DIY economic collapse: no computer hacking or explosive skills required

Some guys living in a shack in the Don Valley in Toronto during the Great Depression. They look a lot better off than the modern homeless ravine dwellers. They have teacups and books.

In my last non-housekeeping or forest photo post, I talked about the brutal truth about climate change. That if we are to limit global warming to 4C (a most dangerous level, but the lowest practical increase from where we already are), we (the world) have to level off carbon emissions soon, then drop them quickly to zero (by about 2050 or sooner). Given the huge inequities in current carbon emissions and the fact that we cannot trust governments to do the right thing, we the people are just going to have to take matters into our own hands. The only thing that has ever resulted in significant year over year reductions in carbon emissions is the fall of the Soviet Union. Therefore, I propose that anyone who is genuinely concerned about the well-being of people in poorer countries in the short term, and their own children and grandchildren in the medium and long term, should be actively working to collapse the current financial system. 

Which is, of course, the argument that conservatives have been using to avoid doing anything. It's just that they love money more than poor people or their grandchildren. And many of them are counting on being raptured before things get too warm anyway. And to supporters of any other political party - we're not going to have a prosperous, green economy, and I wish you'd stop pretending we can.

The current financial system looks ready to collapse under its own weight without any extra help from me, but I'm a pessimist by nature, and I'm not prepared to leave such things to chance. The first thing is to question some basic assumptions about how things ought to be. Like, annual economic growth of 1 - 3% is necessary and good.  Actually, annual economic growth is incompatible with a liveable planet for our kids and grandkids. The conservatives are right - reducing carbon emissions will hurt the economy, but luckily, a collapsing economy will reduce emissions. 

So, what to do. The greenest thing I ever did was quit my high paying job. Our family income dropped by more than half, and so did our spending. Canada's GDP went down accordingly. I could write a book on why I think most families should only have a maximum of one full time job each, but for the purposes of crashing the economy, the drop in family incomes and resultant spending would go a long ways. Why do I suggest quitting your job rather than just spending less? Well, for one thing, I know from experience that you are pretty much guaranteed to spend everything you make plus a little. Even if you save half your income, you have to put it somewhere, and unless it is under your mattress, it's going to be fuelling economic growth in some way. So from an anti-economic perspective it makes a lot more sense to not earn it in the first place. This also results in much lower income tax, which reduces government revenue that will eventually enter the economy.

Please don't have any more kids.  I honestly don't think that if I'd known fifteen years ago what I know now, that I would be a mom today. That would be a terrible loss for me, but my kid, like yours if you're reading this blog, has a much higher carbon footprint than the global average. We don't have enough time to reduce the world's population enough to solve our climate problems, but we can certainly work at preventing the population problem from getting worse. Besides, what sort of world would you be bringing those kids into?

Pay down debt as fast as possible, or default on it entirely. Repaid or defaulted debt takes money out of circulation and frees you from wage slavery. Debt has been the foundation of most of the world's economic growth for the last few years, so whatever you do, don't take on more.

There are major benefits of choosing a low income lifestyle. A perk of voluntarily reducing income is that having less money automatically causes you to question all forms of consumption, and you quite naturally come to the conclusion that you don't need nearly what you thought you did when you had more. All those little decisions you might have had to make about whether or not to spend money on something or other are pretty much made for you, when you don't have much to spare. It's easier to take care of a smaller house and less stuff. Family life is very pleasant indeed when everyone is not always in a rush to get to work and childcare and endless activities. The main advantage to living on less now, though, is that it is pretty much inevitable, with the approaching crises of climate, finance and energy, that very few of  us (save the usual suspects) will be more prosperous in the future than we are now. We might as well get used to living simply, so that our expectations lead rather than trail our circumstances. 

In which I say stuff you won't like after finding out stuff you don't want to know

The last few weeks have provided lots of food for thought on climate issues and I've arrived at a pretty horrifying conclusion.

