Dismantle Civilisation

As soon as I realized that I needed to feel reverence for nature and was able Paul Chefurka’s article is a very good summary of what many people will be going through on a spiritual level, as the collapse progresses.

Of particular interest is this list of stages:

• Denial (This isn’t happening to me!) – “Those Peak Oil/Global Warming bozos are a bunch of alarmist idiots. Ignore their ravings, everything’s just fine!”
• Anger (Why is this happening to me?) – “Those bastard Arabs are selling our oil to our enemies and using the proceeds to attack us. Let’s get ‘em, boys!”
• Bargaining (I promise I’ll be a better person if…) – “I’ve put in compact fluorescents, switched to biodiesel and I bought a bike! That will help, right?”
• Depression (I don’t care anymore) – “Crap, the scale of the problem and the intransigence of human behaviour mean we’re screwed after all. Pass the bong.”
• Acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes) – “The nature of complex adaptive systems and Resilience Theory means were not all screwed, just most of us. I’m probably screwed, but my legacy will be to put in place what I can to help those who do survive.”

And then we can go on to find reverence for nature, and start doing what we can to help repair the damage civilisation has done to nature, and learning to live in sustainable ways.

As soon as I realized that I needed to feel reverence for nature and was able to summon a sense of the sacred in the earth and all its constituents, my lingering, intractable despair suddenly vanished. What is, simply is. We have injured our Earth Mother grievously through our intentional but unaware actions. The best we can do now is to tell her (or perhaps we are just telling ourselves) that we know we hurt her, are sorry for the hurt, will do as much as we can to put it right, and will do everything in our power to ensure that it never happens again. This acknowledgment can reinforce a sense of our accountability and focus us on our responsibility to act.
I now understand that I have always been some sort of pantheist. The Gods and Goddesses of other pagan paths are still foreign to my thinking, but I suspect I will use them as metaphorical focal points or levers in my journey to a spiritual understanding of the situation. I suspect (and fervently hope) that there is about to be an enormous surge in spiritual awakening as the shape of the iceberg clarifies through the mists of fragmentary data, denial and deliberate obscurantism by vested interests. Such spiritual growth is a great boon, and should be encouraged and nurtured wherever we notice its seeds. If you notice those seeds within yourself, give them some sunshine, a little water and good compost; the fruit of that plant is extraordinarily rare and valuable beyond measure.

No Comments »

This article, by Steve Thomas, on the anthropik network looks at an all important subject. In the west, at least, we have attained a reletavely high level of egalitarian structures and society in general, if we stick to the rules, is reasonably decent and fair. Many of the improvements were fought for by our ancestors, but that veneer of decency is pretty thin. How do we maintain that egalitarianism, when the cheap abundant fuel, that has enabled the oppression to be externalised, exported and hidden from view, has ceased to be available. Without that energy, the explotation that enables privilege is likely to come home again. The rich who are used to their privilege and wealth are unlikely to agree to equality or sharing their amassed resources so the rest of us can survive in reasonable comfort.

The Land Grab

What we may see is a massive Land Grab, as millions of urbanites, suburbanites and townsmen struggle for every remaining bit of land they can force a crop out of. In fact, such an event is almost guaranteed to occur. It is very unlikely that this event will be nonviolent. The vast majority of the rural land in America is owned either by the state or by corporations—that is, by the powerful—who are unlikely to give it up, and will probably fight tooth and nail for the last of what they see is “theirs.�?

We may see an incipient feudalism appearing as police, soldiers, and vast numbers of the newly impoverished find themselves willing to fight for some wealthy landholder for the right to a meager plot of land.

Even if/where such a feudalism does not emerge, violence is likely. The North American landmass (north of the Rio Grande) is home to some 320 million people at present. It cannot support that population without modern petroleum-based agriculture. Rwanda—a genocide driven by overpopulation, as Jared Diamond convincingly demonstrated in Collapse—may provide a terrifying example of what America will look like as petroleum agriculture collapses.

Eventually the Land Grab will end, and the North America will settle into a sustainable equilibrium. The question before us is whether that equilibrium will consist of Option A: a reasonably high population of interlinked, egalitarian societies of diverse configurations (as was the case on the continent before the arrival of Europeans); or Option B: perpetual famine, endemic warfare and warlordism (as is the case in other modern examples of state collapse).

Achieving Option A

It is extremely likely—as has been written elsewhere—that we have already entered the beginning of the collapse. It may be a good idea to prolong the period of collapse as long as possible. The slower things unfold, the more time we have to educate people and “change minds.” That is, the more we can see to it that as many people as possible are to building a better society, rather than fighting over the scraps of the old. Moreover, the more slowly things unfold, the more time we have to actually create sustainable infrastructure that can support human life and survive the collapse.

On the other hand, the more slowly things unfold, the more time the hierarchy has to devastate the natural infrastructure such as it exists. If the collapse hits suddenly twenty years from now, a further (great percentage) of US topsoil will be depleted and a corresponding amount of forest will be destroyed. Thus, the more carrying capacity for non-industrial humans in the US will be deteriorated.

We are on the edge of a knife. If collapse occurs too suddenly, we will not be ready, and we will find ourselves overwhelmed and destroyed with the rest of the desperate refugees. If it occurs too gradually, even if we have built our own sustainable habitats, the rest of the continent will be so depleted that the hundreds of millions of new refugees will have no way to make their living. There will be very, very little viable land left—and we will be sitting upon most of it. In such a scenario we will be subjected to constant attack; we will be overwhelmed and destroyed.

It is worth noting that we probably will not have any say in this. The best strategy we can pursue is to 1. continue to create our tribes, communes, church groups, ecovillages, and community organizations and continue to link these disparate groups together, and at the same time continue to create the ecological infrastructure/habitat to support them; 2. to continue to recruit as many people as will possibly want to join us; 3. to continue to struggle against the destruction of extant ecological infrastructure with all of our resources.

Maintaining and Perpetuating Egalitarianism

Food is the foundation of culture. All upper-level cultural organization—social organization, politics, religion, law, war, art, everything—follows from the basic infrastructure of how a society provisions its members. This fact is critical if we are to maintain and create egalitarianism once the industrial infrastructure has disappeared.

Before going on I suppose I should define what I mean by egalitarianism. First, I take it to be the goal of most of us in the broad, linked movement that encompasses anarchists, tribalists, permaculture, ecovillages, culture change theorists, etc. I define “egalitarianism” as a condition, pervading every aspect of cultural life—economic, familial, social, political, religious—in which no individual has the power to command any other; in which the needs (biological and psychological) of every individual are met, or at least are met to the exact same extent to which the needs of every other individual are met; and in which hierarchies that do arise are temporary, based on necessity, and based on individual merit and in no way on ascribed status of any sort.

Now, egalitarianism must (in my view) be coupled with autonomy. If a neighboring Christian group wishes to survive the oil crash, but also wishes to maintain their church-mandated hierarchies, we should not seek to oppose them in this (although given the proselytizing nature of Christianity, it’s probably smart to steer clear of church groups).

So, how can we create and maintain this condition when society is collapsing around us, and when we are likely to be in a state of at least sporadic warfare with people who are very much interested in maintaining and perpetuating the hierarchy?

How indeed? By and large we don’t live in an egalitarian society now, but in a less energy society, where everything is more localised, we may have more opportunuities to build egalitarian realities, at least in some localities.
The article looks at some possible survival choices and possible outcomes from those choices, and concludes:

Other Strategies

The crash is going to open up a variety of new niches in North America that we have never seen before. The abundance of civilizational detritus could lead to numerous tribes of scavengers. Perhaps wandering scrap-peddlars will turn up. To the extent that exotic animals such as camels, elephants, kangaroos, and emus already exist on this continent (in zoos and on private ranches), they will continue to do so after the collapse. Some may flourish. Indeed there is currently a plan to introduce elephants and other African animals into the American plains. Who knows what hunting and herding cultures may result?

