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Water management is hardly progressive in California these days. Photo: roam and shoot/Flickr CC.

If one more Californian tells me how “progressive” California is, I am going to scream.

“Progressivism” is the term applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems that were introduced to America by industrialization. It began as a social movement and grew into a political one. Early Progressives rejected Social Darwinism, believing that the problems society faced — such as poverty, violence, greed, racism and class warfare — could best be addressed by providing a good education and efficient, safe workplace and protecting the environment.

As the ideology developed, it came to represent four core values: Progressives have a two-part definition of freedom: “freedom from” and “freedom to.”

First, they believe that all people should have freedom from undue interference by governments and others in carrying out their private affairs and personal beliefs. This includes the rights to freedom of speech, association, and religion as well as the freedom to control one’s own bodies and personal lives.

Second, they believe that all people should have the freedom to lead a fulfilling and secure life supported by the basic foundations of economic security and opportunity. This includes physical protections against bodily harm as well as adequate income, economic protections, health care and education, and other social provisions.

Complementing their commitment to human freedom is their belief in opportunity. Like freedom, the concept of opportunity has two components: one focuses on political equality and the other on economic and social arrangements that enhance people’s lives.

Along with freedom and opportunity comes responsibility — personal responsibility and the responsibility we have to each other and to the common good.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Lesson from the Holocaust for the Era of the Sixth Extinction

February 1, 2016

A Lesson from the Holocaust for the Era of the Sixth Extinction

Holocaust candles

Holocaust Remembrance. Photo: Ted Eytan/Flickr CC.

This article is the first in a two-part series.

My mother didn’t die when so many others did – and that means she lived to give birth to me.

I write about this now, because it has everything to do with today, even though the cataclysm in which so many perished happened more than 75 years ago. I owe my life, in part, to people who were willing to risk theirs, whose names I will never know.

The story is etched in my bones. I remember its telling and retelling as far back as my early childhood memories. The details are blurred with the passing of time. No one who lived it is still alive. I would not know how to verify the specific facts. So I write this story to the best of my memory, knowing its truth in the deepest and widest sense.

My mother’s family were Dutch Jews with a several century history of calling Holland their home. They were Sephardic Jews, descendants of those who fled the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500s. They came from a people who had a well-refined intuition about when it was time to flee and had found the ways to do so.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert.

More Jews from Holland died in the Holocaust than from any other Western European country. An often used estimate is 75%. Other estimates range as high as 90%.

How did this part of my family manage to survive? And what might be the implications for our times of climate crisis, when we are already living in what is called “The Sixth Extinction” (with dozens of species going extinct every day), when the future of life as we know it may hang in the balance?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Despite Cheap Gas, Coming Back to Peak Oil [Infographic]

November 22, 2015

Despite Cheap Gas, Coming Back to Peak Oil [Infographic]

Yesterday, in Virginia, I filled up my gas tank for $2.75 a gallon.

At that price, even old peak oilers like my wife and I hardly think about poor old King Hubbard’s theory much these days.

And though gas has been cheap in the U.S. for the last six months or more, I still think Hubbard was right that global oil production naturally has a point of peak production.

I used to think that the peak of world oil production already came in 2006. But with the rise of fracking and other extreme fossil fuels, now I’m not so sure.

Could the oil peak come a decade or more in the future as the optimists mentioned in the infographic below predict?

Or could the whole thing be some kind of confusing shell game, with financial markets moving petro dollars around in clever ways to make it look like oil hasn’t peaked yet, when, in fact, it has?

Frankly, as a lay observer of the energy economy, such questions are above my pay grade. I’ll leave petroleum geologists and economists to argue about the real oil supply and its likely effect on the economy in the next five, ten or twenty years.

Meanwhile, the infographic below may be good enough for other laypeople to get the basic facts on the peak oil debate.

The image is courtesy of an energy-services company in the U.K. called Chiltern Thrust Bore. I’m not sure what they think of peak oil, but I’m sure they hope to be able to drill and dig for stuff for a while longer.

