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.

The instructions below are in Spanish below (here’s the original), but essentially here’s how it goes:

1. Lay out a square of cotton large enough to wrap a hunk of meat.
2. Spread 1 kg of salt over the cloth.
3. Soak another cloth in beer and lay it over the first.
4. Put the meat in the middle, wrap it up and tie it.
5. Cook for approximately 30 minutes per side over an open fire.

I can imagine people cooking this back in the middle ages and even much further back for a small feast.

It looked delicious, and I’m told it was. (As a vegetarian, I didn’t partake in the meat portion of the meal.)

* If you’ve read other articles on this site, you’ll know that I normally write about what we can expect in a future of declining oil supplies, climate change, and worse-than-useless leaders.)

Lomo al trapo

UPDATE: Lomo al Trapo – Beef Tenderloin in Cloth (English recipe)

Comensales: 6
País: Colombia
Tiempo de preparación: 15 mins
Tiempo de cocción: 40 mins
Tiempo total: 55 mins

Preparación:

El lomo debe ser bien fino, largo y sin nervios o grasa.
Mojar el trapo de algodón y cubrirlo con un kilo de sal; colocar el lomo en el centro, y cubrirlo con el resto de la sal. Cerrar bien la tela, cuidando de que la carne quede bien cubierta de sal; superponer los bordes largos y doblar hacia adentro los extremos. Atar muy bien con hilo de cocina, ajustando cada 5 cm. para evitar que se escape la sal.

Colocar en la parilla, cuidando de que las brasas no quemen la tela; cocinar por 8 minutos de cada lado, si le gusta bien jugoso. Si no, extender el tiempo de cocción a 10 minutos para término medio; y 12, si lo desea bien cocido.

Al voltearlo, se nota que la sal se solidificó por efecto del calor. Para retirar la carne, hay que romper esta capa de sal, y quitar bien con un cuchillo lo que puede haber quedado sobre el lomo, el cual debe estar seco por fuera y tierno por dentro.

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.

The Oil Drum is one of the best resources on the web for keeping up-to-speed on peak oil’s progress and ramifications. The site also lists several “Peak Oil Primers,” and amusingly ranks them on a DEFCON scale. The DEFCON scale was designed to indicate the activation level of the U.S. military, with DEFCON 5 being “normal peacetime military readiness” all the way up to DEFCON 1, which signals an “imminent or ongoing attack.”

Having spent some time on each of those sites, I can say that they all predict very bad outcomes as peak oil progresses. TOD’s DEFCON rating appears to come from the optimism a site has about avoiding the worst of these outcomes, and how far along we are. I think it is fair to say that Kunstler and Savinar think sliding down the razor’s edge is unavoidable.

Where would you rate yourself? Do you think we still have time to develop alternatives, that peak oil has not yet arrived, that its impact will be slow and we can adapt? Put yourself at DEFCON 5, the lowest rating. Think like Kunstler and Savinar, that there are going to be significant casualties and a big chunk of civilisation will be lost? You’re at DEFCON 1. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in-between.

Personally, I stand at Defcon Zen. What is will be, and we do what we can.

I see us as just on the edge of the first step down of our punctuated decline; we’re in Greer’s first crisis. He predicts that such crises, which include economic depressions, typically last 10-25 years. During the crisis period, we are adapting to a lower availability of energy, and must scale back our civilisation accordingly.

I figure the current recession will deepen and many people will become permanently unemployed. There are millions who will simply have to find other ways to get by, or “make other arrangements” as Kunstler says, because there just won’t be jobs for everyone. In this first crisis, though, I think there will be ways for most who want to, to get by.

Conservation and local gardens have great potential to slash individual energy and food costs and energy use very quickly. They also cut the need for income. I think local responses will spring up, like local farms reviving and suddenly being profitable, as they no longer have to compete with subsidised imports.

While this means most people will eat more locally-grown and in-season food, it also means the price of food will rise. That means people have less money for everything else, and that means higher unemployment.