Conclusions, and What To Do

We have two questions ahead of us: What do we want, and What do we NOT want. For me, and I think for most of you, what we want is a better culture—an anarchic, tribal, egalitarian culture. What we don’t want is to continue to be subjugated by civilization.

We’re approaching a critical period. A point at which there will be no more middle-road—a point at which, if we survive, we will survive either as free participants in established egalitarian societies or as a new class of serfs. We must know what we want, and we must have the will and the ability to fight fiercely for it—without losing it in the process of fighting for it.

I hope this exploration of these concepts has been helpful. I’m going to continue to explore this topic here. Above all, let’s continue to build our infrastructure and convert more people here and now, within the heart of the beast.

Another article that covers similar ground can be found at worldux.com. Reprinted here in full, as its an interesting and thought provoking article:

Community Prep — Getting Serious

As the roller coaster of human civilization slides over the top of our long climb and starts to accelerate down the other side, a lot of folks are going to start waving their arms and screaming. At that point — could be next month, or next year, or ten years from now — your root stirring had better be pretty well along. Hopefully, by then, you’ll be part of a focused group of friends and neighbors who are ready to step up, present the outline of an action plan to your community, and move to implement it.

Your plan will need to address issues of self-sufficiency, answer questions about how the less able and less cooperative members of the community can be cared for or dealt with, and provide the ways and means for the community to protect itself from the chaos that will almost inevitably roil around and within it.

Let’s take these three main elements one by one.

Self-sufficiency

The idea that any group of modern Americans, large or small, could come up with all their own food, shelter, energy, clothing, tools, medical care, and what have you, is pretty ludicrous on the face of it; but a small fraction of us, at least, might have a shot at it. But even for rural people with lots of skills, it’s going to require a huge organizational effort, a ton of extra work (extending into the indefinite future), and an abundance of deprivation and suffering.

A crucial factor in whether we survive will be our level of preparation. Adequate stores of food may allow us to make the transition to food production. The stockpiling of clothing, tools, and household goods will also make a big difference in the struggle to survive. Someday, we or our descendents will have to produce clothes, shoes, metal tools, etc. from scratch; and there simply won’t be any more matches, toilet paper, batteries, galvanized nails, or a thousand other manufactured items we take for granted. Much of this stuff will be priceless — and some of it will be recognized as unnatural and unnecessary — but the more we have of it going in, the better our chances.

Most of us have a house of some sort to live in. If that house happens to be in a reasonably safe place, then the next question will be how to keep it warm in winter. Since most safe places are rural places, where there are more trees, then chances are you can heat with wood.

But how about cooking? A 250-gal. propane tank might let a family cook for a couple years, but sooner or later you’ll probably need ways to cook with wood. Solar cooking might be a good supplement.

And you’ll need something to cook. As mentioned, stored food will be important; but fresh food is essential to health. Vegetable gardening is a good place to start; but if you haven’t done much of it lately, you may be surprised at how much there is to learn — it’s both an art and a science. You’ll need to bring a lot of attention and discipline to it to really be successful.

Seeds are another important topic. You’ll want to raise open-pollinated (nonhybrid) crops, so that you can save seeds. Seed companies vary widely in quality and in the amount of seed you get for your money. The best deal I’ve found, by far, is Fedco, a seed co-op based in Maine (though their seeds come from growers all over the country). Their prices are often less than half those of just about any other company, and the information they provide in their free catalog is both informative and entertaining. They are also the best source for seed potatoes, onion sets, and similar crops.

Seed saving is a real challenge — you’ll need help and a lot of practice and patience to get to the point where you can keep the yearly seed cycle rolling along, for all the food you want to grow. Seed Savers Exchange is the place to start. In their Seed Savers Yearbook, over 800 listed members offer some 20,000 seed varieties. Suzanne Ashworth’s book Seed to Seed is also invaluable.

To grow fruit you’ll need an orchard (or berry vines at the very least), which means getting young trees in the ground 3 to 5 years before you expect to harvest anything. Nut trees are an excellent protein source, but they’re slow to mature.

Another excellent resource is Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply. Based in Grass Valley, Ca., they ship worldwide.

Small-scale grain raising is well within reach; and growing, processing, and cooking with your own wheat is very satisfying (both to the brain and the tummy). Gene Logsdon’s classic book on the subject is a good place to start — if you can find it. It’s out of print, and copies are fetching from 60 to 80 dollars on Amazon! I found one in a used book store for $4.

Turning to animals, egg and meat chickens and ducks are easy enough to manage; but larger livestock — goats, sheep, and cows — require quite a lot of preparation, knowledge, and daily care. And don’t forget that the grain you feed to animals can be used far more efficiently, in terms of food energy, if you eat it yourself. Around our place, we’re attempting to get around this fundamental fact by feeding our poultry only the scraps we don’t eat, plus what they can find by ranging, and by letting our hardy Kiko goats feed almost entirely on brush.

Worm raising might be another good thing to look into. It’s a relatively easy way to grow a lot of high-quality protein (for chickens or whomever) without the need for store-bought inputs.

Lists and inventories

A key to survival planning is the compiling of a list of needed items. And then the list needs to be compared with resources already on hand — that is, you’ll need to take an inventory.

My own list — definitely a work in progress — is available here for download (it’s an Excel 98 file). It won’t match your needs exactly, but it should give you a leg up.

Community organization and support

Those are some of the basics of personal or family survival. But how do you extend them to the whole community? There are two keys, it seems to me: attitude and organization.

By attitude I mean, is the community inclined to move forward with a “all for one and one for all” approach to things, or will selfishness prevail? You may not know the answer to that question until the process is well along. In the meantime you’ll need to proceed with community organizing.

In the early phases of organizing, you’ll have stirred the roots, shared your personal survival strategies and resources with close friends, and worked out the rudiments of a community plan. Now, as the shit really hits the fan, your core group needs to broaden the root stirring and work toward full-scale community meetings, at which the plan can be discussed, fleshed out, and acted upon.

There will be a multitude of issues to addressed at the meetings. Let me pick just one, food production and storage, as an example of how things might go. You will want to assess, in rough terms, how adequate the food stores of each family are. You’ll also want to know how well-developed their gardens, orchards, and animal operations are, and where they may develop surpluses or shortages. What major tools or equipment do they have? What basic tools do they lack?

Putting all this information together, you’ll then ask where the major gaps are and what to do about them. The sharing of seeds, tools, and knowledge will probably be in order. Community gardening or farming projects may make sense (grain farming, in particular, might go better at a larger scale, especially if someone has the equipment for it). Such projects could help community cohesion.

It might be a good idea to develop a questionnaire. If every family fills it out (rather than members of the organizing group trying to question every family), then your assessment may proceed a lot more quickly.

At each stage in the process (right from the beginning, when you’re still a small group), it may be helpful to have a community database, with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of every family. To it you might add what you know about the resources and skills each family has to offer, and special needs they are likely to have.

The database can be readily created in a simple program like Filemaker, which runs on nearly all computers (Windows and Mac). You can share the database via email — but be careful of “version control”: you should always be clear about who has the master copy (it may pass from person to person, as information is added).

A community web site could also be a good focal point — if you don’t forget that many people, especially old folks, still shy away from computers.

To really keep the community together, you’ll need to get every family involved and not let anyone who is needy fall through the cracks. If people feel excluded or rejected, you’ll have trouble. If opposing factions form, you’ll be in real trouble.

