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.

According to a recent poll and just about everyone I’ve spoken with, none of the major Canadian political parties is inspiring or trustworthy. No wonder voter turnout is so low. This is no surprise to me; I speculated this was the case months ago. More importantly, I suggested that this is not simply an indictment of the Liberals or the Conservatives, but also very much of the NDP and Greens.

Given how little faith Canadians have in the two big parties, the NDP and Greens should be rising in the polls. That they are not shows that Canadians put even less trust in the small parties. The Greens and NDP are squandering an opportunity to shine that they may not get again any time soon. If they were communicating any sort of inspiring vision or leadership, they would be gaining a steady stream of supporters, but they are not.

The problem could, and probably does, lie with the leaders and their cronies.

If I were Jack Layton…

I would offer the following to the Canadian people:

“Dear supporters and candidates of all parties, and of course independents, the NDP would like to suggest a practical way to make Parliament work, to stabilize our economy, and to do our part in fighting climate change. We must have the integrity, the wisdom, and the courage to face our problems squarely and honestly.

“Our way is not made easier by a diminishing world oil supply, which we are so dependent upon, and a steadily degrading life support system, the “environment.” Top scientists have been warning us for some time, and we now have little time to prepare. In fact, climate change is already happening and it is already bad, from Arctic sea ice melting and polar bears doomed to extinction – except in zoos – to millions and millions of trees killed by pine beetles.

“Climate change is costing us in every way. Economically and socially, the pine beetles alone have destroyed billions of dollars of timber and countless jobs, leaving devastated towns in BC – and it looks like they’ve crossed the Rockies to decimate the rest of our Boreal pine forests. Worldwide fish stocks are in rapid decline, expected to collapse by 2050 – if not sooner. That means skyrocketing fish prices followed by very expensive, grain-fed, farmed fish if you want it. We are about duplicate the East Coast cod fishery collapse on a global scale. Fish is a major and important part of our diet and our world. As we harm the environment, we wound ourselves.

“We know all these things are going on, but we just don’t know what to do about it. It all seems so overwhelming and out of our control, whether it’s a force of nature or corporate-dominated governments that have forgotten who they represent. And many people are afraid to vote for the “socialist” NDP. Well, we’re actually more like the Social Democrats in some highly successful countries in Europe, like Denmark or Germany. Six weeks of vacation per year doesn’t seem to have slowed their economies down much, and greening their economies is working out pretty well for them.

“But we are putting all that aside. We’re only proposing action on areas where we are sure we have significant agreement with the majority of Canadians. We won’t try to impose six week vacations on you – unless we get a majority government. But we are suggesting cooperation on areas of agreement so that Canada responds appropriately to the various crises we are facing.

“We all know that the climate is changing, and this is going to be a problem for us. Same with the fisheries collapsing, and ocean “dead zones,” and the spreading of deserts, and pollution and overpopulation. We have known for a long time that these would someday become emergencies if not stopped. “Someday” is now.

“And unfortunately, we’re not as economically well-off as we once were for dealing with problems.

“Last year saw an oil price spike that contributed to our current serious recession, and which was triggered by a crooked banking system in the United States. Millions upon millions of Americans have been foreclosed upon. Millions more have gone bankrupt, and the most common cause of bankruptcies in the US has for years been health costs for insured people. There are great and wonderful things about the United States that we admire, but American-style capitalism has some serious flaws. Our banking regulations aren’t perfect, but they protected us from the worst of the excesses on Wall Street. Our health care system isn’t perfect, but it works.

“’If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ And if it does need fixing, or even just an update, learn from examples that work well. Use proven techniques. Learn from success.

“With that in mind, Canada is lagging Europe badly, and we are not preparing for the new green economy. China and India are well ahead of us when it comes to green technology. We are not falling behind. We are behind. This is not acceptable. We cannot sell raw resources and expect to have a developed-world standard of living forever. That is doubly true if the resource is non-renewable, because it’s a one-time-only bonanza.

“The reason we’re lagging the coming economy is because we are not taking climate change and the end of cheap oil seriously, and these other nations are. Other countries see the danger and they are taking appropriate action to protect themselves and to minimize the damage. We are not. As a result, they are building a greener economy, which turns out to be more robust in the face of recession, and we are clinging to the American Way.

“Let’s be proud of the Canadian Way. America is not perfect and there are some things we do better here, from a better and cheaper health care system to better regulated and therefore more robust banks. More than that, we have been leaders in the fight for truth and justice.

“I have great faith in Canadians to do what needs to be done in times of trouble, because of that shining example set by an earlier generation in the Great Wars. They sacrificed to defeat fascism, the horror that a Nazi-dominated world would have been. We face threats of our own, and we must rise. We must have the courage of our forebears to defend ourselves from the problems we face.

