Bonobos are apes that look similar to chimpanzees. (There are physical differences, but I'm not enough of a primate expert to be able to pick them out.) Their behavior, however, is something else. You have to read a lot about them to believe that they exist. They seem like something a sex-obsessed leftie would dream up, but they're quite real. Frans de Waal, an expert on Bonobo behavior, describes them as being "female-centered, egalitarian, ... and substitute sex for aggression." That is an understatement.
(There is a lot of information on the web about bonobos--much of it is from de Waal, but other stuff collaborates his findings. If you want to read a fun blog look at Bonobo Handshake, written by a researcher at the Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary in the Congo.)
Chimpanzees and bonobos are the two primates that seem most closely related to humans. More than 98% of their DNA is identical to ours. But the behaviors of bonobos and chimps couldn't be more different. Bonobos are a true matriarchal society--bonobo males stay near their mother throughout their life and in bonobo society, it's the mothers that are dominant. However, in chimpanzees, aggressive males rule.
"The most important fact, which has remained unchanged over the last three decades of bonobo research, is that there exist no confirmed reports of lethal aggression, neither from the field nor from captivity. For chimpanzees, in contrast, we have dozens of cases of adult males killing other males, of males killing infants, of females killing infants, and so on. This is in the wild. ... There is absolutely no dearth of such information on chimpanzees, which contrasts greatly with the zero incidence in bonobos. " (Frans de Waal)
De Waal cautions against 'fairy tale' writing about bonobos. There are plenty of conflicts between bonobos. But generally the animals deal with them by 'sexual conflict resolution', a true case of 'make love, not war'.
"... at a forested sanctuary at Kinshasa it was recently decided to merge two groups of bonobos that had lived separately, just so as to induce some activity. No one would ever dream of doing this with chimpanzees as the only possible outcome would be a blood bath. The bonobos produced an orgy instead." (from an article by Frans de Waal)
Bonobos are overall more co-operative and egalitarian than chimpanzees. In experiments reported in the journal Current Biology, bonobos were able to cooperate better to retrieve food than chimpanzees (although chimpanzees hunt cooperatively in the wild), particularly when the food wasn't easy to divide.
So here are our two closest primate 'relatives'--one that's dominated by aggressive males that engage in hunting and warfare, and one that's headed up by the females, that's cooperative and relatively egalitarian, and where sex, rather than violence, is used to deal with conflict. As de Waal says, "The chimpanzee resolves sexual issues with power, the bonobo resolves power issues with sex..." In my last post, I wrote about our need for physical affection and how lack of affection is correlated with violence. Here we can see that it's not just true for human beings.
Frans de Waal has written a book called Our Inner Ape pointing out how similar the behavior of chimps and bonobos is to human behavior and how our biology is connected with their biology. He talks about the chimpanzee and the bonobo within each of us, and seeing humans as a hybrid of the two.
I'm sure anyone who has read much of this blog has no doubt which of the two I'd like to see humans be more like. But de Waal has also written a book called Peacemaking Among Primates where he talks about reconciliation behaviors in many ape and monkey species, including chimps and bonobos. He points out that forgiveness is not just a human characteristic.
Before you let anyone convince you that we can't change war, hierarchy, and domination, beause patriarchy, imperialism, and militarism are in our genes, check out the bonobos. Some of our closest relatives are peaceful bi/poly* feminists.
(*Bisexual and polyamorous. I'll talk more about being bi and poly in a future blog.)
Quote of the day: "...the art of sexual reconciliation may well have reached its evolutionary peak in the bonobo. For these animals, sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social behavior. Given its peacemaking and appeasement functions, it is not surprising that sex among bonobos occurs in so many different partner combinations, including between juveniles and adults. The need for peaceful coexistence is obviously not restricted to adult heterosexual pairs." - Frans de Waal
Word (or phrase) of the day: Biomass
Hero(es) of the day: Viktor Frankl
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Love and Affection
In some of my earliest posts, I talked about how important love is. Being loving is fine, but it's also important that it's expressed.
I believe that affection, particularly physical affection, is an important way of telling people they are loved. And, while I can be an advocate for sexuality as a means for giving pleasure and affection to others, probably even more important are those physical but nonsexual means of showing affection: cuddling, snuggling, hugging, holding, holding hands, giving massages/backrubs/footrubs, and, of course, kissing. Nonphysical ways of showing affection are important as well: smiling at people and telling them you like them, or even saying "I love you".
The need for physical affection begins young.