A core issue may be that most people will wait until very late in the game to open their eyes and get their rears in gear. The point at which your core group expands its activities into the whole community may be crucial: too soon and people think you’re just crying wolf; too late and, well, the wolf had you for lunch.

If only a fraction of the community is aware and prepares ahead — even if it’s a large fraction — then there will probably be resource shortages. The bigger they are, the more the willingness and ability of the “haves” to help the “have nots” will be strained. And what if some of your biggest “haves” decline to help out?

Community protection

Which brings us to the question of protection … security … defense, call it what you will.

Almost inevitably, some people in your community will not want to cooperate, or they may be forced into “cooperating” with a powerful, undemocratic faction opposed to you. One way or another, serious rifts could develop, and you would be foolish not to anticipate and prepare for them. (Not that foolishness is the worst of vices: you might choose to sacrifice everything to the attempt to hold the community together; and eventually — long after you’re gone, perhaps — your sacrifice could make all the difference.)

You could find yourself standing at the axis of concentric “circles of trust”: in the first circle, closest to you, your family. In the next circle out, people who share your land and close, trusted neighbors. In the next, your community core group of highly aware, well-prepared friends. In the next circle, perhaps, friends who were slow to “get it” or to prepare. And so on, out to the farthest dark circle where the villians and monsters dwell. The point is, you may want to be careful with your trust.

But let’s say for a minute that your community has held together, at least well enough that it can face up to questions of how to deal with outsiders. Outsiders could come in several flavors. The ones that spring to mind are refugees, vigilante gangs, governmental or quasigovernmental forces, and neighboring communities.

We might be able to arrange these different types according to how difficult they would be to deal with. The order, from easiest to hardest, is probably (1) neighboring communities, (2) refugees, (3) vigilante gangs, and (4) (quasi)governmental forces.

Obviously, if you can maintain harmonious relations with neighboring communities, then great. But that only works if they are as prepared and well-organized as you, and if you don’t need to compete over resources that lie between you.

Refugees could be the toughest outsiders to deal with, in a way, because many of them will be good people who desperately need your help (and who might be able to help you). Remember, though, that your community has a limited carrying capacity, and if you exceed it you may doom the community.

Vigilante gangs, roving “militias” and the like might be nasty. These will be the guys who learned to field strip an AK-47 before they learned to read (and may not yet have mastered the latter skill). They will be kick-ass, and if you don’t kick back, they’ll terrorize you out of existence.

But the greatest threat may come from forces operating at the behest of the government — or what’s left of it. If there is a general societal breakdown and the Big Boys are in trouble, then they’ll turn all their dogs loose: the US military and every intelligence and law-enforcement agency in the land will be working 24/7 to make sure you and I don’t stray off the preserve.

Whoever it is knocking at your door, the door had better be bolted shut. That could mean that you take out the roads coming into (and leading out of!) your town; it could mean that you station guards or run perimeter patrols. It could well mean that you raise and train a community militia.

It might be also be good to have in place a plan for retreat and guerilla resistance, just in case you’re overrun.

In the long run, I bet people like us are going to be smarter, stronger, wiser, and more alive than people like them.

Charley Sweet’s website http://www.worldux.com is interesting and useful. Definitely worth a visit.

No Comments »

The most lethal of attitudes, which a friend recently stated when we were talking about peak oil, climate change and economic or environmental collapse. It is shocking that people who think of themselves as educated and informed can feel so disempowered, or use powerlessness as a shield to justify not attempting to change anything. I wonder how many people would prefer a different world, but constantly chant the mantra of ‘I can’t change it all on my own, so why bother trying to change anything’, instead of actually making changes in their own lives and starting to join with others to make bigger changes.

You do not have to shop at supermarkets, and in fact in most cases you do not have to shop. We can make a difference and in fact, it is the actions of individuals, people who just do what they feel is right without looking to see if anyone else is following, that have made all the positive changes in history.

The credit crisis is permeating its way through the economies of the world. Farmers who normally borrow money for seed and fertilisers, retailers who borrow money to stock their shelves, lorry drivers who borrow to fill their tanks – all are finding it hard to get that credit, and all are part of the chain that brings food to the consumers. We may well see famine in the west next year, due to the finance crisis, and yet most people do not see this catastrophe coming, while many that are aware are unable or unwilling to change their lifestyles in any meaningful way, that could ensure food in their homes next year.

The era of consumerism is coming to an end. The worst scenario could be widespread empty shelves overnight, and all the social upheavals that could cause. Although I think this is unlikely, it is very possible in small areas, and the best we can expect is ever increasing prices, pushing many staple foods out of the financial reach of poorer sections of society.

We need to be aware that this is on the horizon, and to start asking ‘what can I do’ in a realistic way, seriously trying to find answers. Even people in apartments could be growing foods in tubs and guerilla gardening, or cooperating with others who do own land, or approaching local authorities to suggest that council land could be used for growing food.

Even if people in authority, or other local landowners aren’t responsive to your ideas, every time these subjects are raised its another time they have been pushed into the spotlight. This is being called a recession now, but we need to keep telling people that this is more than a recession. We need to keep shouting that this is the end of the world as we know it, and in fact climate change dictates that we MUST end the world that we grew up with, as it is killing our planet.

This is not a time to feel powerless. It is a time where we need to think sideways, find local innovative solutions, force friends and neighbours to cooperate, and in cities to start turning every available inch of under-used land to grow organic food.

Some ideas won’t work, while some will, but we dont have time to feel self pity or disempowerment. We all need to become permaculture social activists.

No Comments »

And fast! Original article at Surviving Peak Oil Blog.

Town and city managers should promptly inform elected and other appointed officials at the local level (including county boards and school boards) about the Peak Oil issue. Forwarding them this article would be one way to do this, and this article could be used to focus discussions on Peak Oil planning. All government officials should be informed so that they can begin planning and so that they are able to respond to questions from constituents and the press about what their government is doing to plan for Peak Oil impacts.

Local governments should establish a Peak Oil committee in their government to provide advice regarding Peak Oil risk management and contingency planning. This committee should concentrate on what the town or city can do to address the problems that the town or city faces. The Peak Oil committee should establish a state wide means of communicating with other local governments in the state. One suggestion is to establish a free Google blog for discussions and announcements, and every local government and citizen advisory committee can be authorized to add to this blog. Local libraries should be involved in this effort so that they can order relevant books and hold local community discussions.

Local government officials should also establish a Peak Oil citizen advisory committee that can advise the public and town/city government, as well as inform state government and congressional leaders. Because Peak Oil is a very controversial and emotional issue, it is wise that an independent blue ribbon committee of citizens advise the media, the public, and local and state governments about Peak Oil problems and plans. The selection of members to this committee is critical. People with general knowledge and community service experience are preferable to those who might want to work to solve national energy problems, instead of focusing on the problems facing the town, city, county, and state. There is also a tendency to focus on energy conservation to plan for Peak Oil. Conservation of individual and local government resources is important, especially if it saves town resources, but local conservation is not a solution to most problems that communities face. Similarly, there is a tendency to focus on ways of generating energy, such as purchasing expensive solar panels or wind turbines. In general, these are not solutions. When the power grid fails, local electric power is not very useful, and it will be useful only as long as storage batteries last. A focus on risk management and contingency planning must be maintained.

Some Ideas for Risk Management and Contingency Planning

1. Studying Peak Oil impacts carefully will enable sensible risk management and contingency planning. The Peak Oil Report provides an excellent review of Peak Oil impacts.

2. Develop contingency plans for a power grid failure, which can occur at anytime (the possibility of a power grid failure is discussed in the Peak Oil Report in the section “Multiple Crises and a Gridlock of Crises” toward the end of the report).

