Into Yet Another New Year

While I haven't been posting here, I haven't been idle.

I've been cleaning and cooking for and shopping for the commune I live in, getting involved with local groups, recovering from a stupid and scary injury that was entirely my fault, working on compost, helping with growing projects until the growing season was over, and I even wrote a three part fantasy story for which I am working on the last chapter. 

Most importantly, as of today, I am taking back control of the Commune Life  blog. I will return to the intensive schedule of having something out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I just got back from an Assembly of communes in southern Missouri and it made me want to be more involved with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities.  And I visited East Brook Community Farm and that made me want to build connection between them and Cotyledon, our community.

So, I have much to do in 2019.  I cannot imagine getting bored with my life.  I just wonder how I ever did stuff and worked for a living, too.  I certainly don't think of myself as 'retired', it's that I no longer get paid directly for the work that I do.

And, yes, the times are challenging.   My wish for everyone who reads this is a new year that is better than the old. 

And I hope to write a little more in the new year. Let's see.  As they say, time will tell.

“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.” ― Ellen Goodman

The Population Paradox

So here’s a problem.  It goes like this: Suppose you believe we need to reduce the size of the population.  You may decide not have any children, or you may only have one or, at the most, two. If you have children, you teach them what you believe, and hopefully they have less children as well.

Now, suppose you don't believe that the population needs to be reduced.  Suppose you believe that it should grow, and you also believe in large families.  So you have a lot of children and your children have a lot of children.

The result is that there are less and less people who believe in reducing the population size and more and more who don't.   This is the population paradox. It says that zero growth people will tend over the generations to wipe themselves out. Even though I think that reducing the population is necessary, it's going to be tricky.

It doesn't take into account our  ability to persuade people and change minds, but it does make me think of the Shakers who died out because they believed in celibacy.  And, I think that there is an unfortunate truth to it.

I do believe that we are in population overshoot, so this paradox worries me, but I have no idea what to do about it. I have written about simple things that people can do about population growth, but I wasn't aware of this paradox at the time. Now that I am, the one thing I can think to do about it is to put it out so other people can think about it.

I want to be clear. Like all my recent posts, I’m not saying that we are doomed, but I am saying that we’ve got a problem, and these days I have become very skeptical about our ability to change it.

So I advise that we hope for the best and prepare for the worst, because what else can we do?

Quote of the Day: “When it comes to the population explosion, there are two questions on the table.  One, is our population growth going to kill us all? And two, is there any ethical way to prevent that from happening?” - Annalee Newitz

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

After the Ecstasy, the Laundry (by Jack Kornfield) is a book about spiritual development that focuses on the fact that, in spite of whatever insights or bliss states or peak experiences people get from doing the work, in the end your stuff doesn’t change that much.  What seems to change is your relationship with your stuff.

The author claims to have interviewed nearly a hundred experienced practitioners from various Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish paths.  One Buddhist teacher described his slow transformation this way: “If my life was like a crowded garage where I kept bumping into the furniture and judging myself, it’s now like I’ve moved into an airplane hangar with the doors left open.  I’ve got the old stuff there, but it doesn’t limit me like before.”

It’s a useful spiritual read, full of people’s experiences and teaching stories, but what interested me was the title.  It reminded me of a Doonesbury comic from the seventies (and this is from memory) where a member of the Walden commune was being asked to do the dishes.  She asked why the men didn’t have to do the dishes and the older woman asking her pointed out that the men did do the dishes, but this time it was her turn.  As the younger woman walked away, she muttered something about “After the revolution...” and the older woman said, “After the revolution, we’ll still need to do the dishes.”

After the ecstasy, the laundry.  After the revolution, the dishes.  I have two takeaways from this:

The first is the simple fact that no matter what transformation we go through, we still will have to do the work.  In fact, the work is just part of the process and the most revolutionary thing we can do is to make sure that the work is being done by everybody, more or less equally.

The second is to question the place of laundry and dishes in a future sustainable culture.  After the Great Turning (to use Joanna Macy’s term), will we still do laundry and dishes?  We are, after all, the only animals to wear clothes and eat off of plates.

However, except in some tropical paradise, I can’t imagine that very many people will be able to go naked (especially in colder climates) and live off of fruits and berries.  But will we clean our clothes and dishes (and bodies) in the river?  Will we have a sci-fi future where we use sonic devices for our cleaning?  As Niels Bohr is supposed to have pointed out, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.”

In any case, no matter what happens, there will still be work to do.   What the work is, isn’t as clear but clearly we will still need people to do it.

Quote of the Day:  “To sustain spiritual life, we need each other’s eyes and hearts as surely as we need help creating food and shelter.  This reflection and encouragement is no small thing. …

“The experience of being truly seen and honored by another reminds us of who we are.  We cannot underestimate the importance of the awakening we bring to one another.”  - Jack Kornfield

Learning from Modeling

I've recently been reading The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge (which I hope to review at some point). I've also just read Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows, which was wonderful but I was borrowing somebody else's library book. I know I'm going to have to get it.

So I was excited when Peter Senge began referring to work by Donella Meadows. I knew that Thinking in Systems came out after The Fifth Discipline so I was curious what he was citing. It turns out he was referring to an article that she wrote, "Whole Earth Models & Systems", in the Summer 1982 issue of CoEvolution Quarterly. I have lots of old CQs which I treasure, so I flew to my horde, and there was Summer 1982. I read the article and learned a lot from it. I was particularly impressed by her reference to seven very different "Global Computer Models" that various people had made. She pointed out that these were "made by people with different political and cultural persuasions and all extremely biased, but in different ways." She goes on to say that these "modelers themselves, who generally started out hostile and critical of one another, have been surprised at the extent to which their conclusions overlapped." She then lists 12 statements that she thought everyone who has done the modeling would agree to. (Apparently this list is also included in a book of hers that I wasn't aware of entitled: Groping in the Dark: The First Decade of Global Modeling.) I want to quote extensively from this list (but not everything, just to conserve time and space) because I think it supports a lot of what I wrote in my previous series on Beyond Fuels.

