Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it's people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa's highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it's populace.   Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it's own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria's natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country. Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF's Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services. SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world's most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970's than he would of in 2012. Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria's Government, a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government. Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets, which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes "I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended "remedies" which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today." The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan. As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord's Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon's expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration. In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned rebel factions vying for control of the Niger Delta oil fields (the source of one of America's top oil imports), which would potentially be secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a US-friendly coup failed to take place. At a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward then went on to brazenly state the priority issue of America's growing dependence on African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM operating under the principle theatre-goal of "combating terrorism". At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the guiding principle of AFRICOM is to protect "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market", before citing China's increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests. After the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change conducted in Libya, nurturing economic destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible effort to secure Africa's second largest oil reserves. During the pillage of Libya, its SFW accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American powers; it would be realistic to assume that much the same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with Western interests. While agents of foreign capital have already infiltrated its government, there is little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front in the War on Terror. Nile Bowie is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. - http://nilebowie.blogspot.com - [email protected] Collapse

With only a few days to go, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the obvious on December 5., telling delegates, "It may be true, as many say: the ultimate goal of a comprehensive and binding climate change agreement may be beyond our reach - for now."

Tone-Deaf Deniers

As for the burning, the climate change deniers have--finally--lost the scientific debate. Reports from the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN World Meteorological Organization, the UN Environmental Program,  and others confirm that the planet is already experiencing the worst-case scenarios of early predictions, showing the hottest decade on record and extreme dangers in the most vulnerable regions of the world.

But the deniers' message on global warming--'don't sweat it'--has won the agenda-setting race. In the United States, especially, conservatives heavily backed by the fossil fuel industry have created a domestic political environment to do nothing. It's no longer politically acceptable to talk about climate change in apocalyptic terms. The term "global warming" has been replaced by the neutral "climate change," while concern about the planet has decreased in inverse proportion to the increase in the earth's temperature. The sense of urgency that once characterized the debates has slipped into complacency, despite the fact that in 2010, global emissions went up 6 percent.

There's also a global consensus on what has to be done to get off this suicidal course. Emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases must be cut back immediately. For all its faults and omissions, the Kyoto Protocol brought developed nations responsible for the historic accummulation of gases into a binding legal agreement to cut emissions. The United States failed to ratify the agreement. Now Canada, Japan, and Russia want out, and prospects for renewing the agreement when the current period runs out in 2012 look dim, to say the least.

In Durban

World governments limped into the Durban talks with a new global economic crisis weighing heavily on their shoulders. This has bumped climate change down the ladder of global priorities--a particularly convenient situation for oil companies and polluting industries. The argument is that current economic conditions preclude significant action on curtailing global warming.

Bickering has ensued over who will sacrifice competitiveness in the international economic system in order to deal with climate change. U.S. negotiators insist that China and other developing countries exempted from the binding rules of Kyoto should be included in a binding agreement, noting that China is now the number-one emittor of CO2 in the world. Yet the United States has blocked any move toward a binding agreement in favor of a voluntary "pledge and review" system of national commitments without sanctions.

China shook things up on Monday when its representative vaguely  indicated willingness to join an international binding agreement. According to reports, South Africa, Brazil, and India made similar statements. These countries have insisted on a "common but differentiated" approach to emissions cuts. The Chinese government released ambitious national goals shortly before the conference. If the Chinese are serious about these goals, the country should have no problem with joining an international agreement on mandatory cuts. If it were to do that, and the European Union at least maintains if not improves on its current commitments, the United States would be practically isolated in blocking multilateral action.

Fourteen major international environmental groups became so frustrated with the U.S. position at the talks that they issued a statement reading, "America risks being viewed not as a global leader on climate change, but as a major obstacle to progress."

Global South Sings Different Tune

Observers note that the U.S. team has refused to consider real action before 2020, and U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change  Jonathan Pershing said as much on Monday. African environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey interviewed on Democracy Now!, had one thing to say about that: "Eight years is a death sentence for Africa."

Bassey recently published a book on Africa and global warming with the telling title, "To Cook a Continent." Civil society organizations gathered in Durban have presented many testimonies on the effects of climate change on small farmers, poor people, women, indigenous peoples, and other groups not represented in official talks. Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, of Via Campesina, told the Americas Program, "The situation is really serious, because in Haiti we have six months of drought a year, and when there isn't drought, there are floods, so agricultural production is declining." He added that under present conditions, it will only get worse.

Bolivia took a lone stand against the agreement to disagree at last year's climate talks in Cancun. That heavily impacted Andean country hosted the Cochabamba Peoples' Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April of last year. It offered a series of solutions that reject carbon markets and other market-based mechanisms, while supporting small farmers, agroecology and "the Rights of Mother Earth"--a paradigm that views the planet as a unitary system of which the human race is but a single aspect.

Oddly enough, as Durban heads toward even more dismal results than Cancun, Pablo Solon, Bolivia's former ambassador to the UN and a leading world figure in the fight against climate change, found hope in the long view.

"It would be an illusion to think that through these processes we're going to arrive in the short term at a declaration that changes the paradigm of western civilization that has placed man at the center of a development model. What we're saying is you can't just put humanity there, you have to put all of nature," he said in an interview.

Durban, like Cancun, in the end will be mostly just another global showcase for this clash of worldviews. As nations continue to view the issue as a trade-off between saving the earth and saving the economic system, there is some hope in the long view.

To build on that hope, one of the most important steps will be to broaden the focus from once-a-year meetings in high-carbon conference centers, to the fields, communities and town halls where alternatives are already growing and a stronger political consensus can be built from the bottom up.

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How does it feel to be the man who kills the last shark in the sea? And how does it feel to eat that final bowl of shark fin soup? Do visions of that shark dying a gruesome death intensify the flavor of the soup?

How will it feel to be the man who kills the last tiger? (It will likely happen soon) Killed so that the precious skin can be a rug. How does it feel to own that remnant of a magnificent and now extinct species so you can walk across it like any nylon shag?

Watch out all creatures great and small
Please know that we shall kill you all.

The fewer, the dearer, the higher the price.
Thank greed and capitalism for your demise.

Meanwhile a few will shed a tear
To watch the last of you disappear.

***************
Dashiell Bennett. Black Rhinos Are Now Extinct in Western Africa. The Atlantic Wire.

The pursuit of rhino horn -- which is prized for its supposed medical value and as ornamental trophies -- has decimated populations and reportedly pushed the price per ounce above gold in some places.

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This appears to be the strategy of the genetically modified organism (GMO) crop industry. The mode of attack is the contamination of non-GMO crops through the spread of pollen and the inadvertent mixing of GMO and non-GMO seeds. Large agribusiness giants such as Monsanto claim to recognize "coexistence" with conventional and organic growers as a desirable state. But, the industry acknowledges that contamination is inevitable. In fact, the complete segregation of GMO and non-GMO crops was never on the table. Several high-profile cases of mixing have already demonstrated this. Starlink corn comes to mind as well as the virtual elimination of organic canola growing in Canada because of GMO contamination (with no effective redress in the courts available). And, what we now know about the spread of genes via pollen from GMO to non-GMO plants makes it all but certain no regulatory regime, no matter how comprehensive and severe, could prevent contamination.

This fact has not stopped aggressive enforcement of the GMO industry's intellectual property rights which involves threats and lawsuits designed to intimidate not just those supposedly in violation of crop patents, but the entire farming community even when the cases involve contamination by adjacent farms and passing vehicles containing GMO seeds. Here's the message: To avoid lawsuits that threaten to take away your farming livelihood, you might as well sign up to buy our seeds because contamination by us or our farmer customers will be no defense in court.

In fact, Canadian courts found that contamination is not a permissible legal defense! Lest you think that I am making this up, here is the relevant portion of a trial court finding which was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in Monsanto Canada Inc. and Monsanto Company vs Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd.:

Thus a farmer whose field contains seed or plants originating from seed spilled into them, or blown as seed, in swaths from a neighbour's land or even growing from germination by pollen carried into his field from elsewhere by insects, birds, or by the wind, may own the seed or plants on his land even if he did not set about to plant them. He does not, however, own the right to the use of the patented gene, or of the seed or plant containing the patented gene or cell.

This precedent and the aggressive enforcement behavior by the industry has led organic growers and seed distributors to file a pre-emptive lawsuit to protect themselves from the industry's legal tactics which are designed to force farmers to pay the company penaltieseven when the farmer is organic and must avoid all genetic contamination to market his or her crops. (Organic standards prohibit genetically engineered crops.)

I am reminded of King Henry's conversation with his counterpart King Philip of France in the play Lion in Winter. Philip is insisting that his sister, Alais, be wedded to Henry's son, as previously agreed by Henry and Philip's father, the now deceased King Louis. It's that or the return of the Vexin, a key county north of Paris given to England in exchange for the betrothal.

Philip: It's their wedding or the Vexin back. Those are the terms you made with Louis.

Henry: True, but academic, lad. The Vexin's mine.

Philip: By what authority?

Henry: It's got my troops all over it. That makes it mine.

Just substitute "crops" for "troops," and you'll see an age-old strategy at work. I am also reminded of Hitler's remilitarization of theRhineland and the Anschluss, his occupation of Austria. Once his troops were on the ground, nobody wanted to challenge him.

The contamination strategy solves two perceived problems for the industry. First, the industry attempted to include GMO plants as acceptable in the original National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But the outcry was so great from activists that GMOs were taken out of the standards. One way, however, to overcome this resistance is through contamination. By forcing food regulators to accept GMO contamination in organic food as inevitable, the GMO industry is paving the way for eventual capitulation by the organic community and conventional growers as well. The industry wants to propagate the attitude that nothing can be done to stop it.

Second, although Europe has long had labeling requirements for GMO foods, in the United States the industry has so far been able to prevent enactment of any such requirement. The response from food activists has been to launch a campaign for voluntary labeling of non-GMO foods and that now has the GMO industry on the defensive. But, what better way to undermine such an effort than to contaminate conventional and organic crops?

What would change the calculus of the GMO industry? Perhaps it would change if some of the contamination suits (mostly outside the United States) were to result in huge verdicts, ones large enough to be financially ruinous to the industry. Nothing like that, however, is on the horizon. In the meantime, we can all look forward to the involuntary consumption of genetically modified food ingredients against our will. The GMO industry tells us that they want consumers to have a choice, that GMO foods should "coexist" with conventional and organic foods. Yet, they oppose labeling.

Meanwhile, the equivalent of the GMO industry's panzer corps is moving into our farm fields and from there into our kitchens. We may soon regret this creeping annexation of our dinner tables. Once the invasion of GMO genes around the world is complete, we may find it harder to roll back than Hitler's armies.

Kurt Cobb is the author of Prelude, a peak oil-themed novel, and a columnist for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen. His work has been featured on Energy Bulletin,The Oil Drum, 321energy,Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, EV World, and many other sites. He is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas--USA, and he serves on the board of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.  His writes a blog called Resource Insights.

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Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons. A single pool fire would release catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, rendering 17-22,000 square miles of area uninhabitable. That's about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont - from one pool fire.

In a March 25^th interview, physician and nuclear activist Dr Helen Caldicott explains that "there's far more radiation in each of the cooling pools than there is in each reactor itself.... Now the very short-lived isotopes have decayed away to nothing. But the long-lived ones, the very dangerous ones, Cesium, Strontium, Uranium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, Neptunium, I mean really dangerous ones, the long-lived ones - that's what the fuel pools hold."

As a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Alvarez was part of a multidisciplinary international team that looked at possible terror attacks on nuclear facilities, focusing on the spent fuel storage pools. In 2003, they released a report, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, which calls for transferring the spent fuel from the pools into dry-cask storage. (Summary here.)

The report recommends that 75% of the spent rods be removed from each of the pools and stored in ultra-thick concrete bunkers capable of withstanding aerial impact. The project would take about ten years and would "reduce the average inventory of 137Cs (radioactive cesium) in U.S. spent-fuel pools by about a factor of four."

The NRC attempted to suppress the IPC report, Alvarez says. "The response by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuclear industry was hostile." But the National Academy of Sciences agreed that a fire in an overloaded fuel pool would be catastrophic. The NRC attempted to block the Academy's report, as well.

The NRC serves industry, not the public, and by controlling the purse strings, Congress has forced the NRC to "greatly curtail its regulatory programs," says Alvarez.

Engineer Keith Harmon Snow couldn't agree more. He recently lambasted the NRC and mainstream media for downplaying the ongoing catastrophe in Japan. He notes that, "The atomic bomb that exploded at Hiroshima created about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies." [emphasis added]

And that's just one US nuclear plant, out of 104, not to ignore the undisclosed number of research sites. Then consider that several nuclear plants sit on geologic faults, as this image by Public Integrity reveals:

Also see this global map of earthquake activity and nuclear power plant locations.

Nuclear waste is a serious, deadly and growing problem that the industry refuses to address, preferring to externalize disposal costs onto the public (even suing the US government to clean up its mess for them, under a 1998 law it no doubt favored).

Unless the radioactive waste is laser-launched toward the sun, we're stuck with waste that will contaminate the biosphere for thousands of years, for the measly prize of 25-30 years of electricity, as nuclear activist and mathematician Gordon Edwards so eloquently explained. The risk far outweighs the benefit; this energy choice exemplifies the insanity of the nuclear industry and its government protectors.

Further Sources:

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, by Alexey V. Yablokov and Vassily B. Nesterenko and Alexey V. Nesterenko (English publication: 2009), recently reviewed by toxicologist Janette Sherman on BlipTV, and also reviewed last year by Professor Karl Grossman at Global Research.

Nuclear Reactors in Earthquake Zones around the Globe (TreeHugger, compiling various sources)

US Radiation Monitoring Map in Real Time (Radiation Network)

Video Maps Spread of Radioactivity in Real Time (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Austria)

 

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Nuclear expert Karl Grossman calls it the ultimate nuclear nightmare, a real time China Syndrome, portrayed fictionally in the 1979 film by the same name.

OnMay 12, Hiroshima Peace Institute Professor Robert Jacobs told Russia Today TV that plant conditions "are much more serious than we were told earlier."

In fact, confirming a coverup, he explained:

"We were not told that for a long time....I have a rule of thumb, which is that anything that is publicly stated is probably around 10 to 20% of what's true. It will take us years to know the extent of the contamination and the extent of the fuel melting. The best case scenario in this situation is that it will take months to begin to stop leaking radiation from the reactors."

As a result, plant conditions are extremely serious, perhaps out of control, but don't expect government or media reports to admit it. Short of that, on May 12, TEPCO said low water levels fully exposed Fukushima's Unit No. 1, grudgingly confirming a meltdown of nuclear fuel rods.

According to Junichi Matsumoto, TEPCO's general manager:

"The water level is one meter below the base of the fuel assembly....Melted fuel has dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is still being cooled...(Entombment) plans need to be revised. We can't deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak."

Moreover, other fuel rods are also affected, AP saying:

"other fuel (melted) to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is thought (but not confirmed) to be covered in water....The findings also indicate a greater-than-expected leak in that vessel."

At issue is one or more core nuclear meltdowns, a worse case scenario. On May 12, London Telegraph writer Julian Ryall headlined, "Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant," saying:

Visual evidence confirms that "(one Fukushima reactor) did suffer a nuclear meltdown. (TEPCO admitted that) the top five feet or so of (Unit No. 1′s) core 13ft-long fuel rods had been exposed to the air and melted down. Now (it appears likely) that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have burned a hole through the bottom of the containment, causing" large amounts of contaminated water to leak, posing an extremely serious health hazard to many countries besides Japan.

Moreover, conditions appear to be worsening, not improving. According to Friends of the Earth spokesman Tom Clements:

"TEPCO seems to be going backwards in getting the situation under control and things may well be slowly eroding with all (six) units having problems. At this point, TEPCO still finds itself in unchartered waters and is not able to carry out any plan to get the situation under control."

US nuclear expert Gene Corley said:

If fuel, in fact, melted through the reactor, "then the most likely solution is to encapsulate the entire unit. This may include constructing a concrete wall around the unit and building a protective cover over it. Because of the high radiation that would be present if this has happened, the construction will take many months and may stretch into years."

Major Media Coverage

Throughout the crisis, they've regurgitated official lies,  suppressing what's vital to know about history's worst ever environmental disaster. Despite the significance of TEPCO's May 12 announcement, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune ignored it, while New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew Wald downplayed it, headlining, "Japanese Reactor Damage Is Worse Than Expected," saying:

New developments will likely "delay efforts to bring" Fukushima's crippled reactor "under control, the plant's operator said Thursday, (admitting) much more damage than originally thought...."

Avoiding the word "meltdown," Tabuchi and Wald said "exposed fuel has probably melted and slumped to the bottom of the vessel in little pellets....Still the worst fears did not materialize....a nuclear chain reaction (causing) a full meltdown and a catastrophic release of radioactive material."

In fact, that's precisely what likely happened, but coverup and denial won't confirm it, exacerbating an already catastrophic situation, affecting residents as far away as California, Boston, Iceland, Sweden and numerous other countries in the form of contaminated air, water, soil, food, and nuclear rain.

On May 3, New York Times writer William Broad wrote a disgraceful article headlined, "Drumbeat of Nuclear Fallout Feat Doesn't Resound With Experts," saying:

"The fear is unwarranted, experts say," quoting paid to lie ones, suppressing shocking truths too important to conceal, especially in feature Times reports.

Nonetheless, Broad said outside proximity to Fukushima, the risk of illness "is tiny, compared with numerous other sources of radiation, past and present."

He lied, ignoring what reputable experts affirm, especially about something this grave.

Though Wall Street Journal writers Mitsuru Obe, Phred Dvorak, and Rebecca Smith used the forbidden word "meltdown," it hardly mattered in their article headlined, "At Reactor, Damage Worse Than Feared," saying:

Fukushima's Unit No. 1 "likely suffered a substantial meltdown of its core....offering a fresh assessment," suggesting conditions are much worse than earlier reported short of "a catastrophic meltdown."

"The findings raise a host of questions," including perhaps "that radioactive water leaked into the reactor's basement in greater than believed quantities, likely dealing additional delays to the stricken plant's cleanup."

The best America's industry-controlled Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could add was that conditions are "not exactly stable," according staff official R. William Borchardt, a contemptible comment about a global disaster showing no signs of abating.

New Problems Reported

On May 12, AFP headlined, "New water leaks at Japan's nuclear plant," saying:

TEPCO also reported a new water leak "and another spill of contaminated water into the ocean." Dousing operations "created massive amounts of highly contaminated runoff water."

As a result, seawater samples "taken near the plant contained cesium-134 at a concentration 18,000 times the permitted level...." Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano called the situation "deplorable.

On May 12, Greenpeace reported radiation levels in seaweed samples far above legal limits, based on tests conducted up to 40 miles out to sea.

Beginning later in May, fishermen will begin harvesting seaweed for public consumption, posing significant risks to those eating it, according to Greenpeace expert Ike Teuling, warning:

"(R)adioactive contamination is accumulating in the marine ecosystem that provides Japan with a quarter of its seafood, yet the authorities are still doing very little to protect public health."

Greenpeace is also evaluating seawater, fish and shellfish, and is expected to release full results next week. However, according to executive director Junichi Sato:

"(A)s the government has limited our research to the area outside of territorial waters, we could not achieve what we originally set out to do."

Since the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, TEPCO and government officials deliberately suppressed full disclosure of an out-of-control crisis.

In her April 25 article titled, "Fukushima and Chernobyl - the Diabolical Nuclear Duo and the Alternative," environmental expert Dr. Ilya Perlingieri explained the connection between them, including:

- "the unmitigated and heart-wrenching scale of these catastrophes," Helen Caldicott saying in March.

Twenty-five years later, "(f)orty per cent of Europe is still radioactive. (For) farms in Britain, their lambs are so full of cesium they can't sell them. Don't eat European food. But that's nothing compared to what's happening now," a disaster multiple times worse than Chernobyl.

- "the devastation to all living creatures;

- the poisoning  of our entire food chain;

- the continued cover-up by corrupt governments" and industry officials, still withholding what's likely the worst of what's now known; and

- "the reality of how extremely dangerous nuclear energy continues to be," so much so, it should be banned, all functioning reactors decommissioned, and for sure no new ones built.

For now, however, "Fukushima's epic calamity continues to pose a major threat to the Japanese population (and) the rest of our planet."

Massive amounts of radiation keep leaking. "The magnitude of Fukushima's radiation is now off the scale," but its amount is deliberately suppressed - from up to six, not one, reactors.

On May 6, nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen called Fukushima's groundwater contamination the "worst in nuclear history" because thousands of tons of irradiated water are being dumped into the sea, a daily process because of so far uncontained reactor leaks.

As a result, Gundersen expects long-term trouble, exacerbated by groundwater moving inland. One town, he said, reported radioactive sewage sludge from groundwater and/or rain.