Whatever the case, their take on peak oil seems to be a accurate summary of Hubbert’s theory and a plausible analysis of what it means for today and the future.

— Erik Curren, Transition Voice

Derrick Jensen has Inspired Me to Question Civilization

October 22, 2015

Derrick Jensen has Inspired Me to Question Civilization

liberate from civilization Photo: Hartwig HKD/Flickr CC.

I rode my horse out through the woods the other day. It was a beautiful Autumn afternoon as golden light filtered through the trees. My horse was keen to graze in an open meadow, so we found a spot where he could forage for some greenery among the late season grasses.

On my ride out, I had been thinking about the widening gulf between the natural world and contemporary civilization. I had recently read Derrick Jensen’s anthology, How Shall I Live My Life: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization. In this collection of interviews, Jensen discusses the destructive dominant culture with various people who have devoted their lives to trying to re-vision it.

In the meadow, it seemed as if I were surrounded by the natural world.

There were birds, rabbits, deer, trees, grasses, insects and even a dried up creek bed. I could hear my horse snorting softly, with satisfaction, as he munched.

But, I also heard the sounds of the dominant culture’s industrialization — the railroad, the highway, chainsaws, lawn mowers, motorcycles, backhoes, leaf blowers, motorized children’s toys. All vestiges of our current civilization.

It didn’t have to go this way. We could have built a civilization that harmonized with our home, the Earth. But we didn’t. Instead, we built a civilization that revolved around money. And, as Marx said, money is dead. So, if we’ve built a culture around something that is dead, we will soon become dead ourselves. And kill the whole planet in the process.

As we begin to notice this, we can challenge the idea that a life motivated by desire for personal gain is either necessary or desirable. We can point to things like the collapse of the environment, suffering of the Third World, alienation, the harried style in which we live and the reductionistic values of most of Western culture.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/10/derrick-jensen-has-inspired-me-to-question-civilization/#sthash.5oHuGZvM.dpuf

Bubbles and Backlashes

October 13, 2015

Bubbles and Backlashes

Image: trialsanderrors/Flickr CC.

Financial markets have been turbulent as of late with no end in sight. A sagging global economy could overwhelm America’s recovery efforts with toxic effects on key climate change and clean energy initiatives now underway.

The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to postpone an interest rate hike is but one reflection of their deep global concern. In a world of multiple, interrelated systems, a sneeze in one global system could cause pneumonia in another; ultimately triggering a perfect storm.

As the global economy worsens and bubbles start to burst, an over-fixation on economic recovery could relegate promising clean energy and climate change initiatives to a secondary status, or worse. The geopolitical blips on the radar screen are ominous. Consider this:

1.We’ve been warned

Global asset, credit and debt bubbles are on the cusp of bursting. My email “News Flash” warned of this last May (See: “Bubblemania is Contagious – Five Warning Signs”). The punctured commodity bubble has already demonstrated the economic fallout to nations exporting raw materials. Imagine the impact of multiple bubble bursts all at the same time. Bottom line: Bubbles always burst; it’s not about if, but when.

2. American limitations

America’s economy is strong compared to many others, but not strong enough to lift the world back into prosperity. In fact, the opposite could occur. China’s declining growth rate (See: “The Chinese Ripple Effect“), deep economic malaise in Europe, Japan, Russia, Brazil, OPEC nations and others, and a slowdown in global trade are taking a toll. Bottom line: Global economic headwinds will be difficult to overcome in the foreseeable future.

3. Low on ammo

In an effort to recover from the Great Recession of 2008 and stimulate growth, our Federal Reserve and central banks worldwide have “printed” money, devalued currencies, created an easy money environment and purchased debt (Quantitative Easing). In addition, governmental fiscal policies have piled on huge deficits and debt to stimulate growth.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/10/bubbles-and-backlashes/#sthash.XM1igyNv.dpuf

Presuming to Care about the Earth

September 28, 2015

Presuming to Care about the Earth

Photo: Mihnea Stanciu/Flickr CC.

There are times that I find myself wandering pensively in the woods, asking aloud, “so how should I presume?”