Her list (excerpts--and remember this was written in 1982; if only we acted then...):

1. "There is no known physical or technical reason why basic needs cannot be supplied for all the world's people into the foreseeable future. These needs are not being met now because of social and political structures, values, norms, and world views, not because of physical scarcities."

2. "Population and physical (material) capital cannot grow forever on a finite planet."

4. "Continuing 'business-as-usual' policies through the next few decades will not lead to a desirable future - or even meeting basic human needs. It will result in an increasing gap between the rich and the poor, problems with resource availability and environmental destruction, and worsening economic conditions." (Unfortunately, all this wisdom from 1982 reminds me of John Michael Greer's remark that "...the collective response of most industrial nations to the approach of the limits to growth would turn out to be a thirty-year vacation from sanity..." See Beyond Fuels 7: The Muddling Path, 12/26/11, for the whole quote.)

5. "...Over the next three decades the world socioeconomic system will be in a period of transition to some state that will be not only quantitatively but also qualitatively different from the present."

7. "Owing to the momentum inherent in the world's physical and social processes, policy changes made soon are likely to have more impact with less effort than the same set of changes made later. By the time a problem is obvious to everyone, it is often too late to solve it."

8. "Although technical changes are expected and needed, no set of purely technical changes tested in any of the models was sufficient in itself to bring about a desirable future. Restructuring social, economic, and political systems was much more effective." (Only too true...)

9. "The interdependencies among peoples and nations across time and space are greater than commonly imagined. Actions taken at one time and on one part of the globe have far-reaching consequences that are impossible to predict intuitively, and probably impossible to predict (totally, precisely, maybe at all) with computer models." (Parenthesis and items within it were part of the original quote. My thought: I think this says we need to think globally, act locally.)

10. "Because of these interdependencies, single, simple measures intended to reach narrowly defined goals are likely to be counter-productive. Decisions should be made within the broadest possible context, across space, time, and areas of knowledge." (It's all connected, it's all connected...)

11. "Cooperative approaches to achieving individual or national goals often turn out to be more beneficial in the long run to all parties than competitive approaches." (If only more people thought about the long run.)

12. "Many plans, programs, and agreements, particularly international ones, are based on assumptions about the world that are either mutually inconsistent or inconsistent with physical reality. Much time and effort is spent designing and debating policies that are, in fact, simply impossible."

She goes on to say that "To nearly anyone with the education and time to think about the world as a whole, these statements are not surprising. ... What is surprising is the lack of congruence between these descriptions of the world and the view of the world reflected in policy - nearly every policy of every nation, enterprise, and individual."

I hope to write more about systems thinking, and the work of Peter Senge and Donella Meadows, in the future. In the meanwhile, I hope that at least some of this is still useful as we try to figure out what we can do now in working toward a better future.


Quote of the Day: "The bottom line message of the global models is quite simple: The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable, global problems arise directly from this mismatch." - Donella Meadows

Beyond Fuels 12: Summing It Up

We need to learn to live without fossil fuels because, whether we like it or not, it's going to happen. The biggest question beyond fuels is whether we get there by wrecking the planet--fracking, burning low-grade coal, stripmining everything we can, extracting from tar sands and shale, causing ever-greater climate change, and massively polluting our world to get those last drops of fuel--and then, eventually, running out out of available fuel anyway, or we choose to change and live sustainably by making the adjustments now and begin creating a different future.

My hope is this series has been useful in giving some ideas about what each of us can do to change and prepare for life without fuels: learning to use simple tools, to fix and build things ourselves, to use our muscles instead of oil, etc, and to envision a 'post-carbon' world. I've looked four pathways forward, and as I said in my last post, I think we need to draw from all of them: curtailing our consumption while creating community, looking realistically at possibilities ahead while also seeing the opportunity to create real social change, and most importantly, realizing that much of this will be done by small, slow, incremental changes--'muddling', if you will, our way forward. None of this will be easy, but it needs to be done and, if there's anything we've learned, we can't expect government or business to lead the way.

It's up to each of us to begin, little by little, to build that world beyond fuels, just as it's up to each of us to work toward a world where everyone gets what they need, where people are not hurt or oppressed, and where we work with nature and natural systems, rather than believing somehow we can control everything. Another world is not just possible, but essential. Things are going to change, the only question is whether the change is toward the world we want to live in or a world that will bring horrors to upcoming generations. Each of us has to choose. We are moving, right now, day by day, beyond fuels--but it will be our actions that will determine what lies there.


Quote of the Day: "We cannot predict outcomes but some things are coming clear and that clarity is beginning to rattle us: The shock of melting ice caps and dying penguins, of leveled rainforests and species wiped out daily before we've met them, of children armed in genocidal war, and children dying of hunger even as we feed over a third of all grain to livestock...[sic]all of this is sinking in, and more and more of us know the time is now--that we act powerfully now or we see our fate sealed...
"...the real problems facing our planet can only be met by the ingenuity, experience, and buy-in--the contagious engagement--of billions of us." - Frances Moore Lappé

Beyond Fuels 11: Where The Paths Converge

The four paths I've just described (aka the four books I've just reviewed) have a lot in common. First of all, they all are clear that we can't continue on as we are, using fossil fuels like they're endless, because they're not. On the other hand, no one is predicting sudden collapse, the destruction of everything we've known, and plundering hordes of barbarians. Although John Michael Greer is the clearest on this (see also his book The Long Descent for another take on this), all four of these authors talk about a long, slow pathway toward a future beyond fuels.

In essence, I think each of these books focus on a different element of that pathway. Muddling toward Frugality emphasizes the slow, indirect route we will need to take. Plan C emphasizes what we will need to do (curtail consumption and create community). The Great Turning emphasizes the opportunity here to use this unavoidable decline to move toward the society many of us want. The Ecotechnic Future emphasizes the probable stages ahead.

