Well. Time to eat some crow.

A couple of weeks ago I slagged Lana (and fellow NDP MLA John Horgan) for standing in the way of what we really need, which is rapid and decisive action on climate change and peak oil. Their party will, in fact, contribute to both climate change and our dependence upon oil by continuing to subsidize it.

That said, it is pointless, unfair, and ungentlemanly to harshly criticize well-meaning people who are trying to do their best in our broken system. Lana and John, both of whom I know personally though not well, are good people. I don’t agree with everything they do; I think subsidizing oil and gas is shortsighted and foolish.

But.

And it’s a very large but.

Our political system is broken. I have written as much elsewhere, and will do so again in my forthcoming book, The Way Home. (Tentatively subtitled: You Can’t Get There from Here, or, what you should be doing to protect yourself and your family against the coming economic, environmental, and social collapse. Cheery, no?)

I wish she would follow-through on some very important promises; at one point, she had asked Guy Dauncey and me to serve on an advisory group to help her with environmental issues. That never happened, and we could have been of some help. As an almost trivial example, Lana was “named “runner up” as Community Leader in the annual CFAX awards for her campaign to replace disposable plastic bags with reusable ones.” (Almost amusing, considering CFAX leans heavily toward climate change denial.) Had I been advising her, I would have suggested that instead all bags should be compostable. What’s the point in replacing disposable bags with ones that last longer but still ultimately end up in the landfill? That still sounds like disposable to me.

Had I been offering suggestions, I would have suggested that someone in the government go talk to companies that make compostable products and ask them if they would locate a plant in BC if a law were passed requiring all ‘disposable’ bags to be compostable. I bet they would. It’s a guaranteed market.

I digress.

The point is, why am I being so hard on a well-meaning person who is doing her best within a broken system? Lana understands the danger of climate change. She is, I have no doubt, working hard within our system, which includes that of her party, to do the right thing.

It is unlikely to be enough. Ideally, all the well-meaning people who ‘get it’ would go on ’strike, a la Atlas Shrugged.* If only all the Lana Pophams and John Horgans (and Brian Gordons) would go on strike, would refuse to serve a corrupt political system, surely the masses would be forced to confront reality, would rebel against the self-serving crooks who largely populate our political landscape, and finally start selecting people of wisdom over those of substance….

It is an idle and ridiculous dream at this point, and as someone committed to embracing reality, I must apologize to Ms. Popham (and Mr. Horgan). If Lana stepped aside, someone would rush to fill her place, likely someone much less worthy. I would infinitely rather have Lana as my MLA than that person.

I accused Lana of being an obstacle to the change that is necessary. That was unfair. In an ideal world, she would be. But we don’t live in an ideal world. All the wise people who ‘get it’ are not going to go on strike and force a confrontation with reality. We can’t even get it together enough to speak with one voice, never mind actually act in concert for the good of humanity and the planet.

So, all this said, I am glad that Lana is my MLA, and I apologize to her, publicly, for my harsh words.  Do I think her party, if elected, will do what is necessary to at least mitigate some of the coming damage due to climate change and peak oil? Sadly, no. But Lana is doing her best within a broken system, and I can hardly ask for more.

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* For those who have not plodded through Ayn Rand’s opus, the premise is that those who actually do positive things go on strike. In Rand’s view, these people are people like steel and railroad magnates.

Those of you who follow me know that I have recently ceased making posts urging large-scale reform. The reasons for that are fairly simple, but they involve a psychological hurdle to get over.

I have been communicating with James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and David Holmgren, all of whom I have interviewed, about a Wise Action Plan. The goal was for us to agree on this Plan and then publicly pronounce it in an effort to get some sensible action on peak oil and climate change. Initially, I urged a response that included a revitalization of rail, large-scale wind or solar farms, and other actions that require the federal government to take a strong leadership role.

While the others generally agreed such actions would be a good idea, especially if they have been started 20 or more years ago, two of the three thought they were a waste of time. They had two reasons for this:

1. It’s too late. We needed to be getting off oil while we still had a surplus. Now that we’ve hit peak oil, diverting any oil to build solar panels means there is less for cars or crops.
2. They ain’t gonna. What politician is going to do that, barring an emergency situation? (Emergency is here defined as rioting, fuel rationing, or other severe measures.)

To be fair to our politicians, it’s hard to get elected telling people their lifestyle is going to change drastically, including many of them giving up their cars. The problem is partly cultural; we want what we want, and we’re going to keep electing politicians who give it to us until that is no longer possible.

And to be brutally honest, most of us have bought into the idea of unending growth and improvement, that the market will find solutions to concerns like oil depletion, and that if it were really that bad, somebody would do something.

At that point, we will be well into the emergency.

It has been difficult for me to give up on the idea of leadership from above. I ran federally as a Green Party of Canada candidate last go-round, but wouldn’t do it again. Even in the fantastic unlikelihood that the Greens got a majority next election, they could not do what needs to be done. Still too many people will resist change, and this resistance will be encouraged and financed – by vested interests.

Think Globally, Act Locally

As a result, I’ve gone local. Leadership is going to have to come from the grassroots, from us, from those who understand the reality and are willing to take some action. I believe that every village, town, city, and region should create a Transition Initiative to get off oil.