3. Plan for government revenue reductions.

4. Guard financial resources.

5. Review the capital budget for possible cuts. For example, some state and local governments are widening highways, although traffic on these highways will decline in the future.

6. Plan ahead for very expensive oil and natural gas in the future. For example, many town or city offices may have to reduce operations to 3 or 4 days a week to cut costs in heating and transportation. Public schools use much heating oil (or natural gas) and diesel for transportation. Should the school calendar be adjusted to avoid the most expensive months: December, January, and February? Should classes meet 3 or 4 days a week? These changes require action by state board of education and changes in union contracts, etc. This example shows that government officials and the public need to be informed about Peak Oil now so that they can plan ahead. The pressure for changes in the school calendar would have to come from the local level, as there are no signs that state governments are planning for Peak Oil impacts.

7. Plans should be made for reductions in the personnel budget, as choices will have to be made between reductions-in-force and across the board reductions-in-pay.

8. Develop an extensive library of books that will provide useful technology for after the time when the power grid has failed permanently. Although this time is years away, these books could be sold out quickly following a national energy related emergency, and then the books may not be available later. An example: penicillin is not difficult to make, if you know how; but if you don’t know, it would be very difficult to invent the process for making penicillin.

9. Certain hand tools should be purchased and stored in quantities. Today they are inexpensive and plentiful, but in the future, they won’t be available, for example: 2 man wood saws, bow saws, and axes.

1 Comment »

Christmas time has come again, and as per usual the yearly carnival of consumerism has returned. It was suggested that the credit crunch might have perhaps thrown some water on the consumerist fire this year, but judging from the increase in spending reported for last month, and indeed my own observations of an incredibly packed Oxford Street in London (a serious contender for the capital of unbridled consumerism) the effect seems to be little. It seems that many businesses live for this time of year, waiting for the hordes to spend their money and keep their businesses out of the red for another year. But how did it come to this? How did a purely religious festival come to be hijacked by one of the most destructive forces of modern civilisation?

There has been a Mid-Winter festival across the world for millennia. The point at which the days cease to get shorter and instead start to get longer again, the Winter Solstice, has been marked by many cultures as a time to celebrate the rebirth of the sun and a celebration of life in general. Despite the cold, harsh conditions in many parts of the northern hemisphere, people have feasted on the produce of the previous summer and have come together as communities for this festival. Even when Christianity imposed their own version of the festival upon the conquest of many pagan areas, the feasting and community aspects of the festival have been maintained, with direct parallels of the birth of Christ in the Christian version and the theme of life and rebirth in the Pagan version helping to amalgamate the two together. Giving and receiving gifts served to strengthen communities, often portrayed through the imagery of St. Nicholas (eventually becoming Santa Claus in popular culture).

However, as civilisation began to consolidate its grip on humanity ever further since the industrial revolution, the festival of life has become poisoned. The giving of presents to consolidate community proved to be the weak-point – people began to use the opportunity to attempt to illustrate their wealth by giving the biggest and best presents. This was the precursor to consumerism, the updated form of this tendency in which people define theirselves not by the content of their character but what they can buy and own. The increasing amount of cheap credit helped to spread this ideology from the upper through to the middle and finally working classes, allowing nearly anyone to buy former luxuries en masse.

The advertising and PR industries soon came to realise that this ideology could be tapped to create a spending frenzy at Christmas time. People could be convinced to judge themselves on the quantity and quality of the presents they could give – not only could they base their personalities on their possessions but also on their ability to outspend each other at Christmas. Thus an advertising/propaganda campaign was undertaken that encouraged people to spend as much as possible – and the result has been a runaway success, with the millions spent at Christmas often making the difference on the balance sheets for many companies, and many families acquire huge debts on credit cards simply to keep up with the demand. Communities continue to be broken apart, with another major period of community-building destroyed in the name of profit.

And so, it has come to the point now where the festival of life has become a festival of consumerism. As consumerism promotes the unlimited and growing creation and purchase of largely unnecessary goods, it plays a major role in the destruction of earth’s ecosystem, helping to push billions of organisms into extinction. Thus, the festival of life has now become a festival of death, but of course with advertising to tell us that it’s all still ‘in the spirit of Christmas’.

So what’s the alternative? We need to reclaim this time of year for a festival that celebrates life, communities and the earth. The focus needs to return to community-building and fun, with feasting and gifts returned to this purpose. Keeping things homemade can cut out the insidious effects of consumerism, forcing out the monetisation of the festival and instead welcoming honest and heart-felt exchange. Spending time outdoors with nature is also crucial, to remind us of not only our links with each other but our links with the earth and its ecosystem, especially on the Solstice day itself. Lastly, as a time of rebirth, it is a good time to plan for the coming year and how we intend to rebuild community and the earth in that time. Set down specific actions such as growing more of your own food, joining local groups, getting to know your community, learning about Permaculture and other new practical skills or planning local currencies and economies. There is no time to lose in building a new, better alternative to civilisation, and we can transform Christmas and the Mid-Winter Festival to help and not hinder us in this great project.

1 Comment »

29 really scary things, that we as a species need to act upon, now – article from IntelDaily.

Time is running out and using denial to escape these harsh realities is no longer an option.