Where they disagree (and there are plenty of these places), they illuminate one another and push us toward examining our own values and biases. None of them suggest their view is what's going to happen (Korten: "The Great Turning is not a prophecy; it is a possibility." Greer: "...the logic of dissensus applies to my own ideas just as much as much as anyone else's..."); all of these paths are really just hypothetical routes. And what JMG refers to as "the logic of dissensus" makes all of these paths valuable because each author has sketched pieces of the potential terrain ahead--the greater the diversity of options available to us, the more likely some of these routes will prove useful.

Which is why I've read and reviewed all of them, as well as why I've been writing this series. I think that, year by year, we will be dealing more and more with less and less fuel sources available to us. All of these authors would agree that beginning to prepare for this now will help us tremendously as we move beyond fuels.


Quote of the Day: "The goal of foreseeing the future exactly and preparing for it perfectly is unrealizable. ...
"The future can't be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. ... We can't surge forward into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them." - Donella Meadows

Beyond Fuels 10: The Ecotechnic Path

Surprisingly, the most practical, rational, and hard-nosed of these four paths comes from a book written by a druid who also writes books about the occult (his recent books focused on UFOs and Secret Societies). This is actually the 'Archdruid' John Michael Greer who I've blogged about several times (see A Magical Way of Thinking, 8/3/08 and The Archdruid Report, 8/5/08).

I've referred to Greer (aka JMG) in two of my previous posts in this series since he has commented on the writings of both Warren Johnson and David Korten (the former positively and the latter negatively). The Ecotechnic Future is his attempt to look at life beyond fuels and he subtitles the book 'envisioning a post-peak world'.

The title is somewhat misleading however since he never really describes what an Ecotechnic Future is. The closest he comes is in the introduction where he says that "an ecotechnic society... will support a relatively complex technology while maintaining rich and sustainable relations with the rest of the biosphere." But Greer's real interest in writing this book is describing the path to that future, particularly focusing on what we can do now and in the immediate period ahead. He uses history and particularly the evolutionary perspective of succession to look at several stages that he thinks we will go through before we even near his ecotechnic future.

Greer sees us now in 'The End of Affluence' moving into a time of 'Scarcity Industrialism' where we will continue as we have been but with less and less resources and needing to get the most out of anything we have. As these resources run out, we will transition to an 'Age of Salvage' where people will recycle many things in ways they were probably not intended for--because he thinks at this point we won't have the resources to create many of the things we now take for granted. (He envisions a time when steel girders, for example, will be hacked free and then used by blacksmiths to forge nails, plows, knives, etc.) Only when we have used up most of what we can salvage are we likely to begin building an 'Ecotechnic Future'.

JMG then looks at how we can find, create, and use resources such as food, housing, and energy, as well as maintaining community, culture, and science through these changes. He thinks that 'dissensus' (which he defines as 'the deliberate avoidance of consensus') as a useful tool since he sees the period ahead (and indeed the whole future) as quite unpredicable and having different people exploring a variety of paths makes it more likely that some of these folks may stumble on the right thing to do in their own situation. He also thinks that different strategies may well work in different areas, so he doesn't think that anyone (including himself) would be able to come up with a plan that would work everywhere. Greer supports what he calls 'the mariner's two hands'--that is, having one set of skills and tools to deal with whatever crisis we may be facing at the time, while preserving other 'legacies of the modern world' for future generations that may be able to use them.

He also writes a section on work where he talks about what skills might be useful to have in the immediate future. (He calls this section 'the deindustrial want ads'.)

All in all this is a very useful book to think about both the intricacies as well as the difficulties in creating a path beyond fuels. JMG's notion of dissensus applies to his ideas also (as he freely admits), which is just as well because I'm not ready to agree with some of his ideas about community and culture. Still, this is absolutely worth reading--and, in fact, balances out some of the optomism of the previous three books nicely without falling into the trap of gloom, doom, and collapse.

In my next post I want to see what we can learn from looking at all four paths together.

Quote of the Day: "The road to the ecotechnic future can only be guessed at in advance, and will have to be built step by step as the human societies of the future struggle to adapt the legacies of our age to the hard limits of a finite planet and the unguessable possibilities of their own time. What we do now, or leave undone, may have a potent influence on their successes or failures. Challenging though it will certainly be to take action on that basis, I can think of no task more richly worth our efforts." - John Michael Greer

Beyond Fuels 9: The Turning Path

David Korten's The Great Turning is probably the most ambitious of the four paths to the future. This isn't exactly the same as Joanna Macy's version of 'The Great Turning', but in my post about it (see The Great Turning, 11/15/09), I wrote: "David Korten admits he got the term from Joanna Macy, and said that when he asked her to use it, she said that it 'should be a public term that is used by everyone and owned by no one.'"

Korten subtitles his book, 'From Empire to Earth Community', and this is the choice he puts before us. He gives his take on history and the growth of Empire, as well as laying out how the United States fits into all this. He begins with discussing the 'imperatives' of peak oil, climate change, terrorism and a world we can't conquer, and increasing inequality and economic instability.

While he sees this as a crisis, and is well aware that we need to go beyond fuels, Korten also sees this as an opportunity to create what he calls 'Earth Community'. He's not talking utopia here. He lays out a framework that includes vibrant community life (mutual trust, shared values, connection, and secure civil liberties), vocations that contribute to the well-being of the community and insure basic needs are met, strong and stable families, civic engagement, and a healthy natural world. He says "...this list may read like a radical utopian fantasy but only because it contrasts so starkly with our present experience. ... each condition aligns with core values shared by both conservatives and liberals. If any of them seem alien, it's only because they all depend absolutely on cooperation and sharing." Yet he believes that cooperation and sharing is possible. It's only our brainwashing by the values of 'Empire' that keep us from seeing this.

David Korten goes on to say that what we need to do is to challenge the stories of Empire and begin telling stories of what could be, putting our visions clearly out to people. In fact, he titles the last chapter "Change the Story, Change the Future". Simply challenging the stories isn't enough, of course, but people (and thus society) are not going to change until they have at least some idea of what's possible.

