Dismantle Civilisation

Sharon Astyk makes us all feel better about not getting that dream vegetable garden planted this year. Its a great article. If your garden isn’t as full as you’d planned, don’t panic. Growing food is a steep learning curve, and whatever you plant, your garden will get better every year, what was once hard work becomes easier, and even the most messed up garden still produces some food. Don’t panic!

Ok, stop. Guess what. You aren’t doomed, and my family is pretty much like yours. You see, there were these sheep, if you’ll remember. That took care of the strawberries, the early tomatoes. Then there was this book – do you remember that, the thing that meant that I didn’t even start until June? And then there were a host of reasons, some real and some stupid, why half my garden is in cover crops or something else – I could claim it was because of my deep commitment to the soil, but that wouldn’t explain why I was crawling around on my knees sticking random unplanted onions in between things…onions, folks. Do you know when you are supposed to plant onions here? The middle of April. And I was planting them on June 26. Nor would it explain why there are sad looking hot pepper plants looking at me and crying “plant me….for the love of god…plant me…I could fruit still before frost if you’d just get me the hell out of my flat, where I’ve been since March…!”And if I don’t get them planted by the time I go to Boston on Monday morning, they are mostly going on the compost pile.

Am I panicked? Guilty? Nope, (well, a little), but only because I’ve been here so often that I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the reality – all the perfect gardens live in my head, and the truth is, every year’s garden is totally messed up. The thing is, I end up eating a lot of food from that messed up garden, and it does get better every year. Or at least every year without sheep in the front yard. And since the disaster is bad, but not that bad yet, we’ve all got another year of screw ups.

Establishing a garden takes time and energy. Every year things get a little easier, the trees grow bigger, and the learning curve gets less steep. Relax, part of living a more natural life is to try to get less stressed, and the nature of gardening means that some things fail and some do well.

Most of all, remember that you are not doomed. Your next garden will be better, because you will have learned from experience. You have mastered something – next year you will do remarkable things. You will probably make a whole new set of mistakes next year, and come up with a new, creative range of personal excuses. See, you’ve learned something!

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So says Charles Hugh Smith on oftwominds.com

In fact the dissolution of the insolvent parts of the U.S. banking sector–yes, the investment banks, the money-center banks, the regional banks, and the savings and loans–would actually be an enormously positive development for the nation and indeed the world.

Let’s start with the fact that a huge number of these lenders are insolvent. If all their bad loans, bad derivative bets and off-balance sheet losses were forced to be marked to market/liquidated to raise capital, then major bank after major bank would fold/enter bankruptcy.

And what exactly would be so bad about that? Businesses go under all the time. The truth is these banks will never ever recover the loans they wrote, so why try to prop them up with taxpayer funds? To bail out the ultra-wealthy owners of those banks, of course.

Just to recap:

1. banks/lenders are already insolvent; the money’s already been lost. Trying to hide the fact or paper it over with taxpayer bailouts changes nothing.

2. the only people who will be hurt by the recognition of bank insolvency is fat cats/ the top 1-5% of citizenry.

3, housing and rents have risen three or even four times faster than wages; to reverse poverty, the historical ratio should be re-established.

4. the best way to do this is repudiate all the bad mortgage debt and sell all the distressed homes for $1 and up to whomever will restore them to liveability and live in them/rent them–no government funds required.

Now let’s count the ways this will help the nation.

1. Instead of struggling to pay a bloated mortgage or skyhigh rent, millions of people will be paying to fix up an abandoned house and the property taxes. They will have a stake in their house and neighborhood and every incentive to improve it.

2. banks don’t need to write mortgages for 10 million homes. No fees will be generated, and there is no investment banker needed to package the mortgages into deceptive securities. Good riddance. Loans are essentially commodities and should be as cheap as any other financial commodity.

3. Property values take a huge one-time hit. OK, so we are collectively not going to retire as millionaires based on a real estate bubble. If we are collectively paying much less for rent and mortgages, then we can start saving actual money rather than feeding off a frenzy which was doomed to collapse anyway.

4. Instead of entire neighborhoods turning into crime-ridden hellholes, people will reclaim the neighborhood one house at a time, with no government funds required.

Now who would be hurt?

1. owners of lenders’ stocks –mostly insiders, hedge funds, financial elites. Pension funds who didn’t exit yet will take a hit but 75% of the losses have already occured.

2. investors who bought the mortgage-backed securities and derivatives. Again: the money has already been lost due to poor risk management, and trying to obscure this doesn’t help anyone.

3. Wall Street and the thousands of jobs created spinning bad debt into bad securities. Many industries have been forced to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs; now it’s the banking industry’s turn.

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by Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, critiquing Dmitri Orlov’s book, and discussing differences between USSR collapse and US collapse.