1. According to a Washington Post article in 1998, a poll was conducted by the New York Museum of Natural History which found that seven out of ten scientists from the American Institute of Biological Sciences are convinced that a mass extinction is underway and that within 30 years, one fifth of all living species could become extinct (Warrick, 1998). In 2005, respected scientist Professor Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, stated that, unless humankind changes behaviors, as many as two-thirds of world species could be extinct by 2100 (Collins, 2005).
2. According to World Wildlife Fund Director-General, James Leape, we would need a total of five planets to sustain the world’s population if everyone on the planet had the same consumption rate as America. This finding was reported in the 2006 Living Planet Report which is the outcome of an annual study that has been conducted since 1998 to determine the rate of change in global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere which manifests from the human consumption of natural resources (World Wildlife Federation, 2006a). The 2006 Report also noted that in 2003, the world exceeded biocapacity by 25%. This means that with a global population of 6.6 billion people, the world is currently consuming at a rate of 25% more than what the earth is capable of regenerating. What will that rate be when the world has 10 billion people?
3. The world’s population in 1600 was at 500 million (Leakey & Lewin, 1995). Two hundred years later in the year 1800, it had doubled to one billion. By 1940, another 140 years, the global population tripled to 3 billion. From 1940 to present day, 66 years later, the world’s population has more than doubled to 6.6 billion. It is projected to be around ten billion by 2050.
4. Global greenhouse gases due to anthropogenic causes have increased 70% between 1970 and 2004 with carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, having increased 80% between the same 34 year period. Two other green house gases, methane and nitrous oxide, have also increased substantially and rank high in terms of a negative affect on the environment. If global average temperature exceeds 3.5 degrees Celsius, it is projected that between 40-70% of species will be at risk for extinction. Eleven of the past twelve years (1995-2006) have been the warmest years of record for global surface temperature since 1850 (IPCC, 2007, p. 1). Global warming is creating changes in the migratory patterns of animals, altering the timing of plant flowerings, causing changes in the flow of the Gulfstream, and creating changes in the ocean and the atmosphere which increase the occurrence of natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. The primary causes are fossil fuel use (gasoline to power cars, boats, etc.) and agricultural and land use changes (deforestation, multinational farming methods, soil erosion, etc.).
5. The IPCC report says that, by 2080, 1.1 to 3.2 billion people will experience water scarcity, 200-600 million will be starving, and 2 to 7 million people each year will experience coastal flooding (cited in Vidal, 2007). As many as one billion people, or 17% of the world’s population, may be forced to abandon their homes over the next 50 years and migrate to another more habitable geographical area. Most of these people will be from poor and undeveloped countries. A combination of social, civil and military conflicts, large-scale development projects, and global environmental decline will make life inhabitable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly from Africa, south Asia, and the Middle East where, ironically, the least amount of consumption takes place.
6. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based non-profit organization working for a healthier environment, reports that America has 5% of the world’s population, but emits 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide (UCS, 2006). The Union of Concerned Scientists’ web site also exposes the efforts of ExxonMobil which spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 hiring advocacy organizations that intentionally discredit the overwhelming evidence pointing to global warming (UCS, 2006).
7. When oil and gas senior executives speak to lawmakers and the public, they report smaller profit margins (around 8 to 10 percent) than when they speak to Wall Street analysts and shareholders (Slocum, 2006).
8. On a global scale, there was an average species decline between 1970 and 2000 of 40% with species in rivers, lakes and marshlands having declined by 50% during the same period (Global Biodiversity Outlook 2, 2006). Research points to declines in amphibians, African mammals, birds in agricultural lands, corals, and common fish species. The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species is recognized as the most reliable evaluation of the world’s species. According to the 2007 Red List, life on earth is disappearing fast and the extinction process will continue unless urgent action is taken. There is a total of 41,415 species on the Red list (IUCN, 2007). Last year, 16,118 were facing extinction and now 16,306 are threatened. The aggregate number of extinct species is 785. The Red List reports that 25% of mammals, 13% of all birds, 33% of all amphibians, and 70% of the world’s assessed plants are now threatened with extinction. One of the most disturbing statistics is that of the vertebrate family which includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes. The entire vertebrate family saw an increase in threatened species jump from 3,314 in 1996 to 5,742 in 2007. Life in the ocean is in peril. According to the 2007 IUCN Red List, there are some 41, 415 species of marine life listed and, out of that, 30% are at risk for extinction. Some other vertebrates facing extinction are the tigers in India which are now thought to total no more than 1,500. In 2002, there were 3,642. Of particular concern is the rapid loss of plant species. From 1996 to 2007, the number of critically endangered plant species jumped from 909 to 1,569 and the number of endangered during the same period rose from 1,197 to 2, 278. The number of vulnerable plants during that period rose from 3,222 to 4,600. Altogether, the number of plant species that are threatened jumped from 5,328 in 1996 to 8,447 in 2007. Twenty percent (20%) of the earth’s reefs have been destroyed over the past thirty years and another 50% are endangered by human activity.
9. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, electric power plants caused 67% of the total sulfur dioxide, more than 25% of the nitrogen oxides, 33% of the mercury, and 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 1998 (Natural Defense Resources Council, 2003). Approximately 120 million Americans live in areas with unhealthy air.
10. The use of toxins, pesticides, and chemicals over the past sixty years has posed a substantial problem for wildlife and humans. Between 1930 and 2000, the global production of man-made chemicals skyrocketed from 1 million to 400 million tons per year (World Wildlife Federation, 2006b). Since the middle of the 20th century, the amount of pesticides sprayed on crops has increased by 26%. Because these pesticides seep into the soil, the crops that are grown absorb it. Humans eat the crops which are absorbed in the body.
11. Factory farms in the United States produce 500 million tons of manure each year which is three times the amount of human sanitary waste (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003). This poses serious threats to the water we drink and the oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams. Large multimillion dollar corporations own many of the farms that generate pollution in the large lagoons that collect the urine and manure from the animals. Because lagoons have broken, failed, or overflowed, these leakages cause fish to be killed and the people living near the lagoons to report higher incidences of illnesses (Marks, 2001). Gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane are emitted from the lagoons and the irrigation pivots. These gases are toxic, consume oxygen, and are even potentially explosive. People residing near the lagoons have reported a host of physical ailments including headaches, excessive coughing, respiration problems, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, depression, and fatigue. Also hazardous are the pathogenic microbes in the animal waste that can infect humans. The amount of meat production in 2006 hit a record 276 million tons which results in greater amounts of sludge from these farms. According to the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization, millions of tons of potentially toxic sewage sludge has been used as crop fertilizer to millions of acres of farmland in America (Center for Food Safety, n.d.). Municipal governments sell sewage sludge to farmers as a way to dispose of unwanted byproducts from the municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sewage sludge contains anything that is flushed in a toilet or put down a kitchen sink. Many people have become ill from the heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive materials which are found within the sewage sludge which is, as mentioned, put on the crops. Government monitoring of this hazardous waste is lax.
12. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans discarded 246 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005 and businesses threw away 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste in the same year (EPA, 2007). This is an increase of 60% since 1980. Municipal residential waste includes items such as paper, yard trimmings, food scraps, plastics, metals, rubber, leather, wood, glass, sofas, computers, and refrigerators. It excludes industrial and hazardous waste. About 11% of landfills are made of plastic waste, a total of 26.7 million tons. Thirty five percent (35%) is made of paper, a total of 83 million tons. The amount of plastic thrown away increased from less than 1% in 1960 to 11.3% in 2003. The amount of paper discarded increased three fold between 1960 and 2003. The majority of municipal solid waste is comprised of containers and packaging followed by nondurable goods such as clothing, shoes, and other textiles. Globally, humans use 1.5 million tons of petroleum-based plastic to make bottles on an annual basis. It takes one million years for glass bottles to decompose. For aluminum cans, it takes 80 to 100 years while tin cans take 50 to 100 years. It takes a plastic coated milk carton five years to decompose and cigarette butts take anywhere from one to 12 years to degrade. It is a 25 to 40 year decomposition process for leather shoes and a 30 to 40 year process for nylon fabric. Environmentalists say that it will take 50 years for all the oil from the Exxon Valdez spill to finally degrade.
13. The World Wildlife Federation (2007) reports that the use of toxic man-made chemicals has increased from 1 million to 400 million tons between 1930 and 2000. They are seeping into the soil and into the food chain of all animals which, ultimately, ends up in the human body.
14. The tropical rainforest is a rich biosystem and contains the greatest diversity of species of biomes on earth which is why there is so much attention given to its preservation. This system is a home for 50-90% of all living organisms and to 90% of primates. It provides home and sanctuary to 50 million creatures that are unable to survive anywhere other than in the tropical rainforest. Serious threats from deforestation, road construction, clearing the land for agricultural purposes, and climate change are decimating it and its flora of animal wildlife. The logging industry needs the wood from forests to provide products such as paper, wood for home and commercial construction, packaging, and a host of others. McDonald’s needs 800 square miles of trees to make the amount of paper that they need solely for their packaging of products. As more and more people eat hamburgers and steaks, factory farms are necessary to grow the livestock. In the South American Amazon region, there are 100,000 beef ranchers. Norman Myers, the Oxford University environmentalist and expert on biodiversity, was the first to bring widespread attention to deforestation when he wrote The Sinking Ark in 1979 in which he estimated that more than 80,000 square miles per year of forests are being felled. This amounts to one acre per second being cut down. In the Amazon, there is an average of 1,500 acres of forest cut down each day.
15. Today, 50% of the forests that originally covered 48% of the earth are gone (NRDC, 2004). Americans use 27% of the worldwide consumption of commercially harvested wood yet only 5% of the world’ population is in the United States. The United States is the largest consumer and producer of industrial wood and the world’s largest importer of wood (Shugart, Sedjo, & Sohngen, 2003). In the construction industry, approximately 1/6 of the wood that is delivered is never used. It is predicted that, by the year 2050, global wood consumption will increase by 50%. In the U.S., more than 50% of the coastal temperate rainforests that once covered areas from California to Alaska have been destroyed. Mexico is losing an estimated 600,000 to 2.5 million acres of forests each year. Most of the mahogany exported from Peru is illegally logged by corporations, a major threat to forests all over the world. Canada provides 80% of their forest products to U.S. consumers. Only 8% of Canada’s valuable boreal forest is sufficiently protected.
16. The United States has lost over 50% of the wetlands in the lower 48 states. The rate of loss is predicted at 60,000 acres per year. Louisiana has lost 500,000 acres of wetlands since the 1950s (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003).
17. Humans have wiped out 90% of the ocean’s large fish (World Wildlife Federation, 2006) and exploited 52% of the world’s fish populations. Of the remaining fish population, 24% are overexploited, depleted or making a recovery from collapse. The world now has only 17% of the ocean fish that it had 100 years ago. In 2004, 156 million tons of seafood was consumed, three times the average amount of per person seafood eaten in 1950 (Worldwatch Institute, 2007). During the 1980s and early 1990s, scientists estimated that 25% of the fish that were caught (60 billion pounds each year) were discarded (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003). It is clear that the 19th century biologist, Thomas Huxley, was mistaken when he made the statement that all the sea fisheries were inexhaustible. The global industrialized fishing fleet is currently 2.5 times larger than what the ocean can sustain. What that means is that humans are consuming 2.5 times more than what the oceans can regenerate.
