Future perfect: the future is Mayberry, not Mad Max by Brian Kaller
February 27, 2009
PEAK OIL HAS ARRIVED — not just the geological phenomenon but the movement of the same name.
The geological part is straightforward: peak oil is the top of an oil field’s bell curve of production, after which demand can rise all it wants, but supply inevitably falls. Throwing more technology at the problem, as the United States has done, just runs the field dry sooner.
To understand the global movement, look around for a moment. Your computer keyboard, pen, food wrappers, nylon clothes, cold capsules, and a thousand other common items are made of plastic, which is made from oil. The machines that produced these items ran on oil. They were transported from factories, often across the world, in ships and planes that run on oil. Many of the ingredients in your last meal were grown thousands of miles away, sprayed with fossil-fuel fertilizers, harvested with oil-powered tractors, and transported in oil-powered trucks, ships, and planes to the supermarket, where you drove your oil-powered car to buy them.
Our lives would be far less petroleum dependent if we had listened to geologist M. King Hubbert in 1956, when he unveiled his peak-oil theory to a Texas convention of oilmen. He laid out the basic curve of oilfield production and, based on the sum of its fields, predicted the U.S. would hit peak around 1970.
Hubbert was mocked for the rest of his life, but the U.S. did peak around 1970, the Middle East became the world’s energy lifeline, and American foreign policy would never be the same.
…The simpler truth is that peak-oil converts are often young people reviving the personal habits and self-sufficient skills of their grandparents’ generation, thinking seriously about their tap water, transportation, income, food, heat, and electricity, and realizing how little would survive the end of fossil fuels. They anticipate that population trends, climate change, and other problems will compound the crisis, creating what Kunstler has called the Long Emergency. While others are preoccupied with the hot-button lifestyle issues of the moment, they are planting gardens, buying foreclosed farms, learning traditional crafts, taking crash courses in survival skills, and soberly preparing while silently counting down.
…We need a common vision that avoids post-apocalypse yarns as well as Star Trek fantasies in favor of something both realistic and hopeful. Handled right, peak oil could bring a revival of small-town America, local farming, small businesses, and an economy that centers around Main Street rather than Wall Street. It wouldn’t require us suddenly to turn Amish. With solar, wind, and nuclear power to maintain the Internet, commuter rail, and other technologies, we could continue the global exchange of ideas.
“Uranium Mining Poisons Native Americans”
February 26, 2009
South Dakota news reports recently referred to a DENR report and stated that uranium is naturally occurring in that area which is said to account for the radiation levels in the water.
“If that was the case, there would not have been villages there for thousands of years. There would have been no fish or any aquatic life previously in this river. We sampled the river with nets for aquatic life and found only 2 crayfish and about 10 minnows in more than 100 yards of the river. In essence, it’s a dead river. There are two endangered species that use this River: the Sturgeon chubb, a small fish, and the Bald Eagle,” explained Charmaine White Face, founder and Coordinator of Defenders of the Black Hills.
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=1
“The Answer is in the Trees”
February 25, 2009
Erosion is the enemy of both agriculture and civilization, according to J. Russell Smith, author of “Tree Crops,” a classic text on arboreal agriculture. Smith took a series of trips in the 1930s to the Mediterranean, Far East and Middle East to study land use. He was appalled by the vast stretches of destroyed and depleted land he encountered: ” Forest – field – plow – desert. That is the cycle of the hills under most plow agricultures.” Between the water erosion on hilly and sloping lands and the wind erosion on flat plains, the world’s fertile topsoil continues to drift away or be washed away. So it is no exaggeration to say that topsoil erosion is as big a threat as climate change, a problem not as visible as the coming oil shortage but a far greater danger to humankind.
Just about every damaging factor in modern agriculture is absent from arboreal cultivation. Tree crops can actually yield significantly more food, including carbohydrates and animal feed. Once upon a time, in ancient Greece and among Native Americans in California , for example, the main source of bread was oak trees. The bottom line is that there are many alternative options that need to be explored.
http://sharonastyk.com/2009/02/25/the-answer-is-in-the-trees/
“Social Collapse Best Practices”
February 24, 2009
Dmitry Orlov
You might ask yourself, then, Why on earth did he get invited to speak here tonight? It seems that I am enjoying my moment in the limelight, because I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower. The idea that the USA will go the way of the USSR seemed preposterous at the time. It doesn’t seem so preposterous any more. I take it some of you are still hedging your bets. How is that hedge fund doing, by the way?
Audio available here:
http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/
Another talk from the previous day (audio) available here:
Visit “Club Orlov” listed in the sidebar for more material of Dmitry’s.
Environmental concerns, the sluggish economy and a desire for quality organic produce led Dan Patrick to the study of permaculture and the creation of a sustainable garden.