The cultural and structural differences between the USSR and the USA are significant, and if Orlov had been an anthropologist his book might have drawn somewhat less sensationalist distinctions. His primary thesis is that the Soviet Union was actually better prepared to weather collapse than the U.S., but I think he missed this critical difference: Russia and the other constituent states of the former USSR were resource-rich.

The delivery system for what I call the FEW Essentials (food, energy, water) was decrepit and inefficient, but there was plenty of oil, natural gas, wheat (Ukraine), water and know-how in a relatively well-educated citizenry. The problems were all basically political in nature: a failed Nanny State could no longer deliver the goods and services it had controlled.

The U.S. will be dealing with an entirely different set of problems: systemic financial crisis/collapse, and shortages in resources that were once abundant: food, energy and water (at least in the West). Those limitations in resources present problems beyond mere political corruption and incompetence, though we have still have an abundance of those. In other words, if the U.S. faces a bigger challenge, it’s because the problems are far deeper than just political structure.

Here in the U.S., the political problem is our system’s inability to tackle long-term problems with any sort of foresight and rationality, but that does not necessarily lead to political collapse. The USSR was a Nanny State par excellence–you needed political approval to go to college, to take a job, to buy food, to move to another city–your entire life was governed by the State, which “promised” to take care of you in a fashion captured perfectly by the wry Soviet-era joke, “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”

The U.S. has certainly evolved into a Nanny state in many ways, but we should be careful not to exaggerate this weakness. Many people in the U.S. are still quite capable of doing things for themselves, including organizing their community around goals the government is either botching or ignoring. As the economy tanks and tax revenues dry up, and government at every level spends more and more of its revenues paying interest on old and new debts, then the path of least resistance for government is not collapse but irrelevance.

Once people realize the Gravy Train has tumbled off the tracks and the government no longer has the money to throw tens of billions at every “problem,” then they’ll eventually stop trying to get blood from a turnip, i.e. demanding something from the gummit which the gummit no longer has–”free” money.

To some degree, that is what we are advocating here, but not just because governments are bankrupt. We argue that governments are the creation of bullies (for want of a better term) trying to legitamise their privilege and power, and minimise revolutionary social change. Civilisation is a culture of empire, sustained through slavery in various forms, where destructive behaviour is rewarded. For example, William the Conqueror gave large estates in England to his friends and those who helped him take England by force. The modern world was shaped by wars, colonialism and oppression, and it continues to this day, but oil has enabled governments to export many of the worst aspects of slavery and exploitation. As governments find they no longer have the energy to dominate our lives, and/or sort out ‘problems’ for their own citizens, it will be up to us to reshape our lives. For many people, living under more oppressive regimes (which are supported by the so-called democratic states), peak oil may well be a good thing in many ways – less interference, direct oppression, regulations etc. But at the same time, the nanny state will be less able to help us in hard times.

4. Wandering around as a homeless migrant is not a good survival strategy. Orlov suggests at the end of his book that wandering between two or three sources of resources would be a good strategy. My own view is that freeloading is frowned upon in the U.S. and your best bet to is either stay put (yes, even in ghettos and urban neighborhoods) or move to a place where you have some roots (where you grew up is always a good place to start) or where there is some commonality: a church you belong to, an ecosystem you love and will nurture, etc.

I also think the value of hard work and generosity is still valued here in the U.S. If you pitch in and start growing some food, and then share it, you will quickly become a valued member of the community, and people will start looking out for you, too.

Wandering around freeloading is a good way to be scorned and loathed. Even in the grittiest neighborhoods, food can be grown in amazing abundance once people put their minds and backs to it.

Good advice. Vagrancy is still a crime in the UK. How will your neighbourhood look post peak oil?

5. The U.S. is on par with Sadr City, Iraq in terms of firepower in the hands of citizens. As the most heavily armed society in the developed world, the U.S. can easily go the way of well-armed criminal gangs controlling urban zones or well-armed militia sprouting up to take out the criminals. There is historical precedents for either scenario. A third scenario (common in the 3rd World) is for wealthy enclaves to hire private forces to protect the enclave.

While I can’t predict which will play out in various circumstances, we should be aware that the U.S. has millions of military veterans and millions of weapons. The USSR had the vets but not the weapons in private hands. People will eventually choose to support an alternative to anarchy or criminal/mob rule, unless the criminal gang is the only alternative to something worse (i.e. the Sadr City scenario). Or people will pay extra to maintain a top-notch police force and let go of the other city services, performing them communally via volunteer labor.

My point is simply that a heavily armed culture with tens of millions of firearm-trained vets is not going to follow the route of a society without those two elements.

This could make the future very scary, but also could limit the government’s ability to oppress people. Of course, this doesnt apply in Europe, where only the government has guns.