It's a broad and far-reaching vision and sometimes he goes a bit far. He begins with a psychological view of human development that, while I think it's mostly accurate, can give the impression of a favored few being superior to the rest of us. One person who, unfortunately, got that impression is John Michael Greer (I'll look at his path forward next) who writes "... David Korten's The Great Turning, insists that certain people have reached a higher 'developmental stage' than the rest of us and are thus naturally fitted to run the world." However, Korten doesn't say this at all. What he says is "Although persons of a mature consciousness are generally averse to the competitive struggle for dominator power, they are strongly attracted to leadership roles in social movements engaged in challenging Empire's dominion." While I still have some qualms about seeing some as more developed than others, there's a big difference between being 'fitted to run the world' and being 'attracted to leadership roles in social movements'. The model David Korten puts out is based clearly on 'partnership' rather than 'domination'.

Still, for whatever faults there may be, I'm glad to have this vision out there. In some ways I don't think he goes far enough, and I'd like a more radical outline for how we could be living. However, I really think this book gives a good overview of some of the possibilities of how we could be living in a world beyond fuels, and lays out clearly some of the next steps we need to take to create the path. As Korten himself says, "...we humans are path-breaking pioneers in uncharted territory."


Quote of the Day: "In the days now at hand, we must each be clear that every individual and collective choice that we make is a vote for the future we of this time will bequeath to the generations that follow. The Great Turning is not a prophecy; it is a possibility." - David Korten

Beyond Fuels 8: The 'Plan C' Path

Pat Murphy's Plan C talks about four different plans we could choose. Plan A is what he calls 'Business As Usual', where we continue doing what we're doing, assuming that economic growth is infinite, or at least indefinite, and what we're doing is okay. Plan B uses 'Clean Green Technology' to rescue us from the mess we find ourselves in. (In a footnote he claims that his version of 'Plan B' is not about the book of the same name by Lester Brown and that the comments he makes about Plan B do not 'necessarily apply to him'.)

Plans C and D are wonderfully alliterative: Plan D he refers to as 'Die Off', and I would add, Death, Destruction, and Doom. (I think we are all familiar with that one, so much so that there is a group of peak oil believers commonly called 'Doomers'.) What Pat Murphy advocates is Plan C, 'Curtailment and Community'. I have it up on my door these days as: Conserve by Curtailing Consumption and Create Caring Community.

Thus, the path of Plan C is two fold: first we need to cut our consumption and consumer habits, rather than expecting some new technology to save us, and second, we need to rebuild community around us, since that's what is most likely to support us through the difficult times ahead.

While it talks about peak oil, peak gas, peak coal, peak uranium, peak economy, and peak empire (not to mention climate change and inequality), the book focuses on what each of us can do to forge the path beyond fuels. It looks in particular at the ways we use energy in buildings, transportation, and food--and how we can change what we do. There are lots of graphs and technical details. (Pat Murphy says in the preface that "This is definitely a numbers book.") Much of the beginning of the book will be familiar to those who follow peak oil and climate change. But the book's strong point is its emphasis on what we can do, even going as far as giving 'six steps' we can take to change our food habits (eat less, change our diet [eliminating soft drinks, snack foods, fast foods, and highly processed foods], reduce meat consumption, purchase local organic food, preserve and store food, and create a garden and/or a henhouse).

He does go on a few tangents I found a bit overly focused on specific solutions (the Smart Jitney, for example, or devoting a whole chapter to 'Kicking the Media Habit'), but ends with chapters appropriately covering 'Localization' and 'Reviving and Renewing Community'. All in all this is a useful book, I think, for charting out the path beyond fuels.


Quote of the Day: "We are facing multiple grave world crises--peak oil, climate change, inequity and species extinction to name just a few. ... Twenty year of so-called sustainability conversations have led nowhere, and green has degenerated into a marketing term. ...
"Our problem is cultural, not technical. It is a character issue, not a scientific one. ... We have allowed cheap fossil fuels to change us from citizens into mere consumers. ...
"Plan C offers an alternative perspective to the ever more frantic technical proposals for continuing our soul destroying and life endangering way of living. ...
"I envision a society based on cooperation and care of the planet rather than competition and exploitation of planetary resources." - Pat Murphy

Beyond Fuels 7: The Muddling Path

Muddling Toward Frugality is a book originally written in 1978 by Warren Johnson. From searching online it seems like it's been recently republished with a review by Edward Abbey (also from 1978) tacked on as an introduction.

The scary thing about re-reading this book is realizing how clear it was, even back then, what we needed to do, and how little of it has been done in the last thirty-two years.

Warren Johnson took the title of his book from a paper written in 1959 by Charles Lindbloom called, "The Science of 'Muddling Through'". It was about the way administrators of various types actually make decisions as opposed to the way academic theorists described ideal decision making. As Johnson says, "The only trouble is that this is rarely the way decisions are made, primarily because it is rarely possible." Administrators need to deal with conflicting demands and priorities and seldom have the time or, indeed, the needed information, to make ideal decisions. The result is that "Even with the best of intentions, the administrator ends up by taking only a modest step (well checked out by the powers that be), ... that at least makes a marginal contribution to the issue at hand. In the process of reaching a decision, the administrator becomes practical and political as well as rational. The result is muddling through." And this is basically the process that Johnson suggests for dealing with the coming crises.

This book really is practical and makes a lot of sense. However, as one reviewer noted, Johnson also muddles his way through the book--making detours through history (not that I haven't done it in this blog) and his opinions on a number of issues (some of which I can't say that I agree with). But his point is if we all make small steps in the direction of using less resources and living on a smaller, simpler scale, this will move us to a future beyond fuels far better than trying grand schemes and failing.

