Surfing between Scylla and Charybdis

     Friends, it has been an incredibly long time since I posted anything. 2013 has been a tough year for this worker-bee, locked into industrial civilization. As the saying goes, life intervenes. I got furloughed from my full-time job, and put to part-time. Now I have to piece a living together with two part-time jobs until I can construct a better way to make a living. We had to work through a serious health challenge with my wife, and move my mother-in-law into a new place, and on top of everything else, my teenager is now driving. Yikes!

      Well, dear reader, if you have followed me this far, you have likely reached one of three conclusions. Either I am as crazy as a pet 'coon and a paranoid, I am a heretic who lacks faith in the human spirit of creativity and intelligence and questions the dominant paradigm of the free market, or human beings have inadvertently (emergently?) gotten themselves lost in a box-canyon from which there is no escape- we are well and truly fucked.

      If you are in the first camp, I have nothing much to say to you, But as the consequences mount, and the chickens of industrial civilization come home to roost, please know that I will hold the asylum door open for you.

      If you are of the second belief, though I believe the free market is delusional, understand it is not the human spirit I lack faith in. Human beings are brilliant, amazing creatures, possessed of a wellspring of ingenuity. It is the hierarchical institutions we are so prone to constructing, in which I no longer have faith. Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Maya, the Mississippians, time and again, we discover a rich energy source, virgin topsoil along with wheat, maize and so on. Civilization grows, emperors and their courts emerge, they expand by conquest, they overshoot, and collapse. This time the energy source is fossil fuel, the Emperor is an agglomeration of CEOs, and the Imperial reach is global.

      But, friend, if you are of the third, well then, welcome and good morning! You have begun to awaken. If you feel overwhelmed, or are despairing our fate, know that you are not alone. It is normal to feel groggy and disoriented after too much sleep.

      Once, when I was a lad, I asked my seventeen-year old high-school friend Laura, in a fit of melodramatic teenage pseudo-profundity, what she would do if she woke up and found out everything she believed in was a lie. I think collectively, as a global society, that is one very serious question we all now face. What happens when everything we believed in turns out to be a lie? Can society withstand it?

      Capitalism, supposedly the most advanced (only?) economic model available, is failing the vast majority of the world's population as it sucks the wealth from the periphery and concentrates it at the top. As the third world was literally sucked dry, the capitalists turned to the working and middle class of the first world, and began to feed.

      Our entire energy system is an addictive drug. We know it is killing us, but we cannot abide the withdrawal.

      And the environment, well we have fouled our own bed. When most of the large fish-stocks are gone, the old-growth forests are nearly gone, the vast majority of the prairies are gone, nuclear waste is sitting there in cooling pools- a malignant ticking time-bomb, we have Superfund sites, and dead-zones in the ocean, and there is a Texas-sized patch of plastic garbage trapped in the middle of the Pacific, how could we think otherwise? We have changed the composition of the very air we breathe and each and every murderous day another 200 species vanish into the eternity of extinction. We are unraveling the very web of Creation.

      What they taught us in K-12, in university (It is Morning in America) is a lie and we are swimming in a sea of cognitive dissonance.

      So what to do? A great many people, probably the vast majority, will pull the covers over their head roll over, and go back to sleep. Unfortunately they will be awoken by the shock of hitting the wall. Like a bug striking the windshield, the last thing that will go through their mind is their asshole. A few however, may not be content to wait. For them (us?) perhaps we choose Resistance.

      Resistance is a loaded word, it conjures up some of our deepest cultural fantasies. We may imagine ourselves encamped at Valley Forge, holed up in the Alamo, ensconced in the glacial fastness of the ice planet Hoth. But Washington is not there to lead us across the Delaware. Sam Houston will not avenge us. The Force is not at our command. We have only our tiny, feeble selves.

     This brings us to the piece of the essay, which you may wish to skip. For we are about to tread on the thin ice of sedition.

      Understand, dear reader, I did not arrive at this place lightly. It goes against all I was taught, all that I cherished. The American Dream is the pinnacle of human achievement. The rising tide of the free market will lift all boats. The arc of history (representative democracy?) bends towards justice. All of this pales in the harsh glare of the sixth mass extinction, the Anthropocene.

      The damnable thing about it, we can watch it happen, and understand. The trilobites that were lost in the Great Dying, the dinosaurs who perished in the KT event, were not sentient. They were neither the engineers, nor the documentarians of their own destruction. We are both. And as we drive our pickup trucks to work for yet another day of debt peonage, knowing full well our consumption and our emissions are omnicidal, we can contemplate our choices. Walk away, disengage, become a hermit? That road may lead to divorce, despair, pauperism, and an early death. Continue as we are? Perhaps we live until famine and chaos set in, and we can contemplate the works of Shakespeare, Picasso, Mozart, and our own genetic heritage all disappearing into the void, for the sake of the almighty dollar and a few more gallons of gas.

      There is a wonderful book called “Who moved my cheese?” It is written to assist the economically displaced (fired, laid-off, outsourced) in overcoming the psychological barriers to moving on after a job loss. I highly recommend it for anyone who was bitten by the Great Recession. The central premise is that, like rats in a maze, once we humans discover an easy food source (our jobs in the industrial economy) we will keep returning, day after day. If someone moves the cheese (we get laid off) we will go through a period of disorientation and grief until we find a new source.

      The central task of our time is to intentionally move the cheese, for we know the moldering block, on which we currently feed, is perched on the wire-bail trap of collapse and potentially near-term extinction .

      Here is the conclusion I have reached, though it pains me to say it, we must bring down industrial civilization before it sterilizes the Earth. I really think the choice may be as simple as preemptively collapsing industrial civilization or near-term extinction. Remember, the rat will keep returning to its cheese, as long as it is there, no matter how nasty the supper, until the day the trap breaks its neck.

      This means that despite the limp actions (fuel economy standards, power plant emissions regulations) and grandiose promises (“This is the day the oceans will cease to rise”) of the Obama administration, we will pursue an “all of the above” energy strategy and exploit every last drop possible of the Alberta Tar Sands and Arctic oil, knowing full well this will put us many times over our carbon budget for 2C. I have seen nothing over the last decade that could lead to any other conclusion. Have you?

      Again, I think the choice may be between bringing down industrial civilization and near-term extinction. Is this an example of a straw man, of simplistic binary thinking? Is there a third path? The third path most often cited is something like a Green New Deal or Transition.

      The Green New Deal envisions a massive push by government to scale up renewables to the national level, perhaps incentivized by a carbon tax or fee and dividend. By doing so, we get to keep all our techno-goodies and continue to live the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed. It requires corporate, social and political consensus (a voluntary buy-in) that seems utterly out of reach as well as suspending the laws of thermodynamics. It also requires time, up to 40 years, time we simply do not have. It is the essence of having your cake and eating it too.

      Transition is a voluntary power-down; it is an engineered soft landing. We could, if we chose to, re-localize our economy. We could apply the principles of Permaculture to revamp our industrial farming system. We could actively de-carbonize out energy systems, and deploy a renewable distributed power generation system, albeit at a much lower level of output.. We could opt for an economic model that values human contentment more than GDP. We could, if we chose to, de-fang the corptocracy that has bankrupted and corrupted every layer of governance, municipal, county, state, federal, even (especially?) international. We could opt for a de-centralized, directly democratic approach.

      The real sting of the argument for either a Green New Deal or Transition is the word voluntary. Does anyone honestly believe that the American populace will opt for a voluntary transition to a local, de-carbonized steady state economy or a massive Green New Deal? Would you be willing to pay a carbon fee when your salary isn't keeping pace with inflation? Even if it were available, would you (or your Mom) park your car and take mass transit to work, the local market, school every day because Obama, Mitt Romney, the Pope himself implored you to do right by your children?

      Even if the American public at large were to suddenly have an epiphany and “get it”, what then about the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)? Will they deprive their citizens of the “right” to a western standard of living that the industrial economy affords? Take China, for example. In order to maintain political stability, the Communist Party has constructed entire cities, that are unlived in, in order to juice the construction section of their economy, suppress unemployment, and forestall political turmoil. If they are willing to spend the resources, energy, and capital building and maintaining a vacant city, can you see them adopting de-growth and putting their political futures on the line. I think not, though their path is omnicidal.