First, there was my predictably disappointing meeting with Gordon O'Connor, my Member of Parliament.   I knew he wouldn't say anything other than the official party line, because no Conservative MP does, but I had really hoped that by going, I might leave him with the impression that ordinary people want the government to do something to reduce Canada's disproportionately large carbon emissions. He kept telling me that the government just wasn't getting that kind of vibe from people. I had to point out to him that I am also a person, citizen and voter, even though we both knew I'd never vote for him. Not the right kind of people, apparently.

With that visit fresh in my consciousness, last week I hosted a meeting of several environmentally-minded folks from my community including a town councillor. All of us had expressed a strong concern about the lack of action nationally on climate change and a willingness to take action locally. There was talk of planning a county-wide environmental conference that would educate folks about climate issues while also developing a white paper that would be presented to local governments. A similar conference was held five or six years ago to great praise from the attendees and polite disinterest from the government recipients of the resulting paper.

I said that I thought that there was a high risk that we could go to a huge effort to basically preach to the converted, like a Billy Graham crusade, and it was pointed out to me that most of the residents of my municipality are either ambivalent or climate deniers and needed convincing. There were suggestions of an art contest for kids and skits and maybe a place for "green" retailers to showcase their recycled denim handbags and whatnot. I was not left with any sort of optimistic energy at the conclusion of the meeting - in fact I'm still reeling from it, because I truly believe the time for diddling around with songs and skits and talking about ways to use old milk bags is well behind us.

Then I read an article in Grist magazine called The Brutal Logic of Climate Change. I strongly encourage you to do the same, though it will stretch your powers of cognitive dissonance to read it and carry on with life as though the implications are not pants-shitting scary. The executive summary of the article is this:  If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. Keeping in mind that there is no hyperbole in the above sentence, the executive summary of that is: We're fucked.

The article is based on a report by Kevin Anderson, a professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and Deputy Director of The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He produced a paper with his colleague, Alice Bows, called "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world". Mr. Anderson gave a presentation of his paper, with slides, that is available here. He gives a surprisingly engaging talk at a citizen level of detail, which outlines the carbon budgets available for limiting global temperature increases to 2 and 4 degrees Celsius. It would be wonderful if everyone took an hour and listened to this talk, but hardly anyone will, and those of us that have are left with this terrible knowledge and nothing to do with it.

The gist of his talk is that there is a limited amount of carbon that can be dumped into the atmosphere to limit temperature increases. The amount of carbon that can be emitted that would have us stop at 2C is so small we have practically no chance of being able to reduce emissions quickly enough to stay within the budget. The carbon budget for a 4C degree increase is larger, but requires us to peak our emissions in 2020, then decrease by 3.5% per year until we reach zero. Zero, zip, nada, zilch (the good news is that the jet ski industry will disappear long before that). Just for comparison, the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in 5% reductions per year for a few years. In 2010, we increased emissions by 5.9%, so this could be hard. Oh, and by the way, a 4C degree increase in average global temperatures is, according to Anderson, "incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable." That might affect your retirement plans.

As I write this article, the world is negotiating yet another climate agreement in Durban, South Africa. Canada once again won the "Colossal Fossil" award for it's appalling behaviour and bad-faith negotiating. In response, Michelle Rempel, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment had this to say: "With regard to the fossil of the year award, the member opposite should know that the real award that counts is that our country sits on top of the G7 with regard to economic growth and job creation." And much cheering and clapping ensued from the Conservative benches. If there are terrorists in this country, they are currently sitting in the House of Commons, actively seeking to destroy the environment that is the foundation of life as we know it.

So if you've stuck with me this far, I wonder if you have arrived at the same horrifying conclusion I have? Since there isn't a global reset button and current governments and industry seem only interested in burning fossil fuels as fast as they can be extracted from the earth, the only way to prevent catastrophic warming is to have a complete and swift global financial collapse that consigns us to pre-industrial levels of energy consumption. Perhaps you haven't, in which case I'd like you to read the article and listen to the talk and then leave a comment with your conclusion.

Luckily, world events seem to be leading us in the direction of global collapse, but in my next post, I'll talk about ways that you and I can act to accelerate bringing down the economy. And it will take a bit more than changing our lightbulbs.

