August/September 2005
Cultivating
Relational Intelligence
Nina Simons
Crimes
Against Democracy: An Interview with Thom Hartmann
Jim Guiness
Rebirth
in the Forest
Will Sears
Right
Living, and Surviving, After The Age Of Oil
John Darling
Permaculture
and Place
Steve Gabriel
Think
of Local Food First
Wendy Siporen
Sustainable
Living at Solviva
Anna Edey
Year-Round
Gardening in Home and GreenHouse
Jeffrey M. Smith
The
Greening of Cuba
Caroline Whyte
A
Path of Peace, Kindness and Compassion
Jody Woodruff
From
Hurt to Heart
Eryn Kalish
Epictetus'
Handbook Revisited
Gay Hendricks & Phillip Johncock
The
Sky of Now
Katie Davis
The
Complete Book of Raw Food
Reviewed by Rachel Bendat
Whole
Foods Companion
Reviewed by Rachel Bendat
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
Right Living, and Surviving, After the Age of Oil
By John Darling
“Live with integrity. It is both necessary and sufficient.” -Buckminster Fuller
The earth can support a maximum of 2 billion people, yet it has three times that. Only one thing—oil—has made that population possible and it’s running out. Oil supplies as we know them today will essentially be gone by 2007. In a global, urban economy like ours, that means a crippling of the current food chain, as oil is critical to every phase of corporate agriculture—plowing, planting, fertilizing, irrigating, harvesting, transporting, distributing, even paying with a plastic card.
There may even be a global economic collapse—after all, they aren’t making any more oil, and alternative energies like solar and wind are going to fill in for only a fraction of it. Meanwhile, the major powers are already devoting their wealth and military might to gaining control of remaining oil, which is what the Iraq War is all about.
But it’s not all bad, says public activist Michael Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon; the Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. The good news is that regions like our State of Jefferson, with fresh water, arable land, good timber, low population and conscious, informed people who can work together, will not just survive but thrive. These people tend to eat organically—which requires no oil—and they have decades of experience planning for the common good.
“It’s being called Jeffersonia, it extends from Seattle to Willits, California” smiles Ruppert, a former LA cop from a CIA family who had just spoken to over 100 at Southern Oregon University. His book has sold 85,000 copies.
The end of oil will be the biggest and most chaotic event in history, says Ruppert. It will collapse the financial markets, with major oil shortages and permanent blackouts—leading to a steady deterioration of the modern way of life.
“The cities are doomed. The big metropolitan areas can’t possibly survive, same with the suburbs. Those who survive will be those who come out of denial, build their own lifeboats and evolve past petroleum into solar, wind, biodiesel.”
Ruppert cites Dr. Richard Duncan, author of The Road to Olduvai, who writes: “The broad sweep of human history can be divided into three phases. The first, or pre-industrial phase was a very long period of equilibrium when simple tools and weak machines limited economic growth. The second, or industrial phase was a very short period of non-equilibrium that ignited with explosive force when powerful new machines temporarily lifted all limits to growth. The third, or de-industrial phase lies immediately ahead during which time the industrial economies will decline toward a new period of equilibrium, limited by the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and continuing deterioration of the natural environment.”
He also cites Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown (see Sentient Times June/July ’05, Ed.) who poses four alternative scenarios for humanity after Peak Oil: 1) Last One Standing: the path of competition for remaining resources, 2) Waiting for a Magic Elixir: wishful thinking, false hopes, and denial, 3) Powerdown: the path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing and 4) Building Lifeboats, the path of community solidarity and preservation.
The first two are now being played out. If the present course persists during this de-civilizing time, Ruppert notes, there will be resource wars.
Ruppert knows his message is depressing and terrifying—he even jokes about how right-wing talk radio jocks make you want to go out and kill others, while his stuff makes you want to go home and kill yourself. His audience laughs. But in Q&A, you can see the shock on their faces, one guy even saying, how do you live with this information, I mean personally, how do you sleep?
