The state of the economy seems to have gone from bad to worse as the collapse of Lehman Brothers has precipitated into a potentially catastrophic tailspin. The Wall Street hucksters are panicking like rats jumping ship. The money market no longer has any liquidity to grease the skids of capitalism. The Fed is scrambling like a gimped quarter back with 5 or 6 helmeted 400-pound gorillas hurdling toward him like the dark angels of death. He just threw a 700 billion dollar ball out-of-bounds in hopes of not getting creamed, but the jury’s still out.
And the average working family is being squeezed from all sides by rising food and energy costs, small mountains of paper envelopes from credit card companies pilling up outside their door each with a “please pay by” date eyeing them menacingly through their cellophane wrapping. And the one thing of value they have and that they were told was the prudent investment in which they should dump the greatest portion of their wealth—their homes—have declined in value by 30 percent within the past year.
So, I’ll keep repeating the mantra that has been echoing through the peak oil and Relocalization crowd for some time now: it’s time to start preparing ourselves, our families, and our communities for hard times to come. As John Michael Greer has suggested (in spite of the name of this blog) it may be too late for global solutions, at least for large institutions, mega-corporations and bureaucratic nation-states. But nothing stops us from acting at the individual, family, and community level. In his newest book, “The Long Descent,” Greer offers a sobering and yet compassionate assessment of the collapse of the industrial world, writing that,
“At this point it’s almost entirely too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed—which it clearly does not. It’s not too late, though, for individuals, groups, and communities to make that transition themselves, and to do what they can to preserve essential cultural and practical knowledge for future generations.”
The vicious irony is that I am writing this from the heart of the industrial world—the epicenter of unsustainability and the locus for a very very uncertain future. I’m sitting in a state-of-the-art auditorium replete with timed lighting, drop down large-screen projector, and extensive audio-video recording system. It’s morning I’m on Columbia University’s Morningside campus surrounded by the collapsing concrete jungle that is New York City.
I’m listening to Dr. Jeffery Sachs, a well known, respected, and sometimes despised economist who heads up the ambitious U.N.’s Millennium Economic Goals. He is earnestly warning the half-awake college students—a good portion of them still in their pajamas and probably more who are still hung-over from the weekend—about the precarious nature of the economy. They start to arouse a bit about as Sachs has interrupted his regularly scheduled program of neat and easy supply-demand economics with straight lines and clean projections to give a brief description of the incredibly ugly group-think dysfunction that is now gripping U.S. economy like Charlton Heston’s cold dead head.
When he finishes his fairly downbeat prognosis (this from a guy who is routinely criticized for being widely over optimistic), a girl in the class asks how this might affect her career possibilities upon graduation. I zone out on Sachs’ response. All I can think about is how utterly unprepared most people are here in the U.S. to cope with the coming challenges swirling around the Venn-diagram intersection of global economic collapse, peak oil, and global climate change.
For any problem, I find it’s always helpful (for me at least) to formulate a “to do list”:
1) Grow a garden and raise small livestock (and buy as many seeds as possible, potatoes are a particularly good survival food www.Seedway.com, www.Fedcoseeds.com)
2) Get an energy audit and weatherize your home (and purchase a high efficiency wood burning stove www.vermontcastings.com)
3) Join or start a relocalization group (www.Relocalize.net)
4) Preserve and store food (can never have to much to share with your neighbors)
5) Make and eat local meals with your family and neighbors
6) Get healthy and quit bad habits
7) Learn a self-reliant skill (growing food, spinning and knitting, brewing beer, primitive living skills, etc.)
8. Volunteer in your community
9) If you don’t know about “Permaculture” or “biochar” find out what they are
10) Support local farmers (www.localharvest.org)
11) Reduce your fossil fuel and consumer culture addictions as quickly as possible
12) Purchase quality tools (such as crosscut saws and quality gardening tools www.crosscutsawcompany.com, www.earthtoolsbcs.com)
13) Find a constructive project to engage in (like building a solar dehydrator or starting a really beautiful compost heap)
14) Start local currencies in your community (www.FEASTA.org)
15) Start campaigns to get good folks who understand the issues at hand (peak oil and climate change) and the solutions (local self-reliance, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, “biochar,” and Permaculture) into office (see, for instance, the state senate campaign of Don Barber www.barberforsenate.com)
16) Re-envision your hopes, dreams, and expectations for the future we may have not expected but which seems all the more likely
Sure, the list isn’t all that great. There’s no cookbook instructions for the decline of industrial civilizationBut it’s probably not a bad starting place for most people. (One of the least effective things you can, by the way, might be blogging.)
Unfortunately, the default strategy for most Americans may be to sit around and wait until the Big-Macs run out (or perhaps until an easily-targeted scapegoat is identified by a rising demagogue.) The possibilities of post-post-modern American society—with all its addictions to fossil fuel derived comfort, guns, clashing ideologies, and other shortcomings—could have the makings for a turbulent future.
And that is exactly why we have to get the word out that now is the time to prepare, to help those most in need (the poor and elderly), and to learn the skills we will need in a post-petroleum, post-Wall Street world.
The most critical things are not material, of course, but are the relationships we have cultivated over the years—our relationships to our neighbors, to our loved ones, and to our bioregionsAs the faith in the dollar runs out, it’s time to invest in what really matters in life: friends, forest gardens, family, sustainable skills, soil, waterways, seeds, love, and community.
