Hurtling Towards the Wall

(source)

If anyone ever wonders why I seem to obsessively forward on information of this nature (in the Transition Lancaster newsletter), a little reflection should provide the answer: it is simply impossible for a human being to maintain his sanity and believe himself to be alone in his knowledge. I am following a compulsion buried deep in my evolutionary nature.

From the Inter Press Service in Paris:

PARIS, Jan 24, 2011 (IPS) - Despite repeated warnings by environmental and climate experts that reduction of fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is fundamental to forestalling global warming, disaster appears imminent. According to the latest statistics, unprecedented climate change has Earth hurtling down a path of catastrophic proportions.

It would be a mistake to regard this as hyperbole. We know, for instance, that sea-level rise this century is almost certainly to be in the multi-meter range, meaning a minimum of around 20' from present levels; this will inundate most every major metropolitan center in the US, from Miami to Boston. Flooding is already devastating many coastal communities worldwide. We know that a continent-sized Dust Bowl is growing now in the heart of North America, not to mention Africa, Asia and Europe. The world's coral are being driven to extinction -- and they have been present on Earth for over 540 million years. Occupying less than one-tenth of one percent of the world ocean surface, reefs nevertheless shelter around 25% of all marine species. Many of the world's peoples depend upon reefs for food, not to mention flood protection and tourist dollars.

Thank God for the economic collapse:

[Global greenhouse gas emissions], measured as equivalent to carbon dioxide, reached at least 32 billion tonnes last year, only one step below the most pessimistic scenario imagined by the IPCC in 2000: 33 billion tonnes of CO2.

The results for 2010 were conditioned by the present global economic crisis – meaning that under normal economic circumstances, the numbers would have been higher. In other words, total consumption of energy in 2010 would have been worse than the most pessimistic scenario the IPCC formulated ten years ago had the global economy been in better shape.

And more on this century of challenges:

According to the newest IPCC estimations, global temperatures may rise as much as eight degrees Celsius [14.4°F] by the year 2200.

Levermann explained that the temperature difference within an interglacial period, such as the one we are living now, have historically reached about five Celsius degrees.

"The transition between these temperature extremes lasted some 50,000 years in the past," Levermann said. "But at the present rate of [greenhouse gas emissions] we are reducing such a transition by 50 times."

He added that the rapid rising of global temperatures could provoke extreme weather catastrophes that humankind won’t be able to survive.

"The rising frequency of weather extremes, with their enormous social and economic consequences, would not allow public budgets to recuperate, nor give societies the time to breathe again," Levermann said. "Nor would insurance companies be able to compensate for the damages."

Levermann echoed earlier warnings that climate change could destroy countries such as Bangladesh, cities situated near the oceans, such as New York and Amsterdam, and make large parts of Africa uninhabitable.

"Climate change would destroy drinking water supplies, agriculture, habitats, and provoke giant waves of migration and mass mortality," he explained.

Levermann compared the consequences of global warming to a wall hidden in fog. "We cannot see the wall, but it is there. And we are driving at the highest possible speed towards it."

And people wonder why I seem so concerned. I will blog later on the efforts some are making to put us on a WWII-type footing to deal with this appropriately. Strict energy rationing and a rapid transition to a fossil fuel-free way of life would be good starts. Local transition movements only set the stage for this move to very necessary nation- and global-scale efforts.

The Story of What Could Be

It won't be easy. (source)

I wrote this originally back on July 4. Though most of us have forgotten about the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the catastrophic and seemingly endless oil spill that resulted, the legacy remains, and will continue to remain, for decades. This story is about what that legacy could be, if we wanted it badly enough.

In the beginning, there was an oil spill. The worst spill in the history of spills. The worst spill imaginable. Unlike past spills, this one came  from a bottomless cup: the Earth. During the worst of it -- and every day seemed the worst -- the people of the world sometimes felt the Earth was bleeding out every last drop of oil. A wound, that's what it was. Not a spill, but a wound -- an arterial cut so deep we sometimes felt the Earth itself would die. Or that we would die. We wished for death -- of ourselves, of the other, of the person responsible--

--But this isn't that story. This is not a story of death, nor murder, but of redemption. This is a story of healing. It begins with anger, rage, pain, despair, it is true, but that is only the beginning.