Worse still, potentially all six Fukushima reactors are at risk, though information about them is being carefully controlled to assure the worst of what's known is suppressed.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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The Easy Way In

"How?" you might ask. The secret to the simple answer lies in the existence of this novel. Here, Quinn has put in the time to reflect and coalesce a great deal of information into an enjoyable and approachable book. Pass it on. If everyone who was touched by this book gave it to ten people, eventually the message would be far-reaching and many people of great influence might be inspired to see a way out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into. Similarly, if we utilize the media available to us on the Internet to spread our appreciation of Ishmael via facebook, online book reviews, etc, we can reach a great number of people with a relatively small amount of effort. There are, of course, many other equally inspired writings available to support this cause, as well.

Earn Your Colors

"What can I do right now?" Ultimately, each individual can begin by altering their participation in our cultural system. Every person that commits to living more in accordance with the peace-keeping law will assist in tilting the scales toward balance. The final goal of these efforts is to shift the cultural perception of what is desirable and practical for the success of humanity. Certainly, this is a daunting task. With this in mind, the specific actions to be taken are personal and require a good deal of self-reflection, for there are many ways to make a difference.

First, consider that the peace-keeping law implies that we should not take more than we need to survive, especially at the expense of our planetary cohabitants. The well-known waste hierarchy is a tenet well worth heeding: reduce, reuse, recycle. We can move toward living in accordance with the law which governs all of life through reducing our consumption of goods by limiting our purchases to that which we need. It would be wise to tune out advertisements in general, which seek to convince us that we must be part of the latest trend and consequently lead us to indulge in buying items that we have no true need for. If we can't avoid advertisements, we can at least foster an air of skepticism and seek to uncover the manipulation to which we are subjected so regularly. By reusing or re-purposing products, we keep goods in circulation much longer than would otherwise be the case. Frequenting thrift stores, taking exceedingly good care of our belongings so that someone else might make use of them when we're finished and using discarded objects as the basis for art are all options for interrupting the waste cycle. Finally, if necessary, recycling products rather than sending them to the landfill is an important contribution.

When you must buy, vote with your dollars. Living in a capitalist society, our culture is subject to the laws of supply and demand. By using each of our purchases to increase demand for products that are most supportive of the peace-keeping law and beneficial to the well-being of the planet, we are able to offer not-so-subtle encouragement to businesses to come along for the ride. There are many factors to consider when using purchasing power to voice an opinion. For instance: How much petroleum was used to make and transport this product? Am I patronizing a local establishment? Where did this product come from and how did it get here? Is this product sustainable- i.e. is it made of renewable resources or natural ingredients in a responsible and humane manner? Does this product have excessive packaging and is it recyclable? Is my food as close to it's natural form as possible? Does all meat that I eat come from small, ecologically responsible farmers? The more we consider these types of questions before making purchases, the more informed our purchases will become. By their nature, business and industry will respond to this increased demand. As it stands right now, industry is jumping at the chance to make the claim of being 'green' because they know that catch phrases such as 'green' and 'organic' sell. This willingness on the part of businesses can and should be leveraged to encourage truly sound practices.

Choosing the location of your home carefully allows you to vote with your feet. When making decisions about where to live, take into account how much or how little fuel you will need to consume for every day living. For instance, consider walkability in order to minimize your petroleum dependence. Walkability refers to the ability of an individual to get most services by walking a short distance from their home. Can you walk or bike to work? Can your children walk to school? Is there a grocery store or hardware store nearby? A farmer's market? Entertainment, parks and natural areas?

Craft Your Soap Box and Hop On Up

Defining the platform through which you can reach out to others is also a highly individual process. In Ishmael, the student is encouraged to utilize his occupation as a writer to teach a hundred people and to inspire each of them in turn to teach a hundred more and so on. This notion touches on an important principle- allowing for small efforts to multiply and gather momentum of their own accord. If we don't allow ourselves to start small, the enormity of the situation can seem utterly stifling. So, it matters not whether you change the mind of one person through personal conversation, hundreds through your blog, thousands as a teacher or lecturer, millions as an author, or just one strategic business person as a consultant. What matters is that as many humans as possible start chiseling away at the walls of the prison with as many tools as we have at our disposal. This is the way to shift cultural perceptions and change the path upon which our civilization trods.

The Gandhi Principle

Gandhi was known for his ability to transform an adversarial relationship into friendship. He did so by forging human connections with his supposed enemies. Herein lies an important lesson- that of the ability to listen. If we can stop and listen to individuals we stand a much greater chance of understanding their point of view and in turn being able to offer up practical solutions. When people feel heard, they are much more likely to listen to what is directed at them. Instead of remaining adversaries, the opportunity for coalition is opened along with the possibility for greater change.

The Culture Connection

Early in the novel, Quinn establishes that we are all "captives of our civilization." By this, he simply means that we are each born into, reared and programmed by the culture of our civilization. With this in mind, we are only able to draw on the information and explanations that are offered by our culture. Through careful de-construction the veils of cultural myth were lifted and the falseties upon which we have built our fortress revealed. Through this knowledge we are able to see that while our civilization's viewpoint is not sustainable, our survival depends upon the ability to and willingness to craft an existence outside of this destructive pattern. Here we have explored some practical steps toward shifting the cultural norm in an effort to move us closer to an ecologically sound way of life. It is worth noting that these methods can also be modified to address any aspect of social inequality that we might observe: locate and distribute well-written information, make personal changes, and find the platform from which you can reach as many people as possible, inspiring them to do the same in turn. Through incremental change, individual viewpoints can be altered affecting change in the culture at large. Perhaps one day, in the near or distant future, we will find ourselves living in harmony with the natural world around us so that we might resume the fine act of evolution.

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

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PHR-I said its Open Clinic treats about 700 status-less people monthly. About a year ago, many women asked for abortions. Conversations determined they were raped in the Sinai en route to Israel.

On December 14, PHR-I published a report describing their ordeal, based on interviews with first-time patients. After publishing it, dozens more interviews were conducted. This report follows up, based on 284 interviewed victims, as well as more information gotten by human rights activists and groups globally.

Regional turmoil compounds the situation further. Recent Release Eritrea information, an Egyptian-based human rights organization, said that five Northeast Sinai prison facilities were evacuated, prisoners released without identity papers, complicating their status gravely.

Included are about 200 Eritreans and Ethiopians. Some reached Israel. Egypt re-imprisoned others. Many were caught by human trafficking gangs. They're now in captivity held for ransom.

Agenzia Habeshia said about 190 Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees are at two Sinai torture camps, traffickers demanding up to $10,000 each to release them. Testimonies gotten reveal horror stories of violence and rape. PHR-I believes other Sinai camps operate the same way.

Of the asylum-seekers treated at PHR-I's Open Clinic, 59% said they were imprisoned under close guard and/or chained, 52% saying they experienced extreme violence. Two-thirds reported severe thirst, 88% saying they lacked food and nearly starved.

Violence reported included punching, slapping, kicking, and whipping. Others described torture, including burial in the sand, electric shocks, hanging by one's hands and legs, burning with white-hot iron bars, prolonged sun exposure, and other types of burning. About 15% have scars and other bodily signs showing abuse

One victim said:

"They tied me and beat me up every day. I have scars all over my body - above the eye, on my back. They tied me feet upwards and beat me on the heels. I broke an arm and several fingers. Since then, they did not heal so well. To me, Sinai was hell on earth."

Another said:

"Those who couldn't pay were held in a container, kept in chains and beaten constantly. Four treated this way died, including children. We started out as a group of 12 people who arrived in Sinai, and I know of only eight who made it to Israel. I don't know what happened to the other four...."

Some victims were so traumatized, it was hard for them to relate their experiences, especially women, raped or otherwise sexually abused. Shame and guilt affected them even though they were victims, helpless to stop it.

One woman, however, said:

"I was raped repeatedly....under gunpoint over a period of five months. I became pregnant as a result. When I arrived in Israel, I was sent to a prison facility. I was depressed and threatened to commit suicide if they wouldn't let me have an abortion. When I was released, I went to PHR-I's Open Clinic."

Despite many dozens of similar reports, Israel has done nothing to help victims, PHR-I saying:

"We find the silence of the Ministries in charge of Health and Welfare particularly exasperating, as they failed to take prompt action to ensure the health and rehabilitation of these torture victims."

It's unsurprising in a country practicing torture as official policy, an issue a previous article addressed, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/08/torture-as-official-israeli-policy.html

Israel does so in violation of the UN Torture Convention, the Geneva Conventions, Geneva's Common Article Three, other international laws, and Section 277 of its own 1977 Penal Law, prohibiting torture by providing criminal sanctions against using it.

Against long odds, PHR-I asked the Ministries of Health and Welfare to grant social residency status to refugees and asylum seekers. "In so doing so, the Minister will give (victims) access to the public health system."

It can be done easily and quickly without legislation, requiring only ministerial authority. However, Israel won't help Palestinians, and for years treated non-Jewish immigrants and asylum seekers harshly. Despite events across the region, PHR-I asked Israel to act. It also asked members of the international community to extend their help.

So far as known, no actions have been taken, and likely won't be. In countries like Israel, non-Jews aren't welcome, especially poor immigrants and asylum seekers.

A previous article discussed human rights in Israel and Palestine, including how migrants and asylum seekers are treated, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/03/human-rights-in-israel-and-palestine.html

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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I recently returned from Northern California where residents there were profoundly anxious regarding the effects of radiation on the West Coast from Fukushima. How not, when on April 1, the San Francisco area newspaper, Bay Citizen, reported that "Radiation from Japan rained on Berkeley during recent storms at levels that exceeded drinking water standards by 181 times and has been detected in multiple milk samples, but the U.S. government has still not published any official data on nuclear fallout here from the Fukushima disaster"?

 

In typical American media fashion, out of sight, out of mind. Fewer and fewer stories of radiation realities in and issuing from Japan are being reported. An occasional comment surfaces, usually assuring us that we have nothing to fear. It's all so benign. Apparently, we can now move on to "really important" stories like Obama's 2012 campaign and the royal wedding.

 

And yet, whether explicitly stated or not, Americans and billions of other individuals throughout the world, are not only terrified about radiation but about their economic future--an economic future which will be inexorably more ruinous as a result of the Japan tragedy and its economic ripples globally. By that I do not mean that they feel mild anxiety about embellishing their stock portfolios, but rather, are feeling frightened about how they are going to feed their families, where they will live after losing their house in foreclosure, where they might find employment in a world where having a full-time job is becoming increasingly rare, how they will access healthcare without insurance or the money to pay out of pocket, or how they will make ends meet in forced or voluntary retirement.

 

Obviously, these anxieties are relevant to the world's middle classes and not to teeming masses of human beings living on two dollars per day or less. Ironically, however, it is frequently the case that for all the suffering of abjectly impoverished human beings, they have seldom known any other standard of living and have learned how to survive on virtually nothing. They hear no reports of nuclear meltdowns, and even if they did, such news would seem insignificant in the face of needing to secure food or water for today--a type of existence that contains its own traumas and yields dramatically short lifespans.

 

Having inhabited a middle class existence, one can only comfort oneself for so long by reflecting on the plight of the destitute in far off places. One's immediate reality is an anomalous deprivation, a stark loss of the familiar, and the looming reality that things will not get better, but only worse, and that these losses are unpredictably punctuated with frightening events such as extreme weather, natural disasters, nuclear meltdowns, or the terrifying consequences of rotting infrastructure such as pipeline explosions or collapsing bridges. These realities take their toll on the body--sleepless nights, a weakened immune system, moodiness, anger, depression, despair, and often, suicidal thinking. Whether the trauma is dramatic and frequent such as a 9.0 earthquake in Japan followed by high intensity aftershocks, or whether it slowly grinds on amid a disquieting sense of the permanent loss of so much that one held dear, the landscapes of countless lives are forever, painfully altered, emotionally littered with charred shells of once exuberant and robust routines.

 

Yes YOU Have Been Traumatized

 

But, you may argue, I haven't been traumatized. My life is amazingly normal. I'm weathering the collapse of industrial civilization reasonably well and feel profoundly grateful.

 

Indeed I celebrate your good fortune, but I must add that no inhabitant of industrial civilization is without trauma because that paradigm is by definition, traumatizing.

 

It is only when you understand the extent to which you have been traumatized outside of your awareness that you can effectively prepare for and yes, welcome, the demise of empire and its ghastly assaults on your soul and the earth community.

 

In the face of extreme weather events and earth changes, skyrocketing food and energy prices, increasingly dramatic expressions of civil unrest globally, massive unemployment, global economic evisceration of the middle classes, and the proliferation of toxins worldwide--whether from fracking in Pennsylvania or leaking reactors in Japan, we are all in varying states of emotional breakdown and breakthrough. The sands are shifting under the feet of all human beings on this planet. Nothing is as it seems. "Things fall apart," said William Butler Yeats, "the center cannot hold."

 

Call it whatever you like--collapse, Transition, Great Turning. Put a happy face on it or a terrified one, but regardless of how you spin it, regardless of how much you want to feel good about it--and there is much to feel good about, the changes are dizzying, sometimes delightful, sometimes devastating. Yes, it's an exciting time to be alive, and it's an excruciating time to be alive. Sometimes one feels schizophrenic, sometimes bipolar. But all of that, yes all of that, is traumatizing to the human nervous system, and if we don't recognize that, we're probably hiding out in the "Hurt Locker" of empire.

 

So how do we not hide out? How do we face our trauma, begin healing it, and protect ourselves as much as humanly possible from further wounding, particularly as life becomes even more traumatic?

 

The Transition movement has provided us with a treasure-trove of resources for cultivating logistical resilience in our communities through awareness-raising, reskilling, and creating self-sufficient and sustainable communities. Anyone not involved in this kind of logistical preparation is only half-awake, yet many individuals believe that no other preparation is necessary. Might that not, in fact, be one characteristic of trauma? Just as the PTSD-scarred combat veteran insists that all he needs is another good battle to make him feel better, it may be that the hunger for one more gold or silver coin, one more case of freeze-dried food, one more bucket of barley, one more permaculture class, one more emergency response training is yet another means of avoiding the emotional healing and preparation work every human being needs to do in order to navigate the accelerating unraveling of the world as we have known it.

A Few Ways Of Developing Emotional Resilience

1)     Understand that industrial civilization is inherently traumatizing. Make a list of the ways it has wounded you and those you care about.

 

2)     If you are involved with a Transition initiative, start or join a heart and soul group where the psychology of change (see The Transition Handbook) can be discussed in depth and group members can share feelings about the acceleration of collapse as well as share how they are preparing for it emotionally.

 

3)     Become familiar with your emotional repertoire and how you deal with your emotions--or not. Imagine the kinds of emotions that you and others are likely to feel in an unraveling world. How do you imagine yourself dealing with those emotions? How would you prefer to deal with them?

 

4)     Think about how you need to take care of yourself right now in an increasingly stressful world. What stresses do you need to pull back from? What self-nurturing activities do you need to increase?

 

5)     Who is your support system? If you do not have people in your life with whom you can discuss the present and coming chaos, you are doubly stressed. Find people with whom you can talk about this on a regular basis.

 

6)     What are you doing to create joy in your life? Do you have places in your life where you can have fun without spending money or without talking about preparation for the future?

 

7)     What are you doing to create beauty? Life may become uglier on many levels, including the physical environment. How can you infuse more beauty into the world? Use art, music, poetry, dance, theater, storytelling and other media to enhance the beauty of your community and your immediate environment.

 

8)     Consider creating a regular poetry reading salon in which people come together perhaps monthly to share poems or stories which express the full range of human emotions. Many communities have found poetry sharing events to be incredibly rich venues for deepening connections and their own emotional resilience.

 

9)     Spend as much time as possible in nature. Read books and articles on ecopsychology and take contemplative walks or hikes in which you intentionally engage in dialog with nature.

 

10) Engage at least twice a day in some kind of mindfulness practice such as meditation, inner listening, journaling, guided visualization. Still another tool for mindfulness and community deepening is sacred earth-based rituals which can be done individually or shared in a group.

 

It is important to remember that challenging experiences are not necessarily traumatizing experiences. The collapse of industrial civilization will be challenging for those who have been preparing for it; for those who haven't, it will constitute massive trauma. The less attached we are to living life as we have known it, and the more open and resilient we are--the more we are utilizing the myriad tools that exist for preparing our emotions, our bodies, and our souls for collapse, the more capacity we create for navigating a formidable future.

 

All of the above suggestions are related to releasing stress from the mind and body. As the external stresses of an unraveling civilization accumulate, we all need ways for letting go of them. My friend, Jerry Allen, of Transition Sebastopol, California who is also a Marriage and Family Therapist, recently penned an article entitled "The Importance of Effectively Discharging Accumulated Stress As Our World Moves Into Crisis," in which he states:

 

Learning to effectively release accumulated stress is not some peripheral process that is needed primarily to treat returning soldiers and victims of abuse, as important as that treatment is. Learning to let go of accumulated stress and discharge new stresses is a vital skill for all of us who are preparing ourselves to face the unknown future. It is as important as doing physical emergency preparations. We have witnessed the chaos, rage and panic that can grip communities when devastating changes happen. When panic hits as someone yells "fire" in a crowded theatre, other voices need to be ready to stand aside and start singing loudly to calm the people and re-direct their energies.  Such work has saved hundreds of people from trampling deaths in panicked crowds. If we are still too activated by our own build up of trauma, we will not be in a position to discharge fast and take quick decisive community initiative.

 

As we prepare to serve in a helping role among many, it makes sense to train a vibrant cadre of our community members on how to cultivate body awareness, let go of stress fast, remobilize our adaptive capacity and be ready for action. It also makes sense to explore and adapt the use of story, song, dance, ritual and whatever works to help our communities come together, heal together and strengthen our joint body for action.

 

My just-published book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition is chock full of re-usable tools for creating and maintaining vibrant emotional resilience. It is also ideal for use in Transition heart and soul or study groups focused on creating emotional resilience.

 

I do not assume that a world of increasing crises will be a world devoid of cooperation or community building. In her brilliant 2009 book, A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster, Rebecca Solnit notes that in most natural disasters, human beings, in most cases, unite in a spirit of cooperation to support each other. While I certainly concur and reviewed Solnit's book in an article entitled, "Disaster: The Gift That Keeps On Giving," I am also well aware that cooperation is not the only response to trauma. Furthermore, the collapse of industrial civilization is most likely to play out in an irregular, "lumpy" fashion in different locations at different times. How it plays out and over what period of time will dictate how humans respond. One thing is certain: Responses will not always be benevolent, caring, and cooperative.

 

Thus we must prepare for a very uncertain future by consciously cultivating emotional resilience. This involves addressing the myriad ways in which we have been traumatized by the current paradigm and training with intention for encountering situations in the future which may be even more emotionally challenging in a world unraveling.

 

For readers living in Northern California, I recommend "Readiness Amid Chaos," a support group facilitated by Jerry Allen and Suzie Gruber, beginning May 9 in Santa Rosa. For more information, contact Suzie at [email protected]

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According to Tokyo Electric (TEPCO), radioactive iodine-131 in samples collected measured 200,000 becquerels per cubic centimeter, or five million times above normal. Cesium-137's elevated level was 1.1 million times. No information on uranium and plutonium concentrations were given. Clearly, however, growing dangers are worrisome, yet official reports downplay them. Coverup and denial persist. According to TEPCO, radiation levels have "no immediate impact" on the environment or human health. In fact, it's catastrophic. More on that below.

Moreover, thousands of tons of radioactive water are being dumped into the Pacific, likely to continue daily to make room for more runoff despite the great risk to sea life and humans. No amount of radiation is safe. Even dispersed in water, it poses grave dangers, and the more dumped, the greater the hazard.

Official reports, however, claim radiation dissipates quickly in the Pacific. They also say long-term effects of seawater radiation contamination are unclear, especially if dumping continues daily. In fact, they're very clear, posing serious future health risks, being downplayed by so-called experts, perhaps well-paid for their comments.

The Times added:

"The pumping effort is not expected to halt or alter a leak from a large crack in a six-foot-deep concrete pit next to the seawater intake pipes near" Unit 2. "The leak has been spewing an estimated seven tons of highly radioactive water an hour directly into the ocean."

In addition, other leaks "have flooded areas of the plant, complicating" efforts to contain the disaster. According to a Kyodo report, 60,000 tons of radioactive water are flooding the basement of Fukushima's reactor buildings and underground tunnels. So far, nothing done has stopped it.

On April 4, Washington Post writer Andrew Higgins headlined, "Peace of Mind, livelihood gone as Japanese city withers in shadow of nuclear plant," saying:

"The danger may or may not be grave, but one thing is certain: Confusing and often contradictory announcements by jittery officials in Tokyo and shifty obfuscation by (TEPCO) executives have already stripped (residents) of their livelihood, their peace of mind, and the fruits of decades of labor."

As radiation levels spread, however, Northern Japan (one-third of the country) is threatened, and if containment efforts fail, all bets are off.

EPA to Raise "Safe" Radiation Levels

On April 5, Natural News writer Mike Adams headlined, "EPA to raise limits for radiation exposure while Canada turns off fallout detectors," saying:

lanetary radiation contamination is increasing, exacerbated by dumping thousands of tons of radioactive water into the Pacific. On April 4, "2.4 million gallons of planetary poison" went in, calling it harmless. Potentially, it may continue for years, "making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world." In fact, it's that and more.