A proud Canadian moment

So the first day of negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change talks in Durban has gone and Canada has scored first and second place in the fossil awards. It got first for planning to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol (in December after the talks are finished - talk about bad faith bargaining) and second for this statement by our Environment Minister, Peter Kent: ‘Emerging and developing countries need to stop “wielding the historical guilty card” and asking for a free pass on emissions reductions just because in the past, industrialized countries had more emissions than the rest of the world’. Yeah, developing countries. Stop asking for free passes. Don't you know free passes are for North Americans?

Third place goes to the UK for making a deal with Canada to bring tar sands oil into the European Union by undermining the Fuel Quality Directive. Hey, I'm considering that a win for Canada, too.

While I was googling around on this topic, I came across some "conservatives" cackling about the awards with glee. So if you thought it was just our government that hates the environment, you're wrong. Some Canadians do too, and they walk among us. Or more likely, they idle their SUVs in the drive-through lane at Tim Horton's.

News Flash: the government doesn't care what I think

   Brick Wall

 I did a bit of citizen activism today. I dressed in my least no-good-sit-n-thinker clothes, brushed my hair and went to speak with my (Conservative) Member of Parliament about climate issues. I'm sure that if I had made an appointment to speak with a brick wall, I would feel much more satisfied than I do now. And if I had banged my head against that wall, at least I would feel relief when I stopped. 

As cynical as I am, I actually came away from my conversation even more pessimistic that there will ever be any meaningful change. The thing that surprised me was that my MP and I pretty much agree that things are going to get warmer - much warmer. We spoke of the need to reduce consumption, and he advised me to tell my grandchildren to buy land along James Bay, because it will be a sunny resort area in the future.

The thing that startled me, given his acknowledgement of the problem (though he tried to lecture me on natural climate variation - I wouldn't hear it) was that he was absolutely certain that the government would never take any serious action because people didn't want it. When I reminded him that I had made an appointment to tell him I wanted to be carbon-taxed and that I was probably representing at least one or two other people in the riding, he merely shrugged. He said the government just wasn't getting that kind of vibe from people. I told him I hoped he got my vibe.

I suppose I wasted my time today. Apparently, there is nothing to be said against the status quo. I guess if the system won't change, we're going to have to change systems.

Stephen Harper and his corporate puppeteers don't speak for me

I engaged in a bit of slacktivism this afternoon. The Council of Canadians has a campaign to let European Union decision makers know that the Canadian government is acting as a shill for Big Oil and does not speak for a majority of citizens. The Canadian and Alberta governments are lobbying against the EU's Fuel Quality Directive, which seeks to reduce carbon emissions from transport fuels by discouraging the use of high-carbon fuels such as tar sands bitumen. They say the FQD is "discriminatory" and "unscientific". Apparently you must remove your conscience before you crawl into the pocket of Big Oil so that you do not mind spewing complete bullcrap in public.

So Madeleine and I took each other's pictures holding this fancy sign and uploaded it to a Flickr group, called I'm Canadian and I Support the EU FQD. This is slightly more effort than signing an online petition, but not much, and I would encourage anyone who is concerned about reducing carbon emissions to go to the Council of Canadians website to get more information on this action and how to participate. Do it. Go now. Oh, and why not leave a comment here once you've done it?

Monday Forest photo: November 14, 2011

11:30 am 17C cloudy

 This weather is strange indeed. A southwest wind is blowing up warm air and we're having temperatures I thought we wouldn't see again until April or May. As lovely as it is, at this time of year there's a nagging feeling that it's not quite right to be this warm. All good Canadians used to say something along the lines of "we'll pay for this" when the weather was unseasonably nice, and now we worry that this particular instance of weather is yet another sign of climate change. Geez, why can't we just enjoy it?

There are a lot of snags in Monday Forest and some bear some striking mycodecorations.