James Prescott, a neuropsychologist formerly with the National Institute of Health, started his career by following the lead of primate experimenters such as Harry Harlow, who showed that monkeys raised without some type of physical connection (even such a minimal connection as clutching a cloth 'surrogate mother' as opposed to a metal wire one) became anxious and violent. He then turned to anthropological findings to see how much this need for affection applied to human beings. Dr. Prescott looked at the literature covering 49 different societies, and found that cultures which provided high levels of infant physical affection were very low in adult violence, and cultures which did not provide much infant physical affection were high in adult violence. There were a few cultures that didn't fit that picture but it turned out that all the high infant affection, high violence cultures punished premarital sex and all the low infant affection, low violence cultures permitted premarital sex. Prescott says that without the premarital sex factor the presence or absence of infant physical affection predicts adult violence 80% of the time, and when the premarital sex factor is included, the two variables are a 100% accurate predictor of adult violence. There is a whole website devoted to the work of James Prescott and other relevant literature entitled The Origins of Peace and Violence.
Other researchers support much of this. Tiffany Field, who has done a great deal of research on the need for infant touch and stimulation, also looked at studies that used massage with aggressive adolescents. According to her, this research suggests that touch and human contact reduced violent behavior in these teens.
I don't think it's an accident that our patriarchal, capitalist society, downplays physical affection. Lack of affection not only increases the likelihood of violence, it creates lonely, needy people who are prey for advertisers who use sexual motifs to suggest that their product will give you what you are missing (not to mention being prey to military recruiters). Imagine if we had all the affection and connection that we needed. Maybe we wouldn't need so much in the way of material goods. Maybe we wouldn't need heirarchies and domination. Maybe there would be a lot less violence in the world.
Reach out to someone. Let them know that you care. Give them a hug if they want it. Love and affection are revolutionary acts.
Next: Sex, affection, equality, and violence among the primates.
Quote of the day: "We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth." - Virginia Satir
Word (or phrase) of the day: Geothermal
Hero(es) of the day: Phan Thị Kim Phúc
I believe that affection, particularly physical affection, is an important way of telling people they are loved. And, while I can be an advocate for sexuality as a means for giving pleasure and affection to others, probably even more important are those physical but nonsexual means of showing affection: cuddling, snuggling, hugging, holding, holding hands, giving massages/backrubs/footrubs, and, of course, kissing. Nonphysical ways of showing affection are important as well: smiling at people and telling them you like them, or even saying "I love you".
The need for physical affection begins young.
James Prescott, a neuropsychologist formerly with the National Institute of Health, started his career by following the lead of primate experimenters such as Harry Harlow, who showed that monkeys raised without some type of physical connection (even such a minimal connection as clutching a cloth 'surrogate mother' as opposed to a metal wire one) became anxious and violent. He then turned to anthropological findings to see how much this need for affection applied to human beings. Dr. Prescott looked at the literature covering 49 different societies, and found that cultures which provided high levels of infant physical affection were very low in adult violence, and cultures which did not provide much infant physical affection were high in adult violence. There were a few cultures that didn't fit that picture but it turned out that all the high infant affection, high violence cultures punished premarital sex and all the low infant affection, low violence cultures permitted premarital sex. Prescott says that without the premarital sex factor the presence or absence of infant physical affection predicts adult violence 80% of the time, and when the premarital sex factor is included, the two variables are a 100% accurate predictor of adult violence. There is a whole website devoted to the work of James Prescott and other relevant literature entitled The Origins of Peace and Violence.
Other researchers support much of this. Tiffany Field, who has done a great deal of research on the need for infant touch and stimulation, also looked at studies that used massage with aggressive adolescents. According to her, this research suggests that touch and human contact reduced violent behavior in these teens.
I don't think it's an accident that our patriarchal, capitalist society, downplays physical affection. Lack of affection not only increases the likelihood of violence, it creates lonely, needy people who are prey for advertisers who use sexual motifs to suggest that their product will give you what you are missing (not to mention being prey to military recruiters). Imagine if we had all the affection and connection that we needed. Maybe we wouldn't need so much in the way of material goods. Maybe we wouldn't need heirarchies and domination. Maybe there would be a lot less violence in the world.
Reach out to someone. Let them know that you care. Give them a hug if they want it. Love and affection are revolutionary acts.
Next: Sex, affection, equality, and violence among the primates.
Quote of the day: "We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth." - Virginia Satir
Word (or phrase) of the day: Geothermal
Hero(es) of the day: Phan Thị Kim Phúc
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Going Local
In this era of globalization, it's nice to see that some authors are focusing on local economic efforts. Three books in particular have caught my attention: Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael Shuman, Making a Place for Community: Local Politics in a Global Era by Thad Williamson, Gar Alperovitz, and David Imbroscio, and America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy by Gar Alperovitz. It's probably not an accident that all these authors are associated with the Institute for Policy Studies, and that Making a Place for Community frequently sites Going Local, and America Beyond Capitalism cites both of the previous books.
The theme of all three books is that local economic alternatives, including community- and municipally-owned corporations, help build stable communities and, as Alperovitz points out in America Beyond Capitalism, create more more democratic ownership of wealth. The books cover a lot of alternatives, including employee-ownership, worker-run businesses, cooperatives, community development corporations, and land trusts. Both Going Local and Making a Place for Community have extensive resource lists in their appendices: Shuman calls his 'Around the World Economy in 80 Ways'; the appendix in Making a Place for Community is more simply entitled 'Resources for Rebuilding'. The amount of information in these books is incredible and very useful.
