In the Horns of a Dilemma post earlier, Michael and Eleutheros were engaging in some interesting conversation and I've carried Eleutheros' last comment up here, as I think it is an interesting point.
I will say that I'm with Michael in thinking that there is more than one way that we need to attack our problems, but I'm also agreeing with Eleutheros that how we manage our personal lives - what we eat, where we live, how we live - is perhaps the most important. (Or, as I believe E would put it, if we're not managing our personal lives aright, then nothing else we do is important.)
Eleutheros said:
Michael:"But people aren't going to drop everything and massively run to start subsistance farms--and there wouldn't be enough land if they were."
All parts of this statment are true, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think. No, there' wouldn't be enough land, nor enough biomass and fertility, not enough nitrogen (in useable form), ditto phosphorous and a number of other things. Not enough water either, not where it needs to be in the quantities there need be.
This fact should send a chill down you spine because the difference between what can be produced by substainable and subsistence farming and what the world needs to be fed ... is what is produced by oil. Modern farming is nothing more than a method of turning fossil oil into food.
And we are rapidly running out of oil. Does the slogan "Ghawar is dying" mean anything to you? It should, it is the world's largest oil field and it is in rather rapid decline as are ALL major oil fields in the world.
No, people aren't going to drop everything ....
People are just going to drop.
With a focus on what government is doing what and who is saying what from what pulpit, it might be that the great movements of our time have escaped the activist's view.
We are at, soon at, or just past Peak Oil where the cost of energy is going to become astronomically more expensive.
We have been eating down our reserves of stored food for six out of seven years and this year's harvests are badly plagued with droughts and heat.
The unbelieveably massive debt the US (and other parts of the world) are carrying as a result of the housing bubble (now bursting) bids fair to bring about the worst depression in history.
No, and more's the pity, you are right. People won't be dropping what they are doing and rushing to subsistence farms. Not even if they eventually come to want to.
Like the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island, some activist will fill up their tank en route to the next protest or conference with the last gallon of fossil fuel.
Sustainable agriculture is only ONE aspect of promoting peace so long as we can continue to plunder the world for the rest. See how peaceful people are when they are hungry. Coming soon to a civilization near you.
UPDATE:
Eleutheros has an interesting series on subsistence living going on at his place:
milesfrombabylon.blogspot.com/
And Michael is in the middle of some fascinating thoughts on Just Peacemaking at his place:
anabaptist418.blogspot.com/
UPDATE 2:
I had asked Rick at ricklibrarian to post his list of ten great books and he has done so. No one recommends books like librarians! And not only did he do so, but he posted a link where other librarians post their lists.
Check it out:
ricklibrarian.blogspot.com
3 comments:
Eleutheros is right about this. I never said that we could ignore this question.
But E. offers no hope. His vision leaves us with 2 choices: Keep going the way we are and watch people starve and have wars, etc. Or, drop everything to become a subsistance farmer and STILL watch most of the world starve and kill itself.
I choose to refuse counsels of despair. I will work to end our hydro-carbon dependencies, including my own. But I will not turn my back on the world and let it go to hell.
This is the last post I will answer from Eleutheros. Not because I disagree with him; I agree with MOST of his diagnosis of the ills of our society and with a great deal of his answer--as partly right. But I am tired of being told that my work for justice and peace is "moot." I would rather be opposed by warmongers than dismissed cheaply by those who choose to sit on the sidelines.
E. sees no city/farm partnerships as possible. It's his way or nothing. Even people trying to move his way are derided and scorned as not-pure-enough. Fine.
So count this impure one out as someone to worry about.
Michael is somewhat correct. Somewhat.
I do not offer hope beyond Dum spiro, specto. Or as the Paul Simon song had the line "I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day..."
World events are now an avalanche. Or as another poet put it: Nor all thy piety, nor thy wit, shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
Michael, from you background there's no doubt you are familiar with Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The same sort of thing is my point. The real determining happenstances of our times are (says I) these:
1) None of us have known a life outside the Age of Oil, and the Oil Culture. The availability of cheap oil is rapidly coming to and end.
2) For the first time in the lives of any of us, famine is a real possibility. In six of the past seven years the world has eaten more grain that it has produced. This year heat and drought burned up great swaths of the US grain and hay this year. Have you heard much about the starvation in Zimbabwe lately? They are still starving but there is little the rest of the world can do so it doesn't make news very often. And now, and now because of point 1) the drivers of SUV's and Hummers want to convert great quantities of food grains into motor fuel.
3) The US owes more than it's entire GDP. Seeing this coming five years ago, instead of doing anything about it, we created a great real estate bubble based on shady debt that bids fair to plunge the world into the mother and father of all depressions.
Of course you'd rather be opposed by warmongers than deal with these issues. Great fun that! And my dismissal (for thus it is) is because I see you activists with your back to the problem raising your fists to potentates and principalities that "roll on as impotently as thou or I."
I see the activist and warmonger as being the two sides of the same coin and little odds. Both stand on the back of the world's poor scoring debating points with each other and counting that as "work".
My "way", as you put it, is to point the way to step down from the back of the world's poor and see what the world looks like from that point of view. People, especially it would seem to me activists, don't want to do that. They want to stay on the back of the poor where it's more comfortable. The way off the back of the poor is then subliminated into "my" way. No, it isn't "my" way. It's living (eating, driving, having clothes, having heating, etc) by exploiting the world's poor or not. Of course you won't turn your back on the world's poor, it's a physical impossiblity to turn your back on what you are riding!
Just because we all clap our hands and believe real hard like a children's television show, it doesn't change the very heady events taking place in the world in our time.
The activist is trying to get the people to deal with esteem and actualization (ala Maslow) while the world is cold and starving and clealy sees that said state is getting worse.
I, for one, appreciate this conversation you've had here, even if I haven't participated much. "Better to be silent and thought a fool..." ya know?
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