6. Orlov underestimates the power of the Web/Internet. Orlov is extending his experience in a pre-Internet Russia, in which you had to stand outside in the cold in order to hitch a ride. Assuming the Internet backbone will be maintained–and why wouldn’t it be placed ahead of every other use except hospitals and the public safety centers?–then virtually everyone will be able to arrange barters of almost unimaginable range via the Web.

I need a ride to San Jose and have a bag of fresh lettuce and green beans to trade, etc. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how the Web will be leveraged to arrange trade, barter, etc

Possibly, although over time there probably wont be the energy to maintain electricity infrastructures, or to repair and replace computers. Again, this could be a good thing, as we learn to make do with what we have, focus more on low energy equipment, and stop expecting to upgrade computers every year or two. Perhaps many communities will learn to share computers (and much more).

7. Cable TV. Orlov does mention the mind-rot induced by the U.S. mass media, but he underestimates the perniciousness of cable TV. As long as Americans turn to the entertainment industry (CNBC et al.) for their “information,” then the U.S. is well and truly doomed. Our only hope is that most Americans will soon be too impoverished to pay their cable/Dish bill and be cut off, forcing them to the Web where some glimmers of reality do poke through the med-enhanced, propaganda-induced haze.

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Published at PeakoilBlues.com

If you aren’t feeling some degree of apprehension right now, you aren’t reading the news. Here are some of my thoughts for turning that emotional energy into constructive action:

1. SET A GOAL TO CUT YOUR EXPENSES by some concrete number—10%, 20%, 30%, even 50%, and set up a plan to do it. Reducing costs is the fastest way to increase your income–faster than making more money.
2. LOOK AT CASH YOU ARE WASTING without enjoying its benefits, such as lights that get left on, computers that stay on day and night, “phantom loads,” like microwave clocks that use more energy than the microwave itself. If you get to know your electrical meter, and record the setting before and after you shut off those phantom loads, you’ll have concrete proof that you are saving money.
3. Set up a THREE TIER SYSTEM for purchases: a) necessities; b) conveniences; and c) other. Put everything you buy in one of these categories for a week, and examine the list. For example, if you buy clothing, you might have bought socks and new fancy shoes. While most people would put the socks under “a” or “b,” most of us would consider the fancy shoes “other” unless they are a necessity for work. The Great Spending Contraction has begun. Get far enough ahead of it, that you aren’t bit in the behind.
4. Consider BUYING FOOD IN ITS MOST BASIC FORM, and in bulk. For example, instead of buying Pancake mix, buy the flour, shortening, and leavening. This, alone, will not only improve your diet, but cost you a fraction of what the prepared mix would cost. Anything that the “Generals” prepare, (General Foods, General Mills, etc) they CHARGE YOU for the privilege.
5. SIMPLIFY. Examine each purchase, and ask yourself whether some other item would do the job equally well. Consumerism produces specialized products that increase demand. The more specialized, the easier it is to charge consumers a premium price for it. Shaving cream, instead of a good lathering soap. Window cleaner instead of vinegar. Do a bit of research and find out how your ancestors lived without most of the products under your sink or among your toiletries. Then, pare it down, and buy it in bulk.
6. SEEK OUT QUALITY. Seek out highly durable, long-lasting products that may cost more, but are well made and will last a long time. You may find out that the cheaper versions can’t be replaced easily, when they wear out. Buy now for the long term, and not on price alone. I’m finding better quality items being replaced by cheaply made products at the same price. Buy the quality stuff while you can still find it, and make sure it fits Tier A. (See #3)
7. Switch over to a CASH ECONOMY. Just do it. Start out deciding how much money you usually spend using credit cards and checks, and take out that amount in cash for a week, two weeks, a month. If you and your family members spend through it before that period is over, stay home and stop spending, until the next period starts. Consumer research has shown that moving to a cash economy, consumers spend on average 20-25% less than if they used a credit card. Use that research to benefit YOU. Get into the habit of using currency, not plastic.
8. GET THE ENTIRE FAMILY INVOLVED in cutting back Tier “B” and “C” spending. If you’ve set a goal of reducing expenses by 20%, make that across the board, and involve the kids. If this means cutting back on extra lessons, dances, mall trips, etc, give your children a say in which things are cut out or reduced. If you are sincere about your own cutbacks, your children will respect and adjust their expectations as well. If you say you are cutting back, but then buy something in the “C” category, you’ve lost your credibility and you’ll have a family mutiny on your hands. Discuss, as a family, all of your expenses based on these categories, and try to reach agreement, so there are no surprises.
9. Chart out your life travels in terms of MILES, instead of minutes, and then figure out how you can travel those miles in ways other than those using fossil fuel. When someone says “That’s 30 minutes away…” get used to asking “Is that walking, biking, or traveling by car?” It is a psychological shift that we all need to make.
10. Learn how to STAY HOME. It sounds funny to some, but for many people, “home” has become a “pit stop” to refuel (eat, sleep) before we head out again. Learning how to stay home might mean resolving the conflicts you have with your significant other. It might mean having higher expectations for better behavior from your children.
11. SLOW DOWN, relax more, and look for ways of improving your home surroundings. I don’t mean a new sofa. I’m talking about cleaning up that harrowing trip from one room to another because you keep tripping over the rug that sticks up, or putting up heavier curtains in the winter so the room stays warmer, or creating a better area to read, or listen to music, free of distractions. It might mean moving your most used kitchen utensils in a convenient place, so it’s easier to cook. Tell yourself “Home is where I’m going to be spending most of my time,” and check out your emotional reaction. If it’s panic or dread, try to figure out why, and do something about it.
12. “GET REAL” with the people you live with or love. Unfinished business, unspoken animosity, curt and angry exchanges not only make it unpleasant to be at home, it actually impacts your health. Bad marriages wreck good health. Come clean and own up to your own unhappiness, and try to own up to your contribution to the situation. The average troubled couple waits seven years before they seek out help, and often the problems by that point are well-entrenched. Try to fix it yourself, but if it doesn’t work, seek out a trained listener.
13. PUT YOUR KIDS TO WORK. Too many children have very little real “purpose” in family life, and this is a bizarre turn of events in the history of human-kind. If your kids seem focused on their own self-interests, ask yourself to what extent you’ve expected them to take in interest in things greater than their own amusements. If you can’t really say “Boy, I’m really glad I have my son/daughter to take care of X, so I don’t have to do it…” you’ve forgotten how to teach them skills like taking responsibility, being reliable, and the “quid pro quo” of living with people. Your future son- or daughter- in-law will curse you.
14. SHUT OFF THE CHATTER from the computer/ internet/television/cable/ telephone/cell phone/pager/Blackberry/fax machine for some period each day and make a space for you to be with those you love, uninterrupted. Make it a revered time when the most important people in the world are sitting with you, paying attention to each other, talking sincerely, relaxing together. Expect severe resistance and techno-withdrawal. Make this revered time long enough to allow for the “hyperactive” withdrawal to subside, and a sense of quietude to permeate the house. Keep it going (as an “experiment” if you must) for at least a month, and open up discussion about what kinds of things you could do, as a family or as individuals, that would be satisfying or fun without using electricity.
15. SERIOUSLY WEIGH WORKING OVERTIME against using this time to create a more sustainable lifestyle. We are used to thinking about making money as the number one priority, but maybe its time to seriously question this assumption. If some crisis should happen tomorrow, just how prepared are you? Have you put up food? Created a garden of some type? Gotten to know your neighbors well enough to ask for (or offer) favors? Connected with religious or civic organizations offering you a wider circle of support? Resolved your marital troubles? Learned to really enjoy your kids? No doubt, cash is important, but time is our most precious commodity. Consider its use very carefully.
16. Imagine a VISION for a future you’d be willing to live in. You know that line about how humans can’t live without hope? (I know, some of you don’t believe in that word, so let’s use the word “vision.”) The happiest families have a vision of what they are living and working for. This vision sustains them in times of trouble. Go ahead. Imagine the worst. Then, visualize how you can live a satisfying life through the worst of it, and what will make it worthwhile. (Hint: if you don’t imagine good friends and family, live music, simple foods etc, it probably looks overly dreary…) Write about it in a story, with you as the hero, draw it in a picture, sing it in a song. Make it real.
17. MAKE LISTS and MARK ACHIEVEMENTS. Most of us are overly optimistic about what can be accomplished in a year, but underestimate what can be accomplished in ten years. See the broader plan, and pick several projects to start on (that’s right, several…). Do something on each one every day, or make it okay to focus on one for a while, until you tire of it, and then shift to another one.
18. Keep the LONGER VISION in mind, and understand how the interim is likely to play out, based on that vision. Give yourself the space to make decisions now that you know will not ultimately be your future course of action. To make sure you are heading in the right direction, ask yourself: “Is this moving me toward greater self-sufficiency?” “If I am using fossil fuel to accomplish this goal now, is this in service of my learning some greater skill, that I can later apply, to accomplished the goal without those inputs?” For example, if you know nothing about carpentry, power tools can make learning about wood a great deal easier. Once you are comfortable with putting things together, you can later apply those skills when using hand tools. A recumbent bike with a “power assist” can get you out there and riding that bike, so you get into better shape to later ride it without the assistance.
19. Understand how the “herd mentality” is likely to impact you, and try to GET OUT AHEAD OF THE CROWD, instead of being trampled underneath it.
20. PROTECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH as closely as you do your physical health. Depression, paranoia, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, abandonment, verbal abuse, compulsive behaviors like overeating, gambling, cyber-sex, anonymous sex etc. are all common reactions to stressful times. Keep a tight grip on the loose reins of that mind of yours, and listen to other people who tell you they are worried about you and the way you are behaving. Find people, ideally true friends and family, to talk to about the pressures and ruminations you have—your deepest fears. If you need help, get it now, and make sure that help includes tangible ways for you to handle that stress better in the future. Talk about your mother only if it helps you understand how to live a more productive life TODAY and gets you moving in the direction you claim to want to go in. Make it okay to schedule “mental health” days..you know, those days when you are just taking time off from work to smell the roses, sleep late, schedule a ‘melt down,’ or otherwise live life.
21. Learn the difference between “HEALTHY PLEASURES” and ones that will burn out your neurochemistry and destroy your health. Most of us exaggerate our habitual way of being when under pressure, based on our personalities. For some of us, we’ll withdraw from other people and become isolated. For others, we throw ourselves into projects that make other people the focus, and ignore our own wellbeing. Some of us become instantly “action oriented” to manage our anxiety, without stopping to consider the purpose or goal of our actions. Others become immobilized, unable to make the simplest decisions, lest they turn out to be the wrong ones. Some become more self-centered, while others stop considering their own needs at all. Still others become dominated by destructive emotions and stop thinking clearly. Too much intellectualizing is the the direction others take, and this allows very little room for emotional expression or sympathetic connection with ourselves or others.