I just read about the land sinking — up to thirteen inches a year in some places — in the Central Valley of California.

I also just read about there being no mountaintops left in certain areas of West Virginia anymore. None. And, the coal companies are pulling out. West Virginia’s usefulness to them as a sacrifice zone is over.

I also read about the botany studies indicating that the sounds of nature have empirically diminished — less bird song, less insect cacophony — having been drowned out by the noise of industrialization. So, really, how should I presume?

Prufrock Nation

T.S. Eliot’s Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, like so many literary examples in modernity, is concerned with issues of meaning, doubt, and individual significance. Prufrock is riddled with uncertainty as his place in the universe seems shaky. He questions, but appears to find no answers. Prufrock finds the modern world becoming a place of spiritual emptiness, a certain absence of the sacred proliferating as modernity takes hold.

Prufrock, then, bombarded by questions that he is unable to answer, finds himself growing old in a world that seems alien to him. I am there. I can’t wrap my mind around a world that is willing to destroy nature in order to grow economies.

Pre-industrial societies knew that nature was their home. Industrial society, quite to the contrary, sees nature as a repository of resources to be used for profit. Native Americans talked to nature. We talk about nature. This is a critical distinction. First People were a part of nature. We objectify it. We are products of Cartesianism and, thus, think that we are separate from nature (or, as Descartes would have called it, all of that “dead matter”) — distinct from our very home. We suck it dry, frack it, mine it, cut it down, pave it over and poison it — all in the name of progress. Civilization.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/09/presuming-to-care-about-the-earth/#sthash.9ovHnLN7.dpuf

Relying on the Government Will Make Climate Change Worse

August 21, 2015

Relying on the Government Will Make Climate Change Worse

Twenty-five years ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property.

A literate public was buying up such books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning).

American psychologists were being introduced to the movement by a brilliant anthology entitled Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, edited by Rollo May and others. The 1958 International Congress of Psychotherapy chose existential psychology as its theme.

And the twentieth-century existentialists themselves were all still alive: Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Paul Tillich.

Today all six men are dead and, from all appearances, so is the movement for which they were known.

But that’s a shame. Especially if you care about climate change and peak oil.

Do it yourself

Here’s why we need existentialism so much today: It encourages people to listen to their own conscience and to take action themselves. It’s against cynicism and quietism.

A central proposition of existentialism is that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals — independently acting and responsible, conscious beings — rather than an amalgamation of the labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories into which they might fit.

The actual life of individuals is what constitutes their true essence. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values. People are defined by how they act and are, thus, responsible for their actions.

Freedom, from an existential perspective, cannot be separated from responsibility.

Existentialism teaches that we alone are responsible for our choices and the consequences of those choices.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/08/relying-on-the-government-will-make-climate-change-worse/#sthash.NQc1gwK8.dpuf

Local Economy or Local-Washing?

August 5, 2015

Buy local

Local Economy or Local-Washing?

“Local” has become a buzzword. Today there’s eco-localism, local food and local farming, local media movements, as well as regional, state, and even national ad campaigns urging us to “eat local” and “buy local.”

Local’s gone global, but what exactly does the term mean anymore?

David Levine, of the American Sustainable Business Council, discusses the “triple bottom line” of social, environmental, and economic impacts. “Local by itself is not enough,” he tells Yes! Magazine. Levine does not want, for example, people buying “local first” from a locally owned sweatshop, toxic chemical plant or dirty manufacturing facility.

Add some democracy to your localism

The goal is having community-led, community-controlled economies where the decision-making is by those who are feeling the effects of the decisions that are made. This type of development comes under the rubric of what is becoming called Commonomics — economic democracies that foster local self-reliance.

Farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry defines economy this way

I mean not economics but economy, the making of the human household upon the earth; the arts of adapting kindly the many, many human households to the earth’s many eco-systems and human neighborhoods.

By now, we all know the signs of a human household that’s been hollowed out.