      Thus, this brings us full circle and back to a rather binary choice, take down industrial civilization or near-term extinction. The first objection that is usually raised when this taboo subject is broached is the human cost. The carrying capacity of the earth, when human society operates within a solar budget, is thought to be approximately 1 billion people. Even if we are generous, and arbitrarily double that number for arguments sake, that means we are in overshoot by 5 billion people. And taking down industrial civilization would mean a die-off of 5 billion people over some period of time. That is horrific, almost beyond contemplation.

      But if we wait until the system collapses from its own weight, what will be the ecological cost? As carbon blows through the 650 ppm mark, and ecosystems collapse like dominoes, will there be enough of a planet left to support 2 billion? 1 billion? Or will we be left with scattered bands of nomadic humans scrabbling for subsistence in the polar regions, as James Lovelock posits? As runaway greenhouse takes hold, will the last human wonder if we could have chosen differently in 2013?

      I sat on the idea for this essay for some time after the Boston bombings and other incidents. Feelings are still raw, and rightfully so. Boston was a clear example of terrorism, the attempt to make political change (US foreign policy in the ME) through inflicting violent terror on the populace. The spectators and runners were not directly responsible for the foreign posture of the US and targeting them is morally unjustifiable. It is as reprehensible as the setting of a car bomb in a open market, or gunning down innocents in a hotel. The average American family is not directly responsible for the colossal mess we are in. They are locked into a system they did not choose and do not understand. This means, in my mind, direct militant action is off the table.

      At any rate, I think it is time we admitted we are living in a soft-core police state. As long as you play by the rules, don't step out of line, you are left alone. But step out of line, as the original Tea Party or Occupy did, well the IRS scrutinizes you, or perhaps NSA analysts dig into your meta-data. Or local police take an interest. For example, I know for a fact that the local chapter of Occupy had undercover police officers as guests at their meetings early on.

      So even if widespread support for militant resistance existed, which it most certainly doesn't, the moment they took action the full force of the Homeland Security apparatus would descend on them like Mjolnir, and under the NDAA, they would most likely become permanent guests at GITMO. Members of the Earth Liberation Front learned this lesson the hard way.

      The other option for resistance falls under the mantle of non-violence. In the West, this is the option that should be fiercely pursued. 350.org, Great Plains Tar SandsResistance, Occupy, and others fall under this mantle. They are doing fine work and should be supported. But in my experience, a great many members are operating under the delusion that the capitalist monster we have grown up under can be reformed and his appetite restrained. What we must do is attempt to educate.

      We seem to have stabilized somewhat economically, albeit at a lower level of GDP and growth. This has taken some of the steam out of Occupy, but I suspect another crises will come, and people will once again be in the streets. Look around the world and one sees turmoil in Egypt, Syria, Brazil, Greece; it is not hard not to believe.

      One of the most promising things in my mind to come out of Occupy was the model of the General Assembly. It offered an alternative for direct democracy. It showed there is a different path. As things heat up, we must point out that it is the very nature of industrial civilization that is pushing us over the cliff. With a whole lot of luck, when we hit a tipping point, when the Tower of Pisa needs just a little push, industrial civilization can be sent toppling into the dustbin of history. With a whole lot more luck, groups like Transition and Occupy will be there to help build a new future.

      Unfortunately, there may be a very large monkey-wrench in the gears. Remember the malignancy sitting in those nuclear waste pools? Take down industrial civilization too quickly, or if it collapses of its own accord, too chaotically, and you end up with 437 Fukushimas. Dmitry Orlov posted an essay recently that points the problem out beautifully. Keep industrial civilization propped up in order support 7 (heading towards 9) billion people, and face financial, energy, and ecological collapse. Bring it down prematurely, and set off hundreds of Chernobyls and Fukushimas, and face ecological collapse.

It seems we are riding the wave between Scylla and Charybdis.

Driving a Pale Horse

     “Understand that things are now in motion that cannot be undone.”

           -Galdalf the Grey (The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien)

     In these posts over the past few months I have tried to paint a clear picture of the general predicaments we collectively face at this time in history. We have the debt-ridden, fiasco of a fiat monetary system backed by an economic model that requires ever increasing economic growth on a finite planet. We have the hard constraint of energy depletion looming in the not too distant future and an industrial system that demands plentiful, cheap oil.

      If Finance comes in first in our little horse race, if all the shenanigans of the central banks, governments, and Wall Street Banksters come back to bite us, it could trigger a depression that makes the thirties look like a cakewalk. If we are able to prop the system up long enough, and Peak Oil takes the prize, not only could that trigger the Longest Depression, but it will destabilize the institutions and infrastructure we depend on for daily life.

      This brings us right smack dab to face the third contender in the Trifecta to do in industrial civilization: Anthropogenic Climate Change. If our monetary hijinks are the shadow in the closet , and energy decline is the monster under the bed, then global warming is the dragon in the forest, capable of razing the realm with its infernal breath.

      Let us put it another way. Financial collapse is a black horse. Her rider demands a day's pay for a quart of wheat, a day's pay for three quarts of barley, but damn sure don't spoil the olive oil and the wine! Peak Oil is blood red and its rider wields a great sword. Remember the Carter Doctrine, when the oil begins to run short, you think the nations won't take peace from the earth? But Anthropogenic Climate Change is a pale horse: “And his name who sits upon him is Death, and Hell followed with him.”

      Is that a bit hyperbolic? You be the judge.

      I like to look at this issue through two lenses, logos and myths, sort of a left brain, right brain thought excersize. There are often considered to be two paths to gnosis (knowledge), that of logos (reason, logic, observation) and mythos (storytelling, prophecy, poetry). In my opinion, both are necessary for a complete view.

      First we will examine this through the lens of reason. Let's review What we know so far and while we're at it, let's dispense with the fucking nonsense, shall we? We have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824 when Fourier discovered greenhouse gases such as CO2. This is not new and ambiguous information. In 1958 Charles David Keeling began taking measurements of atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa observatory and we have known for five decades that the concentration of CO2 has been relentlessly increasing.

      Physics, chemistry, geology, and simple arithmetic eliminate natural processes as the source of the carbon. Only the burning of fossil fuels can account for the fact, and it is an irrefutable fact that atmospheric CO2 has increased from 250 parts per million (PPM) at the dawn of the industrial revolution to over 390 PPM in 2012.

      The higher the concentration of CO2, the less solar heat is radiated back out space, and the global average temperature is forced higher.

      “Wait!”, the skeptics say. We weren't measuring CO2 in 1850 (the beginning of the industrial revolution). More fucking nonsense, we can drill ice cores. Much like tree rings, they give scientists a very accurate window into climate history. The tiny air bubbles trapped in each layer of ice, contain samples of that year's atmosphere. Count back 162 layers, send the slice to the lab, and bingo! We know it was 250 PPM in 1850.

      “But solar radiation and the earth's orbit can affect the climate!”, they cry. Again, physics and math tell us that the slow increase over eons in the sun's energy output is not enough to account for the rapid increase in temperature, almost 1C since baseline (1850). And we are in the “long” phase of our orbit, which is a negative (cooling) forcing. Keep in mind that these forcings are tiny and have their impact on a geologic deep timescale. Only the profligate burning of fossil fuels can account for what we have seen and what we are seeing.

      And if you believe that this is all a hoax by a cabal of academics and scientists bent on increasing their grant money, well I've got a job lined out for you at Bell Helicopters building black helicopters for the U.N.

      

     Speaking of geologic timescales, CO2 can and does sometimes increase due to natural phenomena. A good example would be the Siberian Traps an episode of massive volcanic activity thought to have caused a 6C temperature increase and the mass extinction event referred to as the Great Dying. Another example would be the PETM (paleocene-eocene thermal maximum) thought to be the result of a release of methane hydrates from the sea floor. Methane is one hundred times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 over the short term and about 20 times more potent over the long term as it degrades to CO2. Both these events happened over many thousands of years, but we have already seen nearly a 1C increase in 162 years. This is at least an order of magnitude faster than previous warming episodes. Not only should that give you pause, it should drive home the point that only the burning of fossil fuels can account for this. Period!