“I offer this to all citizens of Canada:

“Let it be known that the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP) agrees to strategic candidacies in every riding in Canada, with the purpose of forming a government that will commit to accomplish the following and no more:

• Open government: No more secret meetings or buried reports. All minutes, budgets, and expenditures down to the lowest level to be published on the Internet in real time. All civil service reports and statistics published immediately upon completion, with data, and untouched by political influence.

• Ban lobbying: Forbid anyone employed by the people of Canada, directly or indirectly as subcontractors or other means, to engage in lobbying for a period of 5 years following the end of public service. Similarly, lobbyists may not work in government for 5 years from the end of their lobbying job.

• Re-direct existing subsidies and all economic stimulus money to the measures below, accepting the current deficit level until unemployment drops below 5%. Convert the GST to a greenhouse gas tax and redirect to building green economic stability. Build to a surplus, pay off the debt, and leave a surplus should bad economic times come again.

• Rebuild our manufacturing by mandating that necessities must be produced here, especially food, energy, and the ability to get around the country. We should not be dependent upon other nations for our needs; it diminishes us. It weakens us. Luxuries we can import. Our food and energy we must not.

• Move oil-producing provinces to energy-producing provinces: The prairies have plenty of sun and wind, for example. Alberta and Saskatchewan can sell electricity instead of oil, and keep the high-paying jobs and good economic times. Imagine if former Prime Minister Chretien had, after committing Canada to Kyoto, redirected tar sands subsidies to green energy; the prairie provinces would be energy superpowers in clean, renewable energy now. Any government since could have done it. All have failed us by not even considering it.

• Rebuild the Canadian National Railway. Not the company; the once-great service from sea-to-sea – that was a condition for acceptance of Confederation for some provinces. The Edmonton-Calgary and golden horseshoe-to-Montreal legs should start immediately and all parts should be built in Canada. We need the expertise and the jobs – and we should be experts in getting around a large, sparsely-populated country.

• Change the building code to mandate net-zero homes – within one year. We have to get moving, and we can learn from the examples of Great Britain and France, which already have such codes mandated. How would you like to pay nothing for heat and hot water? It can be done and is being done.

• Have each city and region perform a “Self-reliance Audit” and create and begin implementing a “Self-reliance Plan”; the purpose is to insulate us from oil price spikes, food or other shortages, or any disruptions to our security.

• Waste Not, Want Not: When a biodegradable, reusable, or recyclable product exists and is within 10% of the cost of the current solution, then all products of that type must be biodegradable, reusable, or recyclable. This drives us to a much less wasteful society, which in the long run will also be less costly. Costs of alternatives will drop rapidly once mainstreamed. And we have the savings from less energy used, pollution-free industries, lower health care costs, and so on.

• Reduce crime and repeat offenders by instituting rehabilitative justice for non-violent offenders. Bring back work farms so the taxpayer is not paying for the offender’s food, but they are providing for themselves. And have them grow the food for the Parliamentary dining room, too.

“To our knowledge all of the above would fit with the Green, Bloc, Liberal, or Progressive Conservative approaches – and more importantly, are what Canadians want. It makes Canada and Canadians more secure and more prosperous. It stabilizes the economy. It is the wise course and it is what we need to start doing yesterday.

“Let’s not waste another moment on business as usual. Canadians should be leaders, not followers – or worse, ignored. That is where the big parties have led us. It is time for a change, to ensure government protects the people first. It is time to do our part on the world stage, and at home.

“We offer this to the other parties, to individual candidates, and to all Canadians. We face threats, crises, and we must rise to the occasion. We are sincere about putting Canada before party. We will work with any citizen, candidate, or party that is willing to do the same.”

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They’ll never do it, of course. And so they will deservedly continue to sit in nowhere land in the polls with the Greens.

I can’t say precisely when, so by “soon” I mean within two years at most. My reasoning is below; I’d be curious to hear feedback.

Given that the:

1. Price of oil spiked to $147 per barrel in 2008
2. Current oil price is $80, even though we’re in the worst recession since the Great Depression

I reason that:

1. The price of oil remains ~$80 per barrel because demand is keeping it there.
2. The U.S. is in recession with oil at that price, no recovery is coming. We are in a permanent recession.
3. With oil at those prices during a recession – four times that of just a few years ago – indicates we have hit the limits of supply at this price. That is, oil producers cannot pump more to get the price down, even if they wanted to (which most don’t).

However, demand in China continues to grow, and we continue to burn far more oil than we’re finding, so this means another oil price spike is almost certain within two years. The U.S. economy may find a way to recover somewhat, too; perhaps another bubble can be found. And the Americans are starting to drive more, again. That will push demand up.

Demand is going to push on supply, and price is going to go up fast, followed by a crash to a lower level than we are now. We have to reach a level of recession where we are consuming considerably less oil, or are considerably less dependent upon oil.

As we’re not doing anything serious about consuming or being less dependent upon oil, there will be another spike and crash.

Don’t wait for your federal government or even state/provincial government to provide leadership. They will at best respond too late, once we’re mid-crisis or beyond. Make your town a transition town.