But that may be the main problem with at least two of these books. While they each do some evaluating, in their attempts to be comprehensive, all three of them almost seem more like catalogs than well argued works. While having so much information is useful, reading these books is almost numbing at times, as they list one local economic enterprise after another. These books are wonderful resources, but I'd like to find some works that critically evaluate community-based economic experiments--what works, what doesn't, and what could be connected to build regional economic networks. Alperovitz does devote a couple of chapters in America Beyond Capitalism to 'The Regional Restructuring of the American Continent', but rather than just listing a few regional structures, he needs to flesh out what is possible if his 'Pluralistic Commonwealth' is going to be more than just another idea.
On the other hand, Going Local gets prescriptive in its last chapter. Michael Shuman ends his book with suggestions and ideas of where to go with all this. Among other things, he includes 'Ten Steps Toward Community Self-Reliance', starting with 'A Community Bill of Rights' and ending with 'Interlocalism' (and including things like 'Community Currency' and 'A Lobby for Localism'). While I think all of these books are worth reading, if only to learn how much local and cooperative organizing is going on, Going Local may be the most useful of the three. It may also be worth owning both Going Local and Making a Place for Community to have both of these comprehensive appendices on hand.
Quote of the day: "A new commitment to going local would mark a dramatic shift in the economic-development strategy of almost every city in America. It's a strategy that will unify people of many political stripes. Talk with the heads of Chambers of Commerce and the leaders of progressive social movements, and you will find that both are livid about being misled and sold out by the promises of disloyal corporations." - Michael Shuman
Word (or phrase) of the day: Libertarian Municipalism
Hero(es) of the day: Thomas Merton
The theme of all three books is that local economic alternatives, including community- and municipally-owned corporations, help build stable communities and, as Alperovitz points out in America Beyond Capitalism, create more more democratic ownership of wealth. The books cover a lot of alternatives, including employee-ownership, worker-run businesses, cooperatives, community development corporations, and land trusts. Both Going Local and Making a Place for Community have extensive resource lists in their appendices: Shuman calls his 'Around the World Economy in 80 Ways'; the appendix in Making a Place for Community is more simply entitled 'Resources for Rebuilding'. The amount of information in these books is incredible and very useful.
But that may be the main problem with at least two of these books. While they each do some evaluating, in their attempts to be comprehensive, all three of them almost seem more like catalogs than well argued works. While having so much information is useful, reading these books is almost numbing at times, as they list one local economic enterprise after another. These books are wonderful resources, but I'd like to find some works that critically evaluate community-based economic experiments--what works, what doesn't, and what could be connected to build regional economic networks. Alperovitz does devote a couple of chapters in America Beyond Capitalism to 'The Regional Restructuring of the American Continent', but rather than just listing a few regional structures, he needs to flesh out what is possible if his 'Pluralistic Commonwealth' is going to be more than just another idea.
On the other hand, Going Local gets prescriptive in its last chapter. Michael Shuman ends his book with suggestions and ideas of where to go with all this. Among other things, he includes 'Ten Steps Toward Community Self-Reliance', starting with 'A Community Bill of Rights' and ending with 'Interlocalism' (and including things like 'Community Currency' and 'A Lobby for Localism'). While I think all of these books are worth reading, if only to learn how much local and cooperative organizing is going on, Going Local may be the most useful of the three. It may also be worth owning both Going Local and Making a Place for Community to have both of these comprehensive appendices on hand.
Quote of the day: "A new commitment to going local would mark a dramatic shift in the economic-development strategy of almost every city in America. It's a strategy that will unify people of many political stripes. Talk with the heads of Chambers of Commerce and the leaders of progressive social movements, and you will find that both are livid about being misled and sold out by the promises of disloyal corporations." - Michael Shuman
Word (or phrase) of the day: Libertarian Municipalism
Hero(es) of the day: Thomas Merton
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Feeding Ourselves in the Future
In 1977, Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins published a book called Food First. One of the points of the title was that while there are many issues to consider, food is a priority. After air and water, food may be the next most important thing for our survival.
If the peakniks are right, if industrial civilization collapses, making sure that people will be fed will be a major issue. And, even if the peakniks are wrong, if we are going to try to create some sort of alternative system, we will still have to feed people.
Some parts of an alternative food system are actually in place now. Like farmers. We don't need agribusiness--megafarms and the Green Revolution aren't going to help us come the collapse or the revolution. What we want are small-scale farmers, family farmers.
So how can we support them now? And how can we get as many of them as possible to grow their food organically? Not because it's cool and groovy, but because it's better for us and because when oil gets too pricy, farmers won't be able to afford the pesticides and fertilizers.
