Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Remembering Deep Ecologist Arne Naess
David Orton, Culture Change
… I never met personally Arne Naess, the Norwegian eco-philosopher, who, according to an Associated Press story, died on Monday January 12th. He was 96. I knew from a fairly recent contact from his wife, that he was in a nursing home and not very well. Naess — like a few others now dead, such as Aldo Leopold, Richard Sylvan, John Livingston, and Rudolf Bahro — profoundly influenced me with his ideas. His deep ecology writings helped orient my life as a green and environmental activist. His Earth-centered ideas and overall philosophy also influenced so many others. His life’s work and his death, will be thought about by those who have been inspired by him and now learn that he has returned to the Earth.
Social relativism, i.e. not taking a stand, was unacceptable to Naess in this age of post modernism and ecological destruction. He himself had seen the impact of fascism on Norway during the Second World War. He saw the deep ecology philosophy, with which his name has become associated, as completely anti-fascist in orientation.
… He told us “that the front is long”, meaning, as I interpreted this, that there are many paths to a deep ecological consciousness; many battles for participants to engage in; and that we should be tolerant and supportive of all those on the path to a new Earth consciousness — no matter the particular field of engagement. He also stressed, that for environmental activists, the views of opponents should be presented honestly and not distorted. We knew through many stories, that Arne, as well as a philosopher, was also an environmental activist, a boxer, and climbed mountains in Norway and around the world. He did much of his thinking and writing in isolation, at a self-built work hut high on a Norwegian mountain, where life’s necessities: water, food, shelter, warmth, clean air and perhaps solitude — what he called in his philosophy human “vital needs” — came into much sharper focus. (Naess advocated decreasing the material standards of living in wealthy countries.)
… Naess defined the “deep movement”, which seeks the transformation of industrial capitalist societies who have brought about the existing environmental crisis, by putting forward seven main points. The article is only a few pages long, but profound and showing the complexity of Naess. He pointed out that biological complexity required a corresponding social and cultural complexity. Outlined is an “anti-class posture” and how anti_pollution devices can, because of increasing the “prices of life necessities” increase class differences. He stressed local autonomy and decentralization.
… Ultimately the significance of the life of Arne Naess is that his philosophy has presented a needed pathway for coming into a new, yet pre-industrial old, animistic and spiritual relationship to the Earth, which is respectful for all species and not just humans. This is the needed message for our time, that the Earth is not just a “resource” for humankind and corporations to exploit.
(8 February 2009)
Arne Naess was one of the precursors of the peak oil and sustainability movements. -BA
Peak oil means sooner or later we’ll wake up to a new normal
Rex Weyler, Georgia Straight (Canada)
Don’t be fooled by low oil prices. Cheaper gasoline does not mean that we now have plenty. Oil prices plummeted with the crashing economy, like everything else, but this does not change the fact that the peak rate of global oil production is now probably behind us. In fact, low oil prices make it more likely that global oil production will never again exceed the long plateau from 2005 to 2008.
… Depressing? Only if one clings to the dream, unable to fully wake up. To see the real solutions, we have to change the way we understand the problem. This will demand a paradigm shift as dramatic as when Copernicus pointed out that the universe did not revolve around the Earth. The answer will be in localization, based less on foreign-made goods, debt, and commuting, and more on friends, local food, and community cohesion. The new normal will be about improving the quality of life without consuming more stuff.
The best news is that we could hardly be in a better place to fashion a genuinely sustainable community for our children and grandchildren. We have a rich environment and several farsighted civic governments in the Lower Mainland, actively investigating genuine solutions.
If we cease eroding and selling off our natural capital, preserve our farmland, build low-energy public transport, and recover energy from our waste, we might discover that the new normal is a golden opportunity to make changes that we will have to make anyway. We may discover that we can have much richer lives with far simpler means.
Rex Weyler is a journalist and a member of the Vancouver Peak Oil citizen planning group.
(26 February 2009)
What is UNsustainability?
Peak Oil Hausfrau, Blogspot
Events seem to be accelerating. The situation is deteriorating. The stock market continues to crash, auto sales continue to tank, people continue to be thrown out of what they thought were their homes. Job are lost, health care costs climb, education loans are denied. The government is not helping by pouring money down the black hole of insolvent banks. People are waking up, but not to reality. They are waking up to anger, indignation, disappointment, but still not to reality.
They are waking up to the idea that they are going to be denied their supposed birthright: progress. Growth. The idea that they will have lives better than their parents, and their children will have lives better than they did. Instead, human consumption and economic growth seems to have finally peaked in the time of the Baby Boomers. THAT, apparently, was as good as it gets. And frankly, it wasn’t all that good.
So we’ve woken from our self-induced stupor, but not to reality. We understand now that we’re in trouble. We understand now that there’s a problem. But we still have not yet grasped the very basics of our situation. Sure, the environmentalists have been saying our lifestyle and economy is unsustainable for years. But what does that mean to me?
The illusion we have been living is that our lifestyle can continue. A lifestyle based on consuming everything on the planet, while flushing our waste “away” to the oceans and the people in the Third Wold. An economy and financial system that is based on never- ending growth, which is inherently impossible. A population that expands and expands and expands, while some people insist that all we need is more people to innovate us out of the mess we so carelessly created. We lived with our expectations and hopes for so long we began to think they were normal, when truly they were just temporary freaks of history.
There are plenty of definitions of sustainable. “Meeting our own needs without comprimising the needs of future generations to meet their own.” “A system that does not exceed it’s carrying capacity.” “A society that does not take more than can be renewed and does not pollute more than can be absorbed.” But what is unsustainable? Do we even need a definition, when it’s all around us, exemplified by everything we see and do? Do we need a definition when unsustainable is the foundation of our lives?
“Unsustainable” does not just mean that our system MUST be stopped, for the sake of the plants and animals, for the water and air, for the planet and our own health. It means that it WILL stop. It WILL stop, because a system that relies on consuming finite resources for fuel cannot be sustained. A system that fouls and erodes the very productive capacities of the planet – the water, the soil, the air – cannot be sustained. It will collapse under the burden of it’s own bloated requirements, it’s pollution, it’s untenable assumptions.
So, can we please get on with it? Can we stop hanging on to the deadweight of ideas that are dragging us down, stop clutching the noose that threatens to hang us all? Can we move past the idea of keeping the auto industry alive – when autos can never be a long term solution? Can we move past the idea of economic growth – when we know that infinite growth is just impossible? Can we stop hallucinating a future of moonbases and flux capacitors and Starship Enterprises, the last resort imaginings of an imploding society? Can we start towards a future that doesn’t depend on things that CANNOT continue?
(24 February 2009)