This is acting locally, and it is vitally important for your survival. Local resilience is ‘in,’ and for good reason. When oil prices go up, imports of everything – including food – are going to get more expensive and harder to get. If you’re already shopping at the farmer’s market, for example, you have helped support a local farmer who will now support you as options in the supermarkets get scarcer and pricier.

This is my new Wise Action Plan:

1. Start or join a Transition Initiative in your area.
2. Reskill.
3. Develop personal self-reliance, which includes everything from starting a garden to insulating your house.

If we’re lucky and good, these local movements will take off, multiply like viruses, and infect the planet. These local movements will bond together and require their governments to do the right thing – to protect us. They will do this not by lobbying or influence-peddling, but by sheer strength of numbers.

The purpose of this site is to find a ‘green’ lever big enough to move the world to sustainability. I titled it Go Green or Die because, well, that is true, we must, and becauseI thought it rather catchy.

That said, I have come to realise that people will not see climate change and peak oil as the crises they are unless and until a social tipping point is reached, where likely we will go from denial to near-panic. Various things can push us toward this tipping point; this site is my own small attempt, as are my The Way Home presentations, but we are not there yet and we are already late getting started on addressing these crises.

And that brings me to the main point. We cannot count upon governments or corporations – large organizations led by people with a strong vested interest in business-as-usual – to wake up and take action on climate change and peak oil in time.

I have come to accept this, and I won’t say I found it easy. I ran as as Green Party of Canada candidate in the last federal election, and as a Green Party of British Columbia candidate in the last provincial election. Clearly I recently thought that action at the national or provincial level was possible; I no longer think so.

It would be a long story to explain all my reasons why, but perhaps a small, real example will help illustrate. In the last provincial election, Lana Popham was one of my opponents as the NDP candidate. She seemed as ‘green’ as me; in talking with her, she clearly understood the threat posed by climate change. Her family runs an organic vineyard. She cycles everywhere.

I nearly withdrew to give her a clear run, but was persuaded otherwise. She won anyway. What has been the result? Her party formed the Opposition, and made her Agriculture Critic. The leaders of the NDP have her spending her time and energy and goodwill campaigning to get bicycles exempted from a new tax.

And that is just a tiny example of why change is unlikely to come from above. It rarely does, really; those entrenched naturally oppose change.

I came to realise that it is up to us. “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” as the song says. We must at least work to save local areas as best we can, to make them sustainable and self-reliant. Done alone, that will not ultimately stop or save anyone from climate change. It will only buffer against the coming oil shock and allow life to continue in a somewhat civilised manner.

The best route I’ve found so far is Transition Initiative, which every town and city and region should be doing. It’s a grassroots movement to make the local region more self-reliant, less dependent upon oil. There is no head office, no Executive Director. There are only guiding principles and local examples.

This is all a long way of saying that I’ve joined my local Transition Initiative. That is where the action is going to come from. The movement has caught on and has spread like wildfire, which gives me hope for wider action. It would be wonderful if ultimately there were thousands and thousands of Transition Towns, and these millions upon millions of people joined forces to end dependence on fossil fuels.

This journey has allowed me to create The Way Home presentation that ends on a positive, optimistic note. I was trained by Al Gore to deliver the An Inconvenient Truth presentation, which I did 40-or-so times to a few thousand people in total. One thing that always bothered me was the lack of realistic solutions offered. I don’t mean just the “Change your lightbulbs” ’solution,’ but even writing to your elected representative is largely a waste of time at this point.

Transition Initiatives do offer hope. I am going to re-do this site in the next few weeks to reflect the path we must take. Yes, we must ‘go green or die.’ But that message is not inspiring change. In an attempt to communicate the extent of the threat, it inspires fear.

What we need is the truth, which is that things are bad. We have not responded appropriately to warnings from experts, and we are going to pay a price for that. Ok, so what do we do? Reality must be faced, and realistic action must be taken. That is the focus of the Transition Initiative, and also of the new look of this site, which will become The Way Home.

It is common for people who are concerned about looming catastrophes like climate change and peak oil to appeal to the humanity of those doing the damage. They think that, if only they could have a word with people like former U.S. President Bush or current Canadian Prime Minister Harper, climate action obstructors both, they could get through with an appeal about caring for their own children. This is highly unlikely, and more importantly, is a waste of precious time.

It is not that these people do not care about their children, but that they have a different morality than you and I. We like to think that, deep down, everyone is just like us. This is a dangerous delusion, and it should be clear to anyone who observes human behaviour even briefly. There are some obvious examples, including psychopaths who murder others for reasons we don’t understand, like Jeffrey Dahmer who murdered and ate young men, or Clifford Olsen who was a serial child murderer, or the freaks who go into a school and start shooting. These people are not like us, they clearly have a different morality, and it matters little whether it is due to nature or nurture: Either way, we must protect ourselves from their dangerous behaviour first, psychoanalyse them later.

There are less obvious examples; the documentary The Corporation has pointed out that corporations behave like sociopaths; they have no social conscience. Their CEOs are responsible for and profit greatly from this behaviour, so I think it is fair to call them antisocial to such an extent that they are a danger to the rest of us.

In fact, I think it is a fair argument to say that most people who seek power are not like you and me. Power comes not only through politics, but also through climbing the corporate ladder, accumulating vast wealth, aligning yourself with powerful people, or murdering others. People who lust for power operate from a predator morality, in which might makes right. In practice, this means that whatever they can get away with is morally acceptable.