This is what makes giving “general advice” like “express your emotions” or “focus inward” so risky. Know in which direction to tend to err, and interrupt the pattern before it goes to extreme. Include people in your life that “balance out” those tendencies. If you are a “worry wart,” connect with someone who’s more carefree. If you tend to intellectualize, find an improvisational theater group. If you dramatize everything, befriend someone closer to a “brain” who “thinks” as a first response. And be prepared to be possibly annoyed by the personality difference.
22. Care for something NON-HUMAN. Eighty-five percent of us already do, whether its wild birds, squirrels, gold fish, a dog, cat or livestock. Scientifically, we’ve found out that caring for someone (or something) else is good for our mental and physical health. We’re likely to live longer through a life-threatening disease if we do. Spend time watching or interacting with this non-human, and access another part of your consciousness—perhaps and older, deeper part, and try to relax while you’re doing it.
23. LIMIT THE ‘BAD NEWS.’ If you find yourself checking the news more than once a day, give it a break, for your own sake. Take a “news holiday” once in a while. Go be around something beautiful, like art or nature.
24. Make a list of the ‘TWENTY THINGS YOU LOVE TO DO’, and post it where you’ll see it every day. Write down, next to the item, when is the last time you did it, and whether you want to do it more (M) or less (L) often. Write down if it was something either parent did (P), and whether you’ll still be able to do it at 85 (85). If it costs money to do it, put a dollar sign ($) next to it. If you need to do it with a friend (F) or special friend (SP) note that. Now, rank-order them, just for fun.

25. DON’T TRY TO CHANGE THE WORLD. Try just impacting your tiny corner of it. Make your street a nicer place. Plant a few fruit or nut trees. Join a neighborhood group. Expand your community food pantry. Get a regular “rent party” together and pass the hat for those who have lost their job or have unpaid medical bills. Next week, that person might be you. Pick up the garbage you come across, even if it isn’t yours. Remember that the world is bigger than you are, and that you don’t own the Earth or the things in it, you are a part of the Earth, and are owned by it.
26. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. Just because people usually list 25 things, be different. List 26. Don’t follow the crowd, walk ahead of it. If they start following you, you’re a leader. If they don’t, you are ahead of your time or you are going in the wrong direction. In either case, enjoy the walk, and break your own rules once in a while.

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Euan Mearns at Oil Drum: Europe.

From riches to rags

The bar chart up top indicates the cost of importing oil and gas to the UK ballooning to about $200 billion (£100 billion) per annum by 2013 – just 5 years away. This completely dwarfs the riches of North Sea oil and gas production the UK enjoyed up to 2004, which were exported at rock bottom energy prices. The chart is indicative since it is unlikely that this will ever come to pass. It is unlikely that the UK will be able to source or pay for this ever rising energy bill on the international markets.

Left to market forces, the problem will be solved by spreading energy poverty throughout the UK population. The wealthy who can afford the small amount of expensive energy on offer will be fine whilst the poor will just have to go without – personal transport, heat, light and power.

The charts below show the gross cumulative and per capita cumulative surplus / deficit from 1998 which is when the BERR chart begins, which coincides roughly with when the New Labour government (Blair – Brown) came to power. We are currently at the fulcrum of surplus turning to deficit. By 2013, the UK may well run up a cumulative deficit in oil and gas imports in excess of $500 billion – if we can find countries that will sell us oil and gas on credit. This equates to an energy debt over $8000 for every man, woman and child in 5 short years. This is in addition to the already dreadful debts we have run up as a country importing consumer goods on credit (see below).