18. Invasive species is largely a man-made act in which one species is purposely moved from its natural environment and transported to another environment resulting in the extinction of species. Few people are aware that invasive species is one of the most serious global environmental challenges that we face today. Hundreds of extinctions have resulted from invasive species. The impact of alien invasive species is immediate and, in most cases, irreversible. Some species relocate unintentionally, but it is still through man-made intervention such as when a species attaches itself to the bottom of ships and is transported to another area. When foreign species are imported into the U.S., it does generate billions of dollars for the economy, but it also poses threats to agriculture and the environment (Schmitz & Simberloff, 2005). Global trade is a direct contributor to this threat to nature.
19. CEOs are now earning $10,000 to $12,000 per hour while the average salary increase for the average American worker is less than two percent (Democracy Now, 2007). If we pause briefly to compare work hours and wages between the average CEO and the average American worker, we see an egregious disparity. Ninety percent (90%) of Americans earn less than $100,000 per year, thus, the year of labor that it takes 90% of Americans to earn $100,000, it only takes the average CEO a total of 10 hours to earn. Sixty six percent (66%) of Americans earn less than $50,000 per year, thus, the year of labor it takes 66% of Americans to earn $50,000, it only takes the average CEO a total of five hours to earn. Fifty percent (50%) of Americans make less than 30,000 per year, so the average CEO makes that in less than three hours. The CEO does not even have labor for an entire day. According to the Drum Major Institute (2006), a non-partisan, non-profit think tank, their 2006 Injustice Index finds that the ratio of the average U.S. CEO annual pay to minimum wage worker’s is 821:1 whereas twenty years ago the ratio was 40:1. According to Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California, the average U.S. CEO pay rose 369 times that of the average worker in 2005 while it was 191 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976 (Krugman, 2002). Compare the 1993 ratio of U.S. CEO pay to the average American worker of 191:1 to the same ratio in Germany which was 23:1 and Japan which was 17:1 (Clinton, 1992). In 2006, the top 20 CEOs of U.S. companies made three times more than the top 20 CEOs of European companies that had higher sales profits than their U.S. counterparts (Sahadi, 2007). In August 2007, the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy published their joint study on the wage gap between average American workers versus CEOs, private equity managers and hedge fund managers. Private equity and hedge fund managers’ pay averaged $657.5 million in 2006 which is 16,000 times more than the average full-time worker and it is 61 times larger than the average CEO pay (Sahadi, 2007).
20. Paul Krugman (2002), an economist at MIT and regular columnist for The New York Times, reports that in a 29 year period between 1970 and 1999, the average annual salary in America rose ten percent (10%) whereas, during the same period, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top CEOs in America rose more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary American workers and, according to a 2001 Congressional Budget Office study, between 1979 and 1997, the after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of American families rose 157 percent (157%). Krugman (2005) reports that the average income of the top one percent (1%) of Americans has doubled since 1973 and the income of the top 0.1% has tripled. According to the United Nations Development Report (United Nations, 1999), the net wealth of the ten wealthiest billionaires is $133,000,000,000 (133 billion dollars), more than 1.5 times the total national income of the least developed countries. Doug Henwood (1998), in Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom, writes that the richest 5% of Americans own 95% of all stock shares and the top 1% of the population owns 25% of the productive capital and future profits of corporate America. In Henwood’s (2003) After the New Economy, he exposes that the richest 10% of Americans possess over ¾ of all the wealth in America and the bottom 50% has almost none of the wealth, but notes that they do have substantial debt. In a government study, the group which had the largest growth in total income between 2000 and 2005 was the top 0.001% individuals who make $1 million or more and which grew by more than 26% during these five years (Johnston, 2007). In the recent government report of the top 0.001% who make $1 million+, that group not only walked away with almost 47% of the total income gains in 2005 compared to 2000, but, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, they captured 62% of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends for the wealthy that President Bush signed into law in 2003 (Johnston, 2007). If the richest 5% of Americans own 95% of all stock shares and the top 1% of the population owns 25% of the productive capital and future profits of corporate America, it does not take a math genius to deduce that President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy have overwhelmingly benefited 5% of Americans and have resulted in vastly deteriorated economic outlooks for the other 95%. The Citizens for Tax Justice reports that out of 134 million American taxpayers, those who make $10 million or more-a total of 11,433 taxpayers—saved almost $1.9 million each and reaped 28% of the investment tax cut savings. As an aggregate, these 11,433 Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investments as a direct result of President Bush’s tax cuts for the top wealthiest in America while the other 90% of American who make less than $100,000 a year saved an average of $318 on each investment.
21. One investment bank has commented that the current period for corporations is “the golden era of profitability” (Greenhouse & Leonhardt, 2006, p. A.1) with corporate profits climbing to the highest amount since the 1960s. Even though productivity levels have risen by double digits in the past decade, American workers’ pay increases have risen by less than 2%. As Herbert (2007) describes it this way: “If your productivity increases by 18% and your pay goes up 1%, you’ve been dealt a hand full of jokers in which jokers aren’t wild” (p. A.19). Most productivity gains have gone straight into the pockets of corporate executives. The savings rate for middle and poor class is now negative and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than they are for divorce (Herbert, 2007). Moreover, 30 million Americans, or 25% of the U.S. workforce, make less than $9.00 per hour, or just $17,280 per year and, according to 2004 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 37 million Americans now live in poverty (Hartmann, 2006).
22. Multinational corporations own animal patents to clone animals. The first animal patent that was issued was in 1988 for the “Oncomouse,” a genetically manipulated mouse to develop cancers that mirror human diseases. The research was conducted at Harvard University, but it was DuPont that was awarded the European Patent 169672 on the mouse in 1992. More than 660 animal patents have been issued in the United States since 1988. This means corporations have power over the DNA structure if cloning is not banned. If there is no ethical and moral line to be drawn with cloning of animals, how long will it take until humans are cloned? What happens if another Hitler or Stalin assume power?
23. More than 75 percent of workers in most of the industrial nations are performing work that is primarily simple and repetitive (Rifkin, 2004). In the United States, out of 124 million workers, more than 90 million jobs are at risk for replacement by machines. Currently, 3.6 billion out of 5.4 billion people in the world lack adequate cash or credit to purchase goods and services (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994). Human androids are being made that will, one day, be indiscernible to a real human being (Whitehouse, 2005). Will they have a conscience? Not only will these androids take over work because of their slavish, blind obedience to authority and the wealthy capitalists, how will billions of unemployed real human beings survive and how will a real human being know if they are marrying a human being or an android? Will androids have legal and political rights? If so, without a conscience, how will they vote and what will they demand? If they become leaders, what will become of the world?
24. Corporations and individuals now own patents on 20 human pathogens (Crichton, 2007). This allows the owner of the patents to halt research, prevent medical testing, and to withhold vital information from a patient or doctor. A corporation can charge any amount for tests related to that disease. The owner of the genome for Hepatitis C is paid millions of dollars by researchers to study the disease. Not surprisingly, researchers turn to studying other less expensive diseases. When SARS was spreading around the world, medical researchers were reticent to study it because of the patent concerns behind it. The inhibition of innovation and research makes the patenting of human genes particularly insidious. Corporations literally have the power to prevent the finding of cures for disease. Perhaps the most disturbing patent is that of U.S. patent 5,476,995 on Tracey the sheep. Tracey had human genes injected into her mammary glands to produce a certain protein. The alteration of her genetic make-up allows the two companies which own her, Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd. and Bayer, to describe her as a human invention. This takes the concept of Orwellian doublespeak and turns it into the more accurate phrase: diabolical deception.
25. Millions of birds, cats, dogs, farm animals, fish, mice, monkeys, rats, rabbits and a host of other domestic and wild animals are subjected to animal testing by psychologists, biologists, biochemists, physiologists, and geneticists. In a 2005 study, it was reported that the United States used 1.14 million animals (excluding rats, mice, birds and cold-blooded species), and an estimated 100 million mice for research (PETA, 2006a). Of these, it is known that 84, 662 animals suffered pain without pain relief. In the same study, it was found that Canada used 2.32 million animals for research and 167,000 animals were subjected to experiments that cause severe pain. In Great Britain, a total of 2.45 million animal experiments were conducted.
26. The military testing of weapons in which they use animals as subjects is a particularly horrible practice, but the public remains largely uninformed about it. According to PETA (2006b), the U.S. military uses AK-47 rifles, biological and chemical weapons, and nuclear blasts to test on animals. In 2001, the Department of Defense (DOD) reported that more than 330,000 dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, nonhuman primates, rats, mice, dolphins, fish, and other animals had been subjects in their military tests. This excludes the experiments conducted by nongovernmental organizations in which sheep, goats, and pigs are shot in wound experiments, so the aggregate number of military tests in which animals are used is likely underreported.
27. President George W. Bush has backed out of important treaties since gaining power. He backed out of the Kyoto Treaty after assuming office in 2001 which meant he refused to honor commitments to work with over 100 other countries who had signed the treaty in addressing global warming. That was troubling enough. Then in December 2001 Bush announced that the United States would no longer honor the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the U.S. signed with Russia in which there was a sort of balance of powers established. This withdrawal marked the first formal unilateral withdrawal of a major power from a nuclear arms treaty and it also triggered Russia to withdraw from its commitments under the START II arms reduction treaty. If that wasn’t alarming enough, in 2002, the Department of Defense presented the Nuclear Posture Review to Congress which expanded the range of situations in which the U.S. could use nuclear weapons allowing the option of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations. This was another withdrawal from an agreement the U.S. had made in 1995 when it said it would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon parties unless they attacked the U.S. while allied with another nuclear-weapon country. The Nuclear Posture Review to Congress also allowed pre-emptive attacks and permitted the development of nuclear warheads. In November 2006, Bush posted plans on a public website stating intentions to build nuclear weapons. Immediately following, six Arab nations made formal announcements that they were launching nuclear programs of their own. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Saudia Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab of Emirates, and Egypt had revealed their nuclear ambitions the prior month and were giving formal notice of those plans. Arms experts called this announcement a “stunning reversal of policy” in the Arab world because of a long past of commitments to a nuclear free Middle East. While the six countries told the IAEA that their intention was the pursuit of nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, it is clear that nuclear energy technology can be turned into weaponry. Then in mid 2007, Bush announced he was going to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin responded by notifying NATO governments that Russia would suspend its obligations under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a cold war treaty that limited arms proliferation. Putin said that the bullying of President Bush was forcing Russia to make this move particularly with two major moves: the combination of the U.S. backing away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its intention to rearm Eastern Europe.
28. There are currently (as of April 2008) nine countries that have nuclear weapons: United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, North Korea, China, India, Pakistan and Israel.
29. Following the bombing of Japan, a group of American atomic scientists published an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) establishing the Doomsday Clock and set it at 7 minutes before the close of midnight. It was intended to be a stark symbol of how close the world was approaching total obliteration. In 2006, the BAS directors and affiliated scientists met to reassess what the most grievous threats to life on the planet are today. The decision was made that global warming is second only to nuclear annihilation and so the Doomsday clock was moved up by two minutes. It is now set at five minutes before midnight.