One way to support small farms is farmer's markets. Most cities have them these days. The Local Harvest website has a farmer's market locator. One way to support your local farmers is to support your local farmer's market. Shop there.
Another way to support farmers is Community Supported Agriculture, also known as CSAs. CSAs are a European creation that came to the US in the 1980s. With CSAs, individuals and families can become "shareholders" in a farm, by paying a yearly membership fee, and in return receive an often weekly (during the growing season) share of what the farm is harvesting. The members get fresh food and help support the farm and the farmers can focus on growing the food and not have to worry about marketing and financial concerns. The USDA has a website devoted to CSAs with much more information and there is also a CSA locator on the Local Harvest website.
The farmers themselves can form producer co-operatives. While some agricultural cooperatives, such as Land O'Lakes, Ocean Spray, Sun-Maid, and Sunkist, have become agribusinesses unto themselves, often forgetting their local roots in an effort to gain a market share, others, such as Organic Valley and Cabot Creamery Cooperative, are proud of their 'farmer-owners' and co-operative structure.
The 'Eat Local' movement (aka locovores, locavores, localvores, or 'local heros') has been a strong supporter of small, local farms. These groups often advocate eating produce grown anywhere from 50 to 200 miles away. There is a 100 Mile Diet website that advocates their 'Diet' as a local-eating experiment. Noted author Barbara Kingsolver co-wrote a book with her husband and their daughter about their year of eating locally. Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle (website) has popularized the notion of eating locally, as has Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma (website) which looks at the food industry and the difference between organic food from Whole Foods (some originating in Argentina) and organic foods grown at a local farm.
Beyond supporting local farmer, it's worth supporting local vendors. If you go to the store, do you want to go to megafoods supermarket (and you may have no choice) or do you go to a little family run store--or your local food co-op? Megafoods is owned by a major corporation (possibly based on a different continent) and run by a corporate directorate. You can meet the owners of the family run market when you walk in the market. Or you can be one of the owners of the food co-op--most food co-ops are consumer co-operatives, owned and run by the people who shop there.
And then there's the possibility of growing some of your own food. There are literally hundreds of books on growing food from Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening to Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening--not to mention all the literature on permaculture (see my last post).
But what if you live in the city and don't have any land? There's always container gardening (Ohio State University , Texas A & M, and North Carolina State University all offer online resources). More importantly, there are community gardens where you can garden with your neighbors. In the US, the American Community Garden Association has a website where you can locate community gardens near you.
I'm fortunate to be living in Boston where there are lots of these types of resources, including one organization, the Food Project that teaches young people (often urban youth) to farm, helps local residents by providing raised beds for gardening and giving workshops on garden maintenance, has a CSA and contributes to Farmer's Markets, and has created a guide to local farms and farmer's markets. They see their mission as building a sustainable food system.
In essence, I think the long term goal is to build a sustainable food system. We need to find ways of networking small-scale farms, farmers markets, CSAs, producer co-ops, consumer co-ops, small family-run stores, community gardens, and the local food movement, to create lots of alternative food systems that are sustainable and can sustain us without agribusiness and when cheap fuel is not available.
Note: I was going to call this post 'Feeding the Future'--then I discovered that there is already a book by that name full of what looks like intriguing essays. (I know, I know, there was a 2006 Minnesota conference called 'Feeding Ourselves in the Future'--but I had to call this post something...)
Quote of the day: "Family farms are the engines for economic vitality, in both rural communities as well as urban areas that benefit from jobs created by vibrant local and regional food systems. ... The more we keep farming local, the stronger the community." -Willie Nelson
Word (or phrase) of the day: Pansexual
Hero(es) of the day: Starhawk
If the peakniks are right, if industrial civilization collapses, making sure that people will be fed will be a major issue. And, even if the peakniks are wrong, if we are going to try to create some sort of alternative system, we will still have to feed people.
Some parts of an alternative food system are actually in place now. Like farmers. We don't need agribusiness--megafarms and the Green Revolution aren't going to help us come the collapse or the revolution. What we want are small-scale farmers, family farmers.
So how can we support them now? And how can we get as many of them as possible to grow their food organically? Not because it's cool and groovy, but because it's better for us and because when oil gets too pricy, farmers won't be able to afford the pesticides and fertilizers.
One way to support small farms is farmer's markets. Most cities have them these days. The Local Harvest website has a farmer's market locator. One way to support your local farmers is to support your local farmer's market. Shop there.
Another way to support farmers is Community Supported Agriculture, also known as CSAs. CSAs are a European creation that came to the US in the 1980s. With CSAs, individuals and families can become "shareholders" in a farm, by paying a yearly membership fee, and in return receive an often weekly (during the growing season) share of what the farm is harvesting. The members get fresh food and help support the farm and the farmers can focus on growing the food and not have to worry about marketing and financial concerns. The USDA has a website devoted to CSAs with much more information and there is also a CSA locator on the Local Harvest website.