      The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and various organizations have been sounding the alarm bell repeatedly that we must avoid 2C warming by 2100, in order to stave off risks to civilization. If I have one criticism of the IPCC it is that they have consistently underestimated the impact and the danger. Since the IPCC's report in 2007 (1C warming by 2100) the data and models have been improving and a relentless drumbeat of dire climate assessments have been piling up. Each is worst than the last. Just this year the World Bank forecast 4C by the middle of the century, and they are hardly a left-wing, liberal, environmental organization. The Global Carbon Project and the International Energy Agency forecasts business as usual pushing us to over 6C by 2100. At 6C the oceans are so acidic that they no longer support phytoplankton, the source of half the earth's oxygen. As Lierre Keith puts it: “if the oceans go down, we're going down with them.”

      Another problem I have with the IPCC and other climate groups is the focus on the year 2100. As if we really have 87 years before we have to get worried. It is not about your grandchildren, it is not about your children, it is about you. Here are a few things we have observed in the past few years. You can light the ground on fire in Siberia because melting permafrost is releasing methane, there was a large oyster die off as the baby oysters could not survive in the acidic environment, the Arctic ocean is releasing methane from melting hydrates (remember the PETM), the Arctic ice cap is melting and the North American pine forest is dying, because of drought and an infestation of mountain pine beetles. Each of these (and other phenomena) are self reinforcing (positive) feedback loops.

      Lets take the pine beetles for example. It no longer gets cold enough, for long enough, in the high country to kill off the pine beetles. The forests are stressed due to ongoing drought and the beetles deliver the coup de grace. Warmer winters ensure more beetles are able to overwinter and survive, killing more trees, which sequester less carbon, which makes the winters warmer, which lets more beetles survive, and so on. Or Arctic ice, less summer ice reduces the albedo (reflectivity) of the Arctic, which means more solar radiation (heat) is retained by the dark ocean water, which melts more ice, which reduces the albedo, and so on. It ain't that complicated, can you dig it?

      For crying out loud, we have seen thousands die in the 2003 European heat wave in France, the heat wave in Russia in 2010 was so severe it killed 40% of the Russian wheat crop and sparked massive forest fires (along with 50,000 deaths from smoke inhalation and heat stroke) and the resultant spiking food prices in 2011 triggered the Arab Spring. Superstorm Sandy (yet another “storm of the century”) devastated the Northeast and Occupy ended up feeding FEMA. The 2012 drought sent grain and meat and dairy prices through the roof and it still hasn't broken. The mighty Mississippi, the unstoppable Old Man River dropped to 9 ft at St. Louis and barge traffic was almost suspended. Climate change is upon us, all around us, right here, right now.

      How many warnings do we need?

      And this takes us to the lens of mythos. There are many cultural traditions that provide an insight into mankind's troubles. Hinduism, Buddhism, indigenous philosophy, Wicca, Islam all these and more provide insights. But as I was raised in the mainstream Protestant tradition, I am not really qualified to speak from their point of view.

      This brings us to the role of the prophet. What is a prophet? The word immediately conjures up an image of a crazy man, dressed in skins or rags, bearing a sign which boldly proclaims “Repent! The End is Nigh!” Or perhaps a shaman or mystic, peering into the ether through their tarot cards, scrying the futures of the high and mighty. Neither tells the whole story. The prophet, quite simply, is one who speaks for God. A person who calls humanity to task for their base and cruel actions and challenges them to change their lifestyle. Not only does this include figures such as Amos, Micah, Elijah and so on, it includes Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi and Mother Jones. It includes Martin Luther, himself. All these people were acting as prophets, speaking the words of truth to power, great and small.

      In biblical tradition, a prophetic warning often follows two basic patterns: “if – then” and “because – therefore”. If you repent, then you shall be forgiven or because you have sinned, your immortal soul is at risk are two simple examples.

      The story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors provides a fine example of the first type of warning. Joseph was the youngest and most favored son of Jacob.. Doted upon by his parents, he was showered with blessings and gifts, the polychromatic robe being the most famous. His brothers, in a rage driven by envy, trick his parents into believing he was killed, and sell the hapless Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Our poor hero eventually finds himself imprisoned in the dungeons of Pharaoh, where his true gifts reach their full potential, the interpretation of dreams.

      Pharaoh is awoken in the middle of the night by a disturbing dream. Seven fat, luxurious cows are feeding in the reeds of the Nile and seven sickly wasted cows come upon them and devour them. Pharaoh is disturbed, but finally manages to fall asleep once again, and promptly descends back into the domain of the nightmare. Seven full stalks of corn (wheat, barley, etc.) are growing when seven stalks of grain, blighted and bare, sprout up after them and they consume the lush crops. Pharaoh awakes again. Later in the day, he confesses his dreams and calls for the magicians and wise men to explain it to him, but they are all mystified. His cup bearer, having seen proof of Joseph’s power, tells Pharaoh to call for Joseph, still languishing in the dungeon, and have his dreams interpreted.

      Joseph tells Pharaoh that his dreams are one and the same. The seven cows and seven stalks of grain are seven years of plenty and the seven sick cows and seven blighted stalks are seven years of famine. The fact that the sick cows and blighted stalks devour the other indicate that the famine will be so severe that the good times will be forgotten in the pangs of want and since the dream was doubled the thing is fixed by God and is imminent.

      Joseph then tells Pharaoh to appoint someone to oversee the harvest and save back 20% of the harvest for seven years against the years of famine. The message is clear and simple. If you heed God's warning and take careful, prudent action now, when times are good, then your people shall be saved when the bad times descend. The entire story of Joseph's journey can be found in Genesis chapters 37-50 and the episode of Pharaoh’s dreams are spelled out in chapters 40-41. We would do well to reflect on the message, if we listen to the warnings, sacrifice and take thoughtful prudent action now (while we are able), then when the hard times come, we will make it through.

      At the other end of the spectrum of prophetic warning, we find” because – therefore”. The Book of Jeremiah is the quintessential example of this sort of warning. I think a thoughtful person, regardless of their personal spiritual beliefs (or lack of them) would be well advised to read Jeremiah and ask, what does this mean for us, in this time, right now? Jeremiah may be a prophet who can speak to this age just as powerfully as he spoke to the Hebrews of the Exile.

      “The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, 'What do you see?' And I said, 'I see a boiling pot, tilted away from the north.' Then the Lord said to me: Out of the north disaster shall break on all the inhabitants of the land. For now I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the Lord; and they shall come and all of them shall set their thrones against all the cities of Judah. And I will utter my judgments against them for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have made offerings to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands.” -Jer. 1:11-16

      “Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become great and rich. They have grown fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?” -Jer. 5:27-29

      Remind you of anyone much?

      In a nutshell, Jeremiah says that because they have engaged in idolatry, glorified their own technological wizardry, and betrayed their sacred obligation to their neighbors, they shall be chastised and their nation destroyed.

      So, again I ask, how many more warnings do we need? Ever since Rachel Carson wrote “Silent Spring” in 1962, there have been a series of environmental prophets who have told us that an unrestrained industrial economy was not compatible with a living planet or civilization. Paul Erlich, Lester Brown, The Club of Rome (Limits to Growth), Bill McKibben, James Hansen, Paul Gilding, and yes even the much-maligned Al Gore, to name a few, have all told us that our industrial lifestyle is unsustainable and is damaging they very thing we depend on for life itself, the biosphere. They have not advocated going back to a medieval, peasant economy. They just said we must slow down, transition, bend the curves. If we get off fossil fuels, then civilization will continue. But in recent years the warnings have taken on a more strident tone, as no substantial action whatsoever has been forthcoming. You can almost see the panic in the eyes of the climatologists.

      Recently, two more major figures have broken with the majority message of “if-then” and shifted to “because-therefore”. Guy McPherson, a conservation biologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona believes that we may have crossed the event horizon. The climate crisis is now accelerating due to positive feedbacks. The governments and and populations of the world are paralyzed by economic lock-in and cognitive dissonance (they literally cannot imagine living in a different society). Runaway greenhouse and near term human extinction, is in his view, a distinct possibility This is the worst-case scenario described in fictionalized form by James Hansen at the end of his book “Storms of my Grandchildren”. One of Dr. McPherson's presentations can be found here.