“It’s a good skill to have,” Patrick said of growing fruits and vegetables at his parents’ home in a Byhalia subdivision.
Patrick, 22, and his family started the garden in the fall using many techniques of permaculture, which advocates sustainable gardening that minimizes environmental impact. Permaculture entails the design of ecological habitats and food-production systems and encourages a synergistic relationship between humans, plants and animals.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/jan/16/its-only-natural/
“Huge protest over Irish economy”
February 23, 2009
Ireland, which was once one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies, has fallen into recession faster than many other members of the European Union. The country officially fell into recession in September 2008, and unemployment has risen sharply in the following months. The numbers of people claiming unemployment benefit in the Irish Republic rose to 326,000 in January, the highest monthly level since records began in 1967.
Forest Garden Immersion Course
February 20, 2009
This “Hands-on Training to Design and Implement Edible Landscapes” is being held at nearby Camp Epworth Permaculture Demonstration & Education Center in High Falls, NY from April 23-26, 2009.
“How to Start a Farm with No Land and Little Money”
February 20, 2009
Jason Bradford, The Oil Drum: Campfire
I am the parent of two boys who attended Brookside Elementary School in the town of Willits, CA. On the first day of school in August 2005 I wandered to the back of the school yard and noticed that a one acre grassy field was essentially unused behind preschool buildings on the grammar school campus. From my knowledge of soils in the area I knew I was standing on a balanced loam, and within minutes decided it was an ideal site for a school farm specializing in vegetables and fruits.
A non-profit administering the adjacent Head Start preschool agreed to be the farm’s fiscal agent, and a local master gardener agreed to help me make sound decisions. I wrote a proposal to the school board for establishing Brookside Farm and the project was approved January 2006. The land was essentially free, but I had nothing else other than some ideas, a lot of friends, and interest in learning how to become a farmer. Not wanting to go into financial debt or spend a lot of my own money to do this, I started raising funds within the community. Local businesses helped with supplies. Local service clubs and individuals gave money. By December 2006 we had a very sturdy fence and cover crops sown. An orchard, berries, and table grapes were planted that winter. Following a CSA model, in early 2007 and 2008 we sold farm shares as our primary income. This year two of the twelve shares were bought by the preschool, with the rest going to private households.
… The substitution of fossil fuels for labor in agriculture has created an abundance of cheap food and a dearth of farmers. Part of my struggle at Brookside Farm is employing more labor intensive, but ultimately more sustainable, practices while still keeping the food in line with price expectations…
As a new farmer of course I have learned a great deal about the predilections of various crops and their pests. But what interests me more to consider is how my character has changed. As a farmer I am viscerally aware of my dependence upon forces beyond my control and at great scale. I now face the world with greater humility. When I plant a seed or a tree, I know that it will take time to bear fruit and this imbues me with greater patience. My body is required to get up and work day after day, and because I have a responsibility towards the farm I must maintain my health. Therefore, I have learned to work at a pace that is steady and earnest, not quick and exhausting. And although each winter I make plans about how the season will unfold and what my schedule will be, no year is average and I have learned to deviate from my path when appropriate, knowing that survival requires adaptation to reality. These lessons are as good as anything I learned while still in school.
“Los Angeles nears water rationing”
February 20, 2009
Under the plan adopted in principle by the governing board of the L.A. Department of Water and Power, homes and businesses would pay a penalty rate — nearly double normal prices — for any water they use in excess of a reduced monthly allowance.
The rationing scheme is expected to take effect in May unless the City Council acts before then to reject it — a move seen as unlikely since Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for the measure under a water-shortage plan last week.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, one of the state’s chief sources of fresh surface water, is far below normal, and reservoirs fed by Sierra runoff are badly depleted as well, due to a statewide drought now in its third year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE51H0AL20090218
“Treating the Blues Could Save the Planet”
February 20, 2009
It’s added up to a lot of work. You know, like working nights. Working weekends. Working like a dog. Working like, well, an American.
Now, we already know that the United States economy wreaks havoc on our environmental well-being, contributing some 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But it turns out that working in that same economy may also wreak havoc on our emotional well-being. Working like an American, some research implies, may be — literally — depressing.
I asked a psychiatrist friend if the fact that the United States sports the world’s highest rate of depression (not to mention, by the way, obsessive-compulsive or panic disorders, which together affect another 18 percent of Americans) is related to problems with our individual brain chemistries or problems with our way of life. My friend said that individual brains — like mine, for example — may have a biological tendency towards anxiety and depression. But this tendency can be triggered by the stresses a culture foists on its members.
… Our economy and our culture doesn’t cater to lifestyle choice. Here in the United States, our policies are not about making sure we can take care of ourselves in any other way than financially. In some ways, I wonder if that puts us in the ludicrous position of having to take a pill — like Prozac — in order to tolerate the way we live.