The farmers themselves can form producer co-operatives. While some agricultural cooperatives, such as Land O'Lakes, Ocean Spray, Sun-Maid, and Sunkist, have become agribusinesses unto themselves, often forgetting their local roots in an effort to gain a market share, others, such as Organic Valley and Cabot Creamery Cooperative, are proud of their 'farmer-owners' and co-operative structure.
The 'Eat Local' movement (aka locovores, locavores, localvores, or 'local heros') has been a strong supporter of small, local farms. These groups often advocate eating produce grown anywhere from 50 to 200 miles away. There is a 100 Mile Diet website that advocates their 'Diet' as a local-eating experiment. Noted author Barbara Kingsolver co-wrote a book with her husband and their daughter about their year of eating locally. Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle (website) has popularized the notion of eating locally, as has Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma (website) which looks at the food industry and the difference between organic food from Whole Foods (some originating in Argentina) and organic foods grown at a local farm.
Beyond supporting local farmer, it's worth supporting local vendors. If you go to the store, do you want to go to megafoods supermarket (and you may have no choice) or do you go to a little family run store--or your local food co-op? Megafoods is owned by a major corporation (possibly based on a different continent) and run by a corporate directorate. You can meet the owners of the family run market when you walk in the market. Or you can be one of the owners of the food co-op--most food co-ops are consumer co-operatives, owned and run by the people who shop there.
And then there's the possibility of growing some of your own food. There are literally hundreds of books on growing food from Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening to Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening--not to mention all the literature on permaculture (see my last post).
But what if you live in the city and don't have any land? There's always container gardening (Ohio State University , Texas A & M, and North Carolina State University all offer online resources). More importantly, there are community gardens where you can garden with your neighbors. In the US, the American Community Garden Association has a website where you can locate community gardens near you.
I'm fortunate to be living in Boston where there are lots of these types of resources, including one organization, the Food Project that teaches young people (often urban youth) to farm, helps local residents by providing raised beds for gardening and giving workshops on garden maintenance, has a CSA and contributes to Farmer's Markets, and has created a guide to local farms and farmer's markets. They see their mission as building a sustainable food system.
In essence, I think the long term goal is to build a sustainable food system. We need to find ways of networking small-scale farms, farmers markets, CSAs, producer co-ops, consumer co-ops, small family-run stores, community gardens, and the local food movement, to create lots of alternative food systems that are sustainable and can sustain us without agribusiness and when cheap fuel is not available.
Note: I was going to call this post 'Feeding the Future'--then I discovered that there is already a book by that name full of what looks like intriguing essays. (I know, I know, there was a 2006 Minnesota conference called 'Feeding Ourselves in the Future'--but I had to call this post something...)
Quote of the day: "Family farms are the engines for economic vitality, in both rural communities as well as urban areas that benefit from jobs created by vibrant local and regional food systems. ... The more we keep farming local, the stronger the community." -Willie Nelson
Word (or phrase) of the day: Pansexual
Hero(es) of the day: Starhawk
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Permaculture
'Permaculture', a term coined by Australian naturalist, Bill Mollison, and his student, David Holmgren, around 1978, is a bit of a two-headed beast. It means both 'permanent agriculture and 'permanent culture'. This makes sense when you realize that permaculture can be a method of gardening or farming as well as a way of looking at systems such as community and society.
As an agricultural method, permaculture employs a great many techniques ranging from sheet mulching and polyculture to emphasizing things like tree crops and edible perennial plants. More than this, however, it is a method of designing food systems that are ecological, interconnected, and sustainable. In permaculture, each plant or design element performs multiple functions and each function in the design is supported by many components of the system. Permaculturists talk about beginning with thoughtful observation of ecological systems, looking at interconnections within a system (sometimes referred to as the 'working relationships' between plants), and designing in the patterns of natural systems. While this certainly applies to gardening, more and more permaculturists are applying the same principles to social systems.
Permaculture, of all types, has made an ethical commitment to three principles: caring for the earth, caring for people, and distributing whatever surplus is available to make sure that resources are used in fair and equitable ways. This last principle means placing limits on consumption--and population.
Permaculture has had a growing influence on activists as well as organic farmers. Starhawk, in her book Webs of Power, points out how permacultural principles suggest ideas for new economic and political systems.
A resource I'd suggest for people interested in exploring permaculture is the Introduction to Permaculture website which contains various definitions of permaculture as well as a resource list of books, articles, and many, many websites. A good book for someone wanting to start using permaculture in gardening is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway.
Quote of the day: "The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children..." - Bill Mollison
Word (or phrase) of the day: Pluralistic Commonwealth
Hero(es) of the day: Kai Leigh Harriott
As an agricultural method, permaculture employs a great many techniques ranging from sheet mulching and polyculture to emphasizing things like tree crops and edible perennial plants. More than this, however, it is a method of designing food systems that are ecological, interconnected, and sustainable. In permaculture, each plant or design element performs multiple functions and each function in the design is supported by many components of the system. Permaculturists talk about beginning with thoughtful observation of ecological systems, looking at interconnections within a system (sometimes referred to as the 'working relationships' between plants), and designing in the patterns of natural systems. While this certainly applies to gardening, more and more permaculturists are applying the same principles to social systems.