      Kevin Anderson, of the Tyndale Center in the UK, skewers the grand plans of the mainstream climate negotiators and scientists in his presentation “Real Clothes for the Emperor”. It can be found here. He points out that all the major programs designed to avoid 2C warming are predicated on CO2 emissions peaking in 2015, two years hence, and then declining at approximately 3.5% per year, year on year. Yet when compared with the actual data on emissions, and constrained by the demands of neo-classical economists for continued economic growth, a startling picture emerges. We have already blown the carbon budget for staying under the ceiling of 2C. In other words, we cannot maintain our economy and avoid 2C. In fact, we will be hard pressed to stay under 4C. And the consequences of 4C mean the end of civilization. The real sting of his presentation is the phrase that a 4C world “may not be stable”. Translation: runaway greenhouse and mass extinction.

      Both men are saying, because society failed to act early and failed to imagine a different economy (as opposed to consumerist suburbia in perpetuity), a gentle transition, putting on sweaters and installing solar water heaters, letting the “markets” work, well that possibility has been foreclosed upon.

      Keep in mind, we have done nothing consequential on the climate front. Japan, one of the most efficient, cohesive, and socially progressive countries on earth missed its emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol. If they can't do it, who can? The U.S., killed Kyoto by Senate Filibuster, Dubbya declared that the American lifestyle was non-negotiable, and Obama threw the Copenhagen Accords under the bus, deciding that health reform and the economy were more important. He did raise the auto emission standards to placate the environmentalists leading up to the 2012 election, but this is like a clown tossing candy to a child on the parade route. It is as if we are leaning out of the airplane, pissing on a forest fire.

      Does anyone, anywhere realistically think carbon emissions will peak in 2015? And as Mr. Anderson points out, the longer the emissions peak is delayed, the steeper the fall must be in order to avoid 2C. The last country that was able to reduce CO2 by 5% a year was the USSR when that nation disintegrated and their economy collapsed.

      And if we continue on our current trajectory, and more extreme weather becomes the norm, how shall we eat? Agriculture is predicated on the predictable weather patterns of the Holocene, not the crapshoot of the Anthropocene.

      'Tis quite a quandary we've created for ourselves, isn't it. We squandered the one thing we couldn't afford to lose, time. Normally, an essay of this sort, would offer a series of possible solutions, of actions we could take to “fix” the problem. But I believe we may have left the era of choice and entered the era of consequence. If we are very, very lucky, it will be a choice of consequences. Behind door number one: the end of the globalized industrial economy and perhaps the continuation of human beings and a living planet on which to reside. Behind door number two: continuing our delusion for a time yet, and then the Sixth Mass Extinction.

      So, the obvious question, is what are we to do? Honestly, I don't know. But there are some paths forward. One path: Resistance. The good news is that the Fellowship is recruiting. More on that next time.

REVOLUTION: Quest for the Magic Pendant

     "The Peak Oil debate is over: the 'peakists' have won the intellectual argument."
          -Dr James Schlesinger, former U.S Sec. of Defense and Sec. of Energy

     I have to confess a guilty pleasure. On Monday nights my ten year old daughter and I like to sit and watch Revolution on NBC. It is a silly adventure show based on a serious premise, the failure of the worldwide power-grid. Fifteen years in the past, a cabal of unknown conspirators, disabled the power grid which led to a global collapse. Our heroine Charlie Matheson is on a quest to save her brother Danny from the depredations of the tyrannical Monroe Militia. Following her dying father Ben’s last words, she has reunited with her uncle, the former General Miles Matheson, a defector from the Militia. Aaron Pittman, the ex-Google geek was bequeathed a "techno-magic pendant" that is mysteriously related to the blackout and at Ben’s direction is accompanying her on the quest. Along the way, they pick up Nora Clayton, the stalwart rebel and IED expert, and we are off to the races. Now it is not just about saving Charlie’s wayward brother Danny, but they must discover the secret of the pendant, turn the power back on, restore the good ole’ US of A, and perhaps save humanity in the process. There are plenty of sword fights, homemade pipe-bombs, and swashbuckling archery. It’s like Errol Flynn meets MacGyver in the post-industrial era, with a nod to Katniss Everdeen in the heroine.


     Yes there are lots of background and plot details that are easy to pick apart. My teenage daughters and occasionally my wife enjoy pointing out the silly flaws, like why are all their clothes in such fine, fine condition? Or when the global grid failed, what happened when the earth’s 400 nuclear power-plants all went China Syndrome simultaneously as the power was cut to their cooling systems? (think: universal Fukushima) Just how could an internal combustion engine fire up after sitting dormant for fifteen years while the fuel degraded and the cylinders rusted and seized up? And what in the world is up with the heart-shaped pendants that swish-flick magically turn the power back on? But if you can ignore the incessant commercials (thank God the election is over, now all I have to worry about is eTrading, iPhoning, and the latest sloppy Thickburger) and suspend disbelief, it’s just good fun.
    
     But as I reflect on the show, I think it has some pernicious flaws, and they play right into our collective national delusion. In the show, the blackout was intentional, it is reversible, and industrial civilization as exemplified by America is a good thing. As a society, we believe technology will always save us and that America is exceptional and blessed with abundance (growth) in perpetuity. Our cup runneth over because we are such good little capitalists in a free (enterprise) country. Think about this, the power was lost because they turned it off. The main goal, the great hope of the protagonists is to figure out the technology of those magic little pendants and turn the power back on. The creators of the show are unable, or choose not to, believe in a future where technology is unable to fulfill our needs, where when we flip the switch, nothing happens. They are incapable of envisioning a lower-energy future that doesn’t involve dictators or bands of dystopian marauders preying on the populace. They fail to imagine a scenario where circumstance and the demands of reality propel us off the de-industrial cliff, not a cabal of evildoers.
     And make no mistake, we are heading off that cliff, although the date of the fall and the speed of our headlong rush are a matter of some debate. You see, although the show is about the loss of the global grid, electricity is not the root of the problem. Oh yes, we are utterly dependent on electricity here at the zenith of industrial civilization, but electric power is generated. It is a derivative of something else, be it wind, solar, flowing water, geo-thermal, uranium, natural gas, coal, and that most magic of substances, crude oil. If fact, I will go so far as to say that all the above forms of industrial energy are in fact derived from oil in some way, shape, or form. It takes oil to power the big earth-movers to build a dam, or mine coal. It takes oil to fire up the frac trucks or construct the wind-farm.

    
     Most of the products we use on a daily basis, in the typical American middle class household are steeped in oil. Think plastic: the children's toys, the housing on the flat screen, the smart phone, the computer, childrens toys, the handles on the bathroom cabinets, the little plug we use to child-proof the electrical outlets, pharmaceuticals, the saran wrap, foam platter, and meat diaper that entombs your nightly dinner. Heck, the ground beef itself is soaked in oil, from the giant CAFO barn where your beef was "grown", to the gigantized GPS equipped combine that harvested the genetically modified feed, all of it is dependent on cheap, abundant oil. The next time you smooch your sweetheart, remember, even the elastic and fake satin in her Victoria’s Secret negligee are made from oil.


     Even with the greenest of intentions, our industrial economy is so oil soaked as to make it as black as midnight. We use about 28 billion barrels of oil a year at the global level. That’s about 75 million barrels a day, if you do the math. Think about that for a moment. In order to maintain a lifestyle in which perhaps a quarter of the world’s have a decent standard of living, a tiny minority lives lives of leisure, and the rest live on a few dollars a day, we must consume 75 million barrels of oil a day, each and every day.

     Contrary to what the fossil fuel propagandists tell you on their snazzy TV commercials (remember a commercial is designed to sell you something) the stuff is not limitless.

     History will vindicate M. King Hubbert who forecast both the US peak and the worldwide peak decades in advance. This is the famous Peak Oil theory, it is the second horse in the running for our Trifecta.  The internet abounds with information on the subject, but I would recommend the Post Carbon Institute as a good place to start. 

     It’s not even running out that is the main issue. Geologists believe we have about 1 trillion of barrels of oil left in the ground. It is the fact that we burned the easiest to extract, highest quality stuff first. They no longer discover giant elephant fields where the oil gushes from the ground, we now must drill in miles of ocean water and squeeze it from fractured shale formations. We must eradicate every trace of the living Earth in the Athabasca Tar Sands to procure that precious sludge. The cheap, easy stuff is gone. Despite all the good news of those snazzy commercials, world oil production has been flat since ’05. But that’s okay, because growth has either been negative or only sluggishly positive since ’08.