A bit of a brag and a request for advice

Reach For The Top is a Canadian quiz show for teams of high school students that has been around in one form or another since 1961 (And Alex Trebek was Quizmaster from 1969-1973!). The teams are composed of the best and brightest from participating schools. I'll admit that back in the day I was not one of the best or brightest from my school. My daughter Madeleine, on the other hand, is in grade 9 and is already competing with senior students on her school's Reach team. Not that I needed more evidence, but I take this as proof that she's a real smarty pants. I'm not a huge fan of the public education system, so Madeleine and I unschooled (a fancy word for not doing almost nothing that looks like school) for what would have been her middle school years, but she felt very strongly that she wanted to go to high school and so she did. Academically, she's thriving there, which is pretty good for a grade 6 dropout, but it makes me wonder what the other kids were doing while Madeleine was watching The Simpsons for two years. All this to say that I think, like most parents, that my kid is pretty special.

Quite often, Miss Smarty Pants and I will talk about life after high school and beyond. Miss Pants is interested in pursuing a PhD in some kind of science and that makes perfect sense given her interests and intelligence. As long as things remain sort of the same as they have been for the last couple of decades it seems like a good plan. The problem is, I don't really see the next decades playing out that way. Instead of increasing prosperity and consumption, I see society bumping up against hard limits of energy, climate and economics and a resulting overall decrease in wealth. I don't even know if it makes any difference, as people have sought higher education during all kinds of turmoil. I am concerned that being in school for many years will result in high levels of student debt that will sentence her to wage slavery for many more years afterward.

There's a bit of a theme in doomer circles to suggest that the only careers that have any future are organic farming and emergency medical technicians. I'm certain this isn't true, but there are jobs that don't make sense in a lower energy world. I wouldn't suggest commissioned SeaDoo sales, for example. Dmitry Orlov makes a good point in his blog today. He says that most of us are stuck thinking we will have financial security by having or keeping more money, when what we really ought to be doing is needing less. Voluntary poverty will be a lot easier than involuntary. Given that, probably the best advice I can come up with is to do whatever you would do for free, and keep your needs simple so you can do it even if there are hard times. Unfortunately, student debt is a great way to ensure that your income requirements remain high for a long time.

What would you tell Madeleine on the subject of preparing for life in an uncertain future? I'm interested to know what other peak aware folks tell their kids.

Oh crap, I'm melting.

Well, the UN has said that 2010 is shaping up to be the warmest on record in Canada. So far, we are 4C above normal. Quite frankly, much of the year was rather pleasant - a short, dry winter and a nice warm spring followed by a hot summer and a wet fall. Oh, there were some floods and tornadoes and forest fires, but they didn't affect me, so no big deal, right?

The Canadian Senate (unelected) just killed a Climate Change bill that had been passed by the House of Commons without any debate or hearings. The bill would have legislated modest but firm greenhouse gas reduction targets. I'm sure it wouldn't have been nearly enough to actually make any difference. And we've already blown off our Kyoto commitments so what were the odds we would have actually done anything positive even if the bill had passed, but still.

The climate change talks in Cancun don't look like they'll accomplish anything. I guess we'll just have to get used to a warmer climate and hope that peak oil and peak coal will do what governments won't.

It would be funny if it weren't true.

Who's picking up the bill? Well, as always, those guys over there.

Screaming for change

I recently read a comment on the movie What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire, which I watched a while back:

It's possibly the most depressingly, bleakly realistic movie I've ever seen regarding coming environmental collapse, touching on everything from peak oil to societal norms that are keeping us from doing anything meaningful "outside the box" ... One thing that I can recommend for it on a positive note is that it gives one 'permission' to step outside and try something else ... in fact it positively SCREAMS for such changes.

