices worldwide as we witness now with the global integration of the food economies under the coercive and bullying force of the WTO.

The so called ‘free market’ only offers the ‘freedom’ for corporations and the western privileged elites to influence governments and markets for their own gain.

VS: That’s because the media orchestrates every analysis and interpretation. They would like this crisis to look like a success of globalization, and they would like to offer more globalization as a solution. In fact, the World Bank has said there should be more liberalized trade. Before the WTO was formed, we had protests with 500,000 farmers on the streets of Bangalore in 1993 to say that this is a recipe for starvation, for destroying agriculture, self-reliance and food security. And the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs — before the WTO was born — had a press conference to say that globalization will make food affordable for all.

They forget that food ultimately is not produced in the speculation and commodity exchanges controlled by Cargill in Chicago. It is produced by hard working women and men working with the soil and sun. And if you destroy the capacity of the people to work the land and the capacity of soil to produce, you’re going to have hunger. The tragedy is that the hunger of today and the rise of food [prices] is the result of globalization policies, and it is being implemented on a global scale. Unless we bring local food sovereignty and “food democracy” back into the picture, we will not have a solution to this.

The poor of the world need to be allowed to grow for their own needs, in preference to trade and cash crops. Local food security has little value in terms of conventional economics, but prioritising the cash economy over subsistence agriculture creates dependence and insecurity.

VS: Water scarcity [is] being created by non-sustainable systems of production for both food and textile. Every industrial activity has huge water demands. Industrial agriculture requires ten times more water to produce the same amount of food than ecological farming does. And the “green revolution” was not so green because it created demand for large dams and mining of groundwater.

Industrial agriculture has depleted water resources. In addition, as water has become polluted and depleted, a handful of industry saw water as a way of making super-profits by privatizing it. They are privatizing it in two ways. The first is through buying up entire civic, municipal distribution. The big players in this are Bechtel, Suez and Vivendi.

And interestingly, wherever they go, they face protests. Bechtel was thrown out of Bolivia. Suez wanted to take Delhi’s water supply, but we had a movement for water democracy and did not allow them to take over. But there’s a second kind of privatization, which is more insidious — and that is the plastic water bottle. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are leading in this privatization. But in India where Coca-Cola was stealing water, I worked with a small group of village women, and they shut their plant down. Across India, these giant corporations are taking between 1.5 to 2 million liters of water a day and leaving behind a water famine.

The reality is that huge corporations and their worldview, activities etc are actually creating the problems. Small is indeed beautiful.

VS: I try to articulate an alternative vision in terms of a democracy. Global market economy makes the first citizen the corporation. The rest of us are slaves, second class citizens. Secondly, it creates an identity for the human species as consumers in a global supermarket. We are no longer creators and producers. We are just consumers of goods that corporations bring to us from the place where they can manufacture them — at the highest cost to the environment and workers.

What we need is a reclaiming of who we are as human beings. We are first and foremost citizens of this beautiful planet. Our first duty is to protect this planet. And out of that flows the rights to the earth, air, water and food that the earth gives us. Those gifts are common resources, not commodities, private property or intellectual property. They are the commons of the earth and all of us have equal access to it. Nobody can interfere in the access of a person to their share of water, land and air. That interference is a violation of the rules of Gaia and the rules of democracy.

But the polluting industry has privatized even the air by first putting their pollutants into it and then by the carbon trade. They’re basically are saying that because we polluted the atmosphere, we own it. So we can pollute as much as we want and then buy up clean credits from someone else who is not polluting. The commons and the recovery of commons is vital to earth democracy. It’s at the heart of sustainability of the earth and democratic functioning of society.

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Don’t believe in homoeopathy? Perhaps this article on Rense.com will change your mind.

We include it here because it is a system of medicine that looks at the person as a whole, in the same way that we argue that the planet should be regarded as a complete living entity.  You can’t seperate symptoms from emotions, lifestyle from sickness – in the same way that we shouldn’t seperate economics from spirituality, human habitation from the forest that the planet needs to survive. Homoeopathy and other wholistic medicine needs to be accepted as mainstream healthcare – its part of the mindset and cultural change that humanity needs to embrace if we want to continue living on this amazing planet.

The body is always intelligent. That is why the human race has survived. When a baby is conceived, Nature chooses the best genes from both parents in order to create a stronger, healthier human.
If the parents are both taking drugs of any kind, whether legal or illegal, the health of the baby will be compromised.

If only doctors and scientists would study Nature, they would find all the answers and instead of going against it, learn from it.
There is only one true science and that is the science of Nature.