It’s a combination, Ruppert says, of having a spiritual life, community-building, wise use of resources and self-interest. As it says on the airplane, put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else. Then work with others.
“We can create a prototype of survival here in the Pacific Northwest,” he tells his audience. “The Titanic has been hit. Not everyone has to drown. We can pass knowledge onto those who know it’s sinking, but not to the ones headed to the bar for another drink.”
It comes down to this: get rid of your debt, get to know your neighbors, form committees, groups, tribes and make post-petroleum survival the agenda of your city and country governments, buy gold, get gardens going—and use oil now, while we have some, to create alternative energy sources, like wind and solar.
Denial is tempting. To keep you from indulging in it, Ruppert repeats his mantras of the five rules for post-petroleum life: 1) there is no combination of alternative energy sources that will sustain the current growth, 2) It takes 30 years to change the investment and infrastructure around energy and we don’t have that time, 3) no government is going to solve oil shortages, 4) until you change the way money works, you change nothing, so, it’s more profitable to let decline, starvation, war and disease happen than to prevent it and 5) all real solutions will be place-based, local, grass-roots and independent of government. What saves you will be what happens in your own neighborhood and the cooperation achieved there.
It’s possible we’ll experience a depression bigger than the last one—and like that one, there will be no loss of wealth, just movement of wealth from the working poor to the rich.
“To drop into George Carlin here, you are in such deep s— with your debt that you can’t buy anymore s— and there’s no place to put it and, overseas, people who don’t have s— want your s— and it’s funded by people overseas who lend you money to buy your s—and you put it on your credit card and you’re in deep s—.”
This is being called “demand destruction”—a way of mitigating the impact of peak oil by destroying wealth and demand in America, which has 5 percent of the world’s population and uses 25 percent of its energy. There will be no escape under the new bankruptcy laws, as they allow creditor corporations to determine how much you can live on. “It’s indentured servitude,” he notes.
The resource wars have already started and that’s what the Iraq War is, he says. “We’re running out of oil and the intent of the US is to Balkanize Iraq, breaking it into six states, then asserting control over the two states that have all the oil.”
It stretches the mind, all these alternative scenarios and parallel realities said to be going on at the same time and in the same world as the official story reported daily in the mainstream media. You will find virtually none of this on ABC news or in the paper—so you think. But do an online search for mainstream articles and see if you still think that.
The university room was packed with 150 people who’d done a lot of homework on this and accept it as their mainstream reality. It is in the media, maybe on page 37, but denial makes us not want to see it. And the mainstream media, who run on advertising dollars and corporate ownership, have little interest in ending that denial. The internet, however, is still a free zone—and that’s where, if you search and link from names like Heinberg, you can get the whole disturbing picture and make up your own mind.
An Ashland author and environmental presenter, Bill Kauth, says he thinks America will “do pretty good” and learn to work in communities.
“The fear I have is that hardly anyone knows about this. The corporate media says everything’s fine and I’m afraid we’ll be caught ignorant. It’s going to be pretty difficult to crank up enough food to feed everyone … It’s already begun, the wars over resources. Bush says he’s going to try to keep up our lifestyle. That’s not going to go over very well with the rest of the world.”
A few weeks later, Kauth starts his seminar at Peace House about coming to grips with the new post-oil survival paradigm. It’s called Sacred Lifeboats: Joy, Security and the New Culture. Twenty people sit in the circle talking about their anxiety “if things get worse.” We all know big things are coming fast, says one, and what if the Evil Empire takes away the internet, not to mention food and water? Part of me is looking forward to it—a simpler lifestyle, working hard in community, having village rituals, says another.
I know half these people, some for many years and here they are making plans for another lifestyle—not small town life, but perhaps something akin to Neolithic village life with internet and rechargeable scooters, where the village indeed does raise the child.
Kauth passes out a workbook that walks you through the process of overcoming denial about some basic premises and includes something called “The Singularity,” meaning big changes—in the environment, economy, politics, energy, social conditions—are rushing together all at once in scary and chaotic conditions, for which we must prepare well.