America's Gulf was contaminated and destroyed by last April's disaster, making nothing in it safe to eat. Potentially, Fukushima may match it in the Pacific if no containment efforts work.

"So what to do," asked Adams. "If you're the (EPA)," one option remains: "Declare radiation to be safe!" As a result, its Protective Action Guides (PAGs) are being revised "to radically increase the allowable levels of iodine-131 (a radioactive isotope) to anywhere from 3,000 to 100,000 times the currently allowable levels."

In fact, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) learned of it through a FOIA request. Its April 5 press release headlined, "RADIATION EXPOSURE DEBATE RAGES INSIDE EPA," saying:

Its plan awaiting approval will "dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after 'radiological incidents' is drawing vigorous objections from agency experts...."

EPA's Office of Radiation and Indoor Air (ORIA) plans to update its 1992 PAG, "governing radiation protection decisions for both short (and) long-term cleanup standards." However, agency experts object, including Stuart Walker of the Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, saying:

"It appears that drinking water at the PAG concentrations....may lead to subchronic (acute) effects following exposures of a day or a week. In a population, one should see some express acute effects....that is, vomiting, fever, etc."

Moreover, proposed limits would also apply to food and soil, so when Fukushima rains hit US cities, announcements, if made, will claim they're "below accepted limits." In fact, though standards and data can be manipulated, human health effects cannot. If Obama's EPA gets away with it, millions of lives will be at risk.

Currently, debate continues behind closed doors. PEER wants everything discussed made public. Internal documents it obtained showed a single glass of water "could give a lifetime's permissible exposure. In addition, it would allow long-term cleanup limits thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These new limits would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed," a likely conservative estimate.

Contaminating Planet Earth

One of Project Censored's (PC) top 2007 stories was Mother Jones writer Julia Whitty's article titled, "Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger," saying:

"Oceanic problems once found on a local scale are now pandemic." Evidence shows "seas are changing in ominous ways....According to oceanographers, the oceans are one, with currents linking the seas and regulating climate."

Yet, thousands of contaminants are "poison(ing) marine creatures and devastat(ing) propagation." Before last April's BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster, America's Gulf had "the highest mercury levels ever recorded...." It also had a dead zone measuring nearly 8,000 square miles in 2001.

Moreover, since 2000, "the global wild fish harvest has begun a sharp decline despite (new) technologies and intensified fishing." (If) the maelstrom of human assault on the seas continues, (they'll soon) reach a point of no return."

Fukushima accelerated the process, besides lots of other contributors daily because governments powerful enough to stop it let it to continue unabated.

Rosalie Bertell (now in her 80s) is a longtime distinguished environmental/nuclear expert. Two of her important books include "No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth" (1985) and "Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War (2000)."

In "Planet Earth," she discussed how the space program and electromagnetic weapons destabilized the ecosystem, causing widespread environmental, economic and social devastation. In "No Immediate Danger," she exposed the dangers of radiation, saying:

"Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death."

"On a clear day, the Earth looks wonderful," she said, so it's "hard to believe the warnings that we have seriously compromised its health," en route to destroying it entirely. The dangers from unbridled militarism alone are doing it, compounded by the madness of sacrificing environmental safety for profit.

In 1991, her article titled, "Radioactivity: No Immediate Danger?" coined a new word to describe the ultimate human rejection of life - "omnicide," what she called "difficult to comprehend," but it's happening. Nuclear industries are killing us by ionizing radiation exposure - cumulative, unforgiving amounts over time.

On the one hand are risks to life and health, including dying of cancer or having a deformed child. "The benefit side is to make money or gain political power. The bad news is that the people who make these trade-offs for us are the same" ones who profit.

She called industrial radioactive pollution "cumulatively greater than from Chernobyl....We are now in a no-win situation with radioactive materials, where (it's) acceptable to have cancer deaths, deformed children, and miscarriages."

Moreover, industry propaganda claims nuclear power is clean and green, when, in fact, the nuclear fuel cycle discharges significant amounts of greenhouse gases, as well as hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and elements into the environment every year. "Claiming nuclear production of energy is 'clean,' " said Bertell, "is like dieting but stuffing yourself with food between meals."

Planetary survival depends on ending all forms of nuclear proliferation. It's "imperative, because we now find ourselves in a strange situation, where the military strategy to save industrialized countries is not only destroying the environment and the gene pool in (them), but also destroying the biosphere, as radioactive material is circulated in the air, water, and food - whether or not (there's) a nuclear accident or war."

Gene pool mutations "create a next generation that is physically less able to cope with hazardous material," a degenerating process over time, affecting physical and mental well-being. Moreover, "(w)hen chromosomes are damaged and then damaged a second time before (having) a chance to repair," bizarre problems occur. For example, "a child developed from damaged chromosomes may have a broad spectrum of defects."

All toxic hazards are serious, nuclear pollution worst of all because "all human life is threatened....Our present path is headed toward species death - whether fast, with nuclear war or technological disaster, or slow, by poison."

Our present path is suicide. Bertell said so in 1985 and again in 1991. Continued nuclear proliferation and Fukushima accelerated it. What will it take to convince policy makers and profiteers to end this madness? Nothing so far has worked.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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The horror of all wars aside, waged solely for wealth and power, never humanity, Japan deserves regular top billing, given its global implications and potential millions of lives affected. Ignoring it is scandalous, yet it's practically disappeared from television where most people get news, unaware only managed reports are aired omitting vital truths.

Over three weeks and counting, Japan's crisis keeps worsens. Radiation levels in Fukushima's underground tunnel water reached 10,000 times above normal and rising. In nearby seawater, they're 4,385 times too high. Heavy rainfall exacerbates the problem. Food, water, air and soil contamination is spreading.

On March 31, New York Times writer Henry Fountain headlined, "Cleanup Questions as Radiation Spreads," saying:

At issue is "how to clean up areas that have been heavily contaminated by radioactivity," stopping short of suggesting they're dead zones that may affect all northern Japan, an area comparable to Pennsylvania, potentially making it uninhabitable.

On March 31, the IAEA (the industry's global promoter) "said a soil sample from Iitate, a village of 7,000 about 25 miles northwest of the plant, showed very high concentrations of cesium-137," a harmful gamma ray-producing isotope, contaminating air, water and soil for decades.

Levels found are "double" those in Chernobyl's dead zone, raising concerns about extending Japan's evacuation, not done so far. Moreover, they're rising daily and will continue for months, perhaps years, creating permanent contamination combined with uranium, plutonium, and other hazardous toxins.

On April 1, Al Jazeera headlined, "Japan nuclear evacuation will be 'long term,' " saying:

"Residents of evacuated areas....have been warned that they may not be able to return to their homes for months," if ever, given increasing hazardous contamination levels. Cleanup will take decades and fall far short of making areas toxin-free.

Experts call conditions "unchartered territory," wondering what, if anything can be done. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. The imponderables are huge, and potential implications staggering.

On March 25, Helen Caldicott highlighted "a medical problem of vast dimensions," saying "the situation has grown increasingly grave." A week later, it's worse with no end of crisis in sight, Caldicott calling nuclear power's harm "the greatest public health hazard the world will ever see."

On March 31, physicist Michio Kaku said "three (Fukushima) raging meltdowns" plus one or more (melting) spent fuel ponds opened to the air are ongoing, adding:

"This is huge," involving "uncontrolled radiation releases into the environment," including plutonium, the most toxic substance known. "A speck of plutonium, a millionth of a gram, can cause cancer if ingested." Moreover, if the plant site is abandoned, "we could be in free fall." Before it ends, Kaku believes it may far exceed Chernobyl. Perhaps it already has, though no one's admitting it or knows for sure.

Every Radiation Dose Is an Overdose

Experts like Harvey Wasserman agree. On March 27, he headlined, " 'Safe' Radiation is a Lethal TMI Lie," saying:

-- No amount of radiation is safe; they're harmful, cumulative, permanent and unforgiving;

-- It's why pregnant women aren't x-rayed;

-- "Any detectable fallout can kill;"

-- Fukushima's "serious danger" requires everyone to "prepare for the worst;"

-- "Fukusima is deadly to Americans;"

-- Minimally, "it threatens countless embryos and fetuses in utero, the infants, the elderly, the unborn who will come to future mothers now being exposed;"

-- There's "no defense against even the tiniest radioactive assault;"

-- "Science has never found such a 'safe' threshold, and never will;"

-- "All doses, 'insignificant' or otherwise, can harm the human organism;"

-- Three Mile Island (TMI) victims experienced "cancer, leukemia, birth defects, stillbirths, sterility, malformations, open lesions, hair loss, a metallic taste and much more....;"

-- Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture also documented the farm and wild animal death and mutation rate;

-- TMI was minor compared to Fukushima; its radiation is "pouring into the air and water;" operators reported levels "a million times normal, then retracted the estimate to a 'mere' 100,000;"

-- Most frightening is what's unrevealed; coverup after TMI and Chernobyl was scandalous;

-- All North America and Europe are affected, especially by rain, increasing soil and water contamination;

-- "Fukushima's worst may be yet to come," by far the worst ever environmental and human disaster;

-- "The response of the Obama Administration has been beyond derelict," claiming Americans face no threat; he lied and now remains silent;

-- " 'Impossible' accidents continue to happen, one after the other, each of them successively worse."

What will it take to stop this monster? Because of enormous industry profits, perhaps it will take ending human life to convince skeptics.

Candidate v. President Obama

In 2008, candidate Obama was skeptical about nuclear power, telling NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert on January 15, 2008:

Unless a "safe way to produce (and store) nuclear energy (is found), then absolutely we shouldn't build more plants."

At a January 13, 2008 town hall meeting, he said:

"Nuclear is bad because we don't know how to store it. And it poses security hazards."

On December 30, 2007, he said:

"....(N)uclear energy is not optimal so I am not a nuclear energy proponent....I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel (to produce) clean energy and (new) jobs....I have not ruled out nuclear (but) only so far is it is clean and safe."

Earlier he said:
-- "Nuclear power is not working for us right now;"

-- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is "a moribund agency that needs to be revamped, and it's become captive of the industries that it regulates and I think that's a problem."

He also called storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain "a bad idea." Nuclear power "has a host of problems that have not been solved," and "I don't think there's anything that we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up....and irradiate us....and kill us. That's the problem."

Even candidate Obama was less than candid. On July 4, 2007, CounterPunch co-editor Jeff St. Clair and contributor Joshua Frank called him "another automaton of the atomic lobby" in their article headlined, "Barack Obama's Nuclear Ambitions," saying:

During the 1990s, "the atom lobby....had a stranglehold on the Clinton administration and now they seem to have the same suffocating grip around (Obama's) neck, (the Democrat's) brightest star...."

It showed (and still does) in generous industry contributions. As of late March 2007, he "accepted $159,800 from executives and employees of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power plant operator." They previously funded his 2004 Senate campaign, contributing $74,350.

In return, he helped kill an amendment to stop large industry loan guarantees "for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects the public will not only pay millions of dollars in loan costs but will also risk losing billions of dollars if the companies default."

In 2005, Nuclear News praised him for "keeping an open mind" on nuclear power. In other words, for supporting it despite the unforgiving hazards. "The atom lobby must certainly be pleased." Why else would they help elect him president.

A previous article explained Obama's longstanding industry ties, including with Chicago-based Exelon. Its web site says it operates 17 reactors at 10 stations in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, providing 20% of US nuclear capacity.

In addition, Obama's former top political aide, David Axelrod, once lobbied for Exelon, and Rahm Emanuel, his former White House chief of staff (now Chicago's mayor-elect), profited handsomely as an investment banker, arranging mergers that created the company.

In his proposed budget, Obama includes $36 billion in industry loan guarantees for new facilities - free money. He's committed to jump-start new construction, halted since Three Mile Island in 1979. Already takers are lining up, 20 or more applications pending before the NRC.

In fact, he and Energy Secretary Steven Chu downplay Fukushima, ignoring industry hazards, including 23 US nuclear plants at 16 locations using the same failed GE-designed Mark 1 containment vessels. Earlier, the NRC called them susceptible to explosions and failure because of cost-cutting design features.

Its 1985 study warned that failure within the first few hours after a core meltdown was very likely. Its top safety official at the time said it had a 90% probability of failing if an accident caused overheating and melting. When reactor cooling is compromised, the containment vessel is the last line of defense. However, GE's design is hazardous and unsafe.

Today, Obama supports the NRC, the same agency Karl Grossman calls "an unabashed promoter of nuclear power," the one candidate Obama called "moribund, (a) captive of the industries it regulates." The one with a perfect record - never having denied applicants new plant licenses. The one now dangerously extending operating lives of aging, poorly maintained plants with deplorable safety records to 80 years, assuring multiple likelihoods of trouble.

It now says no new regulation or oversight is needed. No moratorium on new construction or old plants will be instituted, and, in fact, Vermont's trouble-plagued Yankee plant (using the same type Fukushima reactor) got a 20-year extension instead of being shut down.

That in spite of recent reports highlighting serious industry "near misses," safety violations, failures to reveal legally-required information regarding defective equipment, electrical supply system inadequacies, and other examples of industry mismanagement and criminality, risking an American Fukushima disaster.

According to nuclear technician Tom Saporito:

"The administration, including the president of the United States, is recklessly endangering the population by promoting the construction of nuclear plants and by not taking affirmative action to deal with known safety problems."

In fact, shutting the industry down is crucial, especially as Grossman, a longtime industry expert, says:

"Safe, clean, renewable energy technologies fully implemented can provide all the power we need - and energy that we can live with" safely, unlike the hazardous nuclear roulette played each day these ticking time bombs operate.

As president, however, Obama fronts for Wall Street, war profiteers, Big Oil, Big Pharma, other corporate favorites, and his nuclear industry friends, risking a major disaster to assure generous 2012 campaign contributions for another four years to complete wrecking America and other nations globally. That's his "change we can believe in" plan, not the one sold to constituents.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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This measure was 1,000 times above water readings in Units 1 and 3. Emissions happen during nuclear fission. Tokyo University Professor Naoto Sekimura said the leak came from Unit 2's damaged suppression chamber, designed to contain radioactive substance overflows. French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety's Olivier Isnard believes high readings are "proof that the reactor core (at least) partially melted." Others suggest a likely full meltdown, covered up and downplayed.

A later March 27 Mari Yamaguchi and Yuri Kageyama AP report headlined, "More obstacles impede crews in Japan nuke crisis," saying:

"Mounting problems, including badly miscalculated radiation figures and inadequate storage tanks for huge amounts of contaminated water, stymied emergency workers Sunday as they struggled to" step back from the brink of uncontrollable disaster.

After initial Sunday reports had Unit 2 radiation levels 10 million times normal, Tokyo Electric's Vice President Sakae Muto said a later test found them at 100,000 times, either way too dangerously high. In addition, nearby sea readings are 1,850 times normal. Combined, they're the highest measures since the March 11 earthquake/tsunami, showing conditions are deteriorating, not improving despite government and company reassurances.

Later, TEPCO said surface water outside the reactor contained over 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour. According to the EPA, a single dose that high can cause hemorrhaging. In fact, 100 millisieverts causes radiation sickness.

Besides TEPCO's notoriously poor safety record, also at issue is its penchant for coverup and denial. As a result, perhaps true readings are much higher than reported. UCLA Professor Najmdin Meshkati, in fact, believes "the situation is (likely) much more serious than we (are) led to believe."

Others agree, but fading news reports don't explain, especially television ones, their short attention span diverted to cheerleading for imperial war, bogusly called "humanitarian."

Another company official said many months or years are needed to correct the situation, stopping short of whether anything, in fact, can work. Independent experts express great concerns about dangerously high radiation, especially since containment efforts have failed despite nearly three weeks of trying. According to Greenpeace's Rianne Teule:

"It's very worrying. (T)here is something seriously wrong (at Unit 2)." Perhaps also at other units.

In addition, low radiation readings expected to spike are showing up across America, Canada, Iceland and Europe.

Meanwhile, electricity to restart cooling isn't possible since "cables had to be laid through turbine buildings flooded with contaminated water." In fact, no one can reach the turbine houses requiring electrical work. Possibly the idea will be abandoned.

In the face of growing disaster, TEPCO still claims conditions have partially stabilized when evidence shows them more out of control. Miroru Ogoda of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said:

"We have somewhat prevented the situation from turning worse. But the prospects are not improving in a straight line and we've expected twists and turns. The contaminated water is one of them and we'll continue to repair the damage."

Skeptical Japanese have grave concerns, fearing the worst despite mixed reassuring statements, intended more to deny reality than reveal it.

On March 27, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher headlined, "Higher Levels of Radiation Found at Japan Reactor Plant," saying:

"Japan's troubled effort to contain the nuclear contamination crisis at its stricken (plant) suffered a setback on Sunday when alarmingly high radiation levels were discovered....raising new questions about how and when recovery workers could resume their tasks," besides whether anything, in fact, can work.

In fact, high radiation readings mean fission likely restarted, "present(ing) the alarming possibility of an out-of-control reactor."

On March 28, Reuters headlined, "Japan finds plutonium at stricken nuclear plant," saying:

On March 11, after the earthquake/tsunami struck, traces of plutonium 238, 239 and 240 were found "in soil at five locations at the complex...."

According to TEPCO vice president Sakae Muto:

"It's not at the level that's harmful to human health."

He lied.

NISA reported samples ranging from 0.18 - 0.54 becquerels per kg. Agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said:

"While it's not the level harmful to human health, I am not optimistic. This means the containment mechanism is being breached so I think the situation is worrisome."

In fact, it's catastrophic and extremely hazardous to human health at any level, environmental scientist Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri explaining in her article headlined, "Fukushima Catastrophe: Radiation Exposure, Lies and Cover-up, saying:"

"The half-life of many radioactive elements is thousands of years. There is no safe level of exposure! (Claiming otherwise is) media hype and corporate lies. The plutonium fuel used at Fukushima Unit 3 reactor uses MOX (mixed oxide), a plutonium-uranium fuel mixture. A single milligram of MOX is 2-million times more deadly than enriched uranium....Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years; and (for) Uranium-235 (it's) 700-million years."

She quoted distinguished nuclear power/environmental health expert Dr. Rosalie Bertell from her noted 1985 book titled, "No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth," saying:

"Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death."

Political Fallout Outside Japan

Taiwan's opposition DPP party said it wants nuclear power phased out by 2025. However, the island state's vulnerability to quakes and tsunamis begs the question of a potential disaster affecting the entire nation if abandoning the technology isn't expedited.

In Germany, an estimated 200,000 anti-nuclear protesters rallied on March 26 under the slogan, "Fushushima Warns: Pull the Plug on all Nuclear Power Plants." Days earlier, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered seven older plants shut for safety checks.

In 2001, Germany planned to end all nuclear energy by 2021, a policy Merkel reversed besides extending the plant life for 12 years. About 25% dependent on nuclear power makes the country extremely vulnerable to disasters.

A Sunday Baden-Wuerttemberg election result expressed popular angst where anti-nuclear Greens got 24% of the vote. Combined with center-left Social Democrats, it was enough for a new coalition government for the first time against conservative Christian Democrats there since 1953. Experts agreed, calling it a referendum on future nuclear power use, voters rejecting its inherent dangers.

Perhaps also longstanding incestuous ties between industry officials and regulators, a March 28 Wall Street Journal Yuka Hayashi article headlining, "Nuclear Regulator Tied to Industry," saying:

"Japan's nuclear regulator has amassed power while growing closer to the industry it regulates, according to former regulators and industry critics who blame" scandalous laxity for Fukushima's disaster. However, it's also true in America and elsewhere, assuring inevitable future ones ahead, perhaps worse.

Hayashi said Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) "has two distinct and often competing roles regulating the nuclear power industry, and promoting Japanese nuclear technology at home and abroad." In fact, according to former nuclear industry engineer Tetsuya Lida, "(t)he regulators are so friendly with power companies that they don't hold them responsible for so many things."

In other words, proliferation and promotion supersede regulation, similar to America where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) notoriously conspires with industry, including on matters of safety. As a result, a new Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report documented 14 "near-misses" at US plants in 2010 alone - more than one a month.

Discovered problems included leaking roofs, floods near safety equipment, rusty pipes, faulty pumps, fires and unreported shutdowns. In fact, while plant operators willfully disregarded protocol, NRC inspectors ignored hazardous violations as well as false reports and delayed repairs.

Affected plants were in California, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Kansas at facilities owned by Entergy, Exelon, Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, FirstEnergy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern Nuclear, Omaha Public Power District, Dominion Generation, and Wolf Creek Nuclear.

At issue, cutting corners for greater profits takes precedence over safety. According to UCS, "(m)any of the significant events (it documented) occurred because reactor owners, and often the NRC, tolerated known safety problems."

In 2007, candidate Obama called NRC members "captives of the industry they regulate," running mate Biden saying he had no confidence in them. According to Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum, the industry "embedded itself in the political establishment (through) reliable friends from George Bush to Barack Obama (so that government) has really become cheerleaders for the industry."