There are currently many farm jobs filled by migrant workers and immigrants, legal and not, and there will be great pressure to throttle immigration. I think the developed countries will have to stabilise their populations, whether they like it or not, within this crisis. Americans and Canadians will need the jobs, and will pick fruit and harvest vegetables, like it or not.

This counters the rise in unemployment to an extent as yet unknown, although the wages will be low. And so it goes, spiralling slowly down until we reach some sort of equilibrium where we can sustain a certain lifestyle, either sustainably if we’re wise, or temporarily if we’re not. In the first case, we can begin to rebuild. In the second, there will be a partial recovery and many will think good times are just around the corner, but in reality another step down awaits.

The crisis has begun; it’s going to get worse before it gets better – and it may not get better. Or, it could be an improvement on what we have in many ways. We could make a big shift to living sustainably, to implementing a zero-waste society – waste not, want not – and end up with walkable communities, net-zero energy solar houses, and a pretty decent standard of living. Fewer electronic geegaws, though.

How we respond is unknown as we proceed down this first slope. So far, there has been precious little action and disaster seems certain. But it’s a bumpy ride down, and we may wake up at any point during this first crisis. Once awake, there are wise courses of action to take, ones that lead us to a sustainable future so that this is the last crisis, and there are other courses that merely bring on another step down.

I suspect part of what wakes people up will be the ongoing devaluation of their homes. More and more people will be “underwater” and the banks will simply have to take a writedown in some way. If not willingly, there will be unignorable public resistance.

An oil war in the Falklands would be a shock, too. It would sure look like an Imperial Power siphoning off a resource from a developing country. The issue has already united Latin America. The potential for a war between the United Kingdom and Latin America could jolt people awake.

Or something could trigger a very rapid and deep decline, such as Saudi Arabia cutting back on supply significantly, regardless of the reason. War. Terrorist act. A recognition that their oil fields are in decline plus a sudden desire to use their oil to build a post-oil economy, leaving much less for export. Then it wouldn’t matter how ‘awake’ people were; the descent to a lower level will be rapid.

There is no way to know what it will take to wake humanity from its slumber, or if that is possible, and what the response would be. Given these unknown and at present unknowable variables, it only makes sense to take a Zen approach. Well, what to me is a Zen approach, given that I know very little about Buddhism:

• A good future is possible
• Wake people up
• Save my own soul

The first two I have already covered: A decent future is possible but only if people wake up and take a sustainable course of action. That is the purpose of this site.

The soul, whatever it may be, is only alive that anyone is aware as long as the body is alive, so if you want to save your soul then save your body. I am doing my best to acquire skills that will be valuable during the crisis, to ensure I have a secure place to live, a garden, a protective community, and so on.

We are entering a new and challenging era. There will be much that can be learned, many things rediscovered. It can be good or it may be bad, but ultimately we each must make the best of whatever time and circumstances we have.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The second book is John Michael Greer’s erudite explanation of peak oil and the expected outcome.

The third book is about a growing local movement to “Transition Towns,” and offers a positive vision and hope that we can make a difference locally, as our federal and state governments are not leading.

The final book is about growing your own vegetables year-round in a solar greenhouse, something we might all want to look into.

Many of us realise the nature of the threat posed by climate change, peak oil, peak everything else, fisheries collapse, ocean acidification, desertification…the list is getting longer, especially recently.¹ Even if you don’t know about all of these dangers, you know enough about one or two to know that one or two is enough to do us in. Yet many people still live lifestyles they know to be wildly unsustainable, even actively harmful. Why?

This is not the place for a detailed discussion of each of the threats previously mentioned. I am going to assume that, if you are reading this, you accept that we face at least one very severe threat that will cause great harm. There will be damage to individual and social prosperity, the economy at large, health, our standard of living, and so on. If unchecked, it has the potential to set civilisation and population back considerably. There may be differences over timeline, level of awareness, beliefs about our ability to adapt, and so forth, but we all accept that we face a severe threat. There are millions of people who accept this about climate change and/or peak oil, and/or other environmental concerns and/or etc.

And yet you still drive?