We’ve seen the food deserts and the chronically vacant homes, the ghostly downtown storefronts and the municipalities being courted by sweet-talking corporations that suck up public resources and then run away. We’re familiar with the tension in towns where the only thing that the rich and poor have in common are the roads. We know what it’s like to be close, everywhere, to the same chain coffee shop and two hours away from the “local” hospital. We see the sprawl that’s eating the woodlands.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/08/local-economy-or-local-washing/#sthash.TzCsMNug.dpuf

In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message

July 8, 2015

In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message

climate films
If you’d like, I’m what you’d call an ex-(aspiring) filmmaker, an early vanguard of what promises to be, in one way or another, an eventual mass exodus from the film and television industries. I won’t go into my reasoning behind film and television’s future demise here, but suffice to say, if left to its own devices, the future of film and television is in the hands of peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization.

The reasons for why I quit the industry are wide and varied, ranging from a strong dislike of narcissism, an aversion to big business (which makes all the necessary high-tech equipment), an abhorence of the massive amounts of trash one sees resulting from a film production, a concern about the ridiculous amounts of energy (read: fossil fuels) that goes into making a film, and much else. It’s the last one that I want to touch upon here, film and television in the age of fossil fuels and the climate change dilemma.

Although I wasn’t aware of peak oil ten years or so ago when I quit film and television once and for all (be it making the stuff or watching it), I was however aware of anthropogenic climate change – which I believed in back then, and still do today. That being said, I had a few problems coming to terms with climate change and the stupendous amounts of energy required to power all the massively blazing lights, cameras, editing systems, projectors, and everything else that went into my chosen line of work. When I finally reached my impasse I decided to say “stuff this” and so I went ahead and quit.

Nonetheless, I’m apparently not much of a trend-setter, and so ten years on the film and television industries still seem to be doing thriving. In fact, last I heard, there’s a new thing out there called (ahem) Nyet-Flix.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/07/in-films-about-climate-change-the-medium-is-the-wrong-message/#sthash.T6Swf3lV.dpuf

How Pope Francis’s climate encyclical is liberating the world

June 24, 2015

How Pope Francis’s climate encyclical is liberating the world

In my life there are two things that have the effect of at least somewhat isolating me from others. The first is being a writer on climate change, peak oil, and the economic crises bound up with those modern predicaments. The other is being a Christian environmentalist.

In the first case, my essays, as well as my social media presence, fairly well run counter to the whole of my society and culture, even when a few outliers add concurring thoughts to the mix.

But in the end, by writing a write a blog about what people shouldn’t do, about the things we should give up and forsake for a concept of the greater good, about the ways our habits imperil the world and especially our children and future generations, I can kind of come off like a scold even in my most mild iteration. And forget about those times when I’ve lost all patience with the excuses and indifference to our shared world — then I’m sure I can be a real jerk.

By contrast, my friends who write blogs on the 40th new way to redecorate your home, the best new destination to jet off to, and the greatest products to try as a mommy blogger, are infinitely more popular and beloved than me.

I end up feeling like I stand alone, or at best with a small group of similarly-minded, possible loonies, who together are spitting into a hot and rancid wind.

Crossroads

As an eco-conscious Christian, my experience is not dissimilar.

While I love Christ unreservedly, and without wavering, and that relationship is the most meaningful and important in my life, still, in my life with fellow Christians and with the Church, I have found little immediate commonality on the issue of creation care.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/how-pope-francis-climate-encyclical-is-liberating-the-world/#sthash.SbPvipm7.dpuf

Peak oiler? Not Catholic? You should still stand with the pope on climate

June 21, 2015

Peak oiler? Not Catholic? You should still stand with the pope on climate

support pope on climate

I get it, you believe in peak oil. So do I, despite gas at $2.50 a gallon. But peak oil is no excuse for either you or me to just sit around waiting for the final oil crash to make the climate problem moot by bringing down industrial civilization.

Even if you’re the world’s biggest doomer, you have to admit that the timing is too uncertain — will the über-crash come in five months or five decades? Nobody knows for sure.