Greed induced craziness, that will affect the lives of almost every UK citizen – if you are not already struggling, you almost definitely will be soon. We have reported on the food riots in other parts of the world, this report illustrates that if you think ‘it cant happen here’ you are wrong. In fact, the Uk may be one of the most unprepared countries in the world: archaic planning laws make it almost impossible to acquire land that you can live on, obscene land ownership statistics show that very few people have access to land, decades of road building policies and privatisation of public transport has left the UK with probably the most complicated and expensive public transport system, houses without gardens and very little and poor social housing… the list goes on. For decades the UK has replicated USA policies, stripmining the poor, privatising public services, reducing benefits and making it harder and harder to claim, out of town superstores being allowed to undermine local economies, crazy house prices artificially created through planning restrictions….

A state of emergency

We should hopefully by now have reached a point where all stake holders in UK, European and Global energy are able to grasp the simple fact that we are now in the early stages of a full blown global energy crisis. The focus is currently on oil but this will soon turn to concerns over natural gas and coal supplies.

This crisis has been turned into a state of emergency by the indifference of political leaders in the UK (and throughout the world), fluttering in the wind of poorly informed public opinion while they have prevaricated about expanding renewable energy resources and building new nuclear power stations. All warnings of this pending energy crisis have been ignored in favor of pursuing popular policies that created the illusion of prosperity whilst the fundamentals of our nations security and well being have been draining away.

The chart below shows the current state of the UK trade balance. This is the position at the end of the good times North Sea oil and gas have provided. The situation now is about to get a whole lot worse as our energy surplus turns into a crippling deficit with no plan on the horizon of returning the books to balance.

I have not attempted a forecast since some major changes to UK trading status are to be expected. Higher food, fuel, domestic energy and bank interest bills will squeeze the disposable income of many individuals and families. Thus, instead of buying consumer goods and going to Spain on vacation, families will instead spend this money on food and energy. Thus we can expect the deficit in goods and tourism to reduce while the deficit in energy balloons.

The party is over. Life in the UK is getting worse for most people. We can try to continue down the same old path, or we can demand the right to try something new. Passive consumerism is no longer an option. Relying on peasants in other countries to grow our food for us, is no longer an option.

The future

The exchange last week between Mervyn King (Governor of the Bank of England) and Alistair Darling (Chancellor of the Exchequer) suggests that they plan to do nothing about this presuming that the upwards tick in energy and food prices (that began in 2002) will drop out of the annual inflation statistics a year from now. True rabbits caught in the headlights. They have created a perilous situation for the UK economy that they seem not to understand let alone know how to fix.

Here are a few pointers to what I think we can expect in the next 18 months:

Forever rising energy import bills will pressure Sterling which will continue to fall, pushing up the cost of energy, food and consumer goods even more.

Public sector workers, no longer able to borrow to supplement income will begin to strike once they discover that 3% wage increases do not come close to covering the rise in the cost of living (the great inflation lie will be found out).

Unemployment will begin a steady rise as financial services, banks, building sector, airlines, airports, leisure and retail come under severe pressure. They will be joined by public service workers as the government struggles to fund public services with falling tax receipts, spiraling debt and a falling pound. (already happening in Aberdeen with deep cuts in education spending across the city and teacher numbers being slashed).

I won’t go into the spiraling and compounding nature of this on the property market since this is an article about energy.

The elderly and poor will really struggle this winter to pay their energy and food bills. If the weather is cold, the grid might fail and the vulnerable will begin to die from cold and starvation.

Following that things will begin to get worse as the UK discovers that it is struggling to secure sufficient natural gas at any price, on the liberalised market they helped create. Society becomes more polarised into those who can still afford to drive an SUV, live in comfort and warmth and fill their bellies with prime Aberdeen Angus steak set against a new under class who struggle to feed and heat their families. Welcome to Britain in 2010.

“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair

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“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the hour. And, there are things to be considered…Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your garden.

It is time to speak your Truth.

Create your community.

Be good to each other.

And, do not look outside yourself for the leader.”

Then, he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said:

“This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now, very fast.

It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold onto the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and will suffer greatly.

“Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water.

“And I say, ‘See who is in there with you, and celebrate!’ At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For, the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

“The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

~Oraibi, Arizona, Hopi Nation

Thanks to the Titanic Lifeboat Academy for this.

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The empire of cheap food is crumbling

You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for petroleum-induced famine.

We have “innocently” accommodated rising population with greater and greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe limitations — major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss. The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.

Jan Lundberg, on culturechange.org, spells it out for any of you who still don’t get it. This is the endgame of empire, the crash is happening, civilisation is coming to its inevitable catastrophic endgame.