     And should all the plans of the White House, Congress, and the Fed fall right into place, and economic growth takes off to four or five percent a year, chances are the price of oil will spike once again and kill off our nascent recovery. This sort of instability was exactly what was predicted in the wake of peaking. But surely, you argue, if it were true, they would know, and would implement policy to fix this. They do know, and have known since at least 1972 (the Limits to Growth). Unfortunately, as Guy McPherson puts it, there are no politically viable solutions. The Hirsch Report to Congress concluded peak oil is a reality and we would need to implement adaptive strategies two decades before hitting peak in order to have a smooth transition. But the tactics of corporate America generally, and the fossil fuel companies in particular, are to divide and delay as long as possible in order to maximize the short term return to themselves and their shareholders.


     As we continue our bumpy ride down the back side of Hubbert’s peak, more and more of the systems we take for granted will destabilize and fall apart. Just in time delivery, agribusiness, the daily commute to work, all these and more are at risk, and will surely fail. I know, dear reader, you are saying bring in alternatives, technology. Again, alternatives are in fact derived in part from oil. You have to mine the neodymium for the wind turbines, for example. Also, alternatives don’t pack the same punch as good old crude oil (EROEI), and they are mostly about generating electricity. They are not well suited to transport. At the end of the day, it is about the math. You simply cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet.

     The longer we buy into the memes that are fed to us, oil is limitless, growth is always good, technology can overcome any obstacle; the longer we fail to have an adult conversation about our predicaments. We will fail to put in decentralized mitigation strategies that might allow us to cope. Local public transit, community gardening based in permaculture, passive solar and small scale active solar and small wind turbines are some examples. The Transition Town movement is another template that might be used. But we should have started yesterday. And unfortunately that means rather than being the masters of our destiny, we will be at the mercy of events.

     So, if you fancy it, watch Revolution. Like I said it is good clean fun. Just watch it with clear eyes, and understand that no Google-Fairy will deliver a Techno-Magic pendant to make everything run. Understand that we already have a magic pendant, it is just black and gooey and it’s running down.

On Money Matters

     In the horserace of life, we take it for granted that Economic Growth and Technological Progress will be the winners. In fact, until very recently, this was considered so self evident that only unreformed hippies and anarchic punks, the sort of unsavory misanthropes who frequent anti-globalization or environmental rallies, ever questioned this basic premise. Tomorrow will be better than today. This is morning in America. It is the end of history.

      Of course, in late 2008, history came back with a vengeance, and bit us right on the ass. The Great Recession (Depression II) was the result in part of financial chicanery and outright fraud on a massive scale. Should you wish to explore this in detail, the documentary “Inside Job” is a good place to start.

      A year ago, September, the rage and frustration boiled over into the street, and we saw something we have not seen since the late sixties and early seventies, mass protest on the streets of America and the world. Occupy Wall Street exploded onto the scene and we couldn't escape the cry of “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out!”, punctuated by the cadence of the drum circle. The Anons came out from behind their proxies, the unions rallied their members, the students organized. All of this was driven by one simple fact. You could work hard and play by the rules and...it didn't matter. Forces entirely beyond your control could eliminate your job, take your house, wipe out your pension. Suddenly it seems that in the blink of an eye, everything could disappear and everyone was at risk. Well everyone that is except for the 1%.

      For the first time in 5 generations, the two front runners had stumbled and Financial Chicanery had taken the lead. Oh we've been through downturns before. But with every other recession in recent memory, all it required was a few tweaks to the system, a tax cut here, a bit of deregulation there, and once again we were off to the races. This time the crisis was so great (according to Paulson and Bernanke we were 48 hours away from total collapse of the banking system when Lehman failed) that even our compassionate conservative Dubbya became a Keynesian. TARP, anyone?

      With Obama's election, we doubled down on Keynes, yet the economy languished, throwing gasoline of the idiotic fire of the Tea Party, and here we sit, apparently stuck in the doldrums, keeping a weather eye out, waiting for the wind to stir. Some of us pray to the gods of laissez-faire, some to stimulus, each sure that if only that approach was wholly embraced, the sails would catch the wind and growth would return.

      Sucks, don't it?

      Most Americans don't reflect long, or even often, on what makes our monetary system tick or what happened to us. Before we can really dig into this, we have to answer a basic question. What the hell is money?

      In order to answer that question you have to jump into the Tardis and fly back to a time where there was no money. We are told that money emerged because barter was inefficient and well, that seems not to be entirely true. Before the advent of agriculture, before civilization, deep in the paleolithic, we existed in small familial groups, bands, and tribes. Rarely did the size of these bands of human beings exceed 250 people. The archaeologists and anthropologists think 50-100 would have been a much more common number. As well the bands had a much flatter hierarchy. There may have been a chief or a “Big Man” but he was easily accessible to all members of the group. Just try and speak to the governor, or chair of the county board, or the mayor. First you will have to navigate a robotic phone tree, then run the gauntlet of receptionists and minor functionaries, and if your very, very lucky, you might get ten minutes at a “meet the mayor” event. Your best bet is to write a letter, send an email, or post a comment to their Facebook page, which of course will be reviewed by a volunteer or low level staffer, and you will receive a form letter for a reply.

               Dear William,

           Thank you for your interest in the matter of widgets. I believe the widget industry is a

           vital source of jobs and growth for our community. I appreciate your opinion on the

           issue and I value feedback for all my constituents. I encourage you to remain engaged in

           the political process.

                Best Wishes,

                Pre-printed Signature

      But at the level of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer, the Chief was someone you knew personally, could be related to, have shed blood with. Talking with leadership was as simple as walking to the next shelter over. The reason these bands we so small, relates in part to the circle of trust, the maximum number of individuals we have a connection to in a social setting. The maximum amount we can handle is about 230-250 and is referred to as Dunbar's number. Beyond that, we tend to if not distrust people, at least relate to them at arm's length. Think of the difference between your good friend and the red-smocked clerk wandering the cavernous aisles of the big-box hardware store.

      As well, hunter-gatherers often use a consensus approach to making decisions. After all, it would not bode well for the “Big Man” to alienate a significant portion of the group, as they all depend on each other for their very survival.

      At any rate, these hunter-gatherers operated without money. They had a gift-economy. Barter, if it was used was between different groups or tribes, people outside their circle of trust. Why worry about trade, when I can give this very fine atlatl I carved to my cousin. My status as a generous and skilled guy is boosted. And when my cousin takes down a plump goose with a dart, he is likely to give me a share of the meat. His status as a generous and skilled hunter is boosted and we both benefit.

      And then something weird happens. The Younger Dryas period strikes, resulting in climatic change. The forested areas of the middle east dry out, cool off, and become grassland, and clever humans figure out over hundreds and thousands of years how to domesticate and grow cereal grains, and Voila! Agriculture is born. Then resulting food surpluses lead to larger settlements (cities), division of labor, and trade. It is in this context that we first see money. It is an emergent phenomenon to facilitate trade between and within cities, amongst many thousands of people, a number far beyond our circle of trust. The Sumerians may have initially used shekels, a fixed quantity of barley. Later we see the development of copper, bronze, silver, and gold coinage. And lest you think those people in the Fertile Crescent were unsophisticated, the Sumerians had tablets (cylinder seals) on which they recorded transactions with complex calculations of compound interest. The importance of this cannot be overstated, for money is in fact debt.

      So what is money? “Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.”

It is a medium of exchange (I can buy a gallon of gas for four dollar bills). It is a unit of account. (my car is blue booked at $5000). It is a standard of deferred payment. (this note is legal tender, for all debts public and private) It is a store of value. (I have $500,000 in my retirement fund, nah...I'm lying on that one.)

      I read that modern economics teaches that the third function (standard of deferred payment) is subsumed within the other three. This doesn't surprise me one bit. Good ole' Adam Smith said an economy has three main components, capital, labor, and land. But land has been subsumed by the other two. The neo-liberals however don't want you to think of land as a separate and distinct piece, they assume is is part and parcel of capital, It is this subversion which allows us to see a forest as a sea of dollar bills, as a resource to be exploited and owned and as something limitless and substitutable, as a commodity. Likewise, they don't want us to see money as debt, it opens up a whole can of worms. By the way, I am not convinced that this is necessarily the result of a grand conspiracy. Rather I suspect it is yet another emergent phenomenon birthed of very human failings, such as greed and a lack of long-term thinking. But in my opinion it does expose a certain weakness within the dismal science.