Moreover, revolving door instances are common, Jeffrey Merrifield one of many examples. An NRC official from 1997 - 2008, he left for an executive position with The Shaw Group that operates an NRC regulated nuclear division.

In Japan, it's called amakudari (descent from heaven), meaning regulators transition young to industry, so while in government, they don't bite future hands who'll feed them.

Japan's METI is especially egregious. Ten of its 22 March 2010 retiring officials took energy and power related jobs. According to Liberal Democratic Party member Taro Kono:

"METI has unabashedly sent retired officials to the power industry (including TEPCO), and politicians have received campaign funds (from these companies). In exchange, power companies were allowed to hold on to their regional monopolies" and avoid regulatory oversight.

America, of course, operates the same way, placing bottom line priorities ahead of safety, public welfare, and environmental considerations because regulation across all industry groups is a mere figure of speech.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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This catastrophe caused 4 nuclear power plants to malfunction, 2 of which exploded, and the government in Japan fears a meltdown will occur at one of the plants. Radioactive steam has been leaking from 2 reactors since the earthquake, forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate the area. Even more residents are fleeing the country, in fear of the aftershocks from the original earthquake, and the implications those aftershocks will have on the nuclear situation in progress.

When analyzing a social problem, it's impossible to analyze or predict the implication of a future disaster without a basic understanding of a specific culture in a given society. In the US, our culture is rooted in rugged individualism, and when something happens to everyone, individuals will do what they can for themselves first. This would likely be violent, and perhaps we would see looting, rioting, and protesting. Our cultural values are ingrained in us to protect ourselves first. As a culture, we don't embody typical rules of etiquette. Being polite, helping others in need, coming together as a collective unit when need be, and even being submissive in order to avoid social disruption.

Etiquette is a cultural trait that the citizens of Japan have followed in order to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and radioactive threat from their damaged nuclear facilities. There is no looting, no rioting or violence in Japan. One could assert that the Japanese are submissive, and are afraid to stand up to their government in order to get their basic needs met. I would question that assertion with this- the Japanese government takes care of their people in the first place; there is no need to loot and riot, and maybe even kill people, in order to obtain basic necessities. Japan has welfare programs in place to help everyone; they are not in place only for the elderly and children. This means that when crises occur in a country like Japan, the response will be vastly different than what one might see in the US.

If we look at the number of nuclear facilities in the US, the number hovers just above 100. All of those reactors combined produce less than ¼ of the nation's energy. Worse still- President Obama is supporting the implementation and building of 2 new nuclear power plants to be built in South Texas- along the gulf coast. (truth-out.org) Hurricane Katrina comes to mind. Why on earth would the US provide government assistance (as in billions of dollars) to build nuclear power plants along the gulf coast? This region is known for increasing weather-related activity that can easily be pointed to the greenhouse effect.

I predict that of the 100+ nuclear power plants in the US, at least one of them will fail in the near future as the result of a severe weather event, which would be exacerbated or even caused by climate change. If a failure were to happen at even one nuclear facility in the US following a major weather event, chaos would erupt. Violence, stealing, and other forms of social disruption following a major crisis would be difficult to manage. Not only would the US military be responsible for heading a search a rescue operation, but they would potentially be engaging in a war at the same time due to civilian unrest. If the population in our country was confident in the ability of the government to provide for us- whether we need it or not- violence wouldn't be a likely reaction to the scenario I listed above. When a society is able to work cohesively with their government, and when the government serves the needs of the people properly, social structures are less likely to tear at the seams due to violence and desperation. I believe this is why Japan hasn't completely fallen apart; the people of Japan not only have a cultural way of dealing with each other that is kind and respectful, and possibly even submissive- but they also have the security that citizens of the US are lacking, which is government involvement.

The implications in Japan surrounding the natural disasters that took place has to be a lesson to those of us in the US that have anything to say about nuclear energy and the lack of safety it provides the nation. Nuclear power is not fail proof, it is extremely dangerous, and no matter how many safety inspections a facility undergoes, there will always be a threat of radioactive leaks, radioactive waste contamination, and the hazardous storage techniques used at these plants. It is time for everyone to stop debating the safety of nuclear power and come up with a different solution to produce energy.

Works Cited

Eitzen and Zinn Custom published "Social Problems". Intersections Collection. Social Problems, Rowan Wolf's Sections Only. 2009.

Greg Palast. "Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan's Disastrous Nuclear Operators." Truth Out. Web. http://www.truth-out.org/tokyo-electric-build-us-nuclear-plants-the-no-bs-info-japans-disastrous-nuclear-operators68457. Truth-out.org March 14th 2011.

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In fact, distinguished experts like Helen Caldicott long ago warned of inevitable nuclear disasters, especially in seismically active areas. On May 23, 2004, The Japan Times contributor Leuren Moret headlined, "Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette," saying:

"Of all the places in all the world no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list."

"Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates....and is one of the most tectonically active regions of the world. (There) is almost no geologic setting in the world more dangerous for nuclear power than Japan."

In 2004, Kobe University Seismologist/Professor Katsuhiko Ishibashi called the situation then "very scary. It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."

American cities like New York have no credible evacuation plans in case of nuclear disasters. Neither does Japan, its Fukushima response a clear example. In fact, however, there's no adequate plan possible in cases of catastrophic nuclear events. How and to where do you transfer millions of people. Abandoning the technology alone can work, a possibility not considered, at least not so far.

Japanese nuclear engineer Yoichi Kikuchi told Moret about serious longstanding safety problems at Japanese nuclear facilities, including cooling system cracks in pipes from reactor vibrations. Operators are thus "gambling in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease government oversight," he said.

Former GE senior field engineer Kei Sugaoka agreed, saying:

"The scariest thing, on top of all the other problems, is that all the nuclear power plants are aging, causing a deterioration of piping and joints which are always exposed to strong radiation and heat."

As a result, Moret, like Caldicott, said:

"It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in Japan (or most anywhere); it is a question of when it will occur," and if catastrophic enough, perhaps nothing can be done to contain it.

Moreover, all radiation, especially large amounts, is harmful, cumulative, permanent and unforgiving. Yet lunatic fringe, self-styled "nuclear experts" like Ann Coulter told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that a "growing body of evidence (shows radiation) is actually good for you and reduces cases of cancer." Even O'Reilly reacted skeptically to the "hormesis" notion. Wikipedia calls it:

"the term for generally-favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors," including radiation.

Other toxins aside, no amount of radiation is safe. In her book "Nuclear Madness," Helen Caldicott explained:

"Lower doses of radiation can cause abnormalities of the immune system and can also cause leukemia five to ten years after exposure; (other) cancer(s), twelve to sixty years later; and genetic diseases and congenital anomalies in future generations."

"Nuclear radiation is forever," she added. It doesn't dissipate or disappear. Jeff Patterson, former Physicians for Social Responsibility president said, "There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period." In 1953, Nobel laureate George Wald agreed saying "no amount of radiation is safe. Every dose is an overdose."

On March 19, Ralph Nader's "Nuclear Nightmare" article said:

"Over 40 years ago....the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area 'the size of Pennsylvania' and cause massive casualties."

In square miles, Pennsylvania is one-third the size of Japan. Nader said that "people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water."

On March 25, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, Keith Bradsher and David Jolly headlined, "Japan Encourages a Wider Evacuation from Reactor Area," saying:

"New signs emerged Friday that parts of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were so damaged and contaminated that it would be even harder to bring the plant under control soon."

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) measured seawater showing "the level of iodine-131 at 50 becquerels per cubic centimeter - 1,250 times the legal limit."

Moreover, several workers were contaminated by water measuring 10,000 times above normal, according to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences. In addition, a senior nuclear executive said "a long vertical crack" running down the side of the reactor vessel (expected to enlarge) was detected "leaking fluids and gases." The Times said, "There is a definite crack in the vessel - it's up and down and it's large. The problem with cracks is they do not get smaller."

In addition, contamination is spreading, now affecting Tokyo water with elevated radioactive iodine levels, an alert saying don't let infants drink it. Milk, vegetables, fruits, and likely all crops in northern Japan are affected. Further, on March 25, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said:

"Iodine-131 detected in Tokyo hit 12,000 becquerels, compared with the previous day, a tenfold increase in both radioactive iodine and cesium." In addition, "Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, saw the highest radioactive values recorded, with 12,000 becquerels of cesium, iodine and 85,000 becquerels."

On March 25, the Takoma Park, MD-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) said:

"Radioactive iodine releases from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi reactors may exceed those of Three Mile Island by over 100,000 times....While Chernobyl had one source of radioactivity, its reactor, there are seven leaking radiation sources at the Japanese site. Together, the three damaged reactors and four spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiicho contain (much) more long-lived radioactivity, notably cesium-137, than the Chernobyl reactor."

Its half life is about 30 years. According to IEER president Arjun Makhijani, "This accident has long since passed the level of Three Mile Island." Already, large parts of Honshu, Japan's main island, have been affected. Even so, Japanese authorities haven't been forthcoming about actual radiation releases that independent experts believe are extremely high and dangerous.

On March 26, government officials said predictions on when Fukushima could be stabilized aren't known, spokesman Yukio Edano saying "this is not the stage for predictions." According to IAEA head Yukiya Amano, "(t)his is a very serious accident by all standards, and it is not yet over." Ending it "will take quite a long time."

So far efforts to stabilize the damaged reactors haven't succeeded. On March 24, Natural News.com writer Mike Adams headlined, "Radioactive fallout from Fukushima approaching same levels as Chernobyl," saying:

"The radioactive (iodine-131) fallout is now as much as 73 percent of the daily radiation emitted from Chernobyl following its meltdown disaster." For cesium-137, it's 60%.

Monitoring in Hawaii, Alaska, California, Montreal and other cities are registering Fukushima fallout. Yellow rain in Japan was reported, much like what happened after Chernobyl. Whether it's entirely radioactive isn't known. Contamination, however, is spreading, yet "the nuclear industry says stop worrying....it's all safe!"

On March 25, Natural News.com writer Ethan Huff headlined, "Ominous smoke plumes, contaminated water and food, but everything is just fine in Japan, suggest authorities," saying:

"....black smoke....was seen billowing from Reactor 3, (containing) highly dangerous MOX plutonium fuel," prompting an "evacuation at all four reactors." No explanation was given.

In addition, Kyodo News said "mysterious neutron beams (were seen) coming from the plant 13 times since" the earthquake/tsunami, suggesting uranium and plutonium releases from damaged reactors and fuel rods.

Interviewed on March 17, nuclear expert Hirose Takashi doubts water sprayed on damaged reactors was effective, saying:

"If you want to cool a reactor down with water, you have to circulate the water inside and carry the heat away, otherwise it has no meaning. So the only solution is to reconnect the electricity. Otherwise, it's like pouring water on lava."
Moreover, by using salt water "(y)ou get salt. The salt will get into all these valves and cause them to freeze. They won't move. This will be happening everywhere. So I can't believe that it's just a simple matter of reconnecting the electricity and the water will begin to circulate....I can't understand it....Now it's a complete mess inside....I'm speaking of the worst case, but the probability is not low....Only in Japan it is being hidden."

"I hate to say it, but I am pessimistic....We have to think of all six (reactors) going down, and the possibility of that happening is not low."

On March 26, Reuters headlined, "Radiation spikes in seawater by stricken Japanese plant," saying:

"Radioactivity levels are soaring in seawater near (Fukushima), Japan's nuclear safety agency said on Saturday...." On March 25, tests showed they spiked to 1,250 times normal. NISA official Hidehiko Nishiyama criticized Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) for not following safety procedures inside the turbine building. Throughout the crisis, TEPCO hasn't given accurate information on the disaster's severity, downplaying it instead.

As a result, independent experts express grave concerns that conditions are much worse than reported. They also believe it will take months perhaps to contain Fukusima. In the meantime, radiation keeps leaking and spreading, but it will be years before the real toll is known. Downplaying its gravity is scandalous.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Contrary to other reports, TEPCO's spokesman also said water remains in Unit 4's cooling pool. In fact, there's none. Nothing the company says is credible.

In contrast, distinguished nuclear expert Helen Caldicott called Fukushima an unprecedented "absolute disaster," multiples worse than Chernobyl. "The situation is very grim and not just for the Japanese people. If both reactors blow then the whole of the northern hemisphere may be affected. Only one (Chernobyl) reactor blew, and it was only three months old with relatively little radiation. (Fukushima's) have been operating for 40 years, and would hold about 30 times more radiation than Chernobyl."

It killed nearly one million people and counting, according to the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). Yet the official IAEA figure was 4,000. NYAS' report said:

"This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the (IAEA) and associated (UN) agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findingins reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments."

In fact, IAEA and UN agencies lied, what's ongoing now on Fukushima to conceal the greatest ever environmental/human disaster by far. Calling it a "diabolical catastrophe," Caldicott, in fact, believes "(i)t could be much, much worse than" 30 multiples of Chernobyl. "In the northern hemisphere, many millions could get cancer." Large parts of Japan may be permanently contaminated, not safe to live in.

Adding a hopeful note, she also thinks "the nuclear industry is finished worldwide. I have said before, unfortunately, the only thing that is capable of stopping this wicked industry is a major catastrophe, and it now looks like this may be it."

In a March 16 "Destroyer of Worlds" statement, she added:

"The world is now paying - and will pay however severe Fukushima turns out to be - a grave price for the nuclear industry's hubris and the arrogance and greed that fueled their drive to build more and more reactors. What's more, having bamboozled gullible politicians, the media, and much of the public into believing that it is a 'clean and green' solution to the problem of global warming, the nuclear industry has operated facilities improperly, with little or no regard for safety regulations, and they have often done this with the connivance of government authorities."

In fact, nuclear power isn't "clean and green," nor is it safe or renewable. "It is instead 'a destroyer of worlds.' It is time the globaly community repudiated it....There is no other choice for the sake of future generations" and planet earth. Humanity has a choice - nuclear power or life itself.

On March 17, New York Times writers Norimitsu Onishi, David Sanger and Matthew Walf headlined, "With Quest to Cool Fuel Rods Stumbling, US Sees 'Weeks' of Struggle," saying:

America's "top nuclear official followed up his (day before) bleak appraisal of the grave situation at the plant, (cautioning) it would "take some time, possibly weeks" to make headway.

On March 17, Times writers David Sanger and William Broad headlined, "Radiation Spread Seen; Frantic Repairs Go On," saying:

"....frantic efforts to cool nuclear fuel in the troubled reactors and in the plant's spent-fuel pools resulted in little or no progress, according to United States government officials."

Officials are also trying to restore power with no assurance doing so can help. Explosions, fires, and extremely high heat destroyed most or all plant equipment, likely including water pumps.

An unnamed source said, "What you are seeing are desperate efforts - just throwing everything at it in hopes something will work. Right now this is more prayer than plan."

More likely, however, it's deception, trying to convince public opinion that anything can work when, in fact, it may already be too late.

On March 18, Times writers David Sanger and William Broad headlined, "Frantic Repairs Go On at Plant; Little Progress in Cooling Fuel," saying:

Radioactive "(s)team was again rising over another part of the plant, this time billowing from Reactor No. 2" that exploded on Tuesday. No explanation why was given.

Helicopter water drops failed. On Friday, military officials halted them at least for a day. Nuclear experts think they're futile. Video evidence showed most water missed its target or evaporated before reaching it. Osaka University's Professor Akira Yamaguchi said:

"7.5 tons of water has been dumped. We do not know the size of the pool, but judging from other examples it probably holds 2,000 tons. It does not mean the pool needs to be completely full, but maybe a third of the tank's capacity is needed."

America believes TEPCO "consistently underestimated the risk and moved too slowly to contain the damage."

On March 18, Al Jazeera headlined, "Japan raises nuclear alert level," saying:

Its "nuclear safety agency raise(d the) severity rating of (the) accident at Fukushima plant, signifying higher risk of radiation."

However, Al Jazeera's equating its seriousness to Three Mile Island or Chernobyl is willful deception. Fukushima is unprecedented, in unchartered territory, perhaps unstoppable. Guenther Oettinger, EU energy chief, called the site "effectively out of control, (facing) apocalypse."

Al Jazeera claimed "prevailing winds are likely to carry any contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean."

False! Radiation levels in Tokyo are dangerously high and rising. Moreover, a radiation cloud will reach California by weekend, then spread across most of North America. Downplaying the disaster's severity is scandalous and criminal. Besides dead zones and permanent environmental contamination, millions of illnesses and deaths are likely, though years will pass before accurate information is known.

Make no mistake, Japan's government/industry cabal bears full responsibility for the greatest ever environmental/human disaster, an indisputable crime. They have blood on their hands as does America, other governments, and "Destroyer of Worlds" officials that that proliferate this technology from hell. Nothing short of banning it is acceptable.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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The systematic destruction of indigenous people's land, the poisoning of Native Americans on reservations, Africans in the Niger Delta, African-Americans in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," and Puerto Ricans on the Island of Vieques all have their roots in economic exploitation, racial oppression, devaluation of human life and the natural environment, and corporate greed. Due to unequal power arrangements, the rich have been able to get rid of their toxic waste by exploiting the poor. Developing nations sometimes have no choice but to allow the shipping of hazardous waste into their borders. Most people of colored communities in the U.S. and poor nations around the world are forced to sacrifice their public health in order to create jobs and promote economic development.  Such waste often results in an increased number of children diagnosed with asthma, brain cancer, mesothelioma, and other serious health problems.

This unfair treatment can be described as "environmental racism" and "radioactive colonialism." There has been a direct correlation between the exploitation of land and the exploitation of people.  The following article offers some insight in regard to the matter, stating:

Institutional racism has allowed people of color communities to exist as colonies, areas that form dependent (and unequal) relationships to the dominant white society or "Mother Country" with regard to their social, economic, legal, and environmental administration. Writing more than three decades ago, Carmichael and Hamilton, in their work Black Power, offered the "internal" colonial model to explain racial inequality, political exploitation, and social isolation of African Americans. Carmichael and Hamilton write:

>The economic relationship of America's black communities . . . reflects their colonial status. The political power exercised over those communities go hand in glove with the economic deprivation experienced by the black citizens. Historically, colonies have existed for the sole purpose of enriching, in one form or another, the "colonizer"; the consequence is to maintain the economic dependency of the "colonized."

Institutional racism reinforces internal colonialism. Government institutions buttress this system of domination. Institutional racism defends, protects, and enhances the social advantages and privileges of rich nations. Whether by design or benign neglect, communities of color (ranging from the urban ghettos and barrios to rural "poverty pockets" to economically impoverished Native American reservations and developing nations) face some of the worst environmental problems. The most polluted communities are also the communities with crumbling infrastructure, economic disinvestment, deteriorating housing, inadequate schools, chronic unemployment, high poverty, and overloaded health care systems.