So we have a wound, a deep wound. It was -- and is -- a terrible thing. No one would wish for this wound, for any reason. But it woke us up to the fact that it was and is but one wound among many. It stood up alongside the raping of the forests, the poisoning of the atmosphere, the destruction of the top soil and the desertification of our souls as but one of the great crimes of Man. This wound was simply so large it finally could not be ignored, as much as we would have liked to.

It woke us up; and, like dreamers rudely awakened, we sat as in a daze, gazing at our works -- and a terrible fear grew. We had destroyed the Gulf, bled it dry. Nothing could be done, we thought. In our despair, we imagined an endless welling up of oil. We were not far wrong. Oh, these were bad times.

--Yet, I spoke of redemption earlier, and healing. Can you see it? It is germinating -- right there, in the fear and despair. Some might tell you that nothing good can come of such things, but they have this to say for them: they begin the process, the necessary process, of stripping away illusions. At first, in our fear, we tried many things. Anything we could think of to staunch the flow of oil. "Top hats", "top kills", "junk shots", giant hoses and centrifuges to vacuum it up. Meaningless to you, I know, but to us, briefly, they were everything: we placed all our hopes in these strange techniques, these magics. They all failed. When they failed, as they must have, we tried blame. We blamed the corporatists most involved in the catastrophe. We blamed the bureaucrats who let it happen and the politicians who failed in their sworn duties. All this was right, and just -- partly. In the end, we couldn't help ourselves, we continued to point fingers, pointing on and on till none were left to be singled out but we ourselves. Who purchased the oil so drilled? In plastics, pesticides, pseudo-foods, dish detergents, children's toys, gasoline for our mammoth cars and heating oil for our gargantuan, far-away homes, our make-believe castles. We purchased the oil, bought with blood and destroyed livelihoods and crippled ecologies. We burned it and poisoned the air and acidified the waters. We came to understand that, even without the endless spill, the oceans were under such aggressive assault they had mere decades left, anyway. We came to realize that we, that we were the ones. We caused the spill.

Many shook their heads, they denied, they fought, they justified... but eventually all that fell away. When the visible poison swept through the Florida Keys and on to the Atlantic, nothing sufficed. Justifications could not stand before that endless spill. It stopped mouths and quelled hearts. There was silence, but for the tide; silence, but for the weeping.

***

From that silence sprang a new resolve. We came to know that our only path forward must begin with a realization -- an acknowledgment -- of failure, the utter and absolute failure of modern industrial civilization to protect and preserve the foundation of all things -- the land, sea and air. That path continued with the deep determination to restore and repair. We had lost all possibilities for happiness, for happiness depends on happenstance, on chance, on good fortune, and those were nowhere more to be found. But we did find joy, the unfathomable, ineffable joy that comes from good work righteously pursued. Our work to restore the Earth -- and our proper places in it -- required almost all the energies of humankind. We began with the Gulf. As you know, children, that work continues, two and more generations removed from the final cut that woke us up. Many more it will continue -- but it progresses. We believe that one day it will be restored, and work tirelessly for that day.

Though that work took (and is taking) longer than we had initially hoped, we no longer sought the counsel of despair, and instead put our hands and minds and spirits to work elsewhere, everywhere -- repairing, restoring. What else was there to do? Nothing. But there was nothing else we wanted to do. We rebuilt the soil, planted trees, cleaned the streams, the rivers, the estuaries -- all water became sacred to us again. ...We left. That was the most important thing, in many ways. We left places we never should have been in the first place, and shrunk our right places that had grown too large. The cities became comprehensible again and the countryside had stewards again, and in between -- wilderness.

Couldn't resist.

The work goes on, and will continue forever. What is to be done with the toxic waste, the radioactive poisons? Nothing but to guard forever. Sufficient cause to continue to exist. What is to be done about the upended mountains? Nothing, but to wait for the Earth to shrug her great shoulders. More than sufficient cause to continue to watch and protect. The cleared forests? We plant trees wherever we can, always with great consideration for their placement in relation to others... but we know it will be many generations -- hundreds if not thousands of years -- before they can truly restore themselves. We certainly cannot do that, yet we can help, we can speed the process.