I still drive. I am very aware of the extent of many of these dangers, and how driving is contributing to making them worse. I know carbon emitted by me² indirectly contributed to the drying up of Lake Chad, which resulted in millions being driven from their lands into other, already crowded lands…and a genocide ensued. I know that any carbon emitted by me is contributing to sea level rise that will drown parts of Delta, BC, just across from my home of Victoria.

And yet I still drive, and so do many millions of ‘ecoaware’ people. How can I live with myself?

Here are my reasons:

• I live in a car-based society. I would prefer to live in a walkable community, but those are exceptionally rare. I am working to create one, however.
• If we greened our economy, then living green would be no sacrifice. However, we don’t, so if I want to go green I have to do without things, like jobs I can only take if I have a car, and do other things I really don’t want to do, like carry the groceries home. (If the economy was green I’d be walking to work or taking an electric train or working from home.  The train would stop inside a station in the mall, instead of across the parking lot. And grocery stores would deliver – most do for free now – or I’d get a cart of some sort to haul the occasional heavy load home.)
• Any individual contribution is lost as the rich fly to Paris for Valentine’s Day. Without all of us going green, we’re done. I’m willing to go much deeper green than I am, but not if I’m the only one.

All for one, or none for all

That is our current situation. There are a lot of people unwilling to change, never mind sacrifice. I know that unless they do, we’re all done. But until then, I have to live in this society, and I can’t always get the locally-grown organic wine. Sometimes it’s the cheap stuff.

It’s partly a trade-off, in that it takes more time and money to live green than otherwise, and that means other things don’t get done. In my case, I need time to write this blog and do other things that I consider important in creating a social tipping point, after which we ‘get it’ and go green fast. If the choice is between darning socks and giving a presentation on climate change, I will choose the latter.

I am working to change the example I live and the mainstream view. I am doing this both to give myself the greatest security and because it’s the right thing. We should not be destroying the planet or ignoring reality because it’s convenient and temporarily profitable to do so. Those are inadequate justifications for destroying our natural capital.

And because most people are not changing, there will be consequences. I am working on building a passive solar home, for example, which is the right way to build and the best way to protect myself and my family from some of the consequences of our collective inaction on climate and peak oil.

Are those who sacrifice more, more moral? I suppose the Bible would say so, while the preachers for many of the largest U.S. ‘Christian’ churches, and the vast majority of CEOs, politicians and economists, would say no. My money’s on the Bible in the case, up to a point. So why don’t I sacrifice more? I believe that people are both selfish and selfless, that each is ‘right,’ and that the good life requires balancing the two.

In a world of want, you could reduce yourself to a very impoverished level as you sacrificed as much as possible to be the most moral. Or, you could enrich yourself somehow now and give money to charity later. I prefer taking care of myself so I can help others – and taking care of myself does not require tens of millions of dollars.

Ultimately, it comes down to one’s personal morality, including how willing you are to live with dissonance between morality and action. For me, I do not believe it is more moral for me to sacrifice below the point of a middle class standard of living.

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¹I would also add the corruption of many democracies, in particular that of the U.S., is a great threat to Americans and possibly the rest of us, but the article is about conservation or lack thereof.

² To the nimrods: Yes, I know that I exhale CO2 and yes, I realise that my demise would end this, and no, I am not proposing any should die to reduce CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions. I am saying people will die if we do not reduce non-carbon-neutral processes.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book (from left-to-right) is Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet – something the authors found a tremendous challenge. And they live in Vancouver, where far more can be grown than anywhere else in the country. They found certain foods were simply no longer available. Here’s a telling quote from the book:

Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie?

The next book is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The next two books are growing your own vegetables year-round in a solar greenhouse, something we might all want to look into. The second also has “recipes for soaps, teas and things like that which can be made from greenhouse-grown items” which sounds fun.

Let me make three things perfectly clear: First, in a serious depression, a là the Great Depression, very little is safe and in a collapse there are no secure jobs. Second, the whole idea of a ‘job’ is likely to become a quaint notion the worse the depression or collapse gets. And third, this article is somewhat tongue-in-cheek; its main purpose is to get you to think about your future on our current unsustainable path.