Three days is our average food supply around the modernized world, i.e., for cities and their supermarkets. Long-term food stocks have plummeted: “Cereal stocks that are at their lowest level in 30 years,” according to Worldwatch institute in its most recent Vital Signs. This is exacerbated by increasingly weirder weather, compounded by the oil price/supply pressure on food. What can interfere with the three-day situation are truckers on strike (as in Europe), extended/repeated power outages, and the inability of the work force to commute to work.

Too many people, relying on faceless corporations to supply their needs. Too much damage to the environment (including the climate) in the name of short term profits for shareholders (and as Derrick Jensen points out in Strangely Like War, much of those so-called profits are subsidies funded by taxpayers, without which many industries would not be economically viable. Derrick talks about deforestation, but the same is true of many if not most big business). Too much power in the hands of too few people, while the rest are encouraged to passively consume the garbage churned out as ‘stuff you need’, and to tolerate the decimation of their communities, enviornment, air and water quality, quality of life…. how bad does it need to get?

the way fleeing (potential) victims of Hurricane Rita did in 2005. Will survivors be the ones who had the fullest gas tanks? Will these survivors also require guns to obtain food outside the city, whether by hunting or sticking up some hapless or well-armed locals?

Culture Change’s reports do not intend to add to hysteria. Indeed, if only there were no reason to be alarmed. But looking at our collective situation, it is difficult to see how wrenching shortages are avoidable. The consequence of reactions to these shortages will not be pretty. Without facing this, and taking action to prevent it, our Ship of Fools is on a course to hit the rocks.

Whether you are relatively “set” — with local food supply, not just money — or you are living from paycheck to paycheck and thus depend on the trucks coming into the supermarket without a hitch, you will not be immune to some interruption or limitation on the food you have probably taken for granted. As petroleum is in fast-dwindling supply and is relied upon for mass producing our food, shipping it (on average 1,500 miles for North Americans), packaging it and preparing it, we are up against a petroleum-induced famine of our own making. What evil-doer will we blame instead of ourselves?

Who indeed? Who sets government policy supporting big agribusiness and making life hard for small farmers, with taxes and regulations that are impossible for anyone smaller than a multinational agri-corporation? Who paid foreign governments to encourage cash crops and discourage food production for local markets or subsistence? Who decided that humans should eat corn and soya in industrial food, thinly disguised as different brands, foods, when in fact its all the same chemical laden crap? Who decided that the corn should go to feed cars, now that the people are dependant on it and diversity has disappeared in the marketplace.
Most of us were born into this world, and actually do not realise that things could be different, after all as children we were continually told that ‘this is just how the world is’. Some of us have spent our lives searching for alternatives, but even the ‘alternative’ and ‘green’ movements seem to have more interest in human rights, than human resposnisibility. As we have said before, we dont have the answers, aren’t really sure what a different and better world looks like (although ideas from indigenous peoples around the world figure large). But, this civilisation, we know, has to come down, either voluntarily with people moving to a better healthier, more natural and sane way of life, or nature and the consequences of our actions will bring it down. Either way there will be pain, suffering, loss, change. If we choose to make the big changes that are required if humans want to continue living on this planet, the transition will be easier for most. If not, well….

Unfortunately, our socioeconomic problems are too deeply rooted in disastrous treatment of Mother Nature, for even radical changes in federal spending priorities to get us out of this. So, the big one is coming. Looking at the fundamentals of our society and how it has changed from The Great Depression of the 1930s, we are in for something much worse than those days when the family farms were intact. What is implied for the big one on the horizon, according to optimistic activists such as Joanna Macy and David Korten, is “the great turning.” Doesn’t sound too scary, so I hope they’re right. They will be right, but they seem to skip the unpleasant bit about collapse.

The empire is crumbling, but first we must go through end-stages as the Romans and others had to: increasing debt, falling agricultural output, over-extended military, growing urban population without much productive purpose, etc. But we’re the good guys! — we call our empire’s philosophy “Democracy,” and we are so clever with science. Really, though, we’ve simply done better at distracting the populace and giving them the carrot more often than the stick, apparently. This translates to consumer freedom through more goods. The Big Gulp drink in disposable plastic — who could ask for more? We have had none other than The Empire of Cheap Food. Cheap in the sense that cancer can be had at lower prices than previous generations had to pay. Also, subsidized petroleum (to this day as well) jacked up the food supply and the human numbers.

It’s amazing how really intelligent people can be in dreamland over the possibility of positive change coming to the rescue. It’s not just limited to the technofix. It’s the general idea that people “are becoming more aware,” or “there are more and more people getting into organic gardening, CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), permaculture” and the like.