Last year, John Michael Greer (see my posts A Magical Way of Thinking, 8/3/08 and The Archdruid Report, 8/5/08, for more on JMG--and note that one of the paths ahead is his) wrote a post in his blog, The Archdruid Report, referencing this book. I want to quote a little of it, since it puts the book in perspective. Greer wrote: "Warren Johnson’s Muddling Toward Frugality has fallen into the limbo our cultural memory reserves for failed prophecies; neither he nor, to be fair to him, anybody else in the sustainability movement of the Seventies had any idea that the collective response of most industrial nations to the approach of the limits to growth would turn out to be a thirty-year vacation from sanity in which short-term political gimmicks and the wildly extravagant drawdown of irreplaceable resources would be widely mistaken for permanent solutions.

"... His strategy, though, still has some things going for it that no other available approach can match: It can still be applied this late in the game; if it’s done with enough enthusiasm or desperation, and with a clear sense of the nature of our predicament, it could still get a fair number of us through the mess ahead; and it certainly offers better odds than sitting on our hands and waiting for the ship to sink, which under one pretense or another is the other option open to us right now." And this summarizes the best reason that I can think of for re-reading this book. Seeing the direction we still need to move in and making moves in that direction, no matter how small, may (if anything does) make a difference.

This is the simplest of the four paths I'll look at. Can we muddle our way to a life beyond fuels? What other choices do we have? Let's look at some other, more recent explorations of the path ahead.


Quote of the Day: "Above all, it can be a good life. In effect, we will be exchanging the grand achievements of large scale technological society for modest accomplishments on a more human scale. ... Above all, we will have the comfort of knowing that our relationship to the environment is sustainable, and that the earth is a true home to us." - Warren Johnson

The Long Night

I'm interrupting this series on life Beyond Fuels to observe the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.

I usually blog at this time about the darkness and the light. (In fact, last year's post was called just that: The Darkness and the Light, 12/21/10.) There are definitely blessings to the darkness, but it is also true that what we celebrate now is the returning of the light. There are traditions where folks wait up all night to see the return of the sun at dawn. Somehow, it always seems that if we wait long enough we will get through the darkness into the new day--even on the longest night.

And beyond this is the winter, here in New England the coldest time of the year, but if we can just hang on, the spring will come.

And this makes me think that even this is connected with my current series on life beyond fuels. Certainly there are rough times ahead, but I believe that if we persevere there will be a new day beyond it, and even a new spring. We can survive the long night, we can grow in the darkness, and the cold, and we can be there for a new day--not only for this current long, cold night in this confusing, surprising year, but for the nights and days to come.

Welcome Winter, Happy Solstice, Happy Yule, and to all, a good, long, night.

Quote of the Day: "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." - Anne Bradstreet

Beyond Fuels 6: Four Paths

So we've gotten our tools together, flexed our muscles, and looked at some of what may lie ahead. Now where do we go?

The truth is no one knows. I like the book title (about the Mondragon cooperatives) "We Build the Road as We Travel." Still, a number of people have attempted to provide roadmaps.

In the next few posts I want to look at some pathways that we could take as we move beyond fuels. The four routes that I want to look at are far from identical. Yet I think that looking at what they have in common, as well as where they differ can help us think about the road ahead of us. One of the authors of the four books I will profile (John Michael Greer) talks about 'dissensus', the idea that in a situation (such as what we are facing) where none of what might happen is clear or predictable, the more divergent options we pursue (collectively), the more chance that one or another will work. More important, what works in one place may not at all be what works in another.

With that in mind, let's look at four different views of where we may (or should) be going as we move beyond fuels. After I cover them, I'll write a post on my thoughts about why, in spite of their divergences, I think each of these maps of the future is useful. If nothing else, they provide a good starting place for thinking of directions and preparations we will need as the age of fossil (and nuclear) fuels comes to an end.


Quote of the Day: "...the human sense of what satisfies, the human sense of ultimacy, requires what Rosemary Ruether called 'the conversion to the earth'. ... It will only be powerful enough to save the time and space which that future can unfold if our work on collective structure taps the energy at once of judgement and of hope. ...
"At this point calls to conversion and sacrifice only have a chance of being heard if they are inscribed with the language of desire. Desire not just for the sake of an abstract future, but because a new community already begins to form in the practice of ecojustice. That is, to sort through our garbage, to make choices based on awareness of the sinister and/or beautiful web of connections of our food to our weather to our starving and tortured fellow humans to women's bodies and the homeless ... this multi-dimensional work of recycling releases new ways of being together, a new sense of common goal, of being on the edge together, of consoling and delighting each other in our edginess. We find together the spiritual practices which allow us to ground, quite literally, in our bodies and our earth, the anxieties of the unknown future. ... We are here to claim, to defend and to renew our earth home, the inhabited whole." - Catherine Keller

Beyond Fuels 5: Post Carbon

Last Christmas, two young adults that I helped raise gave me a lovely present. They presented me with a book I had never seen before, The Post Carbon Reader, by Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch.

I'd never heard of the book, although I certainly knew of Richard Heinberg and have blogged about him in here (see for example, Peak Everything, 7/30/08). But when I turned the book over, the back cover made it clear that Heinberg wasn't the only author in this book I knew.

This book is an anthology and includes Rob Hopkins (see Transition Towns, 10/16/08), Michael Shulman (see Going Local, 7/26/08), Bill McKibben (a writer and a journalist who has become one of the leaders of the climate change movement), Stephanie Mills (a former editor of Co-Evolution Quarterly, one of my favorite publications ever), Wes Jackson (who has written extensively on agriculture's impact on sustainability), David Orr (a key figure in the ecological literacy movement), Chris Martenson (creator of the Crash Course, an online course that is the best introduction to peak oil, economic collapse, and personal preparedness, that I know of), and Tom Whipple (an ex-CIA analyst who writes a column for the Falls Church News Press, which pops up regularly on my peak oil news searches).

