Culture Change e-Letter
#34
Birth of a culture
Chaos, collapse and survival
by Jan Lundberg
By now, the charade of peace and universal
prosperity is less comforting to almost everyone, although many still cling to
it. Throughout the
socioeconomic pyramid, people are just out to quickly prosper and hoard,
increasingly because of
the uncertain future. "I know what, I'll own my own
island - one that has a good elevation to escape sea-level rise!"
Sure.
Up until recent years, the illusion of equitable
economic growth and perpetual material security were enough to calm people in
their struggles, provided they were not directly oppressed or persecuted.
However, when top executives now make 450 times
minimum wage, when extra billions of dollars are always squandered on the
gold-plated U.S. military as opposed to helping working people who pay taxes,
and when the environment is deliberately trashed for financial gain,
this sends everyone a message louder and louder: "It's dog eat dog, and to hell with future generations."
What the establishment counts on is
most people accepting this and being good consumers. However, some of us resist,
and when it's together with like-minded people it creates an alternative we can
call community.
U.S. flag wavers don't like to think
they're sending future generations to hell. After all, with faith in good ol' 'merican
ingenuity, everything will just keep getting rosier, right? But they need to
wake up and smell our smoke from Iraq and our climate-altering vehicles. That
would imply eventually changing - perish the thought - one's daily routine and
social relations.
There are some interesting reasons to
think and act, such as ensuring there's a future food supply in the
petroleum-mainlining economy. Another consideration is that U.S. population has
sailed past sustainability, mostly by importing 1.2 million new workers legally
and permanently each year. Legal immigration constitutes the biggest factor in
the disastrous growth of the nation's population. This is policy mainly meant to
add to the consumer base and lower wages.
Many commentators focus passionately and
accurately on the issue of
social equity or on the plight of the ecosystem. While these absolutely merit
immediate action, it is vital to also look beyond issues, to anticipate where we will
arrive and how to cope when we get there.
Scenarios for collapse
A banking crisis means that a bank fails to pay its lenders/depositors, which
spreads to other banks. Some measures stanch this "problem" (can
it be a blessing in disguise?), but cannot when the contradictions of a false economy are
too strong. A whole country can default, as has happened before. It
spreads to other countries, as in the early 1930s from Europe to the U.S. Related to this kind of
financial melt-down is stock market crash.
The financial system depends on
endless growth and massive debt. Moreover, these conditions occur in the finite, fragile ecosystem which has for many decades been unable to
provide subsistence for everyone without unlimited petroleum inputs. So, the
global corporate schemes personified by the World Trade Organization, the World
Bank and other entities exist to maximize growth and profits in ever new ways
(trade tribunals, etc.). This turns the whole planet into a supermarket
owned by the few; even water is becoming a commodity.
What was a world of private property coexisting
with civil society - potentially to allow reforms - is rapidly
becoming less open. Certainly less fun, it is increasingly guarded by militarized
police and more laws. Those who aren't part of the "only game in town" -
consuming lavishly - aren't wanted around, and they generally suffer. At least
the dispossessed (huh? aren't they just lazy?) aren't suffering delusions of
being better than others (poor people). More and more people are contemplating the
direction of society in terms of acknowledging scenarios of chaos, collapse and survival.
The myth of government protection for all
citizens is becoming more clear, as private self-interest has corrupted more extensively
than ever. The White House can be re-christened the Black House, for its
representation of oil interests and their "black gold."
Government merely props up the status quo; it always has and always will,
including revolutionary governments. So, we will not see official leadership towards
issues of collapse and survival. Denial is the byword, locally on up
through national and international bodies. For leaders to bring up
collapse and survival would be too "unpleasant," like reminding people
that today's fast food is not food, or that the U.S. was founded on (among other
things) genocide, slavery and exploitation of nature.
The end of oil
A final energy crisis is on tap to end this extended, gluttonous feast on the
Earth's limited, dwindling resources. The weakest link in the critical
chain of the globalized economy is sufficient, cheap oil. With world oil
extraction peaking now, the market is a disaster waiting to happen. We saw
this in the 1970s, when oil production was still climbing and demand was
lower. Those factors are not in our favor today, so we will pay for
putting off having an intelligent energy policy. Now, U.S. gasoline demand, for example, has shot up 30% over the 1970s, and it will not be possible to comfortably cut
back, or bite the bullet and make due. This is because there is no
mechanism in place for drastic conservation, and alternative fuels are by no
means ready for the level of use the present economy's size would want.
Some people, however, are ready for serious conservation, enduring the
ridicule of flag-waving consumers.
The imminent perceptible gap between supply and
demand for oil will trigger an overnight scramble for supplies before prices
skyrocket. This shortage will not be abated, when the world's geology is
patently insufficient for endless growth in demand. This means that when
the trucks cannot make the supermarket deliveries, the whole game is up.
Panic and chaos ensue. It'll be a little late to depave the driveway and
plant a garden or turn the lawn into an orchard. But, better late than
never.
Die-off is inevitable, because humans have
exceeded their carrying capacity (an ecological measurement): about one
billion people is the Earth's limit, perhaps. It is true that present
factory-farm agriculture based on animals is wasteful, but most of the crop
production we'd like to see instead is also completely dependent on petroleum
(natural gas and oil). We are, as the book by Maurice Green is titled,
"Eating Oil." Worse, we have no more Garden to return to, thanks
to greed and growth. (The original Garden of Eden was probably napalmed
recently by the U.S. in Mesopotamia.)