The human race has survived because we all have an innate healing power in our bodies. In homeopathy for example, this is called the Vital Force. Homeopathy stimulates the vital force to heal the body, through like for like (using a potentised substance that would cause the symptoms but in a tiny dose acts as a catalyst for healing).

So in conclusion, there is no question that dismissing cures as Anecdotal Evidence through the use of natural medicine, is nothing more than a whitewashand a desperate means of suppressing the knowledge of those cures to the public as a whole.

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A very useful range of courses about survival preparedness and food storage. Unfortunately registrations for the ‘Eating Gourmet the Food Storage Way Online Training’ (129 dollars) have ended, but the free courses are very informative and useful.

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C-Realm podcast:

Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse, details the Collapse Party Platform: a list of initiatives that acknowledge the danger of collapse and, if implemented, would make near-future America a more livable place than the destination that political business-as-usual will produce. After that, Ran Prieur shines a harsh but instructive light of reality on a few cherished neo-primitivist fantasies.

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More sound words from Carloyn Baker.

I believe that the collapse of civilization, now accelerating at dizzying speed, is indeed a collective, planetary initiation of the human species. It involves all of us, not just those “clueless Americans out there”, and it will deliver to each of us countless unwanted ordeals on every level-physical, emotional, financial, social, and spiritual. What traditional cultures which practice ritual initiation understand about it is that what matters most in the initiatory process is not whether the initiate survives physically, but that that person’s consciousness is transformed-for her own enhancement and for that of the tribe.

What I want to reinforce for all of us is how imperative it is in the days ahead for us to walk consciously, cautiously, and compassionately through the fires of this long, protracted initiation. Beyond our physical, financial, and logistic preparations, we must continuously work-and it will be work-to open our hearts and minds to the larger purpose behind the ordeals. We must ask ourselves what each particular experience wants to reveal to us, how it comes to us to open our eyes and cleanse the doors of our perception. We will be incessantly reminded that civilization has come to all this-depletion and exhaustion of the earth community and all of the suffering that attends that. In a sense, I believe, we are fortunate to be living in this time and on this planet because something greater than our finite human egos is delivering a message with unmistakable clarity: Living estranged from the earth community as if we are the only and the most important species on earth does not work, and collapse wishes to make certain that we understand unequivocally and irrevocably that our only survival and our only serenity will be found in living as if we and the earth are one.

Moreover, because we and the earth community are one, it is imperative that we reach out to our neighbors and community members. Their awareness may range from totally clueless to that of fellow collapse watcher, but bonds must be made and trust built-for our well being and for theirs. In the days ahead, we will need them, and they will need us. The more familiar we are with each other, the less likely that any of us is scapegoated or victimized by panicked, hungry people who feel victimized and powerless to cope with what they perceive they have been dealt.

The time for a sense of entitlement is over. We are not entitled to anything; I repeat: We are not entitled to anything. Each day, each moment, each breath, each bite of food and drop of water, each smile or warm hand on our shoulder, if we are fortunate enough to have them, are precious gifts to be savored, treasured, and given thanks for.

As I have been writing in recent months, I hold a vision of possibility-the potential for small pockets of survivors to create local outposts of conscious community in which individuals can live compassionately, practicing out of necessity and choice, those behaviors that sustain themselves and the earth. Those who have already begun this process may have an advantage, but none of us will be immune-nor should we be, in my opinion. It appears that this momentous initiation is the only way in which humans can fully and finally comprehend the toxicity of civilization.

Many citizens of the former Soviet Union discovered through the experience of collapse what ultimately mattered most. Yes, there was violence, crime, paranoia, hunger, thirst, deprivation, and astounding loss, but unprecedented compassion, trust, bonding, cooperation, and support flourished in the midst of total societal disintegration. For me, collapse is the opportunity for an outpouring of the latter qualities that causes me to at least partially welcome the demise of all that has prevented us from living and sharing them. Perhaps finally, amid a frightening unraveling, we will grow up-becoming mature human beings who ultimately find it impossible to tolerate anything remotely resembling industrial civilization because we will at last have become adults.

We hope so.

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An excerpt from Sharon Astyk’s book, Depletion and Abundance:

If we were to ask “Where do we need energy the most?” we would get a very different answer. Perhaps the most bang for our fossil-fueled buck comes in health care. In fact, when anyone suggests moving to a much lower-energy society, the most disturbing and frightening thing for them to imagine losing is usually health care. When we talk about the changing economy, the question that most immediately jumps up is “What will we do about health insurance?” The shift here — from medical care to insurance — is a telling one, because right now medical care is so costly that almost no one can afford to pay for it outright. And yet, medical care in and of itself does not have to be as expensive as it is for us. The French, who arguably have the best medical system in the world, spend only half what we do.