I wholeheartedly agree with that comment and I think it could fairly be applied to at least a dozen books and movies I've consumed over the past few years. So why the heck am I only playing around at the fringes of real change? I feel real grief at the loss of wild spaces and species, anger at the political machinery that serves corporate interests in this destruction, utter frustration over a system that normalizes the rampant demolition of soil, water, air and climate for short term interests, and sorrow for future generations who will suffer as a result of our greed. Yet I haven't blown up any dams, reduced my own consumption to a sustainable level, or raised money for any important cause, and I use toilet paper. Here's what I tell myself about why:

1. My family wouldn't stand for any lifestyle activism. They are addicted to hot showers, a warm house, car travel, and toothpaste.
2. Lifestyle activism doesn't change anything anyway.
3. The system is rigged.
4. I don't know what to do.
5. I like my high-consumption lifestyle; it's comfortable and I would be lost without the internet.
6. I never go through drive-throughs, what more do you want?
7. There are lots of people saying that things have to change and it seems like no one is listening to them, so what's the point?
8. It would be irresponsible of me to abandon the money economy if by doing so I would jeopardize my retirement savings.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Peak Certainty

I've been reading some scary stuff lately. Books about how we're fucked, excuse my French, unless we make some serious, drastic changes starting yesterday. Culture Change, by Alexis Zeigler explains how society as it is currently structured will make it almost impossible to carry out the changes that are necessary. The End of the Long Summer, Why We Must Remake our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth, by Dianne Dumanoski explains why we can expect sudden climate change instead of gradual warming and how the odds are against us managing very well. I'm currently working on An Illustrated Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. It's a look at 10,000 years of failed civilizations and surprise, we're on a familiar trajectory. To top off my doomfest, I found the documentary Collapse online and wallowed in that. The movie features Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness explaining how peak oil and economic failure are going to cause the collapse of western civilization without even mentioning climate change. Mike sounds like he's full of it, but as much as I wanted to write him off as a crank, especially when he talks about being a CIA target, I wasn't able to.

So imagine my surprise every morning when I get up and the sun still rises, the electricity is still on, my bank balance is roughly the same as it was yesterday - and worth the same, every institution save the Canadian parliament is still operational, stores are still full of cheap crap, the weather is mostly tolerable, and my birdfeeder is crowded with a variety of birds. No wonder it's hard to convince folks that there's a problem, let alone a problem for which the solution, if there is one at all, is to radically reduce consumption of fossil fuels. I hardly believe it myself and I think about this stuff a lot.

The one thing I'm sure of, is that the future is not going to be like today only richer and more comfortable. I also know that beyond a pretty basic level, wealth and comfort don't make you happier. Other than that, I don't know. I think I crested my Hubbert's curve of certainty sometime last year.

The Story of Cap and Trade: this isn't going to end well...

Well, we all knew that there would be no action on climate change until the rich figured out how to get richer out of it. It seems they have now, so everything should be fine, right? Well, it looks like they might just be able to suck a few more dollars out of the world without actually making anything better at all. Watch The Story of Cap and Trade for some protection against the spin that will be coming your way soon.

Undermining the economy to save the world

This video is a lecture titled "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy"given in 2000 by Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, a physicist at the University of Colorado. Apparently, he's given the talk something like 1500 times and although you may quibble with a couple of his assertions (mostly about assuming steady rates of population growth), it's hard to argue with his main point that continuous growth is not possible. He says, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." You can be sure that any difficulty you may have with the arithmetic is being exploited by folks who are fairly certain you're not checking theirs. He spends quite a bit of time on poking holes in some pretty outrageous claims about coal reserves as just a few examples of "information" that gets into the public sphere without anyone bothering to check the basic math.

If you watch the entire hour or so, and I hope you do, I wonder if you will arrive at the same conclusion that I did; that the ravenous pursuit of economic growth above all else is the greatest risk to longterm wellbeing we face. It's the driver behind climate change, resource depletion, food insecurity and environmental devastation. And it's not open for discussion in polite company.

As there doesn't appear to be any polite company currently in the room, I'd like to point out that the current economic and political system is killing the planet and now would be a good time to stop being a good citizen and start subverting the status quo. First of all, stop working so hard! Work less, earn less, consume less, pollute less, and best of all – pay less tax. Don't vote for anyone who lies. This may eliminate all candidates. Too bad. Don't let your babies grow up to be MBAs. Get your kids out of cubicle training and let them unschool. Grow food. With your justice and environment hat on, start thinking about whether private land ownership even makes sense as a concept. Never take an economist seriously, unless he's showing you his garden. Boycott Christmas shopping.