During the Great Depression the unemployment rate in the United States rose to about 25% – meaning there were still many people employed. Some of them hired the unemployed and desperate as servants. During a collapse, however, the entire economic system is thrown into turmoil, discredited, and, well, collapses. (Here is a brief and entirely non-technical explanation of the difference between recession, depression, and collapse.)

Far more secure is some form of self-employment. The worse the depression/collapse, the closer to being a provider of necessities you want to be. People will still need to eat, but travel to exotic locations will be cut. So, without further ado, here are my lists of ‘jobs’ that are most and least likely to be immune to a severe depression or collapse.

Least Collapse-proof

Tanning salons: At one time, pasty white skin was the ‘in’ look among the rich, who even went so far as to powder themselves to look whiter. The reason the rich wanted to look so white was because the peasants had lovely tans from working outdoors all day, and what rich person wants to look like a commoner? Fast-forward a hundred years and the reverse is true; the idle rich need tans to distinguish themselves from the pasty-white proles who spend all day labouring in cubicles. In a collapse, many more people will be spending much more time out-of-doors, and so I predict pasty-whiteness will again become popular among the well-to-do.

Cop: You might think security would be a concern during a depression/collapse, and therefore the position of police officer more secure. You would be right and wrong. See the next entry…

Any taxpayer-funded position: Firefighter, records clerk, the previously mentioned cops…if the government has drastically reduced tax revenue, there won’t be money to pay you.

Maytag repairman: During tough economic times, people will repair rather than replace…and they are more likely to get their handy brother-in-law to do it. Worse still, they may opt for scavenged parts. And, in many cases, they will simply do without the dishwasher, trash compactor, garburator, clothes dryer, and so on.

Car-related anything: Car dealers, mechanics, brake and muffler shops, etc. Demand for new cars will plummet (you may have noticed that it already has), and those with the money to drive will repair their own, or trade something to someone with mechanical skills. However, there are limits. You think a car is a necessity? What if you have no money for gas? Or if the car won’t go and you can’t afford to repair it? Now what? A great deal of money has been devoted by advertisers to make what were once wants into necessities, but the reality is most people can live without their car. Given our suburban set-up, this may be massively inconvenient, but…

Travel agents: As the price of oil goes up, so does the cost of flying, and thus the number of people who can afford to fly goes down. At some point we’re back to only the rich being able to travel, and in the event of collapse, virtually nobody will be travelling for pleasure. Expand this to all service industries that provide a luxury service: wedding planners, sommeliers, dry cleaners, even waiters – times get tougher in the service industry when times get tough generally.

Asshole: Untrustworthy, obnoxious, arrogant, social and corporate-climbing, worthless idiots you just don’t want to be around. In Canada, we call such people “goofs,” but we always were more polite than the Americans. I don’t know what term the Brits and other nations use, but I suspect every culture has a word for these people. Clue: If nobody wants you now because you’re such a pain-in-the-ass to be around, because you can’t be trusted, or because you’re an idiot, they’re going to want to be around you a lot less when times get tough. If you really want to be one of those people, you better plan on being the only guy in town with something that many people need – and even then, don’t count on keeping it if you’re not straight with people. Politicians are going to have a rough ride.

Most Collapse-proof

CEO of a major company: Here is where depressions and collapses differ. In a depression, unless the company goes bust the CEO is safe. He may have to cut his salary in half – from, say $10 million to $5 million – or sell one of the executive jets, but otherwise he’ll hang in until the end. This is especially true as taxpayers bail out “too big to fail” companies. However, in the event of collapse, the CEO would be wise to hightail it to whatever island he has purchased before we peasants come after him with pitchforks.

Local energy suppliers: If you can build a solar greenhouse that provides a lot of heat to a house, you’ll be in demand. Ditto if you manufacture wood-burning stoves and masonry ovens. People will need heat, and the freer the better; anything they can save on oil, natural gas, or electricity will be a huge bonus. An airtight wood stove can burn wood, trash, excess children, you name it, while masonry ovens can take a short, hot fire and then radiate heat for many hours.