Today, millions of Americans have an increased awareness of the threat of chemical, biological, and environmental toxins. The tragic events of 9/11, the Anthrax scare, and even more recently; the catastrophic events in Japan, have heightened concern and fear of potential exposure. What most people don't know, however, is that toxic waste exposure is not new for many people of color. So many communities are forced to live next to chemical industries that spew poisons into their air, water, and land. For these people, asthma, mesothelioma, disease, and cancer are just side effects that come with the territory. And with the mesothelioma life expectancy lasting only 14 months, the results can be devastating. These communities endure a form of "toxic" terror twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Collapse

To a large extent economies are driven by fossil fuels and natural resources. Countries buy and sell commodities such as: oil, gold, natural gas, diamonds, water, lead, rice, wheat, coal, etc, for profits to buy the commodities that they do not have. Resource rich countries accumulate massive wealth on the back of these naturally occurring resources which facilitates expansive populations and economies. These large populations consume more and more, requiring more commodities, which leads to greater consumption of resources. Unbridled growth will put a significant strain on the planet and not too long in the future supply will not meet demand.
Industrialized nations consume huge quantities of resources. According to the CIA World Fact Book, our oil consumption far exceeds that of any other country1. Our economy was built and depends on moving products from one place to another. We have progressed more than any other country over the last century, largely due to our dependence on oil. While this may be all well and good, there have been numerous disastrous side effects. As we approach "peak oil", the point at which we have consumed half of the planets recoverable oil reserves, supply will only dwindle from here on out. How we got here, however, isn't difficult to figure out. According to fightglobalwarming.com our current level of fuel efficiency is "pretty much back with the Model Ts. Astoundingly, the 28.5 miles per gallon (mpg) of Ford's Model Ts beats the mileage of many of today's vehicles." It's been 80 years of science and engineering since the Model T. We can do better, and we have, but largely society calls for bigger horsepower engines and heavier cars, which leads to more pollution. The fact of the matter is we pollute like crazy because we chose to.
Here's how it adds up: A gallon of gasoline weighs just over 6 pounds. When burned, the carbon in it combines with oxygen to produce about 19 pounds of CO2. Adding in the energy that went into making and distributing the fuel, the total global warming pollution is about 25 pounds of CO2 per gallon. An average car that gets 21 mpg and is driven about 30 miles a day uses 1.4 gallons daily and emits 35.7 pounds of CO2 every day. That's a lot of pounds when multiplied by the millions of cars across the country.2
Through the huge Co2 production involved in driving automobiles, individuals have destroyed our atmosphere. This huge amount of pollution has trapped heat within the atmosphere leading to climate change, new weather patterns, and even the extinction of an untold number of species. This is all because we wantonly drive large powerful oil belching automobiles.
As with automobiles, the greed of both individuals and corporations significantly leads to a number of problems with natural resources. One of the biggest driving factors in the destruction of the Earth is a want for status and wealth. Companies eat up massive amounts of energy to produce products that have short lives in the hands of consumers. Clothes, automobiles, and electronics are frequently replaced before they break or wear out. Consumers, driven to own the newest and latest, leave behind them a wake of discarded products. The energy put into the manufacture of these consumable goods can never be completely recovered. Through inefficient manufacture processes, replacing perfectly good products prematurely, or direct pollution, corporations pursue windfall profits with complete disregard for the effect their decisions and policies are making on the worlds' resources.
Corporations are institutions without a conscience. As a result of their conscious actions they pollute endlessly and make the world a more dangerous and dirty place. One of America's biggest polluters is none other than General Electric. The company known for light bulbs, home appliances, consumer electronics, military products, aircraft/train/ship engines, nuclear energy, and medical supplies, is hardly a responsible corporation. It should be known that GE is "wholly or partially liable for at least 78 Federal Superfund Sites." GE has a long history of complete disregard for the environment and the effects of its pollution. As is stated on the watchdog website www.cleanupge.org3:
In 1995 -- with the establishment of a Presidential Advisory Commission -- the full extent of GE's human experiments with nuclear radiation were revealed. General Electric ran the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington as part of America's weapons program; beginning in 1949, General Electric deliberately released radioactive material to see how far downwind the radioactive material would travel. One cloud drifted four hundred miles, all the way down to the California-Oregon border, carrying perhaps thousands of times more radiation than that emitted at Three Mile Island.
Our citizens largely allow GE to get away with this pollution. Government continues to use them as suppliers of military products; citizens continue to buy their appliances to put in their homes. As long as our society allows corporations to gobble up resources and pollute our world they will do so. While GE is a complete disgrace, we must look at ourselves and at least acknowledge the fact that through our lack of punitive action against this type of behavior we are somewhat responsible for it.
We only have one world and that is an undisputable fact. Sadly, as a society as a whole, we are largely unaware, or unable to undertake actions or measures towards preserving our fragile world. Through the actions of the individual, the government, and corporations, we are absolutely destroying the planet. It will take a grass roots effort to demand the type of changes in policy and behavior necessary to protect the world of today in order to ensure there exists a planet of the future.

1https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2174rank.html
2www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=263
3www.cleanupge.org

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Believe none of them. Nonetheless, on March 15, Reuters suggested what's ongoing, headlining: "Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe," saying:

"Japan faced potential catastrophe on Tuesday" after a fourth Fukushima reactor explosion, fire, and high-level radiation release, posing grave human health risks to an expanding area, including Toyko's 20 million population 170 miles south.

France's Nuclear Safety Authority rated the disaster a six on the international seven-point nuclear accident scale. Clearly, it's the worst ever. Europe's energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger called it an "apocalypse," telling the European Parliament that Toyko lost control of events

Independent experts agree. It's an unprecedented disaster spreading globally. All six Fukushima reactors are crippled, four of them spewing unknown amounts of radiation.

On March 15, city officials said levels were 20 times above normal, later stating they'd dropped, downplaying the risk. Government authorities also claimed Fukushima levels were falling. For residents throughout the country, believing them is hazardous to their health, given the gravity of the situation, likely deteriorating, not improving.

In Maebashi, 60 miles north of Tokyo and Chiba prefecture further south, Kyodo News reported radiation levels 10 times normal, perhaps downplaying much higher ones. Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan was alarmed, saying "(t)he possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening," meaning very likely it reached extremely hazardous levels. Earlier official reports downplayed the danger.

According to Hokkaido University Professor Koji Yamazaki, "Radioactive material will reach Tokyo but it is not harmful to human bodies because it will be dissipated by the time it gets" there.

False! Any amount of radiation is harmful. Moreover, it's cumulative, causing cancer if one human gene is affected. Depending on the type and amount, it damages chromosomes and DNA. In her landmark book, "Nuclear Madness," Helen Caldicott said:

"Lower doses of radiation can cause abnormalities of the immune system and can also cause leukemia five to ten years after exposure; (other) cancer(s), twelve to sixty years later; and genetic diseases and congenital anomalies in future generations.

Moreover, "nuclear radiation is forever," says Caldicott. It doesn't dissipate or disappear. Downplaying its danger is hypocritical and outrageous. For a scientist like Yamazaki, it's scandalous.

In 1953, Nobel laureate George Wald told students (including this writer) that "no amount of radiation is safe," explaining that "Every dose is an overdose."

Radiation is unforgiving. Exposure to elevated levels for short periods is harmful. If longer, cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses may develop. It's why using nuclear reactors to generate power is irresponsible, in fact, crazy.

On March 15, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, David Sanger and Keith Bradsher headlined, "Fire and Damage at Japanese Plant Raise Risk of Nuclear Disaster," saying:

Fukushima's operator Toyko Electric Power (TEPCO), a notorious industry scofflaw, "expressed extreme concern that (they) were close to losing control over the fuel melting that has been ongoing in three (Daiichi) reactors...." After Unit 2 exploded, "pressure had dropped in the 'suppression pool" - a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected."

Afterward, radiation levels soared. According to Hiroaki Koide, senior reactor engineering specialist at Kyoto University's Research Reactor Institute:

"We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released."

Moreover, a plant official said breaching would make it hard to impossible to maintain emergency seawater cooling for an extended period, and if workers are evacuated, "nuclear fuel in all three reactors (will likely) melt down," causing "wholesale releases of radioactive material...."

Further, already over 200 magnitude five or greater aftershocks have occurred, and authorities warned of a 70% chance of a magnitude seven or greater one in days, perhaps making a bad situation much worse. In addition, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said previous radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts - 1,000 times stronger. Earlier he said the situation isn't similar to Chernobyl. In fact, potentially it's far graver,  unprecedented.

Nuclear experts also explained that even without a full meltdown (perhaps ongoing), today's emergency will last a year or longer because of problems cooling the affected cores. As a result, long-term evacuations will be necessary. Already, nearly 500,000 people are affected, a total likely to grow, besides vast destruction, spreading contamination, growing threat to human health, and tens of thousands still missing, by now presumed dead, though not reported.

"Red Alert: Radiation Rising and Heading South in Japan"

On March 15, Stratfor Global Intelligence headlined that danger, saying:

After more explosions and risk of one or more full meltdowns (perhaps ongoing though unreported), "(t)he nuclear reactor situation in Japan had deteriorated significantly." Even Japan's Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Fukushima's No. 2 reactor radiation level rose 163-fold in three hours. At No. 3, it was 400-fold.

Muted Japanese media report rising radiation levels south and southwest, already reaching Tokyo and numerous prefectures. "The government says radiation levels have reached levels hazardous to human health," omitting that any level causes harm.

Reports "suggest a dramatic worsening as well as a wider spread than at any time since the emergency began." All Japan and the Pacific rim are threatened. "The situation at the (affected) facility is uncertain, but clearly deteriorating." How gravely, the fullness of time will determine.

A Final Comment

On March 12, nuclear expert Mark Grossman headlined, "Hydrogen, Zirconium, Flashbulbs - and Nuclear Craziness," saying:

Coolant loss causes hydrogen gas eruptions "because of a highly volatile substance called zirconium," chosen "in the 1940's and 50's" to build nuclear plants, "as the material (for) rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded."

Each plant has "30,000 to 40,000 rods - composed of twenty tones of zirconium." It alone works well, allowing "neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained."

But not without "a huge problem...." Zirconium "is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam." With tons used in nuclear plants, in "a compound called 'zircaloy,' it "clads tens of thousands of fuel rods."

Any interruption of coolant builds quickly. However, because of zirconium's explosive power, the equivalent of nitroglycerine, it catches fire and explodes "at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown."

Before it happens, it can cause hydrogen explosions "by drawing oxygen from water and steam letting it off," what happened at Fukushima. They, in turn, create more heat, "bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level," what may, in fact, have happened, perhaps bad enough to cause a full meltdown.

Using tons of explosive material like zirconium is "absolutely crazy." Doing it makes every nuclear plant a ticking time bomb, vulnerable to explode, spewing lethal poisons into the atmosphere.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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What if there wasn't an Earth? Or what if the planet we resided on was dying? At least then we wouldn't have all these social problems. In fact, we wouldn't have anything. We wouldn't even have life. If the planet you lived on was in danger would you try to save it?
Some scientists and officials state global warming is a hoax. It doesn't exist and there's nothing to worry about. Some think it's only a minimal problem and it's something to be looked into. Other scientists claim without a doubt that global warming is killing the Earth. They say it hurts species of plants, animals and negatively affects society. What do I think? I think it's wise to take threats like this serious.

Global warming is the heating of the Earth's surface and oceans caused by a process called the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is a series of events where radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases and is then partially redirected onto the surface of the Earth. A greenhouse gas is a gas in the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. The more gases that are in the atmosphere, the more heat that's being reflected back to the Earth's surface. "The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide" ("Cause and effect," 2007).

Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources that we use to create energy such as electricity and our transportation fuels. Transportation includes but isn't limited to cars, planes and trains. Oil, coal and natural gas are all fossil fuels that we use. Carbon dioxide, ozone and nitrous oxide are all also heavy air pollutants. Deforestation for urban development is another contributor of global warming that had been introduced by human beings. The lack of trees and plant life greatly decreases natural carbon dioxide filtration. The development of buildings and paved roads then invites automobiles and population growth to the newly renovated area. "Air pollution is usually concentrated in densely populated metropolitan areas" ("Air Pollution," 2011). Respectively, air pollution plays an important role in global warming.

The warming of the globe has a number of negative consequences. With the radiation being reflected back upon the Earth's surface it is only natural the accumulation of heat would cause the temperature to rise. The Earth itself has natural temperature patterns that show a consistent heating and cooling of the surface. "Average global temperatures show a similar trend, but 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record worldwide" (U.S. Environmental Protection, 2011).

These rising temperatures affect a range of ecosystems. Plants that thrive in cooler environments are being replaced by types of foliage whose growth was limited due to lack of warmth. Land and sea animals are changing their hibernation, migration and breeding habits to adapt to the new environment. Multiple species of fish have begun to move northward in search of cooler waters while the sea ice shrinkage causes the polar bear population to go from weighing an average of 640lbs to an average of 510lbs. With the hunting season for many mammals being cut short due to these new migration patterns the loss of animal life has increased. "Between the years 1987 and 2004 the Western Hudson Bay's population of polar bears declined by 22%" ("Polar bear," 2011).
Plants and animals aren't the only inhabitants that are affected by global warming. Among the cultural consequences of losing countless species of mammals and foliage, human beings are likely to suffer from change in agricultural development and natural disasters which lead to shortage in resources such as food and water. Just as the plants that live in warmer climates are overthrowing cold climate plants the production of our fruits, vegetables and grains will be forced to either adapt or wither. Areas with arid plot lands will become more fertile with the increase of warmth and sun while crops planted in cool climates will be subject to less productivity. New, now fertile land being developed for agricultural purposes disrupts the Earth's land cover preventing the soil from absorbing or reflecting heat and light, thus further contributing to global warming. With proper guidance and ample forewarning food distribution can be worked through as new technologies allow us to grow our food indoors or to prepare vast food storages. It wouldn't be easy but it wouldn't be impossible.

Natural disasters are just the tip of iceberg, so to speak, when discussing dangers that global warming can bring to society. As seen with the recent disasters in Japan and Haiti human beings are not prepared to fight major natural disturbances. Neglecting to counter global warming will result in "melting glaciers that will set off avalanches, floods and mud flow in mountain ranges and widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, and trigger tsunamis" (McKie, 2009). The scariest revelation when concerning global warming comes from theoretical notion that global warming will cause an ice age.
The polar ice caps and the melting glaciers are all fresh water while the ocean itself is salt water. In theory if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting ice caps and glaciers flow into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is a swift, warm current that (along with North Atlantic Drift) influences the climate of both Europe and northeastern North America. Without the Gulf Stream the bordering countries would cool dramatically. "Computer models simulating ocean-atmosphere climate dynamics indicate that the North Atlantic region would cool between three and five degrees Celsius if circulation were totally disrupted. The model shows it would produce winters twice as cold as the worst winters on record in the eastern United States in the past century" (Gagosian, 2011).

Prevention of global warming needs to be a top priority and the first order of business needs to be transportation. In Oregon we have a great public transportation system. Our Trimet system needs to be the blueprint for states that don't have mass transit. Pollution is one of the many words Trimet works hard to rid from our vocabulary. I'll admit public transit isn't the most convenient, and for those that shudder at the thought there's always small cars and carpooling. With the reduction of carbon dioxide and other heavy pollutants we could take a step in the right direction and research ways to begin greenhouse gas removal. If plants can convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, why can't we?

Plants are another major point that needs to be assessed. Cutting down trees without replanting them is suicide. And even if we do replant them it's at a fraction of what we cut down. There needs to be less building development until we can manage to get a grip on the situation right now. By continuing the production of giant trucks and sport utility vehicles without investing in alternative fuels we're only creating more of a problem. What the public needs to understand is that whether or not global warming is real our planet is dying. Even without global warming the pollution, disease and overall human induced abuse of the planet Earth is sucking the life right out from under us. By turning a blind eye all we're doing is killing any chance we have at surviving.

Work Cited
Air Pollution. (2011). Wikipedia. Retrieved March 15, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution
Cause and effect for global warming. (2007). Time for Change, Retrieved from http://timeforchange.org/cause-and-effect-for-global-warming
Gagosian, R. (2011). Global warming and the gulf stream. Retrieved March 16, 2011, from http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarmingandweather/a/gulf_stream.htm
McKie, R. (2009). Climate change:melting ice triggers natural disasters . The Observer, Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference
Polar bear. (2011). Wikipedia. Retrieved March 16, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Global_warming
U.S. Environmental Protection Ageny, (2011). Climate change indicators in the united states Washington, DC: Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators.html

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But what will Obama plead? The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas -- by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough.

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from 'failed' to 'passed.'

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety back-up systems are the 'EDGs' in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bail-out-in-the-making is called the South Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse -- Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency back-up diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuke, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked, the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary-men, who work all their their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York. (The company's other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.)

If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become world-wide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the American partners, I'll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you're next. The Obama Administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the Tokyo Electric shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous. Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who dies whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.

***

Greg Palast is the co-author of Democracy and Regulation, the United Nations ILO guide for public service regulators, with Jerrold Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor. Palast has advised regulators in 26 states and in 12 nations on the regulation of the utility industry.

Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.

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Point of fact: Besides its catastrophic quake, tsunami, destructive aftershocks, and resulting humanitarian crisis, Japan is experiencing a developing nuclear catastrophe, the full extent not known until independent sources reveal it.

On March 12, a huge explosion rocked Fukushima's Unit 1 reactor. Reports said its containment chamber was intact. Independent experts are skeptical, believing at least some damage occurred, perhaps a major breach now covered up. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) blamed a core meltdown for the explosion, releasing hazardous atmospheric radioactive cesium-137 and iodine-131.

Greenpeace said:

"This proves once and for all that nuclear power cannot ever be safe. Japan's nuclear plants were built....to withstand natural disasters, yet we still face potential meltdown" disaster.

Nuclear expert Helen Caldicott said atmospheric cesium-137 and iodine 131 releases pose grave human health risks. "All of these substances can cause cancer and genetic diseases either in the near or long term." Why are "we mad enough to introduce this disastrous form of energy into our lives," knowing major catastrophes are inevitable, especially in earthquake prone areas like Japan, California, and other vulnerable locations, many throughout the world.

Caldicott added in an email to this writer that the situation is "beyond terrifying!!!" Moreover, downplaying the potential severity is outrageous, irresponsible and criminal. Literally, millions of lives potentially are at risk. Further, nothing short of shutting down and dismantling all nuclear facilities is crucial. They're all ticking time bombs waiting to explode, especially ones in seismically active areas.

On March 12, nuclear expert Karl Grossman's CounterPunch article headlined, "Don't Worry, It's Just a Little Radiation," saying:

Lies always follow major events like Fukushima. Saying modest atmospheric radiation levels won't have long-term environmental and human health effects is deceitfully false. Grossman quoted the US Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI - the industry trade group) stating:

"The Japanese prime minister and the industry safety agency say all plants in the country are safe and that there has been no radiation release from any reactors," when, in fact, NISA confirmed it with few details.

On March 13, NEI said there's no danger of a Chernobyl-like event, when, in fact, the threat potential far exceeds it. "Japanese nuclear facilities are designed to withstand powerful seismic events," it said. In fact, substantial damage occurred, its full extent not revealed.

Like Japan's prime minister and other government officials, NEI is paid to lie to protect powerful member interests like General Electric. Its Nuclear Energy division is a major producer of "advanced reactor technologies" and related services.

Moreover, claiming failsafe systems prevent nuclear disasters is patently false, Grossman saying:

"In fact, like any machinery, nuclear plants can - and regularly do - undergo accidents. The big difference with atomic energy: the malfunctions can end up killing large numbers of people and impact other life as well."

At worst, however, entire countries, regions or planet earth may be catastrophically harmed. Potentially, Japan's meltdown triggered that type event. Full scale damage control is concealing it, or at least the possibility that it's happening.

Chernobyl's disaster, in fact, affected the entire Northern Hemisphere, killing almost a million people. Multiple Japanese reactor meltdowns may far exceed it, Grossman saying:

"Nuclear power plants are, in fact, life-threatening wherever they are - they represent the most dangerous way to boil water ever devised." Readily available "(w)ind, solar and geothermal energy and other forms of safe, clean power would" prevent the deadly fallout from Japan's catastrophe, threatening the entire Pacific rim and beyond, but using them would be bad for business. Companies like GE have plenty of clout to prevent it, placing bottom line priorities above humanity's survival.

Second Nuclear Explosion Rocks Japan

On March 14, Reuters headlined, "Japan grapples with nuclear crisis," saying:

A second explosion blew off a containment facility's roof. A third reactor's cooling system failed. Officials claimed no reactor's been harmed. As explained above, independent experts are skeptical, believing powerful explosions damage or destroy everything nearby, what official reports won't reveal.

As a result, "Japan scrambled to avert (multiple) meltdown(s) at a stricken nuclear reactor on Monday."

Live NHK video showed the reactor facility's skeletal remains, thick smoke rising and spreading. Multiple injuries were reported. Workers inside were exposed to extremely high radiation levels endangering their lives.

Thousands of quake/tsunami-related deaths are confirmed. Tens of thousands are missing and unaccounted for. In Otsuchi, ICRC's Patrick Fuller described "a scene from hell, absolutely nightmarish." As many as 10,000 people, half the town's population, may have perished, besides many others in Northern Japan.

Spreading Atmospheric Radiation

Massive atmospheric radiation is feared, frantic Fukushima engineers trying to contain it. Multiple reactors are affected. Full scale official and media damage control efforts are suppressing bad news. The IAEA said Japan added a third troubled plant, Onagawa, to others under a state of emergency because of failed cooling systems and radiation releases. Later reports suggested Onagawa experienced no leaks, whether or not true. Be skeptical.

On March 13, New York Times writers David Sanger and Matthew Wald headlined, "Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say," stating:

Flooding two stricken reactors with corrosive seawater (rendering them henceforth inoperable) is "a desperate step to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown," perhaps ongoing but concealed. Japanese officials and media reports call it "partial." Radioactive steam is being released to relieve pressure, spreading atmospheric poison.

A widening area is being contaminated. Tens of thousands evacuated "may not be able to return to their homes for a considerable period," perhaps never, depending on contamination levels. "More steam releases also mean (spreading contamination) across the Pacific...." Discount America's Nuclear Regulatory Commission saying:

"Hawaii, Alaska, the US Territories, and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity."

False! Atmospheric winds and rain potentially may contaminate planet earth, some areas more than others. A worried unnamed official said, "under the best scenarios, this isn't going to end anytime soon," or perhaps well.

Another concern affects some Japanese reactors plus others in France and Germany. They use mox (mixed oxide) fuel, containing reclaimed plutonium - the most hazardous known substance. When ingested, a tiny spec can kill. Larger inhaled atmospheric amounts could devastate whole cities. Two damaged Fukushima units use it, Nos. 2 and 3.

Sanger and Wald added:

"Inside the plant....there was deep concern that spent nuclear fuel that was kept in a 'cooling pond' (began) letting off potentially deadly gamma radiation. Then water levels inside the reactor cores began to fall. (An estimated) top four to nine feet of nuclear fuel in the core and control rods appear to have been exposed to the air - a condition that" caused melting, potentially a "full meltdown" that may, in fact, be happening.