So far, the puppet masters of the world economy have been pretty good at keeping the party going longer than anybody had a right to expect. Who’s to say that oil wars, extreme energy production and various accounting tricks can’t keep mass consumerism running in many places into the middle of the century or beyond?

So don’t hold your breath waiting for collapse. Instead, leave your cynicism behind and let Pope Francis inspire you to finally get serious about climate, a problem that we know is already here and whose future consequences will be unthinkable — unless the world seriously changes its ways, oil crash or not.

A blessing of papal awesomeness

And if you do care about climate change, then what’s not to like in the pope’s encyclical that came out this week?

OK, well, maybe he could have been better about recognizing overpopulation as part of the climate problem. But he’s right that it’s hypocritical for rich countries to use climate as an excuse to pressure poor ones about population. All poor countries put together have done almost nothing to warm the atmosphere compared to the real culprits, the rich nations of North America and Europe.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/not-catholic-you-can-still-stand-with-the-pope-on-climate/#sthash.roDZr6r3.dpuf

Plenty of trouble: Feeding a climate changed world after peak oil

June 19, 2015

Plenty of trouble: Feeding a climate changed world after peak oil

Nothing is more precious than balance, stability, and sustainability. Today, we’re hanging by our fingernails to a skyrocket of intense insane change, and it’s the only way of life we’ve ever known. Joel Bourne has spent his life riding the rocket. He grew up on a farm, and studied agronomy at college. But sharp changes were causing many farmers to go bankrupt and taking over the family farm would have been extremely risky, so he became a writer for farm magazines. Later, he was hired by National Geographic, where he has spent most of his career.

In 2008, he was assigned to cover the global food crisis, and this project hurled him into full awareness of the big picture. The Green Revolution caused food production to skyrocket, and world population doubled in just 40 years. Then, the revolution fizzled out, whilst population continued to soar. Demographers have told us to expect another two or three billion for dinner in 2050. Obviously, this had the makings of an excellent book, so Bourne sat down and wrote The End of Plenty.

The subtitle of his book is “The Race to Feed a Crowded World,” not “The Race to Tackle Overpopulation.” A growing population thrills the greed community, and a diminishing herd does not. Overpopulation is a problem that can be solved, and will be, either by enlightened self-restraint, by compulsory restraint, or, most likely, by the vigorous housekeeping of Big Mama Nature. Feeding the current population is thrashing the planet, and feeding even more will worsen everything, but this is our primary objective. We are, after all, civilized people, and enlightened self-restraint is for primitive savages who live sustainably in roadless paradises.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/plenty-of-trouble-feeding-a-climate-changed-world-after-peak-oil/#sthash.8vamboU4.dpuf

Inspiration For the Burned-Out Localizer

June 2, 2015

Richard Heinberg wants you to “learn to be successfully and happily poorer.” Photo: video screenshot.

Inspiration For the Burned-Out Localizer

While Marx predicted that socialism would follow capitalism, Richard Heinberg predicts the next thing will be localism.

“All roads appear to lead eventually to localism; the questions are: how and when shall we arrive there, and in what condition? (And, how local?),” Heinberg writes in his latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.

But that’s not what’s new in this collection of Heinberg’s essays. Anyone following the Transition movement has been hearing for nearly a decade that more active local economies are the inevitable future once the triple threat of climate change, peak oil and economic crisis topples global industrial capitalism as we know it. The message came through loud and clear in 2008 with The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins and the world’s local future has been a core tenet of Transition ever since.

What’s new about Afterburn is that it offers two things that Transitioners or anyone else who forecasts a more local future needs today: inspiration and advice for the future that’s better than most of what you’ll read elsewhere.

Inspiration

These days, with gas prices hovering around $2.50 a gallon and all the talk about cheap gas from fracking, if you still care about peak oil, then you’re going to be pretty lonely. It’s easy to feel like you’re the crazy person for seeing an end to fossil fuels and thinking it’s a big deal when everybody else acts like the party of cheap energy and economic growth is going to last forever.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/inspiration-for-the-burned-out-localizer/#sthash.LLWef4Ru.dpu

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In Films About Climate Change, the Medium is the Wrong Message

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