The informed, compassionate, and active are tasked with daunting and overwhelming challenges. It is imperative for us to build bridges and remain connected during these profoundly troubling times. Let us persevere, stay informed, remain sober and realistic, and act with moral conscience on the scientific information that is available to us. And let us keep hope alive.

Lists such as this, and there are many additions that could be made to this list relating to the damage we are doing to the planetary ecosystem, and the suffering that we inflict on each other and other life, illustrates just how evil this system/culture that we call civilisation truly is. Although economic collapse is undoubtedly causing lots of hardship and suffering, it is unlikely to come close to the hardship and suffering that modern industrial capitalist civilisation causes, or the increased devastation it will cause if it continues.
It will be better for most of us if the system collapses fast, and we can then get on with the job of rebuilding local communities, helping nature wherever we can to recreate her wildernesses, and learning how to live hand in hand with her.

No Comments »

Jan Lundberg says it like it is, over at CultureChange again.

We’ve outgrown ourselves and we can’t crawl back inside. The shell shatters inward as our economy and aggressive culture implodes.

After the peak, it’s all down hill from here. Back in the summer, with record oil prices that meant some people somewhere were making a whole lotta money, one might have suspected the peak of funny-money and paper/electronic wealth would happen sometime. Turns out it was weeks away.

Now what? There’s confusion about what’s going on and what will happen, especially for those who trusted corporate media. After all, who could wrap their minds around a corporate bailout of a trillion dollars that, despite its absurd size, didn’t even approach the size of the loss in derivatives’ value of over $500 trillion on Wall Street?

As peaks go, such as with crude oil extraction of 86 million barrels a day globally, physical limits can be anticipated from a scientific basis. But money — what we love even more than petroleum products — was seemingly limitless and had become abstract in its infiniteness.

The former supplies of cheaply produced, abundant energy played a major role in inflating wealth over the years. Thus, peak oil brought about peak wealth and peak money. It is no coincidence that we find ourselves at post-peak money and see lower oil prices attained through demand destruction.

Astronomical figures for dollars that were exponentially expanded by modern digital finance are beyond comprehension. The unreality of trillions of dollars, that no one gets to see and that aren’t used for the benefit of real people, has been an unspoken factor in eroded consumer confidence. So the fabulous wealth in the U.S. since the housing-market bubble, enjoyed by the 1% of the population that possesses 38% of the wealth, has destroyed itself. No matter how much was shared with the average Joe, the greed has eaten itself. A new era is dawning, featuring cultural change much more than technological change.

Housing bubble boom for asphalt sprawl

The speculative investment on the housing boom fueled the recent wealth, but the housing boom could not have happened without cheap oil to build and maintain the urban sprawl constructed with “unlimited” asphalt for car-based living. As part of the petroleum feast, agricultural production through cheap petroleum fed suburbanites and almost everyone else.