This, as you know, is our joy. It is our reason. Our Great Purpose: the Restoration. What else is there? Nothing. What else could we want? Nothing.

Go now, children, play; an old man needs his rest.

Both Damned and Saved; or, The Inner Transition

I hope not. (source)

There are many types of transition we must go through to reach the better world we all believe -- or want to believe -- is out there. I consistently return to the conclusion that the most important, most fundamental transition, is the internal (psychological) one. Using less energy, walking and bicycling instead of driving, eating locally and more efficiently (i.e., having a higher vegetable/meat ratio), reducing waste, and composting (etc.) are all important, yet they're all insufficient. Completely. Even all together, they will not even come close to sufficing in the face of everything we know is happening in the world. To me, the true value in these actions lies not in the actions themselves, but in the mindsets or worldviews these actions help to foster. Riding a bicycle, while valuable as a money-saving, pollution-avoiding and health-promoting endeavor, to me finds its true worth in re-introducing us to the joy of using our own bodies and the beauty of the changing seasons -- and to the understanding that the fundamental crime of driving a motorized vehicle is its quiet theft of these experiences from us. It's theft, in essence, of our humanity.

When you know the joy of bicycling, the inner tranquility that a healthy diet promotes, the satisfaction of a near-empty garbage can, you begin to realize how unnecessary are so many modern "conveniences". Not just unnecessary, but actively obstructionist towards a fulfilling life. And that is when Transition becomes truly possible.

Part of the transition is facing up to very difficult facts. In an ideal world, we would have no urgency and could simply amble along the road towards a better world for the simple fact we saw it as a better world. But in the world as it is, we must, in fact, run towards this better world because the one we're leaving behind is crumbling, and threatening to take us with it. I speak, of course, of the twin drivers of the Transition Towns Movement: peak oil and climate change (with a dash of economic crisis thrown in for fun).

This particular post derives much of its motivation from two forces: a speech by Mari Margil of the PA-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) on the harsh reality of the state of the global biosphere, as well as a recent special issue of the Royal Society (the world's first scientific body) on the effects of a mere 4°C (7.2°F) of global warming, which could happen as early as 2060. As a practicing planner with an undergrad degree in math and physics, I am well aware of (a) the stark scientific case for why we're all (almost) screwed and (b) the pathetic political case for why (almost) nothing can be done about it. In a fit of depression, I wrote a short, sarcasm-rich version of this post which I have since deleted. I had made the cardinal sin of forgetting to look at things holistically -- looking only at our collapsing biosphere, I had forgotten about peak oil! You see, most of the worst-case scenarios with respect to climate change and global ocean death require something called "business-as-usual" emissions, which rely on a business-as-usual economy. Thank God for peak oil! Without growing oil consumption, the economy can't grow, and without a growing economy, emissions can't grow -- and, in fact, the prime likelihood is for some deepening economic depression that leads to global economic decline if not outright collapse; in this tangled web we call the global economy, the collapse of one major player can only lead to the collapse, sooner or later, of all the others. So we're saved! By collapse. But maybe there are other options....

It is fitting that we should be both damned and saved by our profligate use of polluting fossil fuels, particularly oil. But the extent to which we are saved rather than damned depends utterly on our willingness to make smart decisions now, while other options remain, rather than wait for the unsympathetic laws of physics to decide for us. It is a guarantee that we will not like the ways in which Mother Nature unilaterally restores the natural balance of things. I would like to believe she'd prefer us as active partners in that restoration, rather than passive victims of our own malign neglect. I know I would.

We have fallen under the influence of the strange conception that "sustainable" means "what I'm doing now, but better", where "better" means "more." What we're doing now -- collectively -- is the problem. What we desire is inconspicuous, painless incrementalism, where what we need is radical transformation. 4°C warming by 2060 -- that's a death sentence for the human race. And the fact that the only politically feasible option we have for averting that cataclysm is political collapse points to the extreme level of dysfunction we have reached as a people.

So what are the other options? I return to where I began with the imperative of the internal transition. The major problem is our expectations for the future, which are out of all sync with reality. They are also all out of sync with ourselves -- our hidden humanity. We've allowed ourselves (collectively) to be lulled into false notions of how the world is. The extent to which we are saved rather than damned depends on our ability to make this internal transition, to deny what we think we know and accept the truths of the world as it is. All else follows.