      So what happened when the Sumerian landowner had a bad season or two, and defaulted on his loans? Well he became a debt slave. Literally a slave, as were his children and grandchildren. With time, such a large percentage of the populace would become locked into peonage that it destabilized the society. The debt had reached such a level that it could never be repaid. The peasantry began to agitate for land reform and other such heretical ideas. They risked a slave uprising, a rebellion. However, these societies had a safety valve. When a new king was crowned, he would declare Jubilee and wipe the slate clean.

      With the development of precious metal coinage, a specie standard became the typical monetary operating system for the civilized world throughout most of recorded history. There were occasional breaks such as tally sticks in England or Continentals in Colonial America, but these were by far the exception, not the rule. Economic growth was very slow and stable. We were still living within a solar budget.

      Then two things happened. Columbus discovered the new world and a few hundred years after that, Drake discovered oil. Suddenly we had vast resources and the means to quickly convert them into products and services via machines fired by fossil fuels. Yet the currency could only expand as fast as new gold and silver could be discovered, mined and minted. The fledgling US fared pretty well, as we operated on a bi-metallic standard. Andrew Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States, and silver was plentiful. Greenbacks and “Free Silver” allowed the currency to expand as the US grew. However, in 1873, the Congress bowed to powerful banking interests, and put the US on a hard gold standard. When the virus of a financial crisis took root in Europe, it spread to American and found fertile soil. With the Crime of 1873, currency was removed from circulation (deflation) , there was a huge railroad bubble, and our economy could produce far more goods and services than the public could buy. Enter the Long Depression, which didn't truly end until J.P. Morgan personally bailed out the Federal Government in 1895. Then in 1907 there is another financial crisis and JP Morgan has to bail out the US banking system. This leads to what I view as the Crime of 1913, when Congress cedes its constitutional power to coin money to a private banking cartel we call the Federal Reserve. This was supposed to fix the problem of financial crisis, but in 1929 a giant speculative stock bubble pops and we enter the Great Depression.

      One of the things FDR's New Deal did was to take us off a hard gold specie standard, and put us on an exchange standard. All gold currency and bullion was confiscated by the Federal government and sequestered in Fort Knox. It took the massive injection of deficit spending that accompanied WWII and the US transition to the armory of the world to break the cycle of deflation and finally kick-start economic growth. But the worldwide gold exchange standard, formalized by the Bretton-Woods agreement couldn't hold. In 1970, Nixon unilaterally closed the gold window and we entered the realm of fiat currency. Now there was no brake on the uncontrolled growth of debt and the economy. In fact, the economy became dependent on the growth of debt.

      Here is the funny thing about the Federal Reserve, as currently structured. If they increase the money supply (printing money) , the Fed loans the money into existence by funneling it to private banks. The banks then loan that money into the economy, at interest. To make matters even worse, the banks are allowed to run a Ponzi scheme through fractional reserve banking. They are only required to have 10% in reserve when they make a loan. So when a bank loans you $100,000.00 for a house, they have created $90,000.00 out of thin air. Each year the debt (public and private) must increase or there is not enough currency flowing through the system to pay off the interest on the previously existing debt.

      Another odd thing happened in the seventies. Wages began to stagnate as globalization took hold. Adjusted for inflation, wages remained flat through the early 2000's. Since the Great Recession took hold, wages have declined. Yet 70% of our economy is dependent on consumer spending. So what to do? The once great middle class deployed a number of coping mechanisms. Firstly, women entered the work force. While the women's lib movement may have plowed the soil, I believe it was simple economic need at the family level that led to most American women entering the work force. Then people began to work more hours. When that option was exhausted, they took out credit cards. The national savings rate plummeted. Finally, in a last gasp, people en masse began to use the equity in their houses to prop up consumer spending. And in '08 it all came crashing down.

      David Harvey states that crises of capitalism are never solved, they are just moved around geographically. What began as a banking and financial crises has morphed into a debt and growth crises. And the solution being offered up? Austerity. With each spending cut, or government layoff, or sequestration, overall revenue falls, the debt increases, the interest rises, necessitating more cutbacks. Austerity has become a positive feedback loop, driving us deeper into the hole. And all those bailouts, all they did was to prop up the broken banks. They are still sitting on trillions of dollars in bad loans and derivatives. Each new addition of QE is supposed to spur the banks to lend. But with only 1-2% growth and a mountain of defaults they cannot. They are effectively insolvent.

      I saw a bumper sticker once about fifteen years ago on a truck in Casper, WY. It said “Lord, give me just one more oil boom, I promise I won't piss it away.” This is the jist of our current economic plans. Please just give us one more bubble of growth, we promise, we won't piss it away.

      I would also say that money is subject to a funneling effect, a concentration. Our capitalist system tends by its very nature to wants to consolidate wealth at the top of the pyramid. And just who sits at the top of the pyramid? The financiers. They seem to have a glorious vision is which exponential growth continues ad infinitum and eventually we reach the shores of a utopian paradise where all are rich. Of course they will be deserving of behemoth sized bonuses in return for their innovation. Sadly this flies in the face of the laws of physics and the simple arithmetic of the exponential function. Economic growth and our financial system are unsustainable. As Paul Gilding puts it “When things are unsustainable, they stop.”

      Lest I be accused of offering no “solutions”, here are a couple of things that might be done. First of all, implement a Global Debt Jubilee. Wipe the slates clean. If this idea is dismissed as being a remnant of godless communism by uber-conservative pseudo-Christians, just cite Leviticus. Secondly, initiate monetary and currency reform. Dismantle the Federal Reserve and institute a debt-free currency as a public good. Perhaps a bi-metallic standard is an option. Perhaps a fiat currency is better, but the key is that they be debt-free and that they are controlled by the people.

      Of course the chances of any of the above happening is about nil. Therefore it may be an awfully good idea for communities to begin experimenting with local alternatives. BerkShares, bit coins, and LETS programs are all examples that could be tried. Heck, Utah made gold and silver legal tender, and they are not exactly a bastion of progressive experimentation. Perhaps people could responsibly stock up on some junk silver coins, and gold Eagles (budget permitting) as a personal currency of last resort. The idea is that communities that have access to a alternative currency will be far more resilient when the next crash comes. And come it will.

      In a way, we may be far luckier if it is the financial horse that crosses the line first. After all at it's heart, money is nothing more than a social agreement, and those can be renegotiated. If it is oil or God forbid climate that pulls the trigger on collapse, we will be in far, far worse shape.

On Griffin Woods, Food Deserts, and the Nature of Boys

"Forests greet us and deserts dog our heels."
-Derrick Jensen

     I began working on this week's post with the full intention of unpacking the Trifecta of the horse-race, in which we are all spectators and participants. We think we are merely sitting in the grandstand, watching the progress through binoculars, laying out two-dollar bets, according to the best guesses of the odds-makers and the bookies. Rather, we are the owners, trainers, and jockeys, whether we realize it or not. The favorites are Economic Growth and Technological Progress. The underdogs, who have unexpectedly pulled ahead: Financial Chicanery, Peak Oil, and Anthropogenic Climate Change. I promise, we will get there, along with exploring other taboo subjects (at least in polite company), the fate of Pax Americana, protest, politics, religion, and many more. I do not pretend to sway anyone to my point of view. If I can but convince even a small minority to think about the predicaments we all face, well then that alone will be something,
Then my youngest daughter asked me to teach her to ride a bike. After a small mishap, involving tangled feet, the pavement, her skinned knees, and her father's broken nose, she is ready to take the plunge once again. Bless her heart! Learning to ride a bicycle is one of the most terrifying and liberating experiences a child can have. You are expected to coordinate feet, hands, eyes, and body in a dance of incredible dexterity to accomplish...locomotion. Try to explaining it in words, the exact process to maintain control, balance, and forward motion, and I promise you, words will most certainly fail you. Riding a bike is just something you have to do.

     And from the child's point of view, this is sheer terror. They are set loose, upon a piece of unfamiliar machinery, that they alone control. Mom and Dad are not there, with them, to make everything OK, to prevent the fall. And fall they will. Try and take yourself back, years ago, when you sat upon that seat for the first time, sure that you would meet the asphalt in short order. It takes grit to learn to ride that bike. But once mastered, it is the child's first real venture into the wider world, it is freedom.