Soap makers: I live in Victoria, Canada, and there are numerous shops selling locally-made soaps, lotions, and similar stuff. While there seem to be lots of them, 99% or more of the population is still buying commercial brands made far away in a giant factory. During a depression/collapse, local is strongly favoured, so soap makers will have a valuable product.

Farmers: Duh. Barring an oversupply, farmers will always have something that everyone else wants.

Horse breeders: Obviously it depends how bad things get, but given that we are facing a collapse due to peak oil (meaning the end of cheap oil and the beginning of oil price spikes and shortages), horses may well come back into fashion. Not the fancy-schmancy English-saddle type, but useful and especially draught horses.

Natural healer: When doctors can no longer make $500,000 per year churning patients through in 5 minute visits to dispense $10 pills or $15,000 surgeries, people will return to less costly and less risky ways of healing. Naturopaths should do well, as will those quaint little stores that sell all manner of herbs and potions.

Manufacturer of inebriating substances: Brewers, wine makers, and distillers will all do well as people seek to escape their troubles or simply have a little fun. If you can’t afford to go to the movies, or if the theatres have gone out of business, if restaurants are too pricey, if there are no cars to get to clubs, if there’s no electricity for the TV or Internet, etc, then you can still sit around with a few friends and have a drink. I originally included marijuana grower in this group, but in reality pot is so easy to grow that anyone can do it. (It’s nicknamed ‘weed’ for a reason.)

There you have it; the official list of up-and-coming post-collapse ‘careers.’ I’m sure those with some imagination can think of many more.

In previous articles, I discussed various collapse scenarios and why they are likely. Here, let us consider how to prepare as best we can.

Unless you’re 85 years old, a partial or complete collapse within your lifetime is a good possibility. Even if we somehow dodge this outcome, we must still move to a sustainable way-of-living very soon; oil and natural gas are running out, fisheries are collapsing, climate change is happening, and so on. What to do? The possibilities include total self-sufficiency for the individual, joining a lifeboat community, or positioning yourself as best you can within an existing community.

The Hermit

Becoming Jeremiah Johnson or Grizzly Adams is still exceptionally difficult, not very practical, and inhuman in that it ignores the fact that all humans, including you, are social beings.

First, you would need your own shack in the woods or small farm. Next, it would have to be somewhere nobody knew about or was likely to find, because there’s no way you can defend your property and goods indefinitely. And finally, you would need mad survivalist skillz, everything from growing/catching/preparing/preserving your own food, to cabin-building, to medical knowledge, to making your own cloth and clothes, etc, etc.

Yes, you could do it, but do you want to? And you must accept that the risks are very high; if your seeds for next years’ crop get mouldy, for example, then what? Or if marauders, human or animal, decimate your crops? A simple infection or broken leg could be the end of you. And what of human contact, companionship, love?

The Lifeboat Community

This is an appealing idea; form a community of like-minded people with complementary skills and ride out the collapse with some measure of comfort maintained.

John Michael Greer suggests that most such communities are unlikely to survive. Some will be swamped by desperate, unwanted, and forceful newcomers, but the main reason is that Greer sees collapse as a decline punctuated by periods of partial recovery. Everyone is willing to endure the hardships that lifeboat living entails when times are tough, but as soon as it looks like a recovery is underway, people will opt to return to more comfortable ways of living.

Find Your Community

The third possibility is to prepare as best one can within an existing community. A collapse does not mean that the world ends, but Wal-Mart might no longer be open for business and you wouldn’t be able to drive there even if it was. However, there will still be cities and towns and farms. Which of these is best for you, and what should you do within each?

First, large cities are best abandoned. This applies especially to insanities like Phoenix, Arizona (where I once lived), with a metropolitan population of over 4 million people and not a single sustainable farm in sight. Everything has to be shipped in, including drinking water via canal. If you live there, get out now. Most large cities are going to be in large trouble because so much must be shipped in or out, including food, water, energy, and waste.