While we can say "good riddance" to
the entire wasteful system of loving artificial wealth, there remain severe
environmental concerns that long-term survival will hinge on. Dealing with
nuclear waste/weaponry will be the challenge for hundreds of generations to
come. Of a shorter-term nature, many toxic inventories - most from
petrochemical production - need neutralizing.
Individual response
Chaos is still building, culminating soon in the overall failure of dominant
"artificial society." Artificial society is the anti-nature,
materialist principles and structures that have become increasingly technical as
we have been "evolving." Bureaucracies, along with factories
making millions of non-biodegradable objects of short-lived utility, may all dissolve
like sand castles in a socio-ecological tsunami that is being created this
moment. There has been a build-up of seven decades since the last "economic
correction." That Great Depression will be fondly remembered compared
to the Great Leveler, as we may call the coming tsunami of collapse.
Many of us are not even prepared to entertain
the idea of living with few consumer appliances, let alone commence a low-tech, subsistence way of living. Preferred scenarios and even social
movements will matter little when prime directives are in a frenzied motion:
secure food and water that is clean, defend home/community territory, and replace
unworkable social customs in order to organize effectively. Compassion
will have to elbow its way in if there is to be long-term success.
Another positive side of anticipating chaos and
the aftermath is to live the adventure of life outside the deceptively
comfortable box of the modern home. To feel like a warrior watching for
the first sign of the tsunami, or walking (or bicycling) the Earth in a War of
Love, can provide mutual support and have solitary rewards as well.
Meanwhile, many an activist today puts primary
energy into fighting sexism, racism and corporate excess. These are
excellent to fight against, in part because today's unsustainable economy grew
out of patriarchal, hierarchical violence. Building a new society that
will last has to dispense with unnecessary, unjust conventions prevailing today.
However, looking ahead to the crushing, painful
demise of Petroleum Civilization, the priorities seem to be mainly (not
necessarily in this order):
1) Research, catalogue and practice sustainable living, with one's family or a
collective that functions as a mutual-aid community.
2) Secure some land and supplies, to share with your "community" or
band or tribe, and protect and restore nature.
3) Oppose the juggernaut of techno-growth and out-of-control consuming, in a
variety of ways. The aims include keeping the beast at bay, e.g., denying
the government in its drive for all power over free human beings, and defending
natural habitats, farmland, fisheries, and the fragile atmosphere. In all
situations we can educate people on these points, whether at the local level in
fighting for the rights of homeless people, or globally as wars are resisted
in the streets and in every other way and place.
The education at hand must never neglect
pointing out (A) the foundations of today's unsustainable culture; (B) the
coming crisis of energy and global finance that will plunge the
"developed" world into chaos and starvation, and (C) alternatives to
the dominant culture and unsustainable institutions.
When people are desperately looking for food and
water, killing each other and engaging in cannibalism, they will not heed essays
or great books. Speeches by sustainable-living experts will have to wait
until the dust has settled, or they will be jeered by the confused masses with
empty, angry bellies. The government may try to control the restive, often
armed masses by means of time-proven as well as new, biotechnological weapons
and concentration camps. But the government may not last long to do so,
when guards and soldiers want to protect their own homes and secure food
somehow. Gangs and other such forms of leadership and organization will
form and may go on rampages. The rich would not be spared, unless some enclaves
are impregnable and self-sufficient. But those hold-outs would have to soon
start growing and collecting their own food, with perhaps no advantages of money (it may
be useless) or law enforcement.
"Share the land," as the Guess Who
song from 1970 went. (for all lyrics, see http://www.ocap.ca/songs/sharland.html)
Birth of a new culture
Although cultural diversity has been greatly stamped out by the dominant culture since
the Agricultural Revolution - witness the disappearance of countless languages -
the collapse to come may mean a fusion of cultures.
In the U.S., the
existing dominant culture will not suddenly die out 100%. The two cultural
traditions - materialism/growth, and nature-based - can become one
neotraditional nature culture. Some technological and individualistic
"traditions" from mainstream U.S. culture, such as redneck culture,
will linger for a while. Its behaviorisms and attitudes will fade, as time
goes on.
Formal education, once offering degrees and separation from other
segments of the population, will revert to village/bioregional wisdom and
skills. Who knows how many computers there will be. (Hopefully not
many, when we consider entropy and the fact that Silicon Valley has the most
Superfund toxic sites.) Our big brains need to again hold thousands of
names for plants and animals - assuming there are still a lot of them left due
to our massive "extincting." An oral tradition will resume
almost universal dominance, when we can no longer waste millions of books and
papers that wear out. Sustainability must be thought of in terms on not
seven but 700 and 7,000 generations. The choice is ours today.
*****
- A prior Culture Change Letter, The
Nature Revolution, a short story, acts out this topic of Chaos, Collapse and
Survival.
- For a sensitive political analysis suggesting a near-future outcome of U.S.
oil aggression, enjoy this story by Adam
Trombly.
*****
Jan Lundberg formerly
ran Lundberg Survey Incorporated which once published "the bible of the oil
industry." He has run the Sustainable Energy Institute since 1988.
It can use your assistance and generous help.
- Feedback is wanted for our letters
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- Check out Fall
of Petroleum Civilization
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Jan Lundberg's columns are protected by
copyright. However, non-commercial use of the material is permitted as
long as full attribution is given with a link to this website, and he is
informed of the re-publishing: info@culturechange.org
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