     Now, I freely admit that a girl's experience of the bicycle, and yes, even the outdoors in general, may be quite different from a boy's. After over twenty years of marriage, and raising three daughters, I can attest to a few truths. Firstly all-statements about people, generalizations, are often flawed. There are stark differences between my girls. One is an artist, one an accidental naturalist (wading in the slough and collecting tadpoles to raise) and one is my gardener (along with a deep fascination in dollhouses). Secondly, I wouldn't trade my situation for all the gold in El Dorado. At this point I have been swimming in estrogen for two decades. The only other person in the house who stands up to pee is the cat, and he's cut. I wouldn't even know where to begin with a son. And last of all, the ladies in my life are an absolute joy, and an abiding mystery. I am convinced now, that if I know anything about the battle of the sexes, it is this: I know nothing.
But I do know something about boys, since I am one. If fact, Mrs. Fairchild would probably point out that there are innumerable instances where I have proven that I never progressed much beyond the age of twelve. Yes, I still like Spongebob and fart jokes are still funny. As well, I think that the riding of a bike, and the attendant freedom, is fundamental to the state of boyhood.

     My first bike was a hand-me-down from my big brother. I no longer remember the brand, but it was red, with deep "longhorn" handlebars, and a banana-seat. I was eight, when I learned to ride, much to the dismay of our neighbor, Delores. After several aborted attempts, Dad sent me down the steep driveway with a chant of pedal, pedal, pedal! That's all it took, from that one trip down the driveway, across the street, and to an abrupt stop facilitated by the Colonel's privacy fence, I was off! Braking and steering, however, took a little longer to master.

     This is where Delores entered the picture. She was a big woman and ambled out onto the sidewalk, resplendent in a patterned house dress, right into my path. The nerve of some people. I can still hear my best friend Tim holler out "Billy! Stop!"

     "I can't! I don't know how!", I replied in a moment of sheer paralysis and terror, forgetting that most important of instructions from my Dad, you must pedal backwards to brake. I met Delores with a thud reminiscent of the Colonel's fence, and down she went, fainting straightaway. I was pretty sure I'd killed her and had visions of the police leading me off to the "hole" never to be heard from again. I am glad to report that Delores fully recovered, with nothing worse to show for it than a long bruise on her massive shin, upon which the tread pattern of the front wheel was embossed on her pallid flesh in purple relief. Oh, I had to apologize, and I was restricted to riding in front of the house for a week. My dad's insurance had to pay the medical bill. But I had not, in fact, committed criminally negligent homicide, and eventually I was turned loose upon the wider world.

     Back in the late seventies, after breakfast, and Saturday morning cartoons, our mothers packed peanut butter and jelly, apples, chips, and a thermos full of Kool-aid into our backpacks, and we boys set off for adventure, with the admonition to be back at home before the sun set, and not get our feet wet. The first condition was doable, the second nigh to impossible. Often, we would ride down the Highline Canal, an old irrigation and drainage ditch that snakes through Aurora, Co. It is a testament to their agrarian past, lined with majestic cottonwood trees and a first rate bike path. But often as not, we would head to the Cottonwood, the boys and I.

     That was what we called it, the Cottonwood. It was a copse of plains cottonwood trees situated on a multi-acre parcel of undeveloped land across from the new middle school. There were remnants of the short-grass prairie that had once covered all of eastern Colorado, studded with yucca cactus, prickly pear, and mullein plants dancing above the cheat-grass. The dried stalk of a mullein makes a great wizard's staff for a ten-year old, by the way. There were tracts of swampy wetlands with bulrushes, cattails, and an abandoned, rusted out, late fifties Chevy. And there were the willows and the massive cottonwood trees, ancient, brooding, dark and hoary, and dare I say it, sentient. This was our Fangorn Forest, our Sherwood, our Garroting Deep. Imagine our delight on discovering an old tree-house. She was made of two by fours and plywood, with one by twos secured to the living trunk with railroad spikes as a ladder. A garden-hose was tied to a branch and left dangling, for quick descent, or the escape of one's enemies. In today's world, this represents one word: litigation. But at that time, some kind soul, who understood the nature of boys, left us a priceless treasure, a place for our imagination to run free. In our mind's eyes, surely Elves, Forestals, Merry Men or other travelers of a long lost eldritch world had left this abandoned arboreal fort, for use in defense of the realm of light against the brewing darkness.

     It was here that I also learned of the kindness of strangers. Whilst trying to effect my escape from marauding orcs by sliding down the garden hose, I slipped and fell about ten feet, cracking a rib. I made it about a half mile back to my house, by bike, when a kindly construction worker, piled me, my friends, and our bikes into the back of his pickup amd drove us the rest of the way. He carried me gently to the door and presented me to my mother. To her credit, she never scolded, she just took care of me. After all, these things happen, boys will be boys. Six weeks later, I was off again.

     Fast forward 35 years, and a controversy is brewing (the way the Brit's pronounce that word, is ever so much cooler). It involves Griffin Woods. For those of you who may not know, this is a patch of approximately 20 acres of undeveloped, forested land, on Springfield, IL's near west side. It sits at the corner of Chatham and Washington. Now before I go further, I must distinguish, there is a clear difference between what we have a legal right to do, and what we ought to do. The Springfield Catholic Arch-Diocese owns the land, and they certainly have to right to sell it to whomever they choose. Schnuck's grocery is a legitimate business (within our standard paradigm) and they certainly have the right to buy and develop it. Schnuck's, to their credit will bring much needed jobs to the area, and will provide an additional source of fresh foods. This is a small beginning in the effort to improve both the economy and the health of the greater Springfield area. You see, much of Springfield, particularly in the central core, and the east-side, can be considered a food-desert. Due to the pioneering work of Mari Gallagher, food-deserts have come into the public eye of late. In a rural area, a food desert is defined as living in an area where the nearest source of fresh food (a grocery store, generally speaking) is more than a ten mile trip for residents. In an urban setting, if you have to travel more than a mile to shop for fresh food, you live in a food desert. Why the concern? It is far more likely that low-income families will face transportation challenges that are not experienced by most Americans. Lack of enough income to support the use of a car (e.g.- purchase price, insurance, licensing, fuel), poor public transportation, and a decidedly non bike-friendly environment are just a few of the obstacles faced by these families. So a daily or weekly trip to a grocery store may be all but impossible.

     Particularly in depressed urban centers, grocery stores see blight, high crime, poor infrastructure, and a low income base as impediments to a profitable operation. The rural landscape often fares worse. The tiny farming hamlet, with a small aging population, a decrepit Main St., and a decimated commercial base, is geographically isolated and considered unworthy of investment. The grocery chains are reluctant to locate in the areas that most need their services. This has led to entire generations of youth growing up on fast food such as burgers, or convenience store junk food, mostly made from high fructose corn syrup, corn derivatives, sugar, and salt. Think cheesy-poofs and cola. Not only does a diet like this lead to obesity and its attendant health-problems, in my opinion, it retards the physical and cognitive development of the children. We potentially end up with a large cohort of the population who grow up to be ignorant couch potatoes, more interested in America's Got Talent and the weekly football game than they are in the fate of the nation, in being engaged citizens.

     So on its surface, the proposal to raze Griffin Wood's and develop the land would appear to be in the public interest. I say "on the surface" because the economic argument may be quite transient. The much ballyhooed jobs and growth, may in fact be a short term phenomenon, for reasons that I will examine in later posts. The other reason that this proposal is of superficial benefit is that the woodland possesses qualities that are very, very hard to quantify in economic terms. The aesthetic benefits to our human community would be one, think of the colors in autumn, for example. As well, according to Urban Forestry, one acre of woods sequesters 2.7 tons of carbon and emits enough oxygen for one person to breathe on an annual basis. That means that Griffin Woods is a carbon sink for 54 Springfieldians. It produces the oxygen 20 residents depend on for their lives. Doesn't seem like much, does it? But this should begin to drive home the point that these woodlands, throughout the U.S. are critically important, and as each small patch is felled, in the name of growth, jobs, and business, it is death by a thousand cuts.