Most people concerned about climate change or social justice simply reject this. They want to believe that these people, who are doing clearly immoral acts, can be reasoned with, that their innate humanity can be appealed to. This is delusional. These people are ignoring the psychopath’s behaviour and projecting their own values upon him.

The same thing occurs in reverse. The neocons and lunatic right are famous for projecting their values on the rest of us. Because they lie, they assume we must, too. Because they seek power, we must be, too. In fact, they see life as a battle for supremacy, and they don’t intend to lose. That is why they see global warming as a “socialist scheme“, an attempt to impose world government – an attempt to do what they are trying to do, which is establish a New World Order with them on top.

Because they see life as a struggle for power, they care for their children in ways that reflect this. They try to make lots of money and attain high-status positions, and encourage their children to do the same. They also don’t want the rest of us following that path because it means more competition, so that’s why school funding gets cut, welfare gets cut, and so on.

And the reason they do not care about climate change is because it contradicts their base value system in many ways. They are not interested in cooperation, which they see as weakness. To power-seekers, there is a clear hierarchy based on power, and one’s power is based on one’s political, economic, or military might. Cooperation, on the other hand, is a group of more-or-less equals working toward a common purpose. No power-seeker is going to do this for someone lower in the food chain.

I believe the differences in behaviour and morality are explained by how we seek security. Security is the greatest human need: None of us wants to die; we all want to live well for as long as possible. That is only possible with security of food and person, freedom from health issues, and so on. Some of these we can do more about that others.

Serial killers are, in their twisted way, seeking some control over their life by destroying others. Power-seekers look for security by dominating others – and this is a time-proven method of achieving security. You will live longer and better if you’re the top dog. Cooperators create security through stable communities, fair laws, and so on.

Attempts to appeal to the humanity of a high-level denier are a waste of time that we do not have. People who seek security through power…believe that security is obtained through achieving power, through being the Alpha wolf. When someone they see as a sheep attempts to persuade them of the joys of cooperation and being a good citizen, they do what wolves do with sheep.

There is a campaign right now in my province of BC to ensure that the new Harmonised Sales Tax (HST) does not apply to bicycles. The HST is replacing the federal and provincial sales taxes, and bicycles, apparently, are currently exempt from Provincial Sales Tax (PST) but will not be under the HST. One of the two major parties in BC is running a campaign to gain an exemption for bicycles from the HST.

And this, it seems to me, is at the heart of the NDP’s loss of moral authority. The federal NDP party is no better, having not long ago campaigned hard against bank fees. Both the federal and provincial NDP parties claim to ‘get’ the danger of climate change, and frequently complain bitterly that the Green Party is taking voters from them.

But…they clearly don’t ‘get’ it.

I understand that we want to encourage more people to ride bikes. It’s good for their health, it reduces traffic congestion, and it cuts greenhouse gas emissions. And of course nobody except banks likes bank fees.

But rather than fighting for a special exemption of a few percent for bicycles, why not fight against the subsidies to fossil-fueled vehicles? If you’re serious about climate change, if you’re serious about improving health through reducing pollution, and if you don’t think we should be subsidising fossil industries, you should be working for streetcars, and building codes for shopping malls that allow electric buses to drop passengers inside the mall, instead of across the parking lot, and pedestrian and bike-friendly neighbourhoods.

If the HST adds a few percent to the cost of a bike – that should be no big deal for most people. And bike riders use roads, too, do they not? Are those not paid for with taxes?

If you’re concerned about social justice, then you should be fighting to ensure that bicycles are not such a major expense that paying a few percent more discourages it.

They are also standing in the way of going green, which isn’t helping their credibility. I ran against Lana Popham in my riding. Lana was the NDP candidate, I was the Green Party candidate. I had a chance to talk with her a bit during the campaign, and Lana does seem to ‘get’ the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

I even considered withdrawing as a candidate and endorsing her – if she would cross the floor and become a Green MLA if and when her own party didn’t follow-through on various green promises. I didn’t do it; the Green Party leader persuaded me not to, believing it would be utterly misinterpreted by the media and public, and she was probably right.

Regardless, the outcome is that a small-g green NDPer was elected…and that did nothing to green the NDP or raise awareness of the danger of climate change. The opposite has happened. The NDP has Lana fighting to keep bicycles a few dollars cheaper in an attempt to woo the cycling crowd, rather than proposing realistic solutions to deeper problems, like why we have to give people a discount of a few percent before they can or will buy a bicycle. Or talking about the fact that climate change will wipe us off the planet, regardless of the final cost of bicycles.

The same problem applies nationally – look at the time the federal NDP spend making a lot of noise about bank fees. OK, nobody likes paying bank fees, but if you can’t take it any more the credit unions will be delighted to have you. And ultimately, when you claim we’re facing ruin due to climate change, devoting your party to fight bank fees utterly trivialises this claim, doesn’t it?

With the federal Conservatives and Liberals at high levels of unpopularity and in the middle of a bankster-induced recession, the NDP (and the Greens, but that’s another matter) should be shooting up in the polls, but they’re stuck at <15%. There’s a good reason for that: The NDP has whittled away at their own credibility and their moral authority until they’ve become just another political party.