Transition Lancaster Newsletter #51, with much interesting news.

Fabulously Fridgeless Was, Indeed

Kick it to the curb!

I'll have photos soon, but I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who attended our first-ever Fabulously Fridgeless event with Jonathan Colon. I think I can speak for all in attendance when I say: truly, truly fabulous. What a fun night.

We made tortillas from scratch just using flour, water, kale and herbs. They were simply delicious with a sprinkling of honey, sea salt, steamed collards and crisp greens --- all fresh, all local (the salt was from Maine).

Then we made squash gnocchi, also from scratch, using a roasted neck pumpkin, flour and herbs, made extra-delicious by a just-made stock from the vegetable scraps, crisped kale, Northeast sunflower seed oil, and more of that Maine sea salt.

Jonathan also took a moment (just a moment) and showed us all how to make fresh pasta. The ease and speed with which he prepared fresh food for thirteen people was truly a joy to behold.

Topped off with a few glasses of wine (some local, some not), we enjoyed the good company till late into the evening.

Given the success of the evening, Jonathan and I are interested in doing this again, possibly on a regular basis. If you're interested, let me know by emailing me at TransitionLancaster(at)gmail(dot)com.

Small is Sustainable

(source)

I had this epiphany while on a walk a few weeks ago, but have been too busy till now to write it down. It is dovetailing with my renewed appreciation for planning, which is, by nature, an incremental art. I was pondering the ever-unfolding economic collapse, and arrived at the conclusion that having limited resources might actually increase the odds of making "sustainable"^* decisions.
This is a point easiest to explain by counter-example (if "small is sustainable", then is large unsustainable?). Consider the national highway system. It took (and is taking) the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars to build and maintain that monstrosity. Only a large, centralized body with access to vast resources (and apparently untapped reserves of hubris) could have conceived of something like that, let alone have built it. And the building of it is one of the many drivers that has set our nation, literally, on the road to ruin.

^*I am uninterested, at this time, in defining the word "sustainable."

So: small is sustainable. With limited resources, one is forced to be creative, resourceful... small. If a mistake is made, terrifying amounts of wealth are not extinguished thereby; it remains a mistake, rather than a catastrophe: one is free to learn and try again. If one succeeds, then others, also of limited means, may learn of that good practice, adapt it to their particular circumstances, and try it themselves. Their success -- or failure -- contributes to the breadth and depth of our collective well of wisdom.

Many small groups experimenting is much better than one centralized entity pooling resources from a large area and rolling the dice. I would not suggest it is never advisable to pool resources, but I am asserting that this ought to be the exception rather than the rule. And just because I'm a hopeless romantic who loves lost causes, here's one exception: universal, single-payer healthcare. This would support small solutions by granting working people and entrepreneurs the freedom to try and fail and move on if and when they choose; there would no longer be a need to stay in a job out of fear of losing all-important health coverage. This enables small enterprise in another way: it lifts the burden of one of the heaviest costs of business, which is caring for employees' health. This is but one example of risk management which, in general, is a sector that benefits from the pooling together of large groups.

Smallness is resilient. The failure of one does not precipitate the failure of another; to the contrary, it may stimulate their improvement by the example of what not to do. Further, the failed, having committed relatively few resources, and presumably surrounded by non-failures, may recover with less delay. Smallness also, by nature, is less interdependent (and more, but not completely, independent). Smallness can't draw on limitless territories for natural and human capital: it must make do with what is close at hand. This contributes to the diversity of experimental solution-finding, but also limits the small's vulnerability to drawn-out resource chains. Consider our situation today, when, by a hilariously perverse (perversely hilarious?) turn of events, the Pentagon finds itself reliant on Chinese rare-earths for key components to its "advanced" weapons systems. Not so "advanced" when they rely on the goodwill of a creditor and powerful economic competitor, eh? Smallness doesn't have that problem... and not least because it probably wouldn't be in the habit of dropping "smart" bombs on some faraway desert to secure the oil it doesn't need.

So, smallness is resilient. But what about the case of systemic failure? This would most likely be the result of neglecting the advice above and tending too far in the direction of centralization of resources and power. As this seems to be where we're trending, however, the question may be worth essaying an answer: in the case of systemic failure, save what's worth saving, discard what's not, and start again. It wouldn't be the first time.

