Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I want to step back from our gargantuan dilemmas of 2009 and reflect on the East German intelligentsia I interviewed in 1990-1992 at the time of the unification of Germany…these East Germans faced the destruction of their national myth, which held that socialism was the true victor over Nazism and that capitalism’s demise was inevitable. In America unquestioned belief in growth has inspired us throughout our history, yet it is going the way of the East German’s mythology.
When the hummingbirds run out of sugar water in their feeder right outside our kitchen, one of them flies up to the window and gently bumps it. Doesn’t run into it as if by accident, but hovers right at the pane and deliberately bumps it. The hummer seems to be saying: “The feeder is empty, you dolts. Get with it.” And they never bump the window unless the feeder is empty. They know. How do they know?
The Archdruid returns from vacation with a few unexpected announcements and a glimpse at a future that may resemble nothing so much as the nineteenth-century past.
Human beings are capable of living egalitarian lives without fossil fuels. Many hunter-gatherer societies testify to the fact it is possible, though not inevitable. Human nature includes both cooperative/altruistic and competitive/“us versus them” tendencies. Our empathetic and cooperative tendencies must be consciously cultivated in everyday life if we are to create a non-violent, democratic future without fossil fuels.
-Apocalypse Later? I’m Going Local Now.
-Local Future: Peak Oil, Climate Change & the Economic Crisis
-LOOK: Lanefab Microhousing
There exists today, a trinity of situations that confronts those of us who live in Western culture: global climate change, the peak and eventual end of non-renewable sources of fossil fuels (oil and gas), and economic meltdown. These issues are old news for much of the world. We in the wealthier nations are going to join the global community in attempting to find ways to survive and live amidst enormously trying circumstances.
If we want to engender a new economy, bottom-up, we have to start by discovering the work we’re meant to do, because we’re only going to persevere effectively if the role we’re playing lies at the intersection of what we’re good at, what we love doing, and what’s needed in the world that we care about.
For those concerned about a sustainable future, changing the reigning industrially-conditioned aesthetic–which is now deeply ingrained in the public mind–will be as much of a challenge as changing the underlying system that created it.
-‘Eco-Therapy’ for Environmental Depression
-Saving the planet, one block, one small project at a time
-India pays couples to put off having children
Today I’m starting another Adapting-In-Place Class, beginning with the basics of evaluating whether you have a future where you are, what your other choices are, and then triaging your situation, but I’ve already written a good bit about those things, so I want to a basic and essential element of triage – establishing redundant systems.
Take a personal tour with members of Santa Barbara City College’s Student Sustainability Coalition. They’re propelling action — like bringing fresh, local organic produce daily to the salad bar, and placing recycling bins in the cafeteria.
When there is no money for fuel in the middle of winter, desperate residents have on occasion resorted to burning the furniture. That works as long as the furniture lasts. But come spring, there may be no place to sit or sleep, and no prospect of resorting to the same practice should a heating emergency arise the following winter. Yet, this is more or less the equivalent of what many states and municipalities are doing in the face of our unprecedented financial crisis.