They have no vision, and as a result they chase bank fees rather focusing on actual crises. They pander to cyclists by looking to save a few percent on the cost of a bike. Why was the NDP in favour of bailing out the American auto companies? It wasn’t to save the jobs, it was to save the unions. The jobs could have been saved by putting those workers to work building electric streetcars and windmills. That would also have helped with carbon emissions and greening the economy.

I am no longer affiliated with any political party, and I can’t imagine what would induce me to run again, but I will say this: If you want a green economy, you’re not going to get it by voting NDP. They claim to ‘get it,’ but their actions speak volumes otherwise. And they continue to waste good candidates like Lana Popham in trivial causes when we face real crises.

Climate change is not a clear and present danger. It is clear to scientists, to those who take the trouble to understand the science, and to those who trust the former or the latter. It is not at all clear to anyone else, and of course the truth and danger are deliberately obscured by paid deniers.

Climate change is also not a present danger, meaning it is not an immediate threat. The longer we put off confronting climate change, the more damage it will do, but the nature of the threat is creeping and exponential. Some changes are occurring right now and many may realise that climate change is a contributory factor, but the danger is distant and remote. Later, as we go up the exponential damage curve, climate change becomes a clear and present danger but it will be too late to stop the worst.

Humanity does face a clear and present danger, however, and combating this crisis will go a long way toward fighting climate change. Environmentalists must not waste this crisis. Despite forty years of environmental activism and some major battles won, the war is all but lost.

If you want to win, it is time to change strategy. The crisis is peak oil, and is dead simple:

1. There is only so much oil;
2. At some point, the peak, we will have used half of all the oil;
3. After that point, there will only be less oil; and
4. Our entire civilisation, especially transportation and food, is dependent upon oil.
5. No substitutes are anywhere near available.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that unless our need for oil remains less than the supply of oil, the price of oil is going to go up. Way up, given how dependent we are upon it.

From The Oil Drum

After the price of oil spikes, there will be a recession, and the price may come back down. That has been the pattern in recent recessions caused by oil price increases. This time, however, we have passed peak oil and that means the supply is less than it way – which means the price is not going to go down as much as it used to.

We are in a permanent recession as a result of the fact that oil prices are roughly four times what they were a few years ago. Because virtually 100% of our transportation – trucks, trains, planes, ships, and of course cars – runs on oil or its derivatives, the price of transportation has increased. The same effect exists with food, where pesticides are petroleum based, and of course tractors run on diesel. Inflation lately has been driven by these increases in transportation and food costs, and as people have to spend more on necessities like food and transportation, they will have less to spend on other things. This means less consumer demand and therefore a recession.

This recession is permanent and will probably deepen. Just prior to the recession, the price of oil spiked to $147 per barrel, and it is now approximately $80 per barrel. This is four times the price of only a few years ago, when the economy was booming. We are now in the worst recession since the Great Depression. The price of oil is not going down.

How does this recession fit into environmentalism? It is a crisis that will continue until we greatly reduce our demand for oil. Which, coincidentally and interestingly, is also a big part of the cure for climate change.

Climate change warriors need to get behind a plan to get off oil. The peak oil crisis is now, and people will respond. Whether they respond by invading another oil-bearing country, by dissolving into poverty and despair, or by conserving and moving to renewable energy is currently an open question.

Environmentalists, climate warriors, peak oilers, nationalists, and democratic reformers need to pile onto peak oil. The longer we delay, the more damage we suffer from recession, from peak oil, and from climate change. Replacing oil with conservation and renewables makes the nation energy-independent, creates a secure food supply, eliminates oil-induced inflation and recessions, and slashes greenhouse gas emissions.

Peak oil is a clear and present danger to the nation, to our prosperity, and to civilisation, and the protective steps for peak oil will greatly help with climate change. All of us need to join together to combat it.

I don’t mean the Paris Hiltons of the world, but her daddy and his cronies – the CEOs, executives, and politicians – the rich and powerful. These people are the modern aristocracy. They have the most to gain in the short-term from the status quo, from maintaining that the current course is the ideal, and by claiming that only their compass is capable of pointing True North. Further, they have the money and connections to insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions, up to a point. They are thus strongly motivated to believe what they want to believe and to ignore reality.

The common man is not so isolated from consequences and has less motivation to believe that the rich know best, so those at the top must employ ‘think tanks’ to tell the little people what to think. Not surprisingly, what think tanks spout frequently coincides with what the rich want everyone to think.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous economist, noted the tendency of executives to be most psychologically committed to the rightness of the corporate vision – they have to be in order to attain their position. For example, if you accept that human-caused climate change is a problem, you’re very unlikely to become Chief Executive Officer of an oil or coal or auto company. The opposite is true:

• Example #1: Bob Lutz is the product development chief and Vice Chairman at General Motors. Mr. Lutz recently called global warming a “total crock of sh*t,” but then went on to claim that his views had no bearing on GM’s commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles. Uh huh.
• Example #2: Rex Tillerson is the CEO of ExxonMobil. Mr. Tillerson argues that “the science of climate change is far from settled and that his company views it as its “corporate social responsibility” to continue to supply the world with fossil fuels.” Fuels that, according to scientists, are destroying the world. Interesting view of “social responsibility.”
• Example #3: Don Blankenship is the CEO of Massey Energy, a coal company engaged in mountaintop removal mining and violator of the Clean Water Act no fewer than 12,000 times. Mr. Blankenship recently tweeted that “Some fear that we are entering a new Ice Age. We must demand that more coal be burned to save the Earth from global cooling.”