With that under their noses, the major corporate media and even “progressive” media still disassociate energy from the house-of-cards economy. Although, if anyone stops to think, it’s clear that higher prices for energy might have taken a huge toll on consumer demand. It’s the failure to spend enough (through debt? Fine!) that economists and politicians blame for our troubles such as massive layoffs.

Now the Golden Goose of purchasing power has been cooked, over the coals of fossil fuels. Why not celebrate the end of the consumer economy? Eat the goose before it rots, however you choose, such as to get out of Dodge. Let us fortify ourselves for the awesome task of reorienting our lives for the “new” local-based survival strategy.

Really, no more money?

Living the future now means not relying on money. Not easy, but as people see their dollar wealth evaporating and the slave-labor option denied, people are already looking at local gardening, bartering, and more.

When and where is someone with no money respected as much as anyone else? I’ve witnessed it in Earth First! and other collectives. Young people are especially likely to value experiencing life and adventure rather than count future money. It’s time we all compared notes, having turned off the television.

The demise of the economy is being treated as so tragic, when the far greater concern should be for Earth’s changing climate. In fact, when we consider the economy’s slowdown in shipping, manufacturing and travel, the only responsible stance is to want more economic collapse so that greenhouse gases continue to be slashed.

Some of the positive implications of a depression include a return to the most basic, hands-on economic reality. Until we actually get our hands in the soil, for example, the experience of barely surviving helps one to question the fantasy world of artificial plenty. A middle-class or very rich person might cling to the myth of ever-rising material prosperity only for the moment, as collapse unfolds.

No Comments »

PeakEnergy blog’s recent article about an innovative way to grow food in the cities.

The Age recently had an article on the emerging practice of “guerilla gardening”, taking a look at the “Gardening guerillas in our midst”. This concept seems to have steadily increased in popularity in recent years (admittedly from a very low base) as the permaculture movement’s ideas have been propagated through the community.

Unlike the usual approach taken when trying to grow food in the suburbs – converting spare land on your own property (as discussed by aeldric previously and, more recently, in Jeff Vail’s series on A Resilient Suburbia) – guerilla gardening involves cultivating any spare patch of urban land that isn’t being used for another purpose, which could provide a substantial addition to the food growing potential of suburbia.

No Comments »

As house prices in US and Europe continue to plummet, Sharon Astyk asks this question, with an inspiring and positive answer.

The first is to shift your thinking. Until not too long ago, people rarely thought of their homes, primarily as assets. Your home is, well, your home. Its value lies not in its potential sale price, or your ability to trade it for something, its value lies in its function. Now only you can evaluate whether you will be paying too high a price for that home – and this is something we all need to think through. But if your house is worth the price to you, too tight a focus on its “official” value distracts from the reality – one’s home is one’s home.

But that’s not all there is to it. Right now most of us with mortgages are pouring money into our houses. None of us can afford a money pit right now – we might as well at least pay rent, and receive basic services and allow others to take the economic risk and make the repairs if we are simply going to pay out (please do not mistake me, I don’t think renting is a bad idea, in fact – but this post my primary focus is on the present homeowning majority). So your house has to not just shelter you, but either help you produce money or enable you to reduce other costs.

That means that you need to evaluate your home for what else it can do for you. Can you grow a garden, and reduce food costs? Plant fruit trees, nuts and berries? Raise chickens, rabbits or bees to provide food and fertility? Raise larger livestock? Produce some of your home heating or cooking energy in the form of anything from coppiced firewood to twigs and dried grasses for a tiny hot rocket fire to stir fry over?

Could extra rooms in your home enable you to produce additional income or reduce total costs. Could you rent out a room, make an apartment and rent that, or take in a housemate? Could you consolidate with your family or with friends? Do you really need all the space you have?

Do you have a workshop that would enable you to do home repairs, fix your own appliances and otherwise cut back on new purchases and hired labor (you may have already done this, but if you don’t, it is time?). Do you have the equipment to mend and repair your own clothing, rather than replace it, or perhaps even make new?

Could any of these things (or something else) be adapted into an income stream? That is can you make, build, repair, mend, cook, tend or do something else that is needed in your neighborhood? There are hundreds of small businesses that can be run from your home part time – everything from small scale programming to selling bulk foods, from daycare to mending and handyman work. These have the dual effect of offering you an economic fallback position, making your home into an asset (and potentially reducing your tax burden in some cases), and also by engaging with the people immediately around you, improving local economies and communities.

Suburban and rural garages and barns offer the possibility of even more than cottage industry – a business that might eventually employ others in your neighborhood. Think about what you depend on, and what will be needed in your community – is it possible that your garage might be the new general store? That your small greenhouse operation might employ your neighbors eventually? That yours might be the neighborhood bakery or restaurant? Those of us who live in areas away from commerce might start thinking in terms of establishing local businesses – these may need to stay under the table until enforcement of restrictive regulations is reduced – that is, you might start baking for a couple of neighbors by barter, while also gradually working on finding the equipment to expand eventually.

What about community as an asset. If you stay put in a place where you have ties (and this presumes we have done the work of making those ties), can they provide a measure of security, of safety, of assistance that we once relied on economic assets for – that is, the neighbors who watch out for you, who help out during illness, who will work with you, who send over a pot of soup when they have extras – those are assets of economic value as well, and must be considered in the calculation. Staying put can enable us to keep those assets in place.

In many cases, if you are committed to keeping your home – because it is near your family, because it has an ideal yard to grow food in, because you are tied to your community – you will need several of these strategies. And they may be hard to enact at first – for example, it may be hard to decided who gets to keep their house when the need for family consolidation comes up. Who moves in with who, and how do we protect the interests of those who don’t own? How do we handle multiple parties working out of the same house? How do we get used to less privacy and less personal space?

The other calculation we need to make is the truly long term value of these homes. Wealth in the US is disproportionally concentrated in the hands of older people – high housing prices and rapidly inflating educational costs along with stagnant real wages mean that those who bought into markets decades ago got most of the actual wealth. Older people and younger ones have a shared crisis – the elderly and aging baby boomers who relied on financial investments and housing to ensure security in their old age no longer can rely on either of those things. Younger people who couldn’t get into the markets, or couldn’t do it without extortionate rates and minimal downpayments have either had no opportunity to own a house or will lose that option rapidly. So we have older folks with houses, but with declining investment income and a declining number of years of employment, and younger people who can work, but who can’t get into the housing market, who can’t afford a mortgage and who soon, by defaulting on student loans and mortgages, won’t be able to for a long time.

You may not be able to trade a house for assisted living anymore, but you might be able to trade a future in your home for help in your old age – it might be as bluntly mercenary as that, but in most cases, it won’t be, it will be a familial relationship. But aging baby boomers and the elderly in the US are facing an economic crisis – and they are going to have to start thinking of their homes as a long term asset to be passed down to children and grandchildren – and those children are going to have to start seeing themselves as stewards of a resource, the people who care for the family home, so that their own posterity can inherit it, and who in turn, care for their own parents and relations so that someone will do the same for them.

The shift of housing from a salable asset to something worth holding, a source of income and reduced costs, the place where you live out your life, and the place where your children grow up, come to adulthood, and come home to is going to be the great psychological and economic shift of our times, I suspect. And any calculation of the value of our homes must begin from this complex question of what our homes are worth – as I say above, I think many of us will find that the answer is both less and more than we ever expected.

No Comments »

Francis Ayley established over a dozen local currencies in the UK before moving to the U.S. He contrasts our standard, scarcity- and debt-based money system with local currencies in which “there’s always as much as you need.” Local currencies like his Fourth Corner Exchange issue money when members trade goods and services. Communities with local currencies will be less affected when recession or depression hits the mainstream economy.

http://www.fourthcornerexchange.com/

A Peak Moment TV video.

No Comments »