The changes we need are indeed more far reaching then most of us realise. Too few people are taking any of it really seriously. Government and big business refuse to do anything, business as usual, too many misplaced vested interests cutting down the forests, poisoning the seas and soil, encouraging us to be stupid.

Meanwhile, with a 100-year flood on the Iowa corn fields — where erosion on monocropped, depleted soil killed by petroleum pesticides and fertilizer and mechanical tilling — we are in for a hell of a summer. Is your food secure? Are you gardening, saving seeds, and protecting precious land and water?

The food price increases have something to do with oil prices that have doubled in a year. And the oil prices have something to do with peak oil. And peak oil has something to do with wasting the Earth headlong into deprivation and ecological destruction. And it’s about civilization as a runaway train. If you don’t agree with the metaphor, just try getting off. Crash must come, and come it will, and soon. I hope I’m wrong that: You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.

That would be our concern when the price of oil can skyrocket (which it is already doing) — if we were prudent. The price of oil is far too low when there are still countless people driving cars unnecessarily. Apparently these drivers don’t find global warming to be as a big deal as “the economy.” Because it’s money, and only money, that can change some people — until they find they cannot eat their money.

Where I sit, the plants are crying out: It’s near 100 degrees Fahrenheit two days in a row in bone-dry San Francisco. It’s the wild deviations from the averages that are deadly to life.

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by Hari Heath, Dec – 2002 “Idaho Observer” (reprinted at Information Clearing House)

In the movie, when Morpheus is about to offer Neo the choice between either the red pill or the blue pill, he explains:

“You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain — but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life; that there’s something wrong with the world; you don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“The Matrix,” Neo asks?

“Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes; it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

And Neo asks, “What truth?”

“That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else, you were born into bondage; born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself.”

Civilisation, the culture of empire, can only function through the use of slaves. In some parts of the world this slavery is less concealed, while many of us live lives of apparent freedom, the matrix being almost completely concealed from us. Our own (inculcated) worldviews actually help to turn us into blue pill people – but some of us just feel that there is something wrong with this (civilised) world.

The corporate/government/financial interface combines to create a massive illusion of benefits — the American dream. For the price of a promise to indebt our future labors, pay our taxes and play within the system, there are seemingly limitless toys, castles, comforts and consumables for those who believe in this Matrix. For half our productivity taken in taxes (the other half in payments) and the deeds and title to whatever we think we own, government and its private affiliates will take care of us.

To live in this Matrix, all we have to surrender is any genuine sense of independence, personal responsibility and our right to live freely and actually own the fruits of our labors.

And, like in the movie, a contingent of agents are deployed to combat any renegade humans who have a will for freedom from the Matrix which surrounds us.

As Morpheus expiained, “The Matrix is a system Neo, and that system is our enemy. When you are inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds we are trying to save. Until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many are so hopelessly dependent on the system, they’ll fight to protect it.”

Why will blue pill people fight to protect a Matrix that enslaves them? It’s all they know. And all their toys, castles, comforts and consumables will be gone without the Matrix. Their whole illusionary existence will evaporate, leaving them naked and alone.

‘Theres lots of people worse off than you’ is the phrase that comes to mind. People who are actually worse off BECAUSE of our activities in the matrix. people who are lower down the heirarchy, and so of ‘lesser value’. People whose lives are impoverished and enslaved in more blatant ways by the system that rewords sociopathic behaviour.

Remember the detainment camps those paranoid conspiracy theorists told you about years ago?

U.S. officials claim they can detain and interrogate enemy combatants until the executive branch declares an end to the war on terrorism. This includes no access to lawyers or family members; investigations, interrogations, trials and punishments can be held without the protections secured by the Constitution. The Nazi/moron president’s administration says there is ample precedent for what it is doing. Are we following the “ample precedent” of a man named Hitler?

Meanwile, the Congress has passed the American Gestapo Authorization (Homeland Security) Act which defines a terrorist as:

“The term “terrorism’ means any activity that — involves an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; and is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”

As a test for social compliance, 838 blue pillers recently passed blissfully through an unconstitutional random roadblock in Pittsburgh without “seeing” the real “terrorists” in Homeland Security’s new America — the police state (See page 22). Is our present police state “dangerous to human life” and “destructive of critical infrastructure” like the Bill of Rights? Is it “against the laws” (18 USC 241; 242) to deprive a citizen of their right to travel and be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects? Do random roadblocks, by design, “intimidate or coerce a civilian population?” What happens if you don’t comply with the roadblock?

What indeed? What do the people who gain the most from this civilisation always do to perceived threats to their power and authority?

How deep does the rabbit hole go? Near the end of the movie, the Matrix’s agent Smith acclaims the virtues of the Matrix to the captive red pill people’s leader Morpheus: “Have you ever stood and stared at it? Marveled at is beauty; its genius? Billions of people, just living out their lives — oblivious.”

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