Presumably these executives do listen to their own scientists when it comes to issues like engine designs, efficacy of oil extraction rates, and so on. They are not opposed to science in general, simply to science that reveals that their business model is flawed, or that their prestige, power, and money results from doing harmful things. They have a psychological blind spot – a fatal flaw.

The idiocy of the modern aristocracy is not immediately fatal for those at the top. You may have noticed that they are not suffering much, so may question just how dangerous it is to be stupid and rich. The sad reality is that their flaw is fatal for us. In a prime example of this dangerously gross idiocy:

• Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency and formerly an OPEC employee, admits that their projections of remaining oil supply are based on wishful thinking. The IEA, which every government in the world relies upon for oil forecasts, had never actually measured how much oil remained until 2008.

The fantastic stupidity of this is mind-boggling to average people. Perhaps if one is paid hundreds of thousands per year, jets around the world on a plush expense account, and looks good in a $1,000 suit, one can find a way to make sense of the senseless. That Mr. Birol gets all this while being so incredibly dumb is a sure sign that idiocracy has arrived in the aristocracy. That Mr. Birol has multiple degrees means nothing; very intelligent people frequently do very stupid things. Because oil is so vital to our civilisation, Mr. Birol’s foolishness is going to cost us very dearly. Heck of a job, Birol.

And that is the true tragedy of allowing morans at the top. They are leading us all to destruction.

I’m sure s/he must be asking itself the same question at this point, given what we’ve done to the planet. I suspect it was boredom. After 65 million years of the dinos, God had had enough. S/he needed something new, fresh, exciting to rejuvenate its creative energy. After awhile it must have been like having the fish tank screen saver on your computer. Very cool…but for 65 million years? So, fire a meteor into the earth, presto-blammo, dino-die-off, now taking applications for new species or new variations on old species. Must be creative, like Me.

Now, after only 1 million years, humans have developed the capability to kill God, or any concept of the sacred, both figuratively and literally. We are destroying the planet, which is our source of life, because to us no life is sacred, every life has a price or a use for someone else. The dinosaurs lasted 65 million years and it took a meteor to wipe them out. We’ve been around 1/65th of the time and are wiping ourselves out. Who had the tiny brain, again?

Life is sacred, not just mine but yours, too. I have no right to kill or exploit you in order to enhance my own life. And you will similarly respect me or I reserve the right to defend myself by whatever means necessary. When capitalism or communism or fascism or any other ‘ism’ permits this exploitation, that system is immoral, destructive, and ultimately self-destructive.

This basic truth, that life is sacred, has been lost, killed, sold.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?
– Friedrich Nietzsche

As we lose respect for others, and for that which created and sustains us, so we lose respect for ourselves, and we decay into moral lassitude, on a path to destruction but too drunk to care.

Not everybody is like this, of course. There are many people more aware of reality, and more moral. I believe the vast majority of people contain an innate degree of conservatism, meaning our natural preference is to move slowly and cautiously forward. That’s our history; generation after generation saw little change.

And when changes did come, often they were bad. A new oppressor, perhaps. Invasion. Some mysterious disease.

As a result, most of us fear change. We were bred to maintain the status quo. Unfortunately, much as we fear change we fear not to reproduce, and inevitably this puts a civilisation in a predicament. So far, no civilisation has escaped this predicament, and now it is our turn.

However, we have something no previous civilisation had: we know that they existed, and roughly what happened to them.

We also know how to avoid the predicament: live sustainably. Live within the limits set by God and nature, and you and your heirs will prosper. Destroy that which God and nature have provided, and barren will be your earth.

I deliberately phrased some of this article in Biblical-sounding prose to remind us of where most of us got our first concept of the sacred: in a church or synagogue or mosque or some holy text. Those with an allergic reaction to the word of concept of ‘God’ may be offended; that is their choice. I was once that way, but it doesn’t make sense to throw away the lessons of the past, including moral teachings, because one doesn’t like the source.

We have killed God and put The Almighty Dollar in its place, and we have the morals to match. We have embraced the Seven Deadly Sins and made them virtues. Prudence and thrift and “waste not want not” are quaint relics that we believe are better replaced with Greed is Good.

There is a part of all of us that understands the concept of the sacred, and thus worships life. Spiritual leaders like Jesus and Gandhi sought to get us to expand that consciousness to other aspects of our character, to other people, even animals.

Jesus shielded the prostitute and kicked over the tables of the money-lenders; we do just the opposite. We judge harshly those we fear, like prostitutes and drug dealers, to evade the reality that we go much easier on crooked CEOs and banksters because we benefit from the system they represent. We are complicit in our own entrapment.

We can avoid the predicaments of overpopulation, resource scarcity, pollution, peak oil, and even natural climate change like ice ages by simply living sustainably. For example, if we know that large areas of the earth get covered by ice every 20,000 years, we don’t put billions of people in those areas.

That would be planning ahead. This, by the way, would have kept us to a much smaller population centred around the equator, except for the Inuit. Of course, we didn’t really figure out the cycles of the ice ages until fairly recently and we had already carved up the planet into nations by that point. But at least we could agree that countries affected by the ice age need to plan accordingly, and as some of them are likely to disappear entirely (like Canada and the Scandinavian countries, for example) they should start planning for their demise. Preferably by attrition, meaning to let the population naturally decline to zero sometime in advance of the ice age.