In the coming changes, the most important things will be making sure that people can live simpler, lower-energy lives without unbearable costs. That means keeping infant mortality low and lifespans long. It means stabilizing population. As we’ve seen, to a large degree decisions about how many children to have are based on expectations of those children’s survival. In a society with a great deal of uncertainty about the future of children, we can expect rising, rather than falling birthrates.

Along with access to education and basic social welfare programs such as support for the elderly and disabled and food price stabilization, I would argue that one of the most urgent projects we can engage in is in finding a way to maintain the benefits of modern medicine in a low-energy society. And as I research this problem, I increasingly believe that this can be accomplished, that we have the resources to create a low-energy national health care — or, if our government will not lead on such a project, that states, regions or even communities can enable such a health care model.

sharon points out that there are 3 health care myths.

1. More health care is better, and good health care must be expensive.

2. The benefits of modern medicine always outweigh the costs

3. Social good programs like health care are things you get to later rather than sooner.

Too much interventionist healthcare can be detrimental to health. Staying healthy with a good diet and sensible lifestyle is far easier and cheaper than sorting out the problems caused by a poor diet or lifestyle. Unfortunately good health advice does not make money like treatments, pills and interventions do. Conspiracy theorists could be forgiven for thinking that our society deliberately makes us ill and then sells us products to make us better. Perhaps some parts of the industrial medical industry is controlled by people without consciences, who deliberately sell toxic foods, release poisons and promote unhealthy lifestyles, so they can then make money selling medications to us. But generally its just the notion that bigger is better, more ‘healthcare’ guarantees health, that puts us where we are. Healthy people do not need healthcare.

The Amish are another important example. Amish people in the US have a number of factors that would seem to place them at risk of higher infant mortality rates and lower lifespans — they receive little preventive care, eat a high-fat diet, have no health insurance, use herbal and home remedies first, and give birth to most of their children at home, using lay midwives. And yet the average Amish lifespan is virtually the same as that of the average non-Amish American, despite their spending one fifth or less on health care.

All of these examples demonstrate the simple truth that, although hospitals and medical care are energy intensive, it is not impossible to dramatically reduce our need for expensive, energy intensive medical care by prioritizing health and general welfare.

Most of the world manage without all this high energy expensive medical care – we are going to find ourselves having to manage without it soon. If we start looking at local low energy health care options now, the transition may be easier.

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An Eye-Opening Personal Experience on Eco-Anxiety.

Stage One: Denial

With recent documentaries, widespread news reports, and nearly unanimous scientific consensus on the challenges arising from environmental issues, it has to be harder now to deny their existence or significance. This may account for why there were not too many outright denials and for the edgy tone of those striving to discount the significance of what they have acknowledged.

Not a problem:
· “There is no global warming problem. It’s been proven. Unfortunately it’s the minority that makes the biggest noise and the only reason it’s in the news is because it sells.”
· “You all go crazy over something that doesn’t exist.”
· “What causes an individual to disregard 50% of the scientific community and cling to the other half that causes you to become paranoid?”
· “Many scientists do not agree with the global warming theories. In fact this winter was one of the coldest on record in some places.”
· “… this anxiety arises from imagined causes … [by] the self-deluded sufferer.”
· “The Bible says that things will spiral out of control as the Last Days draw near. Things are NOT going to get better, they will get worse! … But for those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ, we see these signs and are filled with excitement and hope, for we know that the end of all things draws near.”

Not a significance problem:
· “… global warming isn’t so much a threat as it is a phenomenon of social hysteria.”
· “Whale populations are devilishly difficult to estimate because they spend most of their time underwater.”
· “Fresh water [from melting ice caps] will reduce salinity … and start a new ice age … think how joyous this will be for the polar bears.”
· “Not nearly the issue it’s claimed to be …”
· “It’s really taking away from the real problems facing our society, such as pervasive premarital sex, pornography, divorce, hatred, and the overall moral degradation of society.”

Not a problem anything can be done about:
· ”[Global warming] is caused by the sun’s natural cycles and the earth’s natural orbital variation.”
· “Nothing mankind can do about it. Relax. Evolution is extinction”
· “You are not single-handedly responsible for the environment and there are many factors that are simply out of our control. If you have a Bible read the Genesis account of creation.”

Stage Two: Semi-Consciousness

Now that it’s harder to ignore either the existence or significance of our environmental challenges and the need to do something about them, the majority of the comments were the kind of offensive or defensive reactions typically seen in the second stage of the Waking-Up Syndrome.