Permaculture, of all types, has made an ethical commitment to three principles: caring for the earth, caring for people, and distributing whatever surplus is available to make sure that resources are used in fair and equitable ways. This last principle means placing limits on consumption--and population.
Permaculture has had a growing influence on activists as well as organic farmers. Starhawk, in her book Webs of Power, points out how permacultural principles suggest ideas for new economic and political systems.
A resource I'd suggest for people interested in exploring permaculture is the Introduction to Permaculture website which contains various definitions of permaculture as well as a resource list of books, articles, and many, many websites. A good book for someone wanting to start using permaculture in gardening is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway.
Quote of the day: "The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children..." - Bill Mollison
Word (or phrase) of the day: Pluralistic Commonwealth
Hero(es) of the day: Kai Leigh Harriott
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Peak Everything
In my last post I discussed the phenomenon of Peak Oil. But it's not just oil that's peaking. Most peak oil people are quick to point out that our natural gas supplies are just as limited. More to the point, peak oil theorist Richard Heinberg has published a newer book, Peak Everything, where he claims that oil and gas are just the tip of the iceberg.
Some nonecological types, when confronted with peak oil, will say not to worry--there's always coal and nuclear power. Forgetting about the environmental implications of using these fuels for a moment, reading Heinberg makes you wonder how long even things like coal and uranium will last. Heinberg claims that world coal production will peak in ten to twenty years and the uranium supply will begin diminishing midcentury. He also says that over the next hundred years we will also see declines in population, grain production, arable land, wild fish harvests, fresh water, climate stability, and yearly extraction of copper, zinc, platinum, silver, and gold--and he has charts to back this up. The next few decades are going to bring us less energy, food, and fresh water. From there, Heinberg sees things leading to a lessening of consumption, economic growth, mobility, technological change, and political stability.
He does say that the news isn't all bad. Some other things he thinks will peak over the next century include: economic inequality, environmental destruction, and greenhouse gas emissions. And he points out that there are things that are not in any danger of peaking. He doesn't list renewable resources like wind and solar (although they won't be going away); instead he lists community, cooperation, ingenuity, artistry, and things like satifaction from honest work, intergenerational solidarity, personal autonomy, leisure time, happiness, and 'the beauty of the built environment'.
He sees an end to Industrial Capitalism. And Heinberg isn't the only one. James Kunstler, whose book The Long Emergency has a similar dire forecast, has also written a novel, World Made by Hand, that tries to imagine what a post oil world would look like. There is a whole website (Life After the Oil Crash ) devoted to thinking about life beyond our current western civilization. There are, of course, lots of writers who think that all this is nonsense. Some don't believe in peak oil (a few, like the abiogenic theorists, don't even believe that there are limited supplies of oil) and others think we have the technology to replace oil and whatever else we run low on. They deride the believers in industrial decline (and I am coming to be one of them) as 'peakniks'.
But I don't think we can make wind turbines and solar cells fast enough. The hydrogen fuel cell is in its very early stages of development and struggling there. Coal (which many nations are turning to) causes massive pollution and accelerates global warming (which is already a major problem). I can summarize the difficulty with nuclear power in two words: waste storage.
I really think that we are coming to the point where we may need to choose between poisoning ourselves with what little coal and uranium we have left, and seeing industrial civilization come to a grinding halt.
And it may be soon, especially if we want to eat. One of the major effects of oil and other energy shortages is around food production. Food supply is very dependent on oil, not just for transportation and distribution (and it is very dependent on oil for this) but for the creation of fertilizer. The so-called Green Revolution was completely fueled by oil. I don't think it's an accident that food prices are rising as fast as oil prices and that food riots are breaking out. We are going to need to learn to grow our own food again. Heinberg, writing in Peak Everything, predicts a vast increase in the number of people becoming gardeners and farmers. He has a chapter called 'Fifty Million Farmers' where he claims that we will need to see the majority of workers return to farming if we are going to survive.
I talked in an earlier post about the need to move from Agitating (protests) to focusing on Educating and Organizing. Here's where that really comes into play. Like the Chinese word for 'crisis' (made from the symbols for 'danger' and 'opportunity'), the possibility of industrial collapse gives us a risky chance to create local, decentralized systems that could work for us. The situation reminds me of the title of Martin Luther King's 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Whether the collapse of corporate capitalism would result in dangerous chaos or the opportunity to recreate community will probably depend on how much education and organizing of alternatives we are able to do now.