Using corrosive seawater may, in fact, not work. Because of high containment vessel pressure, forcing it inside is like "trying to pour water into an inflated balloon," according to one unnamed source. It's not clear how much water is getting in and whether cores are covered. Damaged gauges make knowing it impossible, so doing it is seat-of-the-pants, a "Hail Mary" attempt at best.

Operating 55 nuclear facilities, Japan relies heavily on them for electricity, at present 30%, a figure expected to reach 50% by 2030 if planned additions are completed.

Tokyo Electric Power's (TEPCO) Shoddy Maintenance and Safety Record

On March 12, Los Angeles Times writers Mark Magnier and Barbara Demick headlined, "Japanese fearful as nuclear crisis builds," saying:

"(M)any Japanese don't trust (what) authorities (tell) them" anymore. Moreover, they "have an uncomfortable relationship with nuclear power" and TEPCO, Fukushima's operator.

"As many people (know, it) has a history of not being forthcoming about nuclear safety issues, particularly those surrounding earthquake-related dangers."

In 2003, its 17 nuclear plants were temporarily shut for falsifying safety inspection reports. In 2006, it was learned that its coolant-water data at two plants were falsified in the 1980s. Critics have long expressed deep concern about safety at many of Japan's nuclear facilities," some dating from the 1970s and 1980s.

Fukushima especially "has long been on critics' radar, but so has the Hamaoka plant," 100 miles southwest of Toyko on an active fault line. In fact, Kobe University Professor Emeritus Katsuhiko Ishibashi said:

"I have been warning about Japan's possibility of a genpatsu shinsai - a nuclear disaster," explaining that many nuclear facilities are hazardously located in seismically unsafe locations. No one listened.

On March 13, Kyodo News said another cooling system failed at Tokai's No. 2 facility, 120 km from Tokyo. Emergency measures were taken. Unreliable reports say a backup pump and cooling system are operating. Fukushima's No. 1 and 3 reactors experienced meltdowns. Kyodo called its No. 2 "troubled," raising fears of the worst there, besides what's happening at Tokai No. 2 and perhaps other quake/tsunami affected reactors.

Third Reactor Explosion Rocks Japan

On March 14, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, David Sanger and Keith Bradsher headlined, "Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise," saying:

"Japan's nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe" after a third explosion rocked another Fukushima reactor, "damag(ing) the vessel containing the nuclear core (spewing) large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials."

Even top officials who lie admitted "a very high risk" exists. In fact, it's well beyond "risk." It's reality, affecting all Japan, the Pacific rim, and beyond. Clearly, a major catastrophe is unfolding.

What more is needed to demand an immediate shutdown and replacement of all nuclear facilities worldwide. Their continued use threatens all humanity.

A Final Comment

Of any magnitude, meltdowns aren't minor, and no structures are earthquake or tsunami-proof. When most intense, Mother Nature prevails. Images of affected Japanese areas and damaged reactor facilities offer proof, besides the potentially massive, widespread human toll.

Sunday, March 13, on the Progressive Radio News Hour, Karl Grossman explained Japan's "nuclear emergency," discussed in detail on his blog site, accessed through the following link:

http://karlgrossman.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-nuclear-emergency.html

Nuclear plants use radioactive material for heat to generate electricity. Huge amounts are needed. To prevent overheating, "vast amounts of coolant are required, up to a million gallons of water a minute." Without it, meltdowns occur, because "in less than a minute," temperatures can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit - hot enough to "burn through the cement bottom of the nuclear plant" to earth beneath.

Nuclear scientists call it the "China syndrome," meaning "it descends to the water table underlying a plant. Then, in a violent reaction, molten core and cold water combine, creating steam explosions and releasing a plume of radioactive poisons."

Where it spreads depends on wind velocity, direction, and rain. Nuclear reactors are vulnerable, life-threatening, and "the most dangerous way to boil water ever devised." Deactivating them is essential, especially when safe alternatives exist, so far spurned to pad bottom lines for companies like GE, concerned about profits, not human safety.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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More below on the inevitable dangers from commercial nuclear power proliferation, besides added military ones.

On March 11, New York Times writer Martin Fackler headlined, "Powerful Quake and Tsunami Devastate Northern Japan," saying:

"The 8.9-magnitude earthquake (Japan's strongest ever) set off a devastating tsunami that sent walls of water (six meters high) washing over coastal cities in the north." According to Japan's Meteorological Survey, it was 9.0.

The Sendai port city and other areas experienced heavy damage. "Thousands of homes were destroyed, many roads were impassable, trains and buses (stopped) running, and power and cellphones remained down. On Saturday morning, the JR rail company" reported three trains missing. Many passengers are unaccounted for. Striking at 2:46PM Tokyo time, it caused vast destruction, shook city skyscrapers, buckled highways, ignited fires, terrified millions, annihilated areas near Sendai, possibly killed thousands, and caused a nuclear meltdown, its potential catastrophic effects far exceeding quake and tsunami devastation, almost minor by comparison under a worst case scenario.

On March 12, Times writer Matthew Wald headlined, "Explosion Seen at Damaged Japan Nuclear Plant," saying: "Japanese officials (ordered evacuations) for people living near two nuclear power plants whose cooling systems broke down," releasing radioactive material, perhaps in far greater amounts than reported.

NHK television and Jiji said the 40-year old Fukushima plant's outer structure housing the reactor "appeared to have blown off, which could suggest the containment building had already been breached." Japan's nuclear regulating agency said radioactive levels inside were 1,000 times above normal.

Reuters said the 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage, up to then the most costly ever natural disaster. This time, from quake and tsunami damage alone, that figure will be dwarfed. Moreover, under a worst case core meltdown, all bets are off as the entire region and beyond will be threatened with permanent contamination, making the most affected areas unsafe to live in.

On March 12, Stratfor Global Intelligence issued a "Red Alert: Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant," saying:

Fukushima Daiichi "nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown." Stratfor downplayed its seriousness, adding that such an event "does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster," that already may have happened - the ultimate nightmare short of nuclear winter.

According to Stratfor, "(A)s long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the (core's) breached but the containment facility built around (it) remains intact, the melted fuel can be....entombed within specialized concrete" as at Chernobyl in 1986.

In fact, that disaster killed nearly one million people worldwide from nuclear radiation exposure. In their book titled, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko said:

"For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere."

Stratfor explained that if Fukushima's floor cracked, "it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through (its) containment system and enter the ground. This has never happened before," at least not reported. If now occurring, "containment goes from being merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible," making the quake, aftershocks, and tsunamis seem mild by comparison. Potentially, millions of lives will be jeopardized.

Japanese officials said Fukushima's reactor container wasn't breached. Stratfor and others said it was, making the potential calamity far worse than reported. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the explosion at Fukushima's Saiichi No. 1 facility could only have been caused by a core meltdown. In fact, 3 or more reactors are affected or at risk. Events are fluid and developing, but remain very serious. The possibility of an extreme catastrophe can't be discounted.

Moreover, independent nuclear safety analyst John Large told Al Jazeera that by venting radioactive steam from the inner reactor to the outer dome, a reaction may have occurred, causing the explosion.

"When I look at the size of the explosion," he said, "it is my opinion that there could be a very large leak (because) fuel continues to generate heat."

Already, Fukushima way exceeds Three Mile Island that experienced a partial core meltdown in Unit 2. Finally it was brought under control, but coverup and denial concealed full details until much later.

According to anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, Japan's quake fallout may cause nuclear disaster, saying:

"This is a very serious situation. If the cooling system fails (apparently it has at two or more plants), the super-heated radioactive fuel rods will melt, and (if so) you could conceivably have an explosion," that, in fact, occurred.

As a result, massive radiation releases may follow, impacting the entire region. "It could be, literally, an apocalyptic event. The reactor could blow." If so, Russia, China, Korea and most parts of Western Asia will be affected. Many thousands will die, potentially millions under a worse case scenario, including far outside East Asia.

Moreover, at least five reactors are at risk. Already, a 20-mile wide radius was evacuated. What happened in Japan can occur anywhere. Yet Obama's proposed budget includes $36 billion for new reactors, a shocking disregard for global safety.

Calling Fukushima an "apocalyptic event," Wasserman said "(t)hese nuclear plants have to be shut," let alone budget billions for new ones. It's unthinkable, he said. If a similar disaster struck California, nuclear fallout would affect all America, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and parts of South America.

Nuclear Power: A Technology from Hell

Nuclear expert Helen Caldicott agrees, telling this writer by phone that a potential regional catastrophe is unfolding. Over 30 years ago, she warned of its inevitability. Her 2006 book titled, "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer" explained that contrary to government and industry propaganda, even during normal operations, nuclear power generation causes significant discharges of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as hundreds of thousands of curies of deadly radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year.

Moreover, nuclear plants are atom bomb factories. A 1000 megawatt reactor produces 500 pounds of plutonium annually. Only 10 are needed for a bomb able to devastate a large city, besides causing permanent radiation contamination.

Nuclear Power not Cleaner and Greener

Just the opposite, in fact. Although a nuclear power plant releases no carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas, a vast infrastructure is required. Called the nuclear fuel cycle, it uses large amounts of fossil fuels.

Each cycle stage exacerbates the problem, starting with the enormous cost of mining and milling uranium, needing fossil fuel to do it. How then to dispose of mill tailings, produced in the extraction process. It requires great amounts of greenhouse emitting fuels to remediate.

Moreover, other nuclear cycle steps also use fossil fuels, including converting uranium to hexafluoride gas prior to enrichment, the enrichment process itself, and conversion of enriched uranium hexafluoride gas to fuel pellets. In addition, nuclear power plant construction, dismantling and cleanup at the end of their useful life require large amounts of energy.

There's more, including contaminated cooling water, nuclear waste, its handling, transportation and disposal/storage, problems so far unresolved. Moreover, nuclear power costs and risks are so enormous that the industry couldn't exist without billions of government subsidized funding annually.

The Unaddressed Human Toll from Normal Operations

Affected are uranium miners, industry workers, and potentially everyone living close to nuclear reactors that routinely emit harmful radioactive releases daily, harming human health over time, causing illness and early death.

The link between radiation exposure and disease is irrefutable, depending only on the amount of cumulative exposure over time, Caldicott saying:

"If a regulatory gene is biochemically altered by radiation exposure, the cell will begin to incubate cancer, during a 'latent period of carcinogenesis,' lasting from two to sixty years."

In fact, a single gene mutation can prove fatal. No amount of radiation exposure is safe. Moreover, when combined with about 80,000 commonly used toxic chemicals and contaminated GMO foods and ingredients, it causes 80% of known cancers, putting everyone at risk everywhere.

Further, the combined effects of allowable radiation exposure, uranium mining, milling operations, enrichment, and fuel fabrication can be devastating to those exposed. Besides the insoluble waste storage/disposal problem, nuclear accidents happen and catastrophic ones are inevitable.

Inevitable Meltdowns

Caldicott and other experts agree they're certain in one or more of the hundreds of reactors operating globally, many years after their scheduled shutdown dates unsafely. Combined with human error, imprudently minimizing operating costs, internal sabotage, or the effects of a high-magnitude quake and/or tsunami, an eventual catastrophe is certain.

Aging plants alone, like Japan's Fukushima facility, pose unacceptable risks based on their record of near-misses and meltdowns, resulting from human error, old equipment, shoddy maintenance, and poor regulatory oversight. However, under optimum operating conditions, all nuclear plants are unsafe. Like any machine or facility, they're vulnerable to breakdowns, that if serious enough can cause enormous, possibly catastrophic, harm.

Add nuclear war to the mix, also potentially inevitable according to some experts, by accident or intent, including Steven Starr saying:

"Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war," the consequences of which "would be profound, potentially killing "tens of millions of people, and caus(ing) long-term, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of Earth's protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one billion people."

Worse still is nuclear winter, the ultimate nightmare, able to end all life if it happens. It's nuclear proliferation's unacceptable risk, a clear and present danger as long as nuclear weapons and commercial dependency exist.

In 1946, Enstein knew it, saying:

"Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

He envisioned two choices - abolish all forms of nuclear power or face extinction. No one listened. The Doomsday Clock keeps ticking.

Senior Contributing Editor Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected] Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Climate change is a topic that has been spun by the mainstream media, debunked by corporate scientists, and remains a controversial topic in the US. In the media, there isn't a clear consensus on whether the climate is changing due to humans, or just simply another event that may happen because the earth has gone into seemingly random and severe events throughout history. There are several contributors to climate change, and scientific data supports the fact that the contributors of a changing climate are due to humans.

Greenhouse gases are the leading cause for global warming. Greenhouse gases are unable to escape the earth's many layers, so it becomes trapped in the biosphere (specifically, the stratosphere, a layer of the outer earth composed of gases). Since greenhouse gases become trapped and they don't go through the various layers of earth and out into space, they stay within the surface of the earth, thus creating heat and lead to detrimental changes to the climate. One example is a rising ocean. Norfolk Virginia residents have experienced several flooding events caused by a rising tide. According to the New York Times, "Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast -- 14.5 inches since 1930." (NYtimes.com).

Greenhouse gases are causing an abrupt change in the climate, proof that several man-made pollutants are to blame for weather and ecological changes. Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas that is threatening our environment. Carbon dioxide is emitted from burning fossil fuels, cement production, and deforestation. Air pollution and water pollution are the main sources of chemical and toxic waste pollution, as well as burning garbage containing plastics and clothing. These all have an effect on greenhouse gases, and the disturbance of life-sustaining ecosystems around the world. (epa.gov).

The US is responsible for 75% of the world's toxic waste. America only accounts for 5% of the global population, yet we use more energy and building resources than any other country. (Intersections, 2009). The US disposes of toxic waste in the ocean, rivers, sewage systems, underground, and by burning it. Society at large has an assumption that technology can clean up our environmental mess, and that humans can "fix" any problems that we've created. The problem with this logic is that humans live on planet earth- planet earth does not adjust and accommodate the climate and ecosystems to fit our needs. We have to recognize that protecting forests, rainforests, and countless eco systems on land and in the ocean keep us alive. If we disrupt these systems, we are jeopardizing billions of lives on earth, and the entire population of the United States.

I believe the blatant disregard for protecting the environment in our society is due in part to our economic system. We live in a free enterprise country, a place where you can run a corporation and make millions of dollars, and are rewarded for your monetary success, and there is no consequence for environmental implications caused by a corporation. Capitalism is about profit, and profit turns a blind eye at global environmental crises. Koch Industries is the 2nd largest corporation in the US. They own 200 companies under their primary corporation. This company has hired scientists and lobbyists to protect their interests- coal, oil, deforestation. (climatesciencewatch.org) Corporate science has been used to debunk climate change by companies like these who have a stake in the resources that harm the environment and impacts society the most. GE was responsible for dumping toxic waste into the Hudson river- and the company was never forced to hold accountability. To this day, the Hudson is so polluted that doctors warn people in the area to not eat the fish or drink the water. GE supposedly stopped this horrendous practice in the 1970's, and supposedly began dredging PCB's out of the water 2 years ago- but people are still told that the river is a health hazard. (livescience.com). This is an example of corporations not having to be accountable to the EPA, or anyone else for that matter. They were told to stop dumping waste in 1977- and it took GE over 30 years to do anything about it. It's also an example of how as a society, we worship the dollar over the earth that inhabits us. Thinking this way is irrational and dangerous.

The only way to try and stall the looming change in climate is if we, as a society, drastically change our lifestyle and consumption habits. We have to adopt methods of clean energy that do not emit carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other pollutants into the atmosphere while protecting our soil and water. We cannot rely on the government or corporations to lead the way; it would have to begin with a massive social effort.

To go a step further, assuming society is ready to change their lifestyle and adapt to a simpler, environmentally friendly one, we would have to stop producing products that contain plastic, synthetic and chemical materials. That alone wouldn't even be enough. Driving cars would have to be a thing of the past. This would lessen the production of fossil fuels and oil drilling, if enough people stopped driving. The food industry would have to be addressed; the meat industry contributes in several ways to climate change. Society would have to change their consumption habits surrounding meat. If more than half of our population stopped buying beef, there would be a surplus of beef that is not being used and it would force meat industries to reduce their level of production. Something like this would need to play out in order for toxic industries to change their harmful production practices. Likewise, if American's stopped buying plastic products, companies would slow down production and it would alleviate chemical waste.

There are a few steps we can collectively take now to stall the imminent threat of climate change. Stop using commercial cleaning products. Baking soda and vinegar work fine; they even kill mold and mildew. Save rain water and use it to water your garden. Stop buying beef entirely. Recycle what you can; if you can't recycle certain things, make use of them in your home- we must be creative with waste. And, start shopping at second hand stores. Stop buying new clothes, socks, or shoes. It's a money saver and will eventually lead to clothing manufacturers limiting their production. And, last but not least, we have to find a way to be less - dependant on driving cars. If physically able, ride a bicycle. If that is not a possibility, use mass transit. These solutions are only stalling tactics, but if our society adopts these methods of living, it will become habitual. Everyone will save money in the process, and my hope is that we will be able to see a quantifiable decrease in greenhouse gases if we can adapt to this kind of lifestyle change. My fear is that these are unrealistic goals in our culture, and based on the values of our culture. Our culture is based on consuming, throwing away, buying what's trendy, and believing what you watch on television. Materialism is a valued cultural attribute for many Americans. Before we adopt all of these lifestyle changes, it would be necessary to analyze cultural reasons for consumption, and giving incentives to people immersed in materialization to come back down to reality and consume thoughtfully, not selfishly.

Works Cited:

Eitzen and Zinn Custom published "Social Problems". Intersections Collection. Social Problems, Rowan Wolf's Sections Only. 2009.

Piltz, Rick. "Koch Industries Multibillionaire Koch Brothers Bankroll Attacks on Climate Change Science and Policy." Climate Science Watch. Web.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2010/03/18/koch-industries-multibillionaire-koch-brothers-bankroll-attacks-on-climate-change-science-and-policy/. Government Accountability Project. 2010.

United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate Change- Greenhouse Gas Emissions. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html. Web. Greenhouse Gas Overview. 2011.

Kaufman, Leslie. "Front Line City in Virginia Tackles Rising Sea." New York Times. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/science/earth/26norfolk.html. 2010.

Welsh, Jennifer. "Fish Evolved to Survive GE Toxins in Hudson River." Live Science. Web. http://www.livescience.com/12897-fish-evolved-survive-ge-toxins-hudson-110218.html. 2011.

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CB: David, tell us a bit about your background and your journey from the 1950s values that most people our age were raised with. How did you get from there to where you are now so that you could write such a phenomenal book like "The New Normal"?

DW: Back when I was a teenager in the 1960s, I felt queasiness lurking in the easy-going euphoria of the American lifestyle. Gandhi once said, "Speed is irrelevant if you're traveling in the wrong direction," and it was obvious to me that the accelerating pace of life in the U.S. didn't have a real direction. Everything was becoming automatic, comfortable, and "convenient," yet other than going to the moon, banishing germs from our kitchens, and scrapping with the communists, we seemed to be floating up and away from reality like soap bubbles. We each wanted to expend as little effort as possible but still get paid handsomely for it so we could live the good life, before we... popped.

I began to notice that people whose lifestyles didn't center on money were often healthier and more interesting. They seemed more caring and unselfish, and they were passionate about doing active, celebratory things like playing music, dancing, playing chess or bridge, embroidering, fly fishing, cooking delicious meals, studying history, gardening, and staying current with political issues. TV wasn't a central part of their lives; they were less distracted by commercial hype and less detoured by all the products. What they earned seemed less important than what they learned. I was fascinated that in many cases, the ordinary, American Dream-life was much more expensive than the extraordinary lives of these unique, self-creating people who lived their lives rather than trying to buy them.  They had the real wealth - things that made them feel glad to be alive.

Since those early years, I've worked ten years with the U.S. EPA, written or edited ten books, produced fifteen videos and TV documentaries on various aspects of sustainability, and helped design and govern the neighborhood I've lived in for 15 years.  My conviction that our species needs a new way of being in the world has only gotten stronger. The rules and norms we live by - our social "software" - are now obsolete in a world in which temperatures and populations are rising but water tables and human satisfaction are falling.

We urgently need to adopt and implement a simple but proven 4-step strategy to break our addictions to various substances from oil to stuff to prescription drugs. 1. Admit we have a problem of unprecedented proportions. 2. Humbly seek support and cooperation from each other, from whatever higher power we acknowledge, and from history. 3. Create a healthy new cultural identity. 4. With fresh new goals and priorities, intervene in the broken systems and patterns that are destroying the world with which we evolved.

We should shoot for health and wellness rather than wealth and "hellness," and agree to move, together, away from a lifestyle of deadlines and dying species and toward lifelines and living wealth. In The New Normal, I researched and presented 33 leverage points or key places to intervene to quickly shift our economy and culture in a more admirable, affordable, and sustainable direction. The big picture is that production and consumption will no longer be the defining characteristics of the emerging era - cultural richness, efficiency, cooperation, expression, ecological design, and biological restoration will be.