The situation described is roughly the reverse of the one we do face under climate change, with the countries close to the equator likely to be wiped out and the northern ones – well, benefitting from warmer and shorter winters, but starting to pay the price from wild storms, wildfires, and water shortages that are going to get much worse soon.

But we don’t think 20,000 years ahead, and we don’t think even 100 years ahead now. Many of us think in very short terms indeed: executives quarterly, workers paycheque-to-paycheque; our houses are built to last 70 years. No need to worry about any signs of them being around come the ice age.

We don’t even consider our children’s future any more. Nothing is sacred. We consume everything and leave nothing for our children, not even hope. What kind of parents are we? Our family lines deserve to die out.

We don’t have to end this way. We can rediscover the sense of sacred within ourselves. And we must exert our right to restrain those who would harm that which is sacred: life; creation itself.

There’s a lot being said about climate change, peak oil, and other looming catastrophes. Let’s be honest, none of these is helpful and all are potentially dangerous to life as we know it. Some years ago I moved from climate sceptic/denier to climate change warrior, after I investigated and discovered the reality of the threat. Corruption in the financial markets and in our democracies is also quite dangerous, as we have experienced in the current recession caused by crooked bankers and their bought politicians. But where climate change is a long-term threat, and we can stagger along for some time bearing the weight of the banksters, only peak oil looks very likely to deal a mortal blow soon.

Let’s go through these threats one-at-a-time.

Climate change

In brief, we are adapted to this climate, meaning everything from our agriculture to the countless cities at sea level, and any significant change is potentially catastrophic. Many vital crops stop growing above certain temperatures, and even the small amount of climate change we have seen so far is causing droughts and crop failures. A sea level rise of 1m (~3 feet) will displace 100 million people – and the latest projections are for a sea level increase of that magnitude this century. If temperatures rise sufficiently, and we are not doing anything to stop it, most of humanity and most species will be wiped from the face of the earth.

But devastating as climate change will ultimately be, it is not an immediate threat to us personally or to civilisation. (If you live in one of the developing countries, this is not true; bad things are happening now. The slaughter in Darfur was caused in part by the drying up of Lake Chad, which in turn was partly caused by global warming.) The major damage is expected to begin in 40-50 years, as displaced people move into crowded areas and turf wars begin, as water becomes in short supply and water wars begin, as many people realise their lives are going to be destroyed and they get angry about it.

Still, we are wired to respond to immediate threats that we can experience with our senses, and climate change has not passed that threshold yet for most people. They might be able to grasp the danger if it was presented graphically and if there were not paid fossil fuel company shills spreading misinformation and lies.

Pollution

Here I’m going to lump in everything from ocean dead zones (caused largely by excess agricultural chemicals) to acid rain to the hole in the ozone layer. All are bad news and contribute to the breakdown of the web of life that sustains us. Some we have actually taken constructive action on. None of the remaining are immediate threats, nor will be perceived as such.

While cancer rates and the number of children with asthma are believed to be directly tied to pollution, neither threatens to cause a mass collapse or revolt.

Overpopulation

Population becomes overpopulation when that population lives unsustainably. Population overshoot is certainly fatal; it has brought down civilisations in the past that exceeded the carrying capacity of their local environment. It is also a very sneaky problem, because everything can appear fine one year followed by utter collapse and a die-back the next year. There is a famous and chilling story of reindeer on St. Matthew Island that illustrates this. No doubt the ‘denier’ reindeer were saying right up until the end, “Everything is going great! Our population continues to expand, and our GDP (in the form of new reindeer, moss eaten, and poop produced) has just set another record!”

In our case, we have exceeded the ability of the entire Earth to support us, at least in the manner we currently live. We are burning through ‘natural capital’ to keep the party going; we are like the person who appears to be living the high life but in reality is financing it all on credit cards. Sooner or later, the credit is gone and the bills come due.

Many have said that the ‘real problem’ we face is simply too many people: If there were only 100 million humans, we could all live like Americans. However, there are 6.5 billion of us and population is expected to peak at 9 billion around 2050, assuming one of the other limits mentioned in this article doesn’t slow us down first. The real problem is that we are living beyond our ecological means and this has caused most of the other problems.

Resource Scarcity

We are burning through the finite resources of the earth at a fantastic rate and in very short-sighted ways. We expend enormous amounts of energy to dig up various metals, for example, use much more energy to make them into something useful to us – and then re-bury them. Again, though, except for one particular resource, none of the lithium or uranium or topsoil or other natural capital we are drawing down is going to bring civilisation to a crashing halt soon.

Peak Oil

This brings us to oil, that one ubiquitous resource without which our civilisation will end abruptly, and most of us will live much diminished and shorter lives. The reason is that oil is literally in everything in one form or another; our society is utterly dependent upon it. Our food is utterly dependent upon it.

Once we have extracted half of all available oil, rather obviously supply begins to decrease. A reduction in supply means an increase in prices, and because demand is rising, those price increases are going to be sharp and devastating. There was a pre-recession spike up to $147 per barrel, and the price now sits around $80 per barrel, or four times what it was just a few years ago.