(Actually, from a social change perspective, it doesn't matter whether capitalism collapses or not. Even if the peak oil stuff is all wrong and we do need to struggle with the system, the same work of educating and organizing alternatives would have to happen before we can tear down the system. Unfortunately, as history has taught us, without an alternative in place, after the revolution things slowly return to where they were before the struggle, only with different people in charge.)
Quote of the day: "...efforts to try to bring industrialism to ruin prematurely seem to be pointless and wrongheaded: ruin will come soon enough on its own. Better to invest your time in personal and community preparedness. ... Learn to understand and repair (as much as possible) existing tools--including water pumps, farm implements, and woodworking tools--that are likely to still be useful when there is no gasoline or electricity." - Richard Heinberg
Word (or phrase) of the day: Womanism
Hero(es) of the day: Emma Goldman
Some nonecological types, when confronted with peak oil, will say not to worry--there's always coal and nuclear power. Forgetting about the environmental implications of using these fuels for a moment, reading Heinberg makes you wonder how long even things like coal and uranium will last. Heinberg claims that world coal production will peak in ten to twenty years and the uranium supply will begin diminishing midcentury. He also says that over the next hundred years we will also see declines in population, grain production, arable land, wild fish harvests, fresh water, climate stability, and yearly extraction of copper, zinc, platinum, silver, and gold--and he has charts to back this up. The next few decades are going to bring us less energy, food, and fresh water. From there, Heinberg sees things leading to a lessening of consumption, economic growth, mobility, technological change, and political stability.
He does say that the news isn't all bad. Some other things he thinks will peak over the next century include: economic inequality, environmental destruction, and greenhouse gas emissions. And he points out that there are things that are not in any danger of peaking. He doesn't list renewable resources like wind and solar (although they won't be going away); instead he lists community, cooperation, ingenuity, artistry, and things like satifaction from honest work, intergenerational solidarity, personal autonomy, leisure time, happiness, and 'the beauty of the built environment'.
He sees an end to Industrial Capitalism. And Heinberg isn't the only one. James Kunstler, whose book The Long Emergency has a similar dire forecast, has also written a novel, World Made by Hand, that tries to imagine what a post oil world would look like. There is a whole website (Life After the Oil Crash ) devoted to thinking about life beyond our current western civilization. There are, of course, lots of writers who think that all this is nonsense. Some don't believe in peak oil (a few, like the abiogenic theorists, don't even believe that there are limited supplies of oil) and others think we have the technology to replace oil and whatever else we run low on. They deride the believers in industrial decline (and I am coming to be one of them) as 'peakniks'.
But I don't think we can make wind turbines and solar cells fast enough. The hydrogen fuel cell is in its very early stages of development and struggling there. Coal (which many nations are turning to) causes massive pollution and accelerates global warming (which is already a major problem). I can summarize the difficulty with nuclear power in two words: waste storage.
I really think that we are coming to the point where we may need to choose between poisoning ourselves with what little coal and uranium we have left, and seeing industrial civilization come to a grinding halt.
And it may be soon, especially if we want to eat. One of the major effects of oil and other energy shortages is around food production. Food supply is very dependent on oil, not just for transportation and distribution (and it is very dependent on oil for this) but for the creation of fertilizer. The so-called Green Revolution was completely fueled by oil. I don't think it's an accident that food prices are rising as fast as oil prices and that food riots are breaking out. We are going to need to learn to grow our own food again. Heinberg, writing in Peak Everything, predicts a vast increase in the number of people becoming gardeners and farmers. He has a chapter called 'Fifty Million Farmers' where he claims that we will need to see the majority of workers return to farming if we are going to survive.
I talked in an earlier post about the need to move from Agitating (protests) to focusing on Educating and Organizing. Here's where that really comes into play. Like the Chinese word for 'crisis' (made from the symbols for 'danger' and 'opportunity'), the possibility of industrial collapse gives us a risky chance to create local, decentralized systems that could work for us. The situation reminds me of the title of Martin Luther King's 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Whether the collapse of corporate capitalism would result in dangerous chaos or the opportunity to recreate community will probably depend on how much education and organizing of alternatives we are able to do now.
(Actually, from a social change perspective, it doesn't matter whether capitalism collapses or not. Even if the peak oil stuff is all wrong and we do need to struggle with the system, the same work of educating and organizing alternatives would have to happen before we can tear down the system. Unfortunately, as history has taught us, without an alternative in place, after the revolution things slowly return to where they were before the struggle, only with different people in charge.)
Quote of the day: "...efforts to try to bring industrialism to ruin prematurely seem to be pointless and wrongheaded: ruin will come soon enough on its own. Better to invest your time in personal and community preparedness. ... Learn to understand and repair (as much as possible) existing tools--including water pumps, farm implements, and woodworking tools--that are likely to still be useful when there is no gasoline or electricity." - Richard Heinberg
Word (or phrase) of the day: Womanism
Hero(es) of the day: Emma Goldman
Friday, July 18, 2008
Peak Oil
Watching the oil prices go up, up, up, is fascinating. Commentators keep arguing about whether this is because of producers playing the market, speculators playing the market, pipeline sabotage, oil workers threatening to strike, etc, etc. Amazingly enough, for business folks who usually talk mostly about supply and demand, few articles are talking about the oil supply and demand.