CB: Right now as you and I sit here, the prices of food worldwide are surging daily. Yet you tell us in your book to buy organic food. We can grow some food, but much of it we can't. And in this time of global economic crisis and skyrocketing food prices, why should we spend the extra money for organic?

Americans are overfed but undernourished. We have the cheapest food as a percentage of income in the "developed" world, but the most expensive health care. In recent years, national spending on health care jumped from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, largely to treat preventable diseases. Meanwhile spending for food fell from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent.  However, judging by the trends, we will spend more of our discretionary income for healthy food in the near future and less for poorly designed gadgets, clothes, and monster-houses. And this change in dietary priorities will deliver solid, satisfying value. We'll have more energy and be more productive. We'll spend more time baking and breaking bread with friends and family, and less time at the doctor's office.

"Let food be your medicine," Hippocrates counseled long ago, and insurance companies nervously agree. Observes Michael Pollan, every case of Type 2 diabetes they can help prevent with better diet and exercise adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly every can of soda or deep-fried chicken nugget in a school cafeteria is seen as a threat to future profits. So the insurance and health care industries are part of a coalition with enlightened farmers, politicians, and citizen activists, that is bring radical change to the food system.

Evolution dictates that we should eat organic. The better food we eat, the less we go to the doctor. Furthermore, organic food gets CO2 out of the air and back into our food. What is more, organic materials hold water, and this is especially relevant here in Colorado with its water issues. We would all do well to shift our budgets so that we can eat organic.

But our backs are against the wall, there's no doubt about that. The assumptions and goals that guided agriculture in a world of one billion  (1800) or two billion people (1930) are way out of date. We need to preserve the source of our food - the farms themselves - or else the global food system will collapse, as it already has throughout history. Yield and profit are important, but so are preservation of soil and water; restoration of biological diversity; safety and healthiness of food; radical reductions in fossil fuel consumed and greenhouse gases emitted; and co-evolution with an increasingly urban population.

Fortunately, the global food system is one of most easily adapted major systems (though it won't be a snap) for several key reasons: agriculture has until recently been solar-powered, and can be again, when oil becomes too expensive to prop up the industry. The supply-and-demand economics of the food system are accessible to consumers, who are becoming more aware of the overall value of food purchases. Because food affects the most important issues of our times - energy, health, security, equality, biological habitat, and climate change, agriculture will come under increasing public and political scrutiny. The trend toward organic produce and whole foods grown in market gardens and small farms will continue - not just because it can be financially lucrative but also because the work is satisfying to a certain, green-thumbed sector of the population. For example, 2010 was the first year in many that there were more farms in the U.S. rather than fewer.

CB: We live in a state (Colorado) that is going to confront very serious water issues in the near future, especially as climate change worsens. From your perspective, what should we as a state and as local communities be doing about this now?

The issue of water has always been interwoven with keystone resources that lie beneath the bottom line of our abstract economy: oil, grain, minerals, and topsoil. Ask farmers and ranchers who have relied on "fossil water" from aquifers if water shortages are real. Many have now gone out of business. Many of the strategies we need to implement are already underway, but we need to amplify and expedite them. Our landscapes are far too thirsty, and can benefit greatly from a higher level of water-conservative design, using more appropriate plants, mulches and increases in soil organic matter to hold the water.  Innovative farmers drip water right into the root zone, however many of them still ship water thousands of miles in the form of juicy peaches and tomatoes. Long "food miles" to transport watery produce may one day become a taxable offense.

Water is embedded in many other products and practices currently in use. For example, although plumbing fixtures are becoming more efficient, there's still great potential in products like the dual flush toilet. Why use a gallon and a half of water to flush urine?  Water and wastewater treatment will be much more efficient in the future, and operate at a much smaller, more local scale. For example, "living machines" can treat wastewater right in the neighborhood with cattails, snails, fish, and other organisms in greenhouse tanks, without nuisance odors, providing clean water for irrigation. Another emerging energy technology, the fuel cell, can also produce clean water for neighborhood use, without any noise or pollution.  This is a huge departure from fossil fuel and nuclear plants which require up to 40% of a region's water for use in cooling towers.

We need to collect rainwater and use gray water in our state, which can only happen when state laws change. Already, Arizona, New Mexico and California laws allow these uses, why nor Colorado?

In the long run, the best way to conserve water is to host fewer people at a time on our small planet.  When the fossil water runs out and glaciers dry up, our current "normal" will be revealed for what it is: a very temporary and excessive binge.

CB: In "The New Normal," you have a section on the new affordable economy which is absolutely amazing. It is a roadmap for where we need to be in order to insure the continuation of our planet and our species. What are some of the characteristics of that economy, and what has to happen for us to get there?

Though we still cling to our current, high-stress lifestyle, it's become crystal clear to many that the half-millennium-long Industrial Era is running on empty. There's not enough rich industrial ore, topsoil, or biological habitat left for the same old hyper-consumption game to continue-- especially as human population and expectations continue to swell. There's not enough natural resilience to absorb our wastes and provide immunity; not enough climatic stability, psychological stamina, cheap energy, timber, or potable water, either.  A primary goal in the new era will be maturity rather than growth. In their most mature, climax stages, biological systems have learned how to optimize diversity, resourcefulness, and resilience, weaving partnerships among species to make use of each scrap of resource. As a subset of nature, so should we.  To create an affordable economy, the Holy Grail should not be unlimited growth but maturity, like a well-practiced, flawless concerto or a basketball team whose plays are perfectly executed. The players don't need to be bigger to win games, just better.

It seems that a majority of Americans don't yet understand that there are too many transactions, too much "throughput" for biological systems to remain stable. More consumption isn't the answer to our economic challenges; it's where the problems began. Every single day, the global economy extracts the volumetric equivalent of about 112 Empire State Buildings from the earth, disrupting the nests, seedbeds, roots, and hunting grounds of gazillions of living things--our planet's real wealth, which provides clean air and water, flood control, pest control, pollination, renewable energy, fertile topsoil, and climatic stability. When natural systems degrade, life becomes more expensive.

One of the most powerful points of intervention is social: the definition of "success." In the new normal, we won't consider individuals and cultures successful unless daily life is rich in discretionary time, trust, health, social connection, and meaning. Yet, in a recent Gallup survey of 150 countries, the U.S. ranked at the bottom, below 145 other countries in overall stress - just ahead of Iraq and Afghanistan. If the quest for material wealth is bankrupting nature and filling us with anxiety, why don't we just change the goal?  Stepping outside the box into a brand new paradigm may be the most effective lever of all.

Right now, our economy is all about plunder--destroy nature and make money. It must become about preserving nature as a way of making money.

The restoration of nature should be our overall mission for the remainder of this century. We already see remarkable results from approaches like marine reserves, where fishing is temporarily banned. After a New England snapper fishery was protected for a number of years, the local population of snapper increased 40-fold, and as supply went up, prices came down. Yet old-normal federal subsidies for fishing, farming, and forestry encourage depletion of resources like fish, water, soil, and old growth trees, because they reward yield and neglect to protect the source of that yield. Instead of subsidizing farmers based on quantity of yield, our money will be better spent rewarding maintenance of soil and diversity of species. Protecting natural resilience avoids environmental and social costs that make life more expensive, such as erosion, pesticide and fertilizer pollution, and loss of rural communities.

If we look at other systems that support our current way of life, we see many opportunities to create a truly affordable economy, in which we could work less and play more. For example, if we avoid energy losses in America's millions of buildings--with better insulation, windows, appliances and fixtures--energy experts document more than a trillion dollars in savings. We can finance these improvements as much with information as capital, because they provide a continuing stream of avoided costs, or "negawatts."

The redesign of America's suburbs can also make life less expensive. By changing zoning laws to permit restaurants and hardware stores, by growing gardens rather than lawns, by establishing neighborhood vanpools, shared power sources, and recycling systems, by creating town centers that supply what local residents need, we avoid the need for relentless economic expansion by meeting needs directly. Dysfunctional systems are not affordable.

The way we make and consume products offers a universe of opportunity, too. High on our hit list are reductions in unnecessary packaging and air travel, excessive meat consumption, glossy green lawns, and food waste (the average household throws away 14% of what they buy). Flagship American industries like cement and steel are only half as efficient as the global state of the art. In the case of steel making, we miss an opportunity to convert to high-efficiency electric arc furnaces because they use recycled steel, and our recycling rate for steel is a dismal 60%.  In the new economy, recycling will become a ritualized, standard practice, embedded in design and policy, so less costly extraction is required.

We can have much greater quality and durability in our products if we stage a cultural revolution of "consumer disobedience." Maybe our motto can be "fewer things but better." With fewer things, we'll be happier in smaller, less expensive houses, and as a society, we can convert much of our expansive housing stock to multi-family dwellings.

We currently spend $900 per capita to be shelled with unsolicited advertising, embedded in the cost of products and services. A culture that is less consumer-driven will tolerate less advertising and less debt. And less debt means less interest on the debt.

Close to half of the diseases Americans suffer are preventable with improvements in diet, exercise, and stress reduction. For example, we spend $150 billion annually to treat diabetes and $120 billion on obesity. Many of these ailments are symptoms of the way we live. For example, one economist suggests that the huge gap between rich and poor in America is creating unprecedented stress. Our unaffordable economy is making us sick. We are a nation on the edge of a nervous breakdown. We consume two-thirds of the world's anti-depressants as we battle for position in the economy. Why not just declare a cease-fire with the Joneses we've been trying to keep up with?  We've bought into the notion that if we're not wealthy, we're not good enough, which creates horrible stress and anxiety. Why not become citizens again, creating employee-owned businesses and member-owned credit unions that can reduce both killer stress and unnecessary expenses? (Credit unions save $8 billion a year in interest on loans because they are non-profit) Why not invest in community bonds, portfolios and banks and make living returns on our investments?

Savings like these are possible not because we are "cutting back," but because we're tuning up our value system, getting rid of waste, creating and adopting more sensible ways of getting things done. Rather than mandating 100,000 hours of work and commuting per lifetime, a more affordable lifestyle enables each citizen to work less and pay closer attention to things that really matter, like the health of our families, communities, and the environment.

Of course we can't do these things individually. It's an agreement, and the whole culture needs to say, "Enough! Now we must serve the economy instead of expecting the economy to serve us."

CB: In "The New Normal," you have another section that is my personal favorite and that we could spend all day on called "The 12 Paradigm Principles." As you know, I've written a book entitled Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, and my new book is Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. One of the reasons I wanted to interview you has to do with something you say in the first paradigm principle which is: "The challenges we face are not just technical--they are social, biological, political, and even spiritual challenges."

So with that in mind, what do you think needs to happen spiritually and emotionally for humankind to embrace these 12 principles? Can you spell that out specifically for our readers and tell us a little bit about what that would look like? Some of it may be pleasant to think about, and some of it may not be pretty.

It's been said that we humans don't usually make major changes when we see the light--we also need to feel the heat.  That convergence is well underway, but many of the changes we are making are not visible. They are not about flashy new technologies or innovative policies, and they are not about "doing without."  You could say they are more about "doing within."

Changes of heart and mind have often created social tsunamis - almost-instant transitions to a new way of seeing the world (like a school of fish reversing direction). In turn, this renaissance leads to changes in technology, policy, and behavior. When that happens, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't we make these changes sooner?  They're far more sensible, comfortable and equitable than we thought they would be.  It's just the way we do it now."

But this cultural epiphany can't take place unless we are willing to leave our comfort zones, and unless we recycle some familiar assumptions that are no longer useful. For example, that the environment is inside the economy. That people are only worth what they are paid. That economic growth of any kind is always good. That one country can teach another how not to kill, by killing them.

We have experienced a mini-Golden Era since World War II. Many of our challenges have been solved (or at least apparently solved) with technological innovations that have increased labor and land productivity. However, we now face challenges of a different nature; technology is not the limiting factor of productivity--resources are. Deeper wells can't pump water that's no longer there, and larger boats and nets can't harvest more fish when fish populations have been wiped out.  Since we can't change certain biological and geological realities, we need to change ourselves instead. As in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's progression towards the acceptance of death or tragedy, we need to move through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression and accept that the game is different now.

We need to rethink what we are trying to accomplish as a species, and what we truly want to do with our time. Do we really want to let technology guide human evolution ever further into a blind, lifeless alley, or do we want to choose only technologies that enhance our humanity? Now is the time for ecology-based design that lets us participate with our hands and minds, that lets us produce what we need the way bees produce honey: without harming the flower.

New systems of accounting will track productivity in terms of quality, not just quantity. For example, exemplary companies now track tons of cement or sheets of paper produced per unit of energy (not just per dollar invested). Similarly, to evaluate the overall productivity of farming, the new metrics will track the nutritional value of the food and the health of the farms it came from, not simply bushels of grain or pounds of beef.

If we are to save our civilization, all human activity should be based on meeting needs, fully, rather than creating marketable but superfluous wants. A sustainable economy maximizes the productivity of resources in addition to people. When we maximize the productivity of people, we use fewer people, but we have more people than there are jobs. Basically we are using less and less of what we have more of (people) and more and more of what we have less of (resources). That kind of economy just doesn't make sense. Why not move toward full employment of a part-time workforce, giving us enough income to thrive in an affordable, secure economy and also have enough time for living?  It seems obvious that we could very quickly reduce the high unemployment rate by making workweeks shorter and sharing the work, as Germany has done successfully. To fund public services and infrastructure, why not finesse an American political stalemate by cutting taxes on income and levying taxes on fossil fuels and pollution?

These are some of the paradigm principles that guide the discussion in The New Normal. More than ever before, we need to rely on intuition and instinct to challenge the stranglehold of institutions.  Wouldn't it be fascinating to come back in a few hundred years to see if we stopped the stampede in time?

CB: Thank you David for taking time to answer my questions and thereby give us a powerful and inspiring vision of a new normal.

David Wann is a writer, speaker, and filmmaker on the subject of sustainable design and sustainable lifestyles. He's now completed a trilogy of books about culture shift: Affluenza, Simple Prosperity, and his most recent book, The New Normal. This interview draws largely from material in The New Normal. He lives in Golden, Colorado in a cohousing neighborhood he helped design. To find out more, visit www.davewann.com.

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Obviously, the expression, "long emergency" is in itself paradoxical. The very word "emergency" implies a crisis that is sudden, immediate, short-lived, and abrupt. So when James Howard Kunstler entitled his book "The Long Emergency," he captured the paradox that lies at the core of humanity's current and future predicament.

The dictionary defines paradox as: a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. Psychologist James Hillman in a recent interview, when asked about a number of world events, responded with:

We have to realize that our minds are our enemy. The current debate has become very ideological, with certain fixed ideas dominating the discussion. This is a result of thinking in opposites; it goes back to Aristotle, and has to do with an either/or kind of logic: If something is this way, it cannot be that way.

But this isn't how the world really is. For example, most people think that the opposite of white is black. But there are shades of black -- from blackberries, to black coal or blackbirds -- that have nothing to do with white. The point is to learn how to evaluate each issue on its own merits without having to bring up the opposition's point of view. In therapy, when you have a dream of your mother, for example, you don't necessarily have to talk about your father as a supposed opposite.

While I don't agree with everything Hillman writes or many things he says in the interview, I found these two paragraphs priceless in terms of how we need to think about the Long Emergency, particular in the areas of how it is likely to unfold, how we should hold it in our consciousness, and its implications for our species at large.

In older, more traditional civilizations preceding our own, one finds a remarkable capacity for embracing paradox. In fact, paradox inhabited the psyches of indigenous cultures as if in their DNA, as exemplified in their art, literature, stories, and other cultural artifacts. It was not until the dawn of modernity, greatly facilitated by Rene Descartes' dualistic perspective which became increasingly predominate in Western intellectual tradition, that either/or thinking triumphed.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after exhaustive research of traditional cultures, physician Carl Jung, brought forth an entire psychology grounded in paradox because he witnessed firsthand among his patients the pathology of the dualistic perspective and its severe emotional consequences. And indeed, we need only reflect on the fundamental values of industrial, corporate, consumer capitalism to notice the polarization of opposites inherent therein. Thus, we approach the reality of the Long Emergency with questions issuing from a Cartesian paradigm that belie one of the essential causes of our current predicament. Some of these questions are:

Will It Be Fast Or Slow, Positive or Negative?

A number of writers on the Long Emergency, including Kunstler, opine that the collapse of industrial civilization, transition to a new way of life, and what some have called "The Great Turning," will be a protracted process, punctuated by poignant, painful crises that deepen the severity of the overall unfolding of events.

More recently, robust discussion has ensued among Long Emergency-aware individuals and groups regarding what the process should be called and whether or not it should be viewed as "positive" or "negative." Again, this is an embarrassingly Cartesian approach to our predicament--and far removed from the troubling realities of it.

I personally prefer the notion of a process that is unfolding in roughly three segments, all of which are congealing, convoluting, and complementing each other. The first segment I believe is the collapse of industrial civilization in which we are currently deeply embroiled and which will inevitably intensify. The second would be a period of transition which has also just begun and will also intensify, followed by a Great Turning, in which after a long period of anguish and the decimation of Cartesian dualism, humanity will likely engage collectively in an unprecedented turning from its self-destructive paradigm and for the first time in many millennia, embrace and create infrastructures for living a paradigm that authentically and unequivocally sustains life on earth.

For me, it is crucial to acknowledge and name the collapse of the current paradigm as such. To avoid the word, tip-toe around it in fear of "scaring people," or cosmetically alter the unraveling of industrial civilization, is essentially tantamount to celebrating a rebirth while ignoring that a death occurred. To deny death while focusing only on transformation reveals the level of denial in which we are steeped and profoundly insults masses of human beings around us who are terrified of the future because no matter how much we prattle about "potential," "opportunities," or "resilience," they are terrified in the marrow of their bones of what the future holds. They do not need us to fluff pillows and bring them a cup of tea, but to validate what they already know is so, even if they are kicking and screaming with all their might against what they know--and to provide them with support for talking about their fears. Every human knows in their gut when someone or something around them is dying because whether we acknowledge it or not, we are connected with everyone and everything on levels which humanity has only begun to understand.

In his extraordinary 2010 book Requiem For A Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change, author Clive Hamilton states that the consequences of climate change will result in a near-death experience for humanity. But as is so often the case with such events, "Those who have had near-death experiences or life-threatening illnesses are often transformed so that they see their previous lives as empty and self-centered." Furthermore, not only is the impact of climate change likely to produce a near-death experience, but so are the impacts of peak oil and global economic crises. What sense then does it make to recoil from the world "collapse" when the entire human race is well aware that it is swimming in it and feels the relentless burden of it from moment to moment? The kindest and most compassionate response is to validate and name what our fellow earthlings intuit rather than colluding in industrial civilization's delusional denial-fest of "unlimited growth" and "recovery from the recession"--or even the notion that "nothing is collapsing; we are only 'transitioning'."

So let me clarify: "Potential," "opportunities," and "resilience" are very important and useful words, but not when they are used to obscure the last gasps of industrial civilization which are incessantly occurring around us in present time, and which, if we are honest with ourselves and each other, we know will only exacerbate. Such words serve us only if we are also willing to name the ubiquitous death by which we are surrounded and if we are willing to feel it and speak honestly about what we feel.

Are These Secular or Spiritual Issues?

First, let's notice that a question like this would never occur in an indigenous culture. For those societies, there was no separation between the two, and the notion of polarizing them is a thoroughly "civilized" one.

Secondly, the dichotomy results from dissecting the human psyche, insisting that only certain parts are worth keeping, and discarding all others. It also results from religious abuse and the belief that words like "spiritual," "sacred," or "transpersonal" are religious terms. In fact, the word religion is rooted in the Latin word relegare which means "to bind back," or "to obligate." It is a term of bondage and contraction whereas a word like "transpersonal" is expansive and refers to a part of the psyche that is larger and more comprehensive than the rational mind or human ego.

The words, spiritual, sacred, transpersonal have nothing whatsoever to do with theism. Theism is a doctrine of a monotheistic, personal god that is "out there somewhere" in the universe or as Matthew Fox notes, "is behind the universe with an oilcan." In an interview with Derrick Jensen in Listening To The Land, Fox states, "And of course, the next step after theism is atheism. It's easy to reject a God who's way out in the sky. I don't know any other civilization that has invented atheism except the West. The word does not exist in indigenous languages. The spirit exists."

I believe that collapse, transition, and Great Turning are revealing and will reveal the integrated wholeness of the human psyche and the inherent connectivity of all life. The unraveling of the paradigm that has fragmented the psyche and separated us from the transpersonal and the entire earth community is a sacred process, and if we can open to it, instead of resisting or trivializing it, we may have the opportunity to become a wiser, more compassionate, more connected species.

An integral aspect of the Great Turning, I believe, will be a turning away from all forms of theism and religious abuse and a turning toward and abiding with the sacred self within us and within all other sentient beings. This may be the ultimate "opportunity" of the Long Emergency--a protracted process which will be fraught with anguish alongside unprecedented transformation. None of us knows how much of either we will experience. What is certain is that our day-to-day reality will be comprised of both, and our challenge is to hold the tension of those opposites, rather than embracing one and excluding the other. I believe that is unquestionably the most difficult work confronting us, both now and in the future.