You can practically hear the stomachs turn as they engage all these ideas, which range from the obvious to the wild-eyed conspiratorial. But two dozen people have clearly come here on a lovely summer night because, to start with, they need a reality check: am I imagining that things are getting rapidly more scary or am I getting carried away by just being alone in my house thinking about it too much?
But Lifeboats, says Kauth, is about positive change and making preparations that start with getting informed—such as via reliable websites. Try globalideasbank.com, where hundreds of people each month submit ideas from all over the world (4,000 ideas now). The ideas rise to the top by voting. Another is the Global Ecovillage Network, people and communities exchanging ideas, technologies and networks about sustainable living in a balanced environment—http://gen.ecovillage.org.
A highly useable tool for personal and community functioning is a Relentless Optimist group, which Kauth has worked in for years. It’s not about processing your feelings but rather to speak, shape and act on your good ideas for projects, whether its writing a book, forming a community organic garden, doing bike sharing or helping older people integrate with an omni-age community.
An RO group is small, under half a dozen. You commit to show up each week, check in with regular, friendly talk, jokes, what movie you saw, how you’re doing, then update with your progress on your project. Members do active, compassionate listening. There’s no “fixing” (advice to make things better). It’s flexible, flowing, joyful energy, says Kauth.
Kauth stresses that the way to community starts with our stomachs. We have to eat and the many activities around food bond us at our deepest levels—farming, planting, watering, harvesting, preserving, cooking and above all, eating together. We’ll be doing a lot more of these after peak oil. Supporting local produce is key to this, as it is the model of the necessary, sustainable community to come and opens the way for an organic lifestyle.
Good links for dialog and learning include: the Co-Intelligence Institute at www. Co-intelligence.org, the World Café at www.theworldcafe.com, the Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy at www.imtd.org, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation at www.thataway.org and The Dialogue Group at www.thedialoguegrouponline.com
The post-Matrix mindset has already taken root and is flourishing. At the graduation for Ashland High’s Charter School, I see it afoot, as many of the kids acknowledge they were afraid of becoming hippies, what with all this camping, hugging, sharing, sitting in circles, reading Castaneda, Millman, Whitman. But at year’s end, they are saying they want to go back to the annual Bioneers Conference on their own and start getting plugged into the network. They’re confessing to each other, as one girl put it, “I’m in love with each and every one of you and will be all my life, I know this.”
That’s what it’s all about, not setting up new systems but finding new heart—and letting that create the systems. You find it on the Slow Food International Manifesto: “We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus, fast life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat fast food. Our defense should begin at the table with slow food. Slow food is simply about taking the time to slow down and enjoy life with family and friends.”
Resources:
Crossing the Rubicon; the Decline of the American Empire at the End of the
Age of Oil by Michael Ruppert, (New Society, 2004) $22.95, www.fromthewilderness.com
Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-carbon World by Richard Heinberg
(New Society Publishers, 2004), www.museletter.com
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age by James Howard Kunstler
(Grove/Atlantic, 2005)
Bill Kauth, bkindman@mind.net
www.joytopia.net
http:/communitycurrency.org
www.transaction.net
www.communitysolution.org
www.cohousing.org
www.slowfood usa.org
The following
articles may be found online for more on Peak Oil:
“After the Oil is Gone” - Salon, 5/16/05
“An Oil Supply Tsunami Alert” - Asia Times, 5/5/05
“The End of Cheap Oil” - National Geographic, June ’04 “What
to Use When the Oil Runs Out” - BBC, 4/22/04
“G7: Oil Price Threatens World Economy” - Moscow Times, 4/26/04
“World Oil Crisis Looms” - Jane’s Defense Weekly, 4/21/04
“Are We Running Out of Oil? Scientist Warns of Looming Crisis” -
ABC News.com, 2/2/04
“James Howard Kunstler The Long Emergency” - The Rolling Stone,
March 24, 2005
John Darling is an Ashland writer and counselor.