Lancaster County Burn Ban

(source)

I've been meaning to post something on this for weeks -- ever since I first heard it might happen earlier this month, in fact -- and now I'm just going to post something abbreviated before I lose my inspiration totally.

So here's the question: did anyone else, upon hearing of a county-wide burn ban, think to themselves "is this due to global warming?" If you did, you're not alone, although you might be forgiven for thinking so, because there was literally no mention of such a possibility on any of the local news sources I pay attention to, including WITF/NPR and the Lancaster News. (In fact, as an aside, I never hear "global warming" or "climate change" mentioned in connection with strange weather events from these sources.)

For global warming aficionados -- and aren't we all, really? -- this might strike one as rather absurd. You have the hottest year on record, on top of the hottest decade on record, on top of two other previously record-breaking decades, and no one in the media seems to think to themselves "huh. I wonder if this drought which has led to a rash of fires is in any way related to global warming and the extreme weather events it portends?" Now, I don't actually expect a reporter to use a word like "portends", but leave me and my diction alone, ok?

Below is a great image I lifted off the Climate Progress blog. It shows the difference in temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit, between the actual maximum temperature (for the day) and the average maximum temperature, on July 6. You'll notice that, in Central PA, this was apparently in the 12-16 degree range. That's rather a lot. As NASA has pointed out, this is what global warming looks like. We can throw out all the old averages because they're based on a different climate -- the climate of Earth. We live on Eaarth, now. And in Lancaster, that apparently means months with very little rain, higher probability of fires that burn farm fields (and food) and homes... and burn bans.

Weather Underground offers this “plot of the difference between maximum temperature (the high for the day) and average maximum temperature in degrees F for July 6″ (source)

Renting a Home

Is your mortgage underwater? (source)

 I'd like in this post to address what's turned out to be a topic of major importance. As many of you are probably aware, from reading or listening to or watching the news, home purchases are way down. Many mortgages are underwater. The housing bubble is collapsing as we speak (I say "collapsing" instead of "collapsed" because many of the commentators I read believe it's still got a ways to go). These trends affect many of us personally, in addition to being powerful macroeconomic drivers.

For decades, the federal government has pushed homeownership as a means of growing the economy. This despite the fact that, as of 2000 (the last published US Census), in Pennsylvania alone there was a glut of 500,000 homes. In other words, the commonwealth had 500,000 unoccupied residences, probably many of those in urban cores. For the nation as a whole, that number was 10.4 million. Also according to the 2000 Census, 13.6 million housing units were built between 1990 and 2000... apparently 10.4 million in excess of what the nation actually needed.

In other words, our economic growth, at least from 1990 on, insofar as it was built on housing and homeownership, was phantom growth. We chopped down endless acres of forests, poured endless of acres of concrete, put up endlessly hideous square feet of vinyl siding... so that well over 10 million homes could sit empty. What were we thinking?

But that's not what I want to write about today. Taking all the foregoing as necessary background, how do we move forward? If we accept as fact that home values have much further down to go (and how can they not, with such a glut on the market?), what sensible person, not already a homeowner, would make the decision to enter those ranks? For the first time in decades, it seems, it is not financially rational to purchase a home: you are practically guaranteed to lose money (on the other hand, if you have the cash to purchase one outright, you might prefer to do so for the security of tenure you'll be granting yourself).

I think the way forward is to return to renting as the major mode of home occupation. There are many benefits to renting, from increased mobility (less debt and no need to find a buyer before moving), to fewer maintenance costs, even to the ability of the savvy renter to negotiate lower monthly payments in return for services rendered (e.g., mowing the lawn). Many people think of renting as "temporary", as some sort of phase between living with one's parents and finally "growing up" and "owning" a home. I put owning in quotation marks because I think its arguable whether you or your bank really own the home you purportedly purchased. You might say you own it, but wait till you've lost your job and your unemployment runs out: that knock on the front door is the sheriff. At least, with renting, ownership is unambiguous: it's definitely not you (though it also might not be the landlord).