Author and educator, Margaret Wheatley, in her recent book Perseverance, speaks powerfully and paradoxically to the uncertainty of the future and captures the essence of holding the tension of, rather than polarizing, opposites:

Either position, optimism or pessimism, keeps us from fully engaging with the complexity of this time. If we see only troubles, or only opportunities, in both cases we are blinded by our need for certainty, our need to know what's going on, to figure things out so we can be useful.....

Certainty is a very effective way of defending ourselves from the irresolvable nature of life. If we're certain, we don't have to immerse ourselves in the strange, puzzling paradoxes that always characterize a time of upheaval.....

The challenge is to refuse to categorize ourselves. We don't have to take sides or define ourselves as either optimists or pessimists. Much better to dwell in uncertainty, hold the paradoxes, live in the complexities and contradictions without needing them to resolve.

Carolyn's latest book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition is now available at Amazon and by ordering from your local bookstore. The Introduction may be read at www.carolynbaker.net

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Coming on the heels of a retrial later this year of KLA commander and former Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, an enormous can of worms is about to burst open.

Last month, Antifascist Calling reported that Hashim Thaçi, the current Prime Minister of the breakaway Serb province, and other members of the self-styled Drenica Group, were accused by Council of Europe investigators of running a virtual mafia state.

According to Swiss parliamentarian Dick Marty, the Council's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Thaçi, Dr. Shaip Muja, and other leading members of the government directed--and profited from--an international criminal enterprise whose tentacles spread across Europe into Israel, Turkey and South Africa.

For his part, Thaçi has repudiated the allegations and has threatened to sue Marty for libel. Sali Berisha, Albania's current Prime Minister and Thaçi's close ally, dismissed the investigation as a "completely racist and defamatory report," according to The New York Times.

That's rather rich coming from a politician who held office during the systematic looting of Albania's impoverished people during the "economic liberalization" of the 1990s.

At the time, Berisha's Democratic Party government urged Albanians to invest in dodgy pyramid funds, massive Ponzi schemes that were little more than fronts for drug money laundering and arms trafficking.

More than a decade ago, Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky documented how the largest fund, "VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue 'families' of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests," even though the fund "was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money."

By 1997, two-thirds of the Albanian population who believed fairy tales of capitalist prosperity spun by their kleptocratic leaders and the IMF, lost some $1.2 billion to the well-connected fraudsters. When the full extent of the crisis reached critical mass, it sparked an armed revolt that was only suppressed after the UN Security Council deployed some 7,000 NATO troops that occupied the country; more than 2,000 people were killed.

Today the Berisha regime, like their junior partners in Pristina, face a new legitimacy crisis.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported, mass protests broke out in Tirana last week, with more than 20,000 demonstrators taking to the streets, after a nationally broadcast report showed a Deputy Prime Minister from Berisha's party "in secretly taped talks, openly negotiating the level of bribes to back the construction of a new hydroelectric power station."

As is the wont of gangster states everywhere, "police responded with extreme violence against the demonstrators; three people died and dozens were injured."

While the charges against Thaçi and his confederates are shocking, evidence that these horrific crimes have been known for years, and suppressed, both by the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and by top American and German officials--the political mandarins pulling Balkan strings--lend weight to suspicions that a protective wall was built around their protégés; facts borne out by subsequent NATO investigations, also suppressed.

Leaked Military Intelligence Reports

On Monday, a series of NATO reports were leaked to The Guardian. Military intelligence officials, according to investigative journalist Paul Lewis, identified Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi as one of the "'biggest fish' in organised crime in his country."

Marked "Secret" by NATO spooks, Lewis disclosed that the 2004 reports also "indicate that the US and other western powers backing Kosovo's government have had extensive knowledge of its criminal connections for several years."

According to The Guardian, the files, tagged "'USA KFOR' ... provide detailed information about organised criminal networks in Kosovo based on reports by western intelligence agencies and informants," and also "identify another senior ruling politician in Kosovo as having links to the Albanian mafia, stating that he exerts considerable control over Thaçi, a former guerrilla leader."

As noted above, with the Council of Europe demanding a formal investigation into charges that Thaçi's criminal enterprise presided over a grisly traffic in human organs and exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade, it appears that the American and German-backed narco statelet is in for a very rough ride.

In the NATO reports, The Guardian revealed that Thaçi "is identified as one of a triumvirate of 'biggest fish' in organised criminal circles."

"So too," Lewis writes, "is Xhavit Haliti, a former head of logistics for the KLA who is now a close ally of the prime minister and a senior parliamentarian in his ruling PDK party."

The reports suggest "that behind his role as a prominent politician, Haliti is also a senior organised criminal who carries a Czech 9mm pistol and holds considerable sway over the prime minister."

Described as "'the power behind Hashim Thaçi', one report states that Haliti has strong ties with the Albanian mafia and Kosovo's secret service, known as KShiK."

The former KLA logistics specialist, according to The Guardian, suggest that Haliti "'more or less ran' a fund for the Kosovo war in the late 1990s, profiting from the fund personally before the money dried up. 'As a result, Haliti turned to organised crime on a grand scale,' the reports state'."

Such information was long known in Western intelligence and political circles, especially amongst secret state agencies such as the American CIA, DEA and FBI, Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Britain's MI6 and Italy's military-intelligence service, SISMI, as Marty disclosed last month.

In 1994 for example, The New York Times reported that the Observatoire Géopolitique des Drogues released a report documenting that "Albanian groups in Macedonia and Kosovo Province in Serbia are trading heroin for large quantities of weapons for use in a brewing conflict in Kosovo."

According to the Times, "Albanian traffickers were supplied with heroin and weapons by mafia-like groups in Georgia and Armenia. The Albanians then pay for the supplies by reselling the heroin in the West."

A year later, Jane's Intelligence Review reported that "if left unchecked ... Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to a Colombian syndrome in the southern Balkans, or the emergence of a situation in which the Albanian mafia becomes powerful enough to control one or more states in the region."

Following NATO's 1999 bombing campaign that completed the sought-after break-up of Yugoslavia, that situation came to pass; Kosovo has since metastasized into a key link in the international narcotics supply chain.

NATO spooks averred that Haliti is "highly involved in prostitution, weapons and drugs smuggling" and that he serves as Thaçi's chief "political and financial adviser," and, according to the documents, he is arguably "the real boss" in the relationship.

Like Haradinaj, Haliti "is linked to the alleged intimidation of political opponents in Kosovo and two suspected murders dating back to the late 1990s, when KLA infighting is said to have resulted in numerous killings," Lewis reports.

In 2008, Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj were acquitted by the U.S.-sponsored ICTY "victors tribunal" of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lahi Brahimaj, Haradinaj's uncle, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for the torture of two people at KLA headquarters.

A retrial was ordered last summer after evidence emerged that Haradinaj, long-suspected of running a parallel organized crime ring to Thaçi's that also trafficked arms, drugs and sexual slaves across Europe, a fact long-known--and similarly suppressed--by the mafia state's closest allies, Germany and the United States, may have intimidated witnesses who had agreed to testify against his faction of the KLA leadership.

A former nightclub bouncer who morphed into a "freedom fighter" during the 1990s, Haradinaj has been accused by prosecutors of crimes committed between March and September 1998 in the Dukagjin area of western Kosovo.

According to The Guardian, "Haradinaj was a commander of the KLA in Dukagjin, Balaj was the commander of the Black Eagles unit within the KLA, and Brahimaj a KLA member stationed in the force's headquarters in the town of Jablanica."

The appeals court ruled that "in the context of the serious witness intimidation that formed the context of the trial, it was clear that the trial chamber seriously erred in failing to take adequate measures to secure the testimony of certain witnesses."

The indictment charges that the KLA "persecuted and abducted civilians thought to be collaborating with Serbian forces in the Dukagjin area and that Haradinaj, Balaj, and Brahimaj were responsible for abduction, murder, torture and ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma and fellow Albanians through a joint criminal enterprise, including the murder of 39 people whose bodies were retrieved from a lake," The Guardian disclosed.

But in a case that demonstrates the cosy relations amongst KLA leaders and their Western puppetmasters despite, or possibly because of their links to organized crime, German Foreign Policy revealed that "high ranking UN officials helped intimidate witnesses due to testify in The Hague against Haradinaj."

This charge was echoed by Special Rapporteur Dick Marty. He told Center for Investigative Reporting journalists Michael Montgomery and Altin Raxhimi, who broke the Kosovo organ trafficking story two years ago, that his investigation "could be hindered by witness safety and other security concerns."

"If, as a witness, you do not have complete assurance that your statements will be kept confidential, and that as a witness you are truly protected, clearly you won't talk to these institutions," Marty said.

Such problems are compounded when the leading lights overseeing Kosovo's administration, Germany and the United States, have every reason to scuttle any credible investigation into the crimes of their clients, particularly when a serious probe would reveal their own complicity.

Eyes Wide Shut

The Haradinaj cover-up is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

According to German Foreign Policy, "the structures of organized crime in Kosovo, in which Haradinaj is said to play an important role, extend all the way to Germany. It is being reported that German government authorities prevented investigations of Kosovo Albanians residing in Germany."

Investigative journalist Boris Kanzleiter told the left-leaning online magazine that the UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and its newest iteration, the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) "maintains very close ties to Haradinaj."

The former head of UNMIK, Sören Jessen-Petersen, referred to him as a "close partner and friend." Kanzleiter said that "Jessen-Petersen's successor, the German diplomat, Joachim Ruecker, also has a close relationship to him."

Kanzleiter told the journal, "accusations were made that high-ranking UNMIK functionaries were directly involved in the intimidation of witnesses."

These reports should be taken seriously, especially in light of allegations that even before Haradinaj's first trial, a witness against the former Prime Minister was killed in what was then described as "an unsolved auto accident."

"Back in 2002," German Foreign Policy reported, "three witnesses and two investigating officials were assassinated in the context of the trial against Haradinaj's clan."

Similar to the modus operandi of Thaçi's enterprise, the newsmagazine reported that the BND had concluded that Haradinaj's "network of [drugs and arms] smugglers were operating 'throughout the Balkans', extending 'into Greece, Italy, Switzerland and all the way to Germany'."

Not that any of this mattered to Germany or the United States. German Foreign Policy also reported that despite overwhelming evidence of KLA links to the global drugs trade, political circles in Berlin vetoed official investigations into KLA narcotics trafficking.

In 2005 "the State Offices of Criminal Investigation of Bavaria and Lower Saxony tried to convince the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation to open a centralized investigation concerning the known [Kosovo-Albanian] clans and individuals in Germany" because "many criminal culprits from the entourage of the KLA have settled in Germany."

The author noted "this demand was refused." Indeed, "even though the Austrian Federal Office of Investigation and the Italian police strongly insisted that their German colleagues finally initiate these investigations, the rejection ... according to a confidential source in the Austrian Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, came straight from the Interior Ministry in Berlin."

As we have since learned, Haliti and other top KLA officials have also been linked to organized crime in Marty's report. The human rights Rapporteur accused Haliti, like Haradinaj, of having ordered "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations" of those who ran afoul of Thaçi's underworld associates.

In 2009, German Foreign Policy reported yet another "new scandal" threatened to upset the apple cart. "A former agent of the Kosovo intelligence service explained that a close associate of Kosovo's incumbent Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, had commissioned the assassinations of political opponents."

"The newest mafia scandal involving Pristina's secessionist regime was set in motion by the former secret agent Nazim Bllaca," the magazine disclosed.

According to the publication, "Bllaca alleges that he had been in the employ of the secret service, SHIK, since the end of the war waged against Yugoslavia in 1999 by NATO and the troops of Kosovo's terrorist UCK [KLA] militia."

The former secret state agent claimed "he had personally committed 17 crimes in the course of his SHIK activities, including extortion, assassination, assaults, torture and serving as a contract killer."

Marty told the Center for Investigative Reporting that "Bllaca's experience did not bode well for other insiders who are considering cooperating with the authorities." EULEX officials only placed Bllaca under protective custody a week after he went public with his allegations, in what could only be described as an open-ended invitation for an assassin's bullet.

Despite such revelations, diplomatic cables unearthed by WikiLeaks show that the U.S. Embassy views their Frankenstein creations in an entirely favorable light.

A Cablegate file dated 02-17-10, "Kosovo Celebrates Second Anniversary with Successes and Challenges," 10PRISTINA84, informs us that "two years have seen political stability that has allowed the country to create legitimate new institutions," but that the narco state "must use its string of economic reforms and privatizations as a springboard to motivate private-sector growth."

Such as auctioning-off the Trepca mining complex at fire-sale prices. As The New York Times reported back in 1998, the Trepca mines are "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion."

Summing up the reasons for NATO's war, one mine director told Times' reporter Chris Hedges: "The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait--the heart of Kosovo. We export to France, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and Belgium.

"We export to a firm in New York, but I would prefer not to name it. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all this for themselves."

Judging by the flood of heroin reaching European and North American "markets," one can only conclude that if fleets of armored Mercedes and BMWs prowling Pristina streets are a growth metric then by all means, America and Germany's "nation building" enterprise has been a real achievement!

In light of reports of widespread criminality that would make a Wall Street hedge fund manager blush, we're told by the U.S. Embassy that the Thaçi government "must prioritize the rule of law and the fight against corruption."

Laying it on thick, despite damning intelligence reports by their own secret services, the Embassy avers that "Kosovo's independence has been a success story." Indeed, "the international community and the Kosovars, themselves, can feel good about the positive steps that have occurred over the past two years."

That is, if one closes one's eyes when stepping over the corpses. Collapse

In the ensuing discourse since the massacre, we have been incessantly reminded by media that mental health issues are as real and valid as physical illness and should not be viewed with disdain but rather treated by mental health professionals as any physical ailment such as diabetes, heart disease, or cancer would be treated by a physician. Yet even as journalists and mental health and political pundits banter about mental health treatment in the United States, they fail to address, or perhaps even understand, the deeper questions.

 This article is intended to address those questions, the implications of which extend vastly beyond the January 8, Tucson tragedy.

The Loughner Generation

Almost no one has noticed that Loughner is a member of a generation which has virtually no economic future in this country. Were he to continue attending college, as a member of the working class, in order to graduate, he would almost certainly need to finance his education by way of student loans and complete his degree program by accumulating tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Upon graduation, he would most likely join the masses of unemployed or underemployed college graduates who will be student loan debt-slaves for the rest of their lives with income levels that will force them to default or live in poverty in order to pay off the loans. We can only speculate about how long young people in this nation will continue to pursue a college education under these circumstances and what the implications of millions of them rejecting the higher education shell game will ultimately be socially, economically, and politically.

Naturally, one might wonder what has prevented millions of other young people of Loughner's generation from erupting in displays of mass mayhem regarding their future, but a bit more research on their public school education experience and the pressures foisted on them by the college-to-cubicle philosophy of higher education answers the question. College is no longer a venue for learning, but rather an assumed guarantee of employment. College life is all about preparing for the big "J," and there is little time for all-night discussions, student protest, or deeply pondering what mortgaging one's future over the course of four years is all about. What is more, the pressure to "do whatever it takes" to graduate is so intense that more than 70% of students admit to cheating in order to make the grade.

Was Jared Loughner thinking about this when he mowed down 19 people on a sunny January morning last week? Probably not. But as with all socio-cultural phenomena, individuals who erupt violently may not be fully aware of the impact their milieu has on them. And since the Tucson tragedy, we have seen an increasing number of stories in the news media regarding the repercussions of economic crisis in nations throughout the world and growing speculation regarding the possibility of civil unrest as a result. For example: The Great Food Crisis of 2011; A World In Breakdown; and Global Food And Commodity Prices Spark Worries On Security, to name only a few.

Economic Collapse, Big Bad Pharma, And The Death of Therapy

Moreover, there is almost no mention in the current media mental health discourse of the death spiral of psychotherapy in the United States. While mental health treatment in the nation was never fully accepted without stigma, it may have been most widely embraced in the 1970s during the Carter Administration when the National Mental Health Systems Act was passed. Only a few years later, the act was repealed by the Reagan Administration, and mental health and substance abuse program funding was cut by 25%. While Reagan himself did not stand at the door of mental health institutions and tell patients to flee, the repeal had the same results in terms of the priority mental health treatment received in subsequent state and federal budgets.

With the advent of managed care in the 1990s, insurance companies limited the number of mental health sessions that would be covered for insured patients, severely curtailing coverage and duration of treatment. These limitations have remained in place, and in many cases increased, over the past two decades, and in 2011 with some 50 million uninsured individuals in the United States, receiving mental health treatment generally means paying for it out-of-pocket--an expense not likely to have priority in a milieu of massive unemployment, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and skyrocketing food prices.

Not surprisingly, at about the same time as managed care emerged, the pharmaceutical industry debuted a new array of anti-depressants known as SSRI's or Seratonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and others, which not only alleviated symptoms of depression for millions of mental health patients, but were increasingly used to treat a wide variety of emotional disorders among children and adults who had never darkened the door of a therapist's office.

In 2011, each day brings yet another story of a state or states teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and spending cuts that are nothing less than amputations or inexorable eradications of all manner of health programs.

Thus, in a world of profound economic collapse, fewer people can afford mental health services, yet as a result of personal and societal economic meltdown, more need them than perhaps at any time in our history since the Great Depression. Psychotherapy and psychiatric hospitalization as we have known them are becoming increasingly difficult to access and within the next decade may well become non-existent--a gargantuan reality rarely addressed in media discourse about "mental health stigma" and "mental health treatment."

The Madness of Industrial Civilization 

The larger issue unaddressed because it is un-named and willfully unexamined, is the paradigm of industrial civilization itself. Historians note that civilization began with sedentary, agricultural communities which evolved into cities. Cities are by definition, communities that are not self-sufficient and depend on external venues for resources. Increasingly, cities became non-agricultural and dependent on other communities and nations for their survival. Disconnection from the land base facilitated what Thomas Berry calls a "use relationship" with nature and other members of the earth community, including humans. Once relationship devolves from relatedness to using the other, we are well on the road to madness because relatedness means seeing, appreciating, valuing the innate qualities of the other. Use inherently means not seeing the other and its/his/her attributes but objectifying the other and perceiving the other only in terms of how the other can benefit oneself. Such is the essence of dysfunctional relatedness.

Supplanting relatedness, use became the modus operandi of modernity and particularly of growth-obsessed, profit-driven industrial civilization. That which profit could acquire--stuff, possessions, and power replaced relatedness as the essential elements of meaning and purpose. These, it was assumed, would bring unprecedented happiness and fulfillment. Yet myriad studies in the 20^th and 21^st centuries indicate the opposite. The level of satisfaction and sense of well being in a society does not increase with the level of growth or economic prosperity.

In Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything: Waking Up To A Century of Declines (2007), he notes that "While a historical GDP (gross domestic product) chart for the U.S. shows general ongoing growth up the the present (GDP correlates closely with energy consumption), GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) calculations show a peak around 1980 followed by a slow decline. If we as a society are going to adjust agreeably to lower rates of energy flow--and less travel and transport--with minimal social disruption, we must begin paying more attention to the seeming intangibles of life and less to GDP and the apparent benefits of profligate energy use."

In fact, I would argue that as growth-driven civilizations decline, the madness engendered by use relationships and the vapid meaninglessness of acquiring possessions and power are increasingly laid bare. Industrial civilization is inherently crazy-making, and Jared Loughner is merely another poster boy for its paradigm.

Yet in our mental health discourses, we fail to consider what Derrick Jensen beautifully observed, long before the Tucson massacre:

I'm continually stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.

When I was a psychotherapist in private practice in the 1990s, I learned that 80% of mental health clinicians who had spent precious years and resources training to become psychotherapists would leave that field within five years of entering it. I have no idea what the statistics are for this phenomenon in 2011, but I do know that given America's economic meltdown and the inability of states, counties, and cities to fund mental health services and the inability of individuals to pay for it out-of-pocket, the psychotherapy profession is becoming an increasingly thankless one.

As the collapse of industrial civilization exacerbates, I anticipate epidemic levels of depression, suicide, and indiscriminate violence. Human beings blindsided by society's and their own unraveling will be desperate to be heard, comforted, and reassured that they are not alone. Anyone who is collapse-aware and even a little bit emotionally stable may become the "therapist of the moment." This will not look like two people sitting quietly in a tidy office and talking for 50 minutes. It may look like a group of human beings sitting in the street or in a community garden all night discussing how they will eat the next day, and the "fee" may be a bag of potatoes or a bottle of vodka. Such individuals will definitely behave in an "uncivilized" manner, but they probably will not be mentally ill.

Mental health necessitates taking a stand in the face of madness in order to live and love in relatedness with other earthlings--whether human or non-human. The paradigm of industrial civilization is inherently mad and proliferates mad people. Many of us have been called "crazy" for the past decade because we have named the madness of civilization and where it is taking us. Today, we may be perceived as "less crazy" since most of what we forecasted is now everyday, tangible reality--just as we said it would be. As industrial civilization accelerates its death spiral, our work is to imagine