At the rate we’re going, we may not make it even that long. I’m not really a “doomer,” but I have always maintained that political events may bring a sudden end to our current idea of civilization long before climate change or even peak oil really set in. And current political events in the Middle East should be giving any thoughtful person plenty of reason to wonder if they will be a catalyst to rapid change.

By-the-way, apparently the Mayans didn’t really predict the end of the world in 2012; that’s simply when their calendar ran out, and we have interpreted that as the end of times. Interestingly, the Christian tradition predicts an apocalypse – which will start in the Middle East. I’m no expert on either, so readers please feel free to chime in.

I’ll lay out my concern, and I have no doubt that it is shared by the Pentagon, top U.S., British, and other government officials, and anyone with a stake in anything – family or business – in the Middle East.

• There are currently popular uprisings in several countries in the Middle East. The Tunisian government has fallen, Egypt’s government is threatened, and now so is Yemen’s.
• All of these states were tacitly or concretely supported by the U.S. and other Western countries like the U.K. and France.
• All of these states are, or in the case of Tunisia, were dictatorships. Elections, if they took place, were a farce.
• Fundamentalists like the Muslim Brotherhood, while currently keeping relatively quiet, are almost certainly awaiting their opportunity to step in and seize power, as they have done elsewhere.

So far, we are not staring into the abyss, and we can sit comfortably in our developed, more-or-less democratic and peaceful countries and wish the residents of these countries well. We don’t depend upon Tunisia, Egypt, or Yemen in any real way.

However.

Saudi Arabia is also a dictatorship. Iraq is hardly stable. Iran’s autocratic government came close to being overthrown in 2009 in the Green Revolution. These are major oil-producing nations, where Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen are not. If they are destabilized in any way, the price of oil will go through the roof, and the U.S. economy will literally grind to a halt.

I do mean literally; essentially 100% of transportation of people and goods in the United States is via diesel or gas-powered means: Planes, trains, trucks, and cars. Industrial farming is utterly dependent upon oil in various forms. Everything plastic – which these days is almost everything – is made of oil. I have discussed this elsewhere, as have many others better educated on the topic than I. There is a reason the Pentagon is planning for oil depletion.

Whether the reins of power are seized by the Muslim Brotherhood or some other entity, or whether real democracy and elections break out, decades of support by oil-junkie Western nations for the former despotic regimes is hardly likely to endear those who take power to the West.

They may also be economically unsophisticated. Remember the oil shocks of the 1970′s? There were long line-ups at the gas pumps, prices soared, and we experienced nasty recessions. That was when the Iranians persuaded their fellow Arabs to use “the oil weapon” against the United States. It was a very successful weapon of mass economic destruction – but the backlash was that the subsequent recessions caused the price of oil to plunge, and that slashed revenues for the oil-producing nations.

The Saudis and others learned the hard way that their economies – and therefore the security of the despots in power – was directly tied to the economic prosperity of the United States. Incoming, unfriendly governments may well not remember that lesson, or think that it no longer applies, given the tremendous worldwide demand for oil and the current price of ~$90/barrel.

If any major oil-producing nation significantly reduces oil sales to the U.S. for any reason – unfriendly government, terrorist bombing of oil distribution facilities, war, civil unrest – the price of oil is going up-up-up, and our economies are going down-down-down. Fast.

What that leads to is anyone’s guess. Here’s  mine.

First, I should state that what we could and should do are not likely to be what we actually do. We could, for example, immediately redirect much electricity generation to producing wind, solar, nuclear, etc power plants. We could and should immediately start retrofitting cities with electrified buses and light rail. Above all, we could and should fund conservation measures and local agriculture. That has the potential to drastically cut out oil consumption quickly, possibly saving the economy from collapse.

However, again.

We have had years of warnings. We have had “oil shocks” followed by recessions. We are currently in a bad recession, yet suffering food and fuel price inflation. And, the two most important obstacles:

• Our own governments are not as democratic as we like to believe; they are largely captive to monied special interests like oil companies. There is a reason they continue to receive large subsidies despite earning record profits.
• We are all oil junkies; most of us expect to be able to commute to work and Walmart.

Anybody trying to change the nation’s course will have to overcome both these special interests and a mass of people who feel they are entitled.

We could be in for a bumpy ride sooner rather than later. I hope not; I hope we have the time and wisdom to transition our economies off oil dependency. However, up until now we have not demonstrated that wisdom, and it looks like time is running out sooner than expected.

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.

Here is the ideal post-collapse (meat) meal.* For future hunter-gatherers, here’s an easy meal when you just want to warm yourself around an open fire on a cool spring evening, drinking some mead and laughing with family and tribe. (Update below with recipe in English.)

My wife and family are from Colombia, which means that my wife’s mother retains memories of and skills from a more self-reliant age. She can turn milk into cheese using only the sun and a powder called “Milkset,” for example. And every now and again, my wife, who has the memories but not the skills, because like most of us in the developing world, her generation never had to use them, still occasionally goes back to her roots.

This dish – Lomo al trapo – likely has very old roots. It’s the sort of thing people have been cooking for thousands of years, because the requirements are simple: cloth, string, fire, beer, salt, hunk of meat. Continue reading →