This is a time in the process when doubts begin to creep in, but are staunchly defended against. Most likely the degree of anger expressed is correlated to the degree of effort required by the person to maintain his or her views in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

Blame
Although Al Gore was not mentioned in the article, he got a lot of the blame.
”Al Gore is a hypocrite … Those SUV’s he owns and how about that mansion …”
“You are unfortunately one of the many who have succumbed to Al Gore’s new way of making himself a lot of money.”
”Keep giving your money to Al Gore and car companies that make hybrid cars.”
”There is a lot of money to be made in this global warming thing. Just ask Al Gore.”
”He does the same [he] preaches against. He is a con man.”
”Try thinking for yourself. You’ve been duped [by A Gore].”

But Gore certainly didn’t get all the blame:
”Your anxiety is the result of too much education and not having a real job.”
“A PhD! All that money, all that time spend on ‘higher education’ – all wasted.”
“Just another way for you and others to be a victim.”
“[This is the result of] past gross negligence on the part of those claiming imminent dire consequences from human economic and recreational activities.”
”Your moving to [where you live] is part of the problem.”
“You must give up your politics … and conform to God.” (The article made no reference to politics or religion.)
”Give up Liberalism and instead. I encourage you to become an American once again.”
”You are using the issue to promote eco-psychology and earn a nice living off the unfounded fears of others.”
“What you’re doing is unethical; feeding into your clients’ anxiety to make a quick buck.”
”What she is really suffering is the experience of thinking she is able to make a difference in the world.”
”Here is the subliminal influence of the Marxist philosophhy.”
”You are riding the wave of mis- and dis-information provided by Global Warming scammers.”
”It’s a throught disorder created by insufficient rational (adult) investigation.”

Mockery
“Oh my, thanks for the laugh. This is too funny.”
“You shouldn’t vote in the election because your vote wastes paper and would seriously damage the planet.”
”ROFLMAO ‘Ecopsychologist’! LOL! That is the most ridiculous thing I have read all week! … Hilarious!”
”[You] need to have a talk with my old friend Johnny Walker–or another buddy Jack Daniels. Besides neither come in six packs so [you don’t] need to worry about some dolphin getting his nose caught in one of those plastic six pack rings and starving to death and when the bottle is empty you can shove used toilet paper in it and keep it as a prize.”

Defiance
“I hope more and more of us get more extreme in our consumption.”
“I just bought a GMC 2500HD Xtreme … and I could care less how much it costs to fill it up or how much it uses.
”This is how I deal with the ever-increasing eco-stress of today: I use only materials made of entirely plastic and … throw them away by placing them in a large 55 gal.drum and burning them. I love to watch the thick black smoke rising high in the sky wondering if people in the next county can see it or I just toss the barrel in the river … Oh, I do try and hug a tree … when I cut down one for firewood.”

Resentment
· “She’s just trying to sell her own ecotherapy by convincing others that their illness is real. Barnum would be proud.”
· “You should consider a hobby.”
· “Stop blaming everyone else for your situation.”
”Eco-therapy! Try something like real work and a belief in God.”
· “Way too many people overeact to the hype and exaggeration rampant within the environmental movement.”
· “Get a life. Get the facts.”
· ”Self-indulgent sufferer.”
· ”You eco-freaks”
· “You ignorant slut.”
· “Outright malpractice.”
· ”The whole stupid article was just an unpaid commercial … what a freakin’ scam artist.”
· YOU SHOULD JUST KILL YOURSELF, REMEMBER TO USE A GREEN METHOD. JUST CLIMB A TREE AND JUMP. MAKE SURE YOUR BODY IS USED FOR COMPOST (all caps as in original)

Its quite frightening how people can react when confronted with information of a threatening or scary nature. Its so much easier to blame the messenger than to rationally seek further info and make up your own mind. We have covered the steps that people go through when facing information they’d prefer not to be true – denial and then partial acceptance seem to be normal stages towards accepting and taking some action. Peak oil and climate change are facts, along with other aspects of civilisations endgamethat are starting to play out worldwide. We are likely to see a lot more eco-anger and eco-anxiety. It would be nice to think that denial will quickly give way to acceptance and large scale action to secure local food supplies, local employment. If just a few large organisations or companies were to start putting resources into sensible things, rather than shareholders profits and the drive to globalise, the transition would be so much easier. But people are so addicted to their cages and growth economics, we suspect real action will only be seen at the grassroots in small pockets for some time to come, while the mainstream will deny, blame, mock, resent and defy.
Get over it. The planet can not afford the excesses and waste of global capitalism. It has to change, and will, whether we go along with it or not. The more energy we put into our localities now, to increase food production, diversity and local economies, the easier it could be for all of us.

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