Or else Dr. Bartlett and I have got it all wrong, in which case, carry on.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel queasy

This is the trailer for a new documentary called H2Oil, which has just been released. I'll be looking for it when it comes out on dvd or is screened locally, but I won't be looking forward to it. It's about the oil sands, water and our agreements with the US that lock us into giving them away.

The film highlights the environmental destruction caused by oil sands development which, on its own, even without any regard for climate change or peak oil, should have us pursuing radical conservation starting now. I think the path of aiming towards the same lifestyle only with more efficient lightbulbs is really a dead end. I say this while writing on a very new, large computer in a poorly insulated, nuclear-powered (and heated) house which is too far to walk to anything. Sadly, I don't think there are any vacant caves within walking distance of any place I ever go, so my conscience and my creativity are going to have to cooperate to find an arrangement we can live with.

Parallel but reasonable

I feel like I live in a parallel universe to the one inhabited by the powers that be. In my universe humans are rapidly making the planet uninhabitable through profligate consumption. In the universe TPTB are in, the main problem is that the economy is sinking and people aren't consuming enough. In my universe, fossil fuels are becoming scarcer and more difficult to extract. In the parallel universe, technological solutions will solve any energy problems that may arise in the future. In my universe, climate change is a threat to most lifeforms on Earth. In the parallel universe, climate change will allow agriculture in marginal areas and open the Arctic to fossil fuel extraction.

How is it that I can exist in what appears to be the same time and place as TPTB and arrive at such different conclusions? I've been accused of exposing myself only to pessimistic sources of information and thus missing out on the optimistic perspective. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find these optimistic news sources. I think TPTB say things that make us think they have some optimistic news somewhere to back up their utterances. When Barack Obama says “we will not apologize for our way of life” he makes it sound like it would be reasonable to continue living the American way of life. But where did he get that idea? When politicians of every stripe go on about economic stimulus, they make it sound like there's some credible information that pouring money into the exploded carcass of the financial world will solve anything. When TPTB argue that the economy is more important than the environment, they insinuate that it is possible to live well on a dying planet. Is it that they're not paying attention or are they lying to us to advance an agenda?

I'm certainly not so naïve as to believe that anyone capable of achieving high rank in government or business is incapable of spinning the truth, but I think it's more than that. Here's why. Most of TPTB have kids. And most of the ones with kids actually love them and want what's best for them, because that's what parents do. They may not give a crap for anyone else's kids but they generally love their own. Wanting what's best for your kids, to most people, means thinking about what kind of life they're going to have when they're grown up. You want them to have good relationships, good work, good health, clean air, clean water and healthy food. Don't you? And if you wanted those things for your kids wouldn't you make decisions that promote a good future? Isn't that what parents do? Don't parents sacrifice so that their children can have good lives? Ok, this argument doesn't make sense unless you add in a huge smear of willful ignorance and apply it to everyone. We all love our kids and we're all pretending things aren't going to be worse for them because of our greed and stupidity. We demand to be lied to so we can trade our clean air, water, topsoil and trees for money and feel like we're doing the right thing.

It turns out I'm not actually alone in my parallel universe. Sharon Astyk has recently published a fabulous book called Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front Or One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times. This is my new favourite book and I encourage everyone to read it. Sharon is at least as concerned about the future as I am (well, probably way more because she's done more research and she's doing something about it) and instead of just ranting has set about to help people adjust to the new reality in a positive way. She focuses on the domestic economy as the foundation of a reasonable life, especially during hard times. She advocates a return to home as the centre of family life, establishing roots in community, growing and preparing your own food, sharing with family and neighbours, and being prepared to live largely outside the formal economy. And if we all do that, maybe our kids can have reasonable lives too.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine

I've decided to give up on my civilization death watch for a while. Much smarter people than me have been describing in agonizing detail the collapse of the financial system, the depletion of oil reserves, the inevitability of climate change and other environmental horrors and the rise of religious fundamentalism. Every newspaper carries page after page of news stories confirming the decline of industrial civilization and the natural world that sustains it. The destruction of the natural world to enrich a small minority of the world's population breaks my heart, but the loss of the system which allows this to be so – not so much.