It also includes some folks that I'd like to pay more attention to, like Erika Allen (who works with Growing Power, a local food initiative focusing on low-income communities), Michael Bomford (a researcher in Kentucky working on organic agricultural systems suitable for small farms with limited resources), and Deborah and Frank Popper (who have came up with a concept for the Great Plains states to manage declining population and economic shrinkage by creating land reserves emphasizing ecological restoration and native species, and are now working on 'Smart Decline' strategies for urban areas).

This book is a primer on issues we will need to deal with as we move beyond fuels: climate change, water, biodiversity, food, population, energy, economics, transportation, waste, health, and education--as well as looking at the effects of culture and behavior, the changes needed in cities, towns, and suburbs, and ways to build resilience in the midst of major change. It ends with a 'Call to Action' written by Asher Miller, executive director of the Post Carbon Institute, the initiators of this book. He states, "Our vision is of a world worth inheriting, where people not only survive, they thrive." There's a direction for going beyond fuels. He ends the book with, "Now put this book down and go do something. Anything." Hopefully something informed by all you might learn from this book.

Quote of the Day: "Resilience in the face of social upheaval resulting from peaking supplies of traditional energy and climate disruption requires that we protect our landscapes and ensure that the services they provide are sustained. ... We can do this now and be better for it, come what may. And it's essential that we act now; the unraveling is well under way." - Gloria Flora

Beyond Fuels 4: Human Power

In a world beyond fuels, we will need to figure out what we can use to keep what we want and need going. One method might be human-powered machines.

The Human-Powered Home by Tamara Dean gives a very useful overview of what can be accomplished by using muscles to power things. Solar power isn't always reliable and neither is wind, and hydropower assumes that you are near a river or stream that you can tap into, but when all else fails, there is always what my mother referred to as 'elbow grease'--or in the case of many of these appliances, 'knee and leg power'.

The first two chapters of this book give a history of using muscles to power things, and an overview of what you need to understand in order to build human-powered machines. These should be read by anyone who has ever thought about the amount of energy that can be raised by pedaling, stomping, or hand-cranking. The author gives clear and useful information about how all these things work--as well as what doesn't work and what hasn't worked.

The next three chapters concentrate on plans for actual devices (and stories about similar ones) to power things in the kitchen, the garden, and around the house. The final chapter focuses on recreational devices and, more importantly, devices for 'emergency preparedness'.

I became aware of this book when I found out one of my friends was using plans from it to build a bicycle-powered electrical generator. (I wanted to help but I didn't really know much about electricity. I spent nearly a week with my head in books about electricity and electronics--not really something I wanted to study!)

When you think about Peak Oil, etc, (see my posts on Peak Oil, 7/18/08, Peak Everything, 7/20/08, and Collapse, 7/5/10, for more on this concept and its reprecussions) you may start wondering whether we can salvage any of what we've learned in the last couple of hundred years and whether there will be a place for technology in the future. I think this book point the way to a technology that will always be available to us--using our arms and our legs.


Quote of the Day: "Replacing motors with muscles can even be considered a political act. Gandhi urged his fellow Indians to spin and weave their own cloth, endorsing local self-reliance as a means to defy the British textile industry which had crushed cottage industries and changed the nature of Indian society. He called this self-sufficiency 'swadeshi'. Through swadeshi he believed India could gain its independence. Each day he sat at his spinning wheel and practiced it himself. Perhaps we can claim hand-cranking our coffee mill each morning or pedal-powering our laptop in the evening as our own personal swadeshi." - Tamara Dean

Beyond Fuels 3: Handy Books

Right across the street from my new place is the city recycling center. It's really convenient but unfortunately they have a book section and everytime I visit, I come back with more books. (It's an addiction, I tell you!)

Two books I picked up fit the theme of this part of the Beyond Fuels series: Handyman: Complete Guide to Home Maintenance (Banner Press, 1975) and, for those who are very ambitious, How to Build Your Own Home, by Robert Reschke.

Once you've learned how to use tools (see my last post, The Tools Beyond Fuels, 11/28/11), it's time to start learning how to fix things--particularly around your house.

I'm not recommending these particular books, but there are lots of books out there on fixing things, home repairs, and home maintenance. Others that I've seen include books from Reader's Digest, Time-Life, and Sunset Publishing. You should be able to find something easily at used bookstores, yard sales, or even giveaways. These old manuals give lots of useful tips for do-it-yourselfers, and as fuels go away, a lot more of us are going to have to do it ourselves.

In imagining a world beyond fuels, I'm imagining a world where we do a lot of the work around our own homes, the way it was done not so long ago before repair people would arrive with their trucks and vans. When I talk about building a new world beyond fuels, sometimes that actually requires a hammer and saw.


Quote of the Day: "One key ingredient is confidence. You gain this by a combination of knowledge and practice. You learn by inquiring and you learn by doing. ...
"As implied earlier, it is more satisfactory to work in pairs than alone. You exchange knowledge and know-how, and beat the weariness and discouragement..." - Robert Reschke

Beyond Fuels 2: The Tools Beyond Fuels

My former housemate Jon is a very handy guy to have around. He's good at fixing things--in fact, he fixes things for a living. When I expressed interest in learning these kinds of skills, he loaned me two of his books. (It's been sort of a long-term loan as I borrowed them quite a while back.)

The Way Things Work by David Macaulay is an introduction to the basic physical principles of tools. While it does explore electricity and nuclear power plants (and the newest edition focuses on computers) the early chapters give a basic understanding of how simple things actually work.

In fact, the first part is called The Mechanics of Movement and discusses the Inclined Plane, Levers, Wheels and Axles, Gears and Belts, Cams and Cranks and Pulleys, and Springs and Screws and Rotating Wheels. If you can ignore the overly cute mammoths, this book will give you a clear and simple picture of the physics behind the tools and machines we use. Even better, it shows how some of these very basic concepts are used in many complicated machines. Later sections explain how boats and pumps and toilets and thermostats work. All in all, incredibly useful to someone who has no real knowledge of why and how tools (and machines) work. And if fossil fuels go away, knowing the use, care, and repair of tools and simple machines is going to be very important.