     The woodland also provides habitat for songbirds, for voles and mice and hence raptors such as the red-tailed hawk. It also supports countless populations of pollinators. Remember What Albert Einstein said, "One year with out bees means the next year without people." Finally, the woodland and the wetlands they contain, filter an unimaginable amount of rainwater and runoff, naturally removing toxins and pollutants from the watershed and preventing flooding. All these attributes are lumped under the dry moniker "ecosystem services" by conservation biologists. Boy, that's a slogan to rally behind, ain't it? Viva ecosystem services! Geez, it doesn't work. That is because most people experience a connection to the natural world through the lens of mythos, not logos. It seems nature is best described by the poet, the painter, the singer, and this does not lend itself to the "rational discussion" we like to pretend to in our political deliberations. So on a regular basis, the conservation argument is marginalized and the developers win. More wild areas fall to the bulldozer and more strip malls and parking lots blight our landscapes like a spreading pox.

     And this brings me full circle. Back to the Cottonwood. As we succumb to the relentless juggernaut of sprawl and suburbanization, of endless growth, more and more boys (and girls) find themselves cut off from exploring their world. We deprive them of what I believe is a necessary
part of growing up and developing into well rounded adults, the ability to ramble unsupervised in the natural world, to appreciate the fullness of her bounty, and to let the imagination run free. Who wants them crossing a six land road on a bike, much less piddling around unsupervised in a marshland? And so we end up with a legion of boys, isolated in sterile, cloned , cookie-cutter, vinyl clad subdivisions. And they still piddle around. They just do in alone, online, and discover the joys of violent video-games and internet porn. What a colossal mess we have made for ourselves.

     There is another way. CSAs, farmer's markets, community gardens and permaculture are offering a new model for food production and distribution. In 1995, developers expressed an interest in a parcel of undeveloped, wasted land, across from the middle school in Aurora, CO. They wanted raze the cottonwood trees and build yet another assembly of tract housing and condominium complexes. Local residents organized, began petition drives, consulted with the city, and eventually TPL acquired the property and preserved it while making a few improvements such as bike paths. The Cottonwood died, but the Jewell Park Wetlands were born. It is perhaps a bit over tame for my taste, but that copse of cottonwood trees still stands and is a wild oasis in the suburbs. Perhaps a similar path can be found for Griffin Woods. If Schnuck's brings another store to Springfield, they can find a more appropriate location. Surely this is what ought to be done. However, as sad as it makes me, I won't hold my breath. It seems that in these hard times, it is indeed "the economy, stupid", even at the cost of a living planet.

On Travel

"Good help ain't cheap, and cheap help ain't good."
     -Anonymous

     The subjects I will broach have well documented and written about for years, by a variety of experts, economists, scientists, journalists, and writers and occasionally theologians. What I hope to do is to examine the issues that we collectively face, at the end of an age, from the perspective of a layman, an average Joe, a working stiff.

     I am a regular working guy. I make my living off one of the most fossil fuel intensive industries under the sun, the airline business. Crude oil is the life blood of this business. Jet fuel is now the largest expense airlines have, outstripping even labor (including health care). Now, every major legacy carrier has gone bankrupt, resorting to Chapter 11 to abrogate their labor agreements and toss workers and their pay, pensions, and health insurance out the window. Every function that can be subcontracted, has been. Catering, aircraft cleaning, maintenance, passenger check-in, baggage handling and ramp service and even flying. All these functions are now performed by third party vendors, wherever possible.

     As a side note, when pension obligations are discharged under Chapter 11, the responsibility for paying pension claims, generally at fifty cents to the dollar, falls to the PBGC. (Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation) Think of it as the FDIC of pensions. That means, dear reader, that this responsibility falls to you, as a taxpayer. Meanwhile the airline execs walk away with golden parachutes, receiving Wall Street accolades for their "turnaround". Yet one more example for socialism for the 1% and capitalism for the 99%. Ain't neo-liberal economics great? Of course the PBGC is grossly underfunded and is effectively insolvent. Perhaps Paul Ryan can come up with a voucher program for that too?

     Even the epidemic of airline bankruptcy has not been enough to staunch the bleeding. And so the subcontracting has ratcheted up. Short haul routes that were once flown by the majors in 737 aircraft are now bid out to the regional airlines for 90, 70, or even 50-seat RJ service, yet the fares only increase (note the recent $10 one-way fare increase on short haul routes). Enter the era of nickel and dime-ing and self-service. Want to check a bag? $25.00 please. Want a seat with legroom suitable for someone over five feet tall?, That'll be $69 please. Even Tyrion Lannister would be cramped and uncomfortable in seat 32B. Show up to the airport a little early and want to get a head start? That'll be $75 please. How would you like to pay for that today?

     Just as getting a person on the phone is an increasingly rare experience, so is actually interacting with a human being during the booking of your reservation, or check-in. Humans are expensive and electrons are cheap, for now. Most customers have been blithely trained to do their own work. Tickets are purchased via an el-cheapo website (replete with fine print restrictions even an experienced lawyer can't sort out.) When you arrive at the airport, you insert your credit card into a kiosk, or ARD (agent replacement device) as we call it, and out spit your boarding passes, after you navigate a dizzying series of menus, hawking various "travel options" in an effort to separate you from your money. The truly savvy techno-travelers get a bar code sent directly to their smart phone and breeze through security without ever having to mess with the unwashed masses at the ticket counters.

     Still, this is just not enough. So the airlines merge. There is simply not enough revenue available for them all. Contraction is the order of the day. When I started in the business over twenty years ago, there were many air carriers. The original Frontier, Eastern, Western, Ozark, Aloha, Western Pacific, Northwest, America West, and TWA and many more have either gone belly-up or been swallowed by competitors. The latest was the marriage between Continental and United. Now US Airways is making noise about merging with American, after they finally succumbed to to pressures of operating with livable wages in a high oil environment and filed chapter 11.

     Another side note, I remember when US Airways emerged from Chapter 11 and merged with America West. Their CEO said "US Airways is well positioned to be profitable in an environment with oil priced at $60 per barrel", or something very close to that. I paraphrase. Last time I looked, Brent crude was $113/bbl.

     It is easy to peg this as all the fault of the "greedy unions" but that would be wrong. Keep in mind that when my friend George went through an airline bankruptcy in the early 90's, and mainline service was replaced with regional service at his location, he went from $36,000.00/yr as a ticket counter agent (hardly a 1% living) to $8.00/hr. DGS (Delta Global Services) one of the major ground-handling providers is starting their new-hires at $7.50/hr. -part time- in 2012! This is the magic of the market, right? The invisible hand at work. Unfortunately the Adam Smith's hand is crushing the workers into debt-peonage. At $7.50/hr., they are far less likely to finance a car, buy a home, or go shopping (consume) which is where 70% of our GDP is birthed. And so the economy languishes. Meanwhile, instead of professional service at an airport, what we get is akin to a trip to the local burger shack during lunch rush. Airlines have even had to relax their tattoo and piercing policies to accommodate the new caliber of ramp-workers.
　
     I actually do not arrive at this juncture from a place of covetousness or envy. This is just the way is is. This is what a corporation must do to remain competitive in the 21st century. As Wendel Berry put it: "A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance." This pile of money has only one purpose, to become an even bigger pile of money, by whatever means necessary. This is the process of "biggering" that Dr. Seuss wrote so eloquently about the "The Lorax."
So what do we do? Unfortunately, most citizens would see this as an issue to be "fixed" by "policy". Provide grants or stimulus. Cut taxes, relax regulations. Perhaps drill, baby, drill. Build a pipeline direct to the tar-sands. That's great shit up there in Alberta ain't it? Let's raze the entire Canadian boreal forest and poison the watershed of a whole province so we can fly to LAS for $59.00, one-way. Let's put the world's largest freshwater aquifer at risk, while we're at it. And that doesn't even raise the specter of runaway greenhouse, a real risk at this point, by all accounts.
     And therein lies the crux of the problem. We cannot see the forest for the trees. We see individual issues within the Global Industrial Economy as problems to be fixed, rather than seeing the economy for what it is, a man-made complex adaptive system that exists as a subset within the biosphere. And like any organism, the Global Industrial Economy depends on abundant nutrients and ample waste sinks. Unfortunately the larder is getting bare and the septic tank is backing up into the yard. We know this. Meals on Wheels ain't gonna show up and the Divine Septic Service is otherwise occupied.

     So once again, what are we to do? We can plant a garden and put in a composting toilet, or we can sit back and watch the horse race. More on the looming Trifecta next time.