Renting need not be a phase. According to Time Magazine (9/6/2010), while the rate of homeownership in the US is 68%, the rate in Switzerland, e.g., is only 35%. And just 110 years ago, in the US, the rate was only 47%. This rate was only pushed up to its current high levels through proactive government efforts. Again according to Time, the idea of the 30-year mortgage was invented by the federal government in 1928, as a way of making homeownership affordable to more people; and, even then, it required the creation of a government entity, The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to buy the mortgages off the books of the banks.

I guess what I'm saying is that it is much more likely that homeownership is the phase, and renting the norm. To return to the title of this piece, what do I mean by "renting a home"? Well, if renting is the norm and not homeownership, shouldn't we stop thinking of renting as a way to store our butts when we're not at work, but rather think of renting as renting a home? I think so. It's a shame that many municipalities zone renters out of the best neighborhoods on the rationale that they'll bring property values down. There may have been some logic to that in the past, when our cultural zeitgeist told renters there was no point in improving their residences since "they got nothing out of it". I think that's an idea due for throwing into the dustbin of history. I say again: it's time to think of renting as renting a home. Of course it makes sense to improve your home, whether you own it or rent it. Do you want to live somewhere uncomfortable, or antagonistic to your sense of self or aesthetics? No, and who would? And if you say "but you're just improving the place for your landlord", I might reply that I'd rather improve a home for a person than for a bank.

I'll close with a case study, as it were. My wife and I, as I'm sure some of you may have guessed by now, rent a home. It's on a lovely block in west Lancaster. We have great neighbors (some of whom also rent), a backyard, almost enough space to suit our needs, and the (mental) freedom to improve our home. Here are some of the things we've done to our apartment: turned the backyard into an extensive vegetable and flower garden; built a fence between the yard and the alley, and a gate between the yard and the street; installed ceiling fans in every room (much preferred over AC); painted the walls a pleasanter shade than white; installed racks for hanging vegetables, pots, and coats; and other miscellaneous things.

Pretty good list, right? I'll tell you the secret of how we did it. Actually, two secrets. First, we recognized that there's no way we could afford to own a home, and we didn't want to; this made it easy for us to leave that bit of cultural baggage behind and see our "dwelling unit," as planners say, as a home. Second, we have carefully cultivated a relationship with our landlord. This began as early as 18 months ago, when we were looking around for a place to live. One of our criteria for a good place was "a good landlord." I think that's a key goal for anyone looking to rent a home. If you've got a jerk for a landlord, move. If you meet a jerk of a landlord, but otherwise like the place, understand you'll probably be leaving when the lease runs out in a year; if you're looking to live somewhere longer than a year (say, in a home), then take the time to find a good landlord.

Once you have your good landlord, start cultivating that relationship. Before you even sign a lease, ask if he minds if you plant a garden. Ask who mows the lawn, and can you do it? Often (s)he'll be happy to let you mow, and pay you to boot. We get paid $10 per mow. Little things like this form the basis of a solid relationship, such that, when you eventually ask him to shell out $80 for a ceiling fan, on the proviso that you install it yourself (very easy, and saving a good chunk of money on labor), there's a good possibility of him saying yes. If there's hesitation, don't hesitate, yourself, to make the argument that, when you eventually move out (if you ever intend to), you've just improved the value of the place, at practically no cost. I've found this to be a strong argument. We've also convinced our landlord to pay for paint (and it helped we went to the Habitat Re-store to buy it, allowing us to paint our entire apartment for under $50). When your landlord knows you care enough not to waste his or her money, you've made that relationship stronger, and eased the way for future improvements you might like to do.

Rent your home! (source)

Finally, given the state of the national and global economy, you might be worried about the security of your employment. What happens if you lose your job and find rent difficult to make? This is a tough one. Dmitry Orlov has suggested, on his blog and in his book, Reinventing Collapse, that it is imperative for renters to "de-monetize" their relationship with their landlord. I've take the first tentative steps down that path by helping my landlord with basic home maintenance, for free. I don't mean to say I did that out of cold calculation; rather, I did what felt natural in a growing, mutually-beneficial relationship, but in may also help in the "Orlovian" sense, if I may be allowed to coin a term.

So, go forth! Rent a home. And don't feel like you're in some sort of pre-buying holding pattern. Being a renter may very well be your permanent condition, but there's nothing wrong with that.