The other book Jon loaned me is a very old, very useful book called A Museum of Early American Tools by Eric Sloane. Eric Sloane points out that the word 'museum' used to mean a printed collection of facts. His book is a collection of information about the tools used in the US before mass production took over. They were hand made with care and each was one of a kind. The book gives a lot of information about the functions of tools and what was used for what--particularly which implement was used to fashion what before power tools took over. Each page has beautiful drawings of the tools and is filled with information on their use.

If fuels are going away, so are power tools. To live beyond fuels means that we can't take any technology for granted. Not just power tools, but even things like assuming the lights will work and we can just purchase what we want. Knowing how to make and craft things, how things work and how they are repaired, and how to do this all using simple tools will be essential. We will need an real understanding of what basic hand tools are and how they work. Once they were how everything were made and built. I believe that this is how they will be again.


Quote of the Day: "The Civil War period marked a turning point in tool design... Before that time, the word tool meant an implement that could make one thing at a time; mass production tools then entered the scene, and the word tool, which had meant only 'hand tool', took on many added meanings. ...
"Generally speaking, hand tools made after the Civil War period lacked the simple beauty of those of the ante-bellum period. Things were made to sell quickly, things were made in large quantities so that they could be catalogued identically, and hand-made implements began to disappear. ...
"When we consider tools, we are dealing with human benefactors of the most primary sort. Tools increase and vary human power, they economize human time, and they convert raw substances into valuable and useful products. ...
"An extraordinary awareness of life and time permeated our early days; when something was made and the maker was satisfied, it wasn't complete until his mark and the date were added. Nowadays things are almost obsolete before they leave the drawing board." - Eric Sloane

Beyond Fuels 1: New Living and Old Learnings

We need to learn to live without fossil fuels. (Or nuclear fuels, for that matter.) Whether you look at peak oil (and Peak Everything--see my post of 7/20/08), or climate change, or all the pollution these fuels cause, or what the industrial world is doing to our lives, it's clear (at least to me) we need something different.

I wrote about Walking Away (8/23/11) and taking The First Step (9/3/11) a few months ago. While there is no way to accurately describe or predict where we are going and what lies in a world beyond fuels, in this series I want to point to some resources that give some general directions on where we're headed (or could be headed).

A lot of this will be looking at re-learning the tools and skills from times before nuclear energy and fossil fuels. There's a lot of good stuff that we've abandoned--and not just from a long time ago. Some of this series will also talk about things developed in those heady times in the sixties and seventies when we began exploring alternatives that seemed to have been dropped for our current high tech, high stress lifestyles.

I also want to point to new things that are being created. The future is not going to look just like the past, even if there are similarities. We've learned more than a few new things that don't require fuels to make them work.

The future will be built on what we can harvest from the sun and wind and water and muscle. And it will be built on having less and enjoying it (and each other) more. It will probably be harder, but it could be more fun.

Quote of the Day: "The transition to a post-carbon, post-growth future means relocalizing and reinhabiting certain places, learning where we're at....
"With careful, concerted action on and help from nature's phenomenal capacity for regeneration, the transition beyond fossil-fuel-dependent industrial civilization to a stable world of flourishing, land-based communities may find our descendants inhabiting a planet that still hosts a variety of life and culture." -Stephanie Mills

Darkness and Despair

No, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. Life at home has been stressful and my quiet job has gotten very, very busy. I haven't had the time to put into this blog. Life will probably quiet down but it might not be until December--or next year.

I started writing the intro for a new series on 'Life After Fuel', and I have lots of ideas for it (and lots of resources), so hopefully when I get the time I can plunge into that.

Meanwhile, I almost always write something this time of the year to honor the pagan feast of Samhain. (Pronounced, for some reason having to do with celtic languages, like 'sow-wen'. See Darkness, 11/1/08, Out of Darkness, 11/1/09, and Death, Decay, and Impermanence, 11/1/10 for my previous posts.)

One aspect of darkness I want to look at is the feeling of despair. This is not an easy feeling for me--or for many people, I imagine. I have a natural optimism that keeps finding reasons for hope, no matter what. I also fear that if I felt some of the real despair that is all around, I would sink into it and become depressed and hopeless.

Yet the despair is there. I'm not sure we (the human species) are going to make it and I am sure that if we do, it will be through a lot of pain and suffering, and I often feel like there isn't much that I can do to affect that. I don't want to deny those feelings, but I also don't want to sink into them and give up. I am not going to give up hopefulness, but I wonder if there is a way to hold to both hope and despair and not give up (or give into) either.

As the darkness, and the cold, and the winter rolls in, I want to acknowledge my despair, and my grieving over the way we are stuck in what we are doing, and continue to do it, even if it means our destruction. I want to feel those feelings and also the hope that even the little I can do may make some slight bit of difference.

I've had the thought (occasionally) that if we are doomed, we should treat each other the way we'd treat someone who is dying. Like hospice work, we need to give comfort and care to each other. If we are going to disappear as a species, it's worth being gentle and supportive to people and allow ourselves to die out with dignity. Of course, I still want to work to make this not happen, but I think it is worth feeling the uncertainty, and the despair, and remain open to the possibility that we are not going to make it. And whether we do, or we don't, loving each other is the best way to go. And for now I will try to remain open to the darkness and despair.


Quote of the Day: "We are bombarded by signals of distress--ecological destruction, social breakdown, and uncontrolled nuclear proliferation. Not surprisingly, we are feeling despair--a despair well merited by the machinery of mass death we continue to create and serve. What is surprising is the extent to which we hide this despair from ourselves and each other. ...
"Despair in this context, is not a macabre certainty of doom or a pathological condition of depression and futility. ... Rather, as it is being experienced by increasing numbers of people across a broad spectrum of society, despair is the loss of the assumption that the species will inevitably pull through. ...
"So long as we see ourselves as essentially separate, competitive, and ego-identified beings, it is difficult to accept the validity of our social despair, deriving as it does from interconnectedness. Both our capacity to grieve for others and our power to cope with this grief spring from the great matrix of relationships in which we take our being." - Joanna Macy

Beyond Civilization

Now that we are into the new year, I want to head back to my Survival Resources thread, but first, I want to ask: why are we interested in surviving? As in, what are we working toward? What are we surviving for?

Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn is a fascinating, thought-provoking, infuriating book. I agree with the basic thrust of what the author is saying and disagree with many parts. It is definitely worth reading, particularly if you are thinking about where to go beyond this capitalist, hierarchical, industrial society. Quinn subtitles his book, 'Humanity's Next Great Adventure'.

He is particularly taken with Richard Dawkin's book, The Selfish Gene, and his idea of memes. A meme is a concept or belief which is a social/cultural building block that has a life of its own. Daniel Quinn believes that what keeps civilization going is a bunch of memes, which include "Civilization must continue at ANY cost and must not be abandoned under ANY circumstance.", "Ours is the one RIGHT way for people to live and everyone should live like us.", and "Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE invention and can never be surpassed." To counter these, he proposes a different meme, "Something BETTER than civilization is waiting for us." (I like this--it reminds me of "Another world is possible.")

Although Quinn says clearly "There is no one right way for people to live", he also clearly advocates living tribally, saying that this is the way that human beings haved lived for millions of years and that this works better than our current 'civilization'. He claims that the Maya, the Olmec, the Hohokam, and the Anasazi all tried some version of civilization and then abandoned it. He sees tribalism as a 'social organization' which functions without hierarchy--which is something that I find very appealing. He also sees most circuses (especially the small ones) as an example of a tribal organization. His definition of a tribe is "A tribe is a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living." (I think this definition might surprise some hunter-gatherers who might not think that 'making a living' was their reason for working together--or living together.)

I like Daniel Quinn's unorthodox approach to homelessness: instead of rousting the homeless out of makeshift refuges and into 'shelters' that don't work for most of them, we should 'Let them house themselves'. (A great line: "Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.") Quinn also sees allowing the homeless to flourish in an environment of their choosing as "the first great movement of people to that social and economic no man's land I call 'beyond civilization'."

One of the things that makes this book both easy to read and more than a bit disconcerting is the fact that it is divided into page long little sections, a lot of which gradually unfold ideas, a bit at a time and rather chaotically. But, as it unfolds, there is a lot of useful stuff in this book.

On the other hand, Daniel Quinn seems to have an antipathy for 'communes' (which is, as anyone who has read a bunch of this blog would know, a particular passion of mine). He claims that "Yes, a commune can definitely be a tribe; it's just a problematic way to begin." This is because Quinn's definition of 'a tribe' is about making a living. Using this definition he says "it will be luck rather than design if they actually have some occupational interests and skills in common." He also rejects the idea of the Amish as a tribe because "If you apply for membership, they'll be much more interested in your religious beliefs and your moral character than in your agricultural ambitions." It's not that I don't think that there can be tribal businesses such as circuses (I think that Mr. Quinn is on target there) but I don't think that's the only way to build a tribe, anymore than there's one right way to live.

Still, for those who want to build something new, 'a World that Works for Everyone', this is an important read. Now back to Survival Resources.

Quote of the Day: "Daniel Quinn teaches that no single person is going to save the world. Rather (if it's saved at all), it will be saved by millions (and ultimately billions) of us living a new way." - Daniel Quinn

Vision, Dissonance, Determination

I was arguing with a friend who insisted that outrage was necessary for social change. I don't think that's always true. I would like to claim, like the Buddhists that I am reading, that my motivation to change things is simply compassion. Unfortunately I'm not sure that would be entirely true either.

When I look at why I am so insistent a believer in the need for social change, while I do think that compassion is in the mix, and may have even been the instigating factor, what keeps me going is a combination of vision, dissonance, and determination.

I talked at the beginning of this blog about analysis, vision, and strategy. (See my post on Creating Social Change, 7/2/08.) In a way, this is the same bit on vision--except that this is visceral. This is no longer intellectual--it's personal. I can almost see a different society. I know a little of what it would look like, a little of what it would sound like, I can almost tell you what it would taste like. It lurks constantly in my peripheral vision. I know that another world is possible. I just don't know how to get there.

This creates dissonance. When I look around at the world that I live in, it is so far from what I can see, how I believe we should be living, where I want to be and where I want the world to be, that it almost hurts. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way; it's true of many of the writers that I read and often quote: Starhawk, Joanna Macy, Francis Moore Lappé, Richard Heinberg, Fritjof Capra, Arundhati Roy, and lots of the utopian authors I've talked about. (See 'Annotated Utopia' post of 7/14/08.) I could throw in a lot of other, now departed, folks: Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Emma Goldman, Gandhi, and on back to at least the Diggers of seventeenth century England, and probably long before that. Not everyone had the same vision, but there is a lot in common and some of that is the realization of the chasm between what is and what could be. I just read a column by George Monbiot where he declared that the talks in Copenhagen weren't only about climate change, they were about redefining ourselves, about the question of whether we create another world or whether we continue on the road we are traveling. He sees it as a "global battle between expanders and restrainers". I see it as a fight for the future. I see it as dissonance between what we have and how things could be.

And that dissonance leads me to determination. The only way things are going to change is to do something. These posts are one attempt to do something. Building community is another attempt--a try at gathering likeminded people in the hope that together we can accomplish more than any of us can separately. I go to meetings and demonstrations and try to figure out how to support people who are pushing for social change. It may not be much, but as Gandhi said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it." So I do. I keep focusing every day on wanting to make a difference in the world. I see how things could be, I see how things are, and I keep looking for ways to push things a little further toward where I believe they must go.

It's not that it's a nice idea. It's that I feel compelled. It is what my life is really about.

Another world is possible. I know it.


Quote of the Day: "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, if you listen carefully, you can hear her breathing." - Arundhati Roy