It appears that we have hit peak oil, or will very shortly. It had to happen at some point; there was only so much oil.

Because demand for oil is increasing while supply is decreasing, the price of everything containing oil in any form – which is virtually everything – will rise. And because oil is fundamental to our civilisation, any reduction in supply must either be replaced in some way or accompanied by a scaling back of civilisation. As there are no viable replacements for oil and because we have not taken steps to ‘get off oil,’ there is going to be a nasty crash that few will escape.

Fear

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: pointing out real threats is not scaremongering. Crying wolf is OK if there really is a wolf. Riding across the region warning people “The British are coming!” is the right thing to do if it’s true. And if climate change, peak oil, and other problems are real, then only a fool calls facing up to reality scaremongering.

Fear will not kill us. It can paralyse us, but that would be no different than our current state, in which we are not responding to legitimate threats. Fear can also galvanise us to action. If you see a bear charging toward you, fear would be a normal and even useful reaction as your body is flooded with fight-or-flight hormones.

Right now we face multiple crises but we dismiss them as problems. Climate change really is that bad. We are consuming the finite resources of the earth and shitting out pollution into our air, our water, and our soil. we have built our civilisation on oil and have not prepared to live without it. Consequences are to be expected. And while some people see this, many do not.

Fear is a legitimate emotion to feel when one looks at the future for your children – even for yourself. If peak oil is now, could this recession be due to high oil prices? Could this be a permanent recession because the price of oil is only going up from now on?

Peak oil has begun and we have not prepared at all. We should rightly be feeling angry at those who have deceived us about the dangers we face, and at our supposed leaders. They have betrayed all of us.

We need to begin a crash program to ‘get off oil’ immediately. We are in a predicament, which is different from a problem because problems have solutions. Predicaments may not. Turn your fear into anger and do something useful with it.

We face a legitimate crisis: the end of the age of oil.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

You would be wise to educate yourself about the reality of these problems. Do not take the word of politicians or talking heads, many of whom are paid by vested interests like the oil companies. Don’t believe me, for that matter, until you do your own investigation back to original, i.e., scientific, sources. I am confident that when you do, you will agree that I am representing reality fairly.

The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age well describes the problem of peak oil, which is our most pressing threat.

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (New Society Publishers) discusses the realities mentioned above, namely that as a result of living unsustainably we now face shortages: peak oil, peak fish, peak topsoil, and so on.

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is an in-depth, impeccably sourced dissection of the lies spewed by vested interests to protect their profits at everyone’s expense.

Happy reading. If you don’t know, you cannot prepare. And if you are not prepared, your chances at surviving a downturn, setback, or collapse of any sort are greatly diminished.

A word of warning: To many, the Mobilisation Plan given here will seem extreme, even ridiculous. It calls for a radical restructuring of our economy, how we use energy and where we get it, how we transport things, including ourselves, how we grow our food, build our buildings, and even govern and educate ourselves. Radical it may sound, but necessary it most certainly is, and the sooner we implement something like it the more of civilisation we get to keep.

To those people who think this plan too ‘radical,’ I would suggest two things: First, what you or I think is entirely irrelevant in the face of reality. If the reality is that declining oil supplies will wreak havoc on our civilisation, then no amount of scoffing will prevent it. I would suggest you acquaint yourself with reality before deciding upon a sensible course of action. I will admit that it was only a few years ago that I would have considered this plan extreme, but I have been busy educating myself about the truth of our situation. This article assumes that you have done some research already and are aware we face multiple crises; you know I am not scaremongering, but simply confronting reality.

Second, if you are willing to think sensibly about our current economic model, that is what you will find to be ultimately insane. And you will realise that one reason such ‘radical’ changes are needed now is because we did not make smaller changes earlier. We are like the smoker who has ignored doctor’s warnings for a long time, and now faces radical surgery and possibly even death as a result.

Here are the things that must be done in developed countries, particularly Canada and the United States; you can see why we’re unlikely to do them – there will be great resistance from vested interests and the majority of unaware people. As a result, we will likely suffer greatly.

Energy

• Redirect all oil subsidies to conservation and renewable energy
• Immediate 10-year plan for energy self-reliance; no more imported oil, even from “friendlies”
• Redirect a portion of existing energy to create renewable energy; eg: take 10% of hydroelectric and dedicate it to making wind turbines

Our entire civilisation is built on “cheap oil.” This cannot be overemphasised. Oil is in virtually everything, from food to pharmaceuticals, from cars to houses. As the price of oil goes up, and it is, so will the price of virtually every single thing we need or want.

We should have been ‘getting off oil’ years ago. Back then, when the warnings first started coming in about peak oil and climate change, we had decades to make a gradual transition to an economy that used much less energy thanks to conservation, and where that energy we did require came from renewable, clean sources. Now, we are in trouble and must move very rapidly.

Transportation

• Passengers, mail, and parcels: high-speed electric rail
• Redirect all road and automaker subsidies to electrified local rail (light rail, streetcars) and long-haul rail; develop high-speed on/off loaders for freight trains
• Ban private jets; ban short-hop flights; phase out medium haul flights; ban air freight
• Overseas and long-haul flights must be off oil in 5 years or they’re grounded
• Shipping, from cruise ships to freighters, must be off oil in 5 years

Every single one of our transportation choices is entirely dependent upon oil. The recent oil price spike (up to $147 per barrel just before the recession) started to get people thinking about the cost of commuting everywhere, but it was nothing compared to what is coming. Because we transport everything by oil-fueled means, and because so little is produced locally, oil price increases will drive up the price of everything from food to iPods.