But a number of writers--many of them geologists, financiers, and journalists--have started discussing something called Peak Oil. (Some books about this include: Kenneth Deffeyes, Beyond Oil; Colin Campbell, The Coming Oil Crisis; Jeremy Leggett, Half Gone; Matthew Simmons, Twilight in the Desert; Dale Allen Pfeiffer, The End of the Oil Age; Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over; Paul Roberts, The End of Oil; and James Kunstler, The Long Emergency.) The gist of Peak Oil theory is a prediction (first made by a geologist working for Shell Oil, M King Hubbert, in 1969) that the peak production of oil would occur around the millenium. (Hubbert apparently thought it would occur around 1995-2000, Deffeyes claims it happened at the end of 2005, and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas is guessing it will occur in 2010. Even the wildest oil optimists--for example the US Energy Information Administration spokesperson quoted in Roberts, The End of Oil--forecast an oil production peak of 2035.) Regardless of the actual date involved, the point is not that we are running out of oil (the peak is the halfway point) but that oil production can't be sustained at the rate it's happening now. Moreover, once we've reached the peak, the decline may be fairly rapid.
For one thing, the oil we've been using is the oil that's easy to get--it's going to take more and more energy to get the oil and at some point it isn't going to be worth it. More importantly, the demand (especially with developing countries such as China and India using more and more energy) appears to be increasing even as the supply may be diminishing. That's the supply and demand that I think may be responsible for the surging oil prices. Even with the increase in oil prices, the demand (worldwide) is increasing with it.
What does all this have to do with social change? Industrial society runs on oil. Our cars, buses, trucks, trains, and airplanes all depend on oil. Almost everything that's made of plastic is made from oil. Most of our medicines are made from oil. And our food is brought to us by trucks running on oil--and, depending on where you live, that could be a lot of oil.
Radical writers are always talking about how to dismantle the system, how to smash the state, destroy corporate capitalism. I saw a bumper sticker in 1991 that said 'Visualize Industrial Collapse'. I couldn't do it then. I can now. What if rather than dismantling capitalism, it collapsed on its own? Especially if oil isn't the only thing that's reaching its peak...
More next post...
Quote of the day: "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." - Kenneth Boulding
Word (or phrase) of the day: Parecon
Hero(es) of the day: Aung San Suu Kyi
But a number of writers--many of them geologists, financiers, and journalists--have started discussing something called Peak Oil. (Some books about this include: Kenneth Deffeyes, Beyond Oil; Colin Campbell, The Coming Oil Crisis; Jeremy Leggett, Half Gone; Matthew Simmons, Twilight in the Desert; Dale Allen Pfeiffer, The End of the Oil Age; Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over; Paul Roberts, The End of Oil; and James Kunstler, The Long Emergency.) The gist of Peak Oil theory is a prediction (first made by a geologist working for Shell Oil, M King Hubbert, in 1969) that the peak production of oil would occur around the millenium. (Hubbert apparently thought it would occur around 1995-2000, Deffeyes claims it happened at the end of 2005, and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas is guessing it will occur in 2010. Even the wildest oil optimists--for example the US Energy Information Administration spokesperson quoted in Roberts, The End of Oil--forecast an oil production peak of 2035.) Regardless of the actual date involved, the point is not that we are running out of oil (the peak is the halfway point) but that oil production can't be sustained at the rate it's happening now. Moreover, once we've reached the peak, the decline may be fairly rapid.
For one thing, the oil we've been using is the oil that's easy to get--it's going to take more and more energy to get the oil and at some point it isn't going to be worth it. More importantly, the demand (especially with developing countries such as China and India using more and more energy) appears to be increasing even as the supply may be diminishing. That's the supply and demand that I think may be responsible for the surging oil prices. Even with the increase in oil prices, the demand (worldwide) is increasing with it.
What does all this have to do with social change? Industrial society runs on oil. Our cars, buses, trucks, trains, and airplanes all depend on oil. Almost everything that's made of plastic is made from oil. Most of our medicines are made from oil. And our food is brought to us by trucks running on oil--and, depending on where you live, that could be a lot of oil.
Radical writers are always talking about how to dismantle the system, how to smash the state, destroy corporate capitalism. I saw a bumper sticker in 1991 that said 'Visualize Industrial Collapse'. I couldn't do it then. I can now. What if rather than dismantling capitalism, it collapsed on its own? Especially if oil isn't the only thing that's reaching its peak...
More next post...
Quote of the day: "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." - Kenneth Boulding
Word (or phrase) of the day: Parecon
Hero(es) of the day: Aung San Suu Kyi
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