Towns are a far safer bet, especially those established way back when, as they were likely largely self-reliant for necessities at one time and could be so again. Not nearly as much food is needed and it doesn’t have nearly as far to travel to get to you – or you to it. They also tend to be safer because people know each other, are easier to govern, and you can get around without a car.

Farms are a personal choice; if you like the farming life, go for it. Just keep in mind that there may not be fuel for tractors and pickup trucks, the lack of which makes farming much more work and more isolated. Back in the day, farmers used to come to market once a week or so, by horse. It was a trek; they couldn’t just hop in the truck and zip out to rent a movie or pick up Tampax. As this collapse is likely to be caused by peak oil, meaning oil price spikes and shortages, today’s farmers may be in the same position as yesteryears’.

Be Prepared

Wherever you live, you need to be prepared. Remember California’s rolling blackouts? That sort of occurrence is very common post-collapse. In the worst case, power will be off more than on, or even give out completely. I currently live in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and much of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams – on the mainland. It arrives via undersea cables. While the dams may continue to operate for years even after an economic breakdown, that long supply line may mean problems for Victoria.

The point here is that many things we currently take for granted, like flipping a switch and a light goes on, or doing laundry whenever we feel like it, deserve some thought. You can install a personal windmill or some other means of generating electricity, and I would encourage everyone to do so, but it’s unlikely to generate enough to run an electric dryer or stove, or possibly even the furnace fan – which burns natural gas that is either no longer available or prohibitively expensive.

To prepare adequately, think necessities first: food, shelter, clothing, knowledge, trade.

Food

If you are in a town that was once self-reliant, the odds are good that farmers will grow food and somehow get it into town. This may not be reliable, and it may be expensive – and cash may not an accepted medium of trade. (I wrote a previous article that alluded frequently to trading the use of one’s body for goods, or prostitution, as something that happens during difficult economic times. I was half-joking and some people didn’t get it, but the fact is that in an economic collapse, cash is not much use. This has happened time-and-again during collapses from pre-WWII Germany to the post-Soviet Union Russia to innumerable developing countries.)

Russian families managed to grow a great deal of their own food in private gardens, as did Americans and the British in Victory Gardens; you should prepare to do the same. As John Michael Greer points out in The Long Descent, you don’t have to grow all your own food right now. What you should be doing is getting over the steepest part of the learning curve now. Start a garden on your own land or in a community garden or wherever and grow an organic garden. It takes some skill to grow food, and then to preserve it so you don’t give yourself botulism, and to save seeds for next year, and so on. Start small now and master the essentials.

Shelter

Ideally, you want a house that gets most of its heat from passive solar. You can get great strides in this direction by attaching a solar greenhouse to an existing house; even older, leaky houses can get a lot of heat this way. Insulate and weatherstrip to keep that precious heat.

Clothing

If you can make your own, you’re in good shape. Likely you can recycle existing clothing until someone figures out how to make cloth again, as cheap imports from China will not be available.

Knowledge

Buy books now that will be useful post-collapse. The best gardening, craft, and other books may well disappear rapidly from bookstores and libraries when times start to get tough. My personal policy is to borrow books that are useful now from the library (see the books listed in the previous article), and to buy books that will be useful if the Internet or the electricity become less reliable.

Trade

I left this to the end, but you need to think seriously how you will make yourself useful following a collapse. Web designers, retail clerks, insurance salesmen, marketing executives, and all manner of other jobs will cease to be of value. Farmers, obviously, will always have something to trade. What value will you add?

Certain skilled trades will be valuable; if you can make or repair furniture, for example. Or if you know how to build a solar greenhouse, or raise draught horses, or use herbal medicines…these sorts of things will continue to be of value as long as any sort of community exists.

If you don’t have any useful skills, you’ll either be dead or a peasant. Post-collapse, most of us will be either peasants or tradespeople. Most of the professions will be useless, even lawyers and investment bankers. Executives may be worse than useless as they attempt to cling to positions of power and prestige; they will want to remain on top of the heap while others do the real work, but this is unlikely to work out once everyone realises managers add no value.