Government

• End all subsidies for anything that uses fossil fuels, including farming
• Completely open government up to scrutiny; no need for Freedom of Information requests
• Ban all lobbying; end the revolving door between government and business
• U.S.: withdraw entirely from the Middle East (including Israel) over the 10 year ‘get off oil’ plan; downsize the military to strictly national defence; use demobilised personnel to rebuild the national rail system, net-zero housing, etc.

Government is not the problem, but it is a big part of it. Any business subsidy favours that business and distorts the market. Had we never subsidised oil (in the form of tax breaks to oil companies, free roads for trucking companies, and foreign occupations), we would likely be driving electric cars and riding electric streetcars now. We would be eating organic foods. And we would not be dependent upon hostile nations for energy.

However we did, and we also did not forbid pollution; we allowed companies to use the atmosphere (and everywhere else) as a dump. In doing so we dug ourselves into a big, dark hole, and we do not have time for ‘the market’ to figure a way out. That is why I have called for subsidies to renewable energy and conservation, because we now need to overcome years of going in the wrong direction.

Government must be made entirely transparent. Every report, minutes from every meeting, budgets – all must be made immediately public (and readily searchable). Corporations must also be brought to heel; many are so large that they have more power than our elected representatives. Only by doing these two things do we have a chance of keeping these new subsidies from becoming as big and permanent a problem as the ones they replace.

Economy

• Move to a stable and sustainable economy – abandon the growth economy to the trash heap of history where it belongs
• Stabilise population now; more people need more resources
• Break up large companies; replace organizations that must be large with co-operatives with strict rules on size and influence; no business can be allowed to become To Big To Fail or large enough to influence government
• Ban advertising aimed at children; make all advertising non-tax-deductible
• Re-localise as much as possible, from decision-making to farming; decisions should be made by those affected, not remote capitalists or bureaucrats

The whole idea of a continuous growth economy on a finite planet is insane. Unchecked growth in the body is a cancer; in a segment of the economy it is a bubble. When the entire economy must grow constantly, then the entire economy is a bubble. This includes population, which must be stabilised in every country as quickly as possible. In developed countries, where population is only growing because of immigration, population can be stabilised immediately.

Unregulated capitalism is as much as disaster as the so-called socialism that led to the Soviet Union. As history has clearly demonstrated on more than one occasion, capitalism sooner-or-later devolves into crony capitalism, where one or a few companies control large market segments – and exert far too much influence on government cronies.

As corporations and governments increase in size and centralise power, people become pawns for profit. Decisions must be made by those who are affected by them, not just those who profit from them.

Food and necessities

• Relocalise farming starting immediately
• End all farm subsidies except those transitioning small, local, family farms to organic
• Enact trade protection for necessities; limit food imports to luxury items

Almost all our food is grown on massive factory farms. Every piece of farm machinery runs on oil or a derivative. Irrigation pumps run on gasoline. Fertiliser is derived from natural gas, also in decline. Pesticides and other agro-chemicals, without which industrialised farming cannot exist, are petrochemical based.  All transportation – trucks, trains, ships, and aeroplanes – run only on oil products.

Oil price increases will ripple through the system raising food prices dramatically. The only food that is immune from this effect is locally grown, small-scale organic, and we know how much that costs. We are ‘eating oil,’ and as the price of oil increases, so must the cost of our food.

There is no advantage to international trade in food, except to the multinationals receiving subsidies to do so. The United States has a population in excess of 300 million; is there really any economy of scale for food that is not possible in a market of this size?

Any country not self-reliant for necessities is vulnerable and prone to war: see: current U.S. involvement in the Middle East; any empire in history.

Shelter

• Change building codes effective immediately to net-zero energy; use current best practices until we develop more ways to build sustainably
• Plan to abandon cities like Phoenix

We can build houses and office buildings right now that require no net energy to construct or heat. It is also true that building codes favour current, grossly inefficient methods of construction. We should end this favouritism immediately.

Some cities, particularly those in the American Southwest, are completely unsustainable without a reliable supply of cheap oil. Phoenix is the poster child for this; it essentially consists of 4 million commuters living in the middle of a desert. All food, water, and energy must be brought from far away. Mass transit is not even possible because the city is so spread out. We either begin a planned rampdown of cities like Phoenix or oil shortages will do it the hard way.

Education

• Launch major research programs into sustainable building
• Educate people, rather than indoctrinate them

Our current educational system is dysfunctional, to be kind. It is really designed to train children to be obedient factory workers and unquestioning consumers, and in that it has succeeded all too well. A glance at the number of intelligent idiots (and many not so intelligent) who unquestioningly believe Fox News tells the story. Here we have a supposedly advanced society where citizens allow themselves to be rebranded as consumers, where they believe talking heads rather than scientists on matters of science like peak oil and climate change, and where economic ideology is still taken seriously despite decades of being just plain wrong.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

Lester R. Brown has proposed a plan in much more detail. It is available for free download or can be purchased.

The first two books discuss peak oil and its consequences. The second two books are plans to at least mitigate some of the crisis we face.