Most people can figure out that if you have a civilization based on the destruction of the natural world eventually you're going to run out of nature and that's the end of your civilization. This has happened over and over throughout history. The difference today is that our industrial civilization has expanded to include close to 7 billion people, the entire landmass of the planet, all the oceans and even beyond the thin layer of atmosphere to outer space. I'd say we've pretty much run out of nature.

I have no patience for the proponents of “sustainable” anything unless they really mean it. Given that to be truly sustainable we'd have to have about 10 planet Earths at our disposal or a tenth of the population consuming the same or the entire population consuming a tenth of what we're consuming now I don't think most “sustainable development” folks really mean it. I'm also losing patience with the lightbulb changing crowd. You can't argue with efficiency, but these incremental, no standard of living change required changes are insignificant.

I think most people understand the utter uselessness of technological solutions and incremental changes to solve the problem of ecological limits whether consciously or not. A few years ago George W. Bush bought a 98,000 acre ranch in Paraguay– even he knows what's going on. The rest of us intuitively understand that the structural changes required to stop the destruction of our air, water, topsoil, forests and oceans would be countered by state violence. If that sounds extreme, try preventing a uranium mine from going ahead, or stop a piece of farmland from being lost forever to housing. See how long it is before you're talking to a representative of the government who happens to be wearing a kevlar vest and gun. And if you're really serious about protecting that piece of ground, well – you're going to jail or worse. So most people don't even consider it and even disapprove of those who do.

Instead of the death watch, I'm going to try, to the extent possible, to disentangle myself and my family from the worst of civilization while increasing our connections to the natural world and the people in our lives. It won't change a thing, but I'll feel better.

Talking to kids about the end of the world as we know it

A disclaimer: I would not take parenting advice from me if I were you. The object of my parenting efforts for the last 12 years is not a typical child and the results are not yet in.

I spent my childhood in Kingston, Ontario, known as the limestone city. Because of its geology, even though it was on Lake Ontario, there were no good beaches. But there was an artificial sand beach. This beach was on property owned by DuPont, adjacent to the nylon carpet fibre plant. Only plant employees and their families could use this beach, so it was an exciting thing to be invited by a friend to go swimming at DuPont. I felt very privileged to be allowed access to such a place. The actual experience did not quite live up to my expectations, however – the sand portion of the beach was crowded with people and the water, while not suffering from overcrowding, had a disturbing number of dead fish floating in the yellow foam that covered much of the surface. The sand did not extend into the water so the bottom consisted of green slime covered rocks. The one positive feature of the water was that it was not nearly as cold as Lake Ontario water normally is.

It took a few years for my critical thinking skills to develop to the point where I could override the neighbourhood adults’ cheerful acceptance of the DuPont beach and figure out for myself that allowing children to swim within spitting distance of a factory outflow isn’t good. Even allowing for misremembered details. I suppose the moms on the beach were comfortable with the situation because, after all, this beach was provided as a benefit of employment by the DuPont company. One word: sheeple.

If I was presented with the opportunity to bring my daughter to the DuPont beach of the seventies, today, I would not allow her to swim in the polluted water even if everyone else was doing it, and I would explain to her exactly why (of course, she’d very likely have figured it out completely on her own). The idea that a large corporation could be so indifferent to human health would of course be disturbing. But no less true for that. So what about the myriad other inconvenient truths out there? How do you handle those without damaging the fragile mental health of your offspring? Especially when it appears that everyone else is blissfully splashing around in the murky water.

Now, before I get to that, let me remind you that this is a problem of privilege. People have been dealing with difficult, dangerous, and demoralizing situations throughout history and across the planet and parents have figured out how to handle it with their kids. In North America in the last fifty years, parents have not had to exercise this muscle very much, except perhaps to break the bad news that Tickle Me Elmo is on backorder at Wal-Mart. Oh, and there was the Cold War. Perhaps as a kid I was incurious, but I don’t remember discussing “mutually assured destruction” with my parents. I know I was aware of the concept, but it seemed like a vague, if pretty serious, threat. I think I mentally filed it in the same spot as the religious concepts which I was assured by adults were true but couldn’t possibly be. (I had a Calvinist education so in addition to the usual virgin birth and resurrection absurdities, my salvation was contingent on having memorized the Heidelberg Catechism which includes the old favourite: Whence knowest thou thy misery?) Maybe years of the minister preaching (with no regard for my mental health) hell’s inevitability given my moral weaknesses inoculated me against feeling too much anxiety over mere nuclear annihilation.

But I digress; any parents who have followed me this far are not in possession of children with this kind of training. Our kids are going to be disappointed to learn that civilization is as doomed as that goldfish prize they won at the cheesy Wal-Mart parking lot fair. But not too many parents are willing to sit their kids down and inform them that if they survive to adulthood without resorting to cannibalism, they’re still going to be faced with certain unpleasantness, what with the stone age conditions and lack of internet. And most parents are not willing to connect the dots of financial collapse, climate change, peak oil, food insecurity, globalization and runaway consumption and arrive at that picture for themselves either. I try to gently explain things as they come up but just as there’s no point in telling a two year old if he hasn’t asked, that the meat in his hamburger comes from the same kind of animal as the moo moo cow in his favourite book, it’s hard to avoid when the same child at four demands to know the details. Young kids are good at accepting difficult truths – they don’t have much choice. I would suggest that long term, more damage is done to children by feeding unrealistic expectations and feelings of entitlement than knowing about global inequality. And teaching a kid to make her own decisions about whether to swim near the factory outflow regardless of what everyone else is doing will make for a healthier life. I’ve long felt that the best antidote to general anxiety is telling yourself that no matter what happens, you can and will just deal with it. It may not be a bad idea to remind kids of that from time to time as well. Of course, kids take their emotional cues from the adults in their life and keeping calm in the face of world events is the best, if challenging at times, thing to do. After all, if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

A little close for comfort

At the risk of sounding a complete crank and darnit, being wrong about what's going on in the world, I'm going to come out of the doom closet. Oh, you already knew I was a doomer? Well, this is going to be easy then. It's the end of the world as we know it. Let me rephrase that: it's the end of the world as we've known it for the past fifty or sixty years. My generation has up til now, only experienced relative prosperity and security, but my grandparents lived through world wars, financial collapse, pre-antibiotic healthcare, and life without a government safety net. I think we're headed in the same direction, but without the benefit of generally low expectations. Perhaps the current financial crisis will forestall the coming climate, population and energy crises for a time, but that will be small consolation for those of us young enough and lucky enough to have avoided the insecurity that has been the fate of most of humanity for most of history. And a woefully unprepared bunch we are.

I went to school when home economics was being phased out of the curriculum. Those of us headed for higher education wouldn't have considered taking it even if it had been offered. Traditional women's work was of such low value you didn't need to learn it in school. Besides, with our careers we'd have money, so we didn't need to worry about preparing food or mending clothes or cleaning our houses. Luckily, globalization came along, and with all our stuff now made by underpaid children in developing countries, we could be thrifty by buying stuff. Conservation would help the environment and our wallets. We could buy a Prius and a programmable thermostat and save the world. Most of us run our lives and families and homes with steady injections of cash not skills.

It is unfashionable, unless you're a Mormon or a survivalist, to prepare for the worst. Culturally, we are chronically optimistic that, as in the adage you don't need to outrun the bear, you only need to outrun your buddy, nothing too terrible could happen to me and mine because we're not at the bottom. The blog world is becoming populated with people who reject this idea of immunity and are starting to prepare for the worst. And some of them are not cranks. From what I can tell, most of them are American, and the kind of American who does not believe in any kind of divine American superiority. In other words, the kind of American we Canadians aren't afraid of.

What I'm leading up to is that I think we all need to prepare for hard times. Mentally as well as physically. Check out this: Casaubon's Book and this: Justice Desserts for examples of what other people are doing. I'm just starting to come around to this idea myself and I'll post more on the topic as time goes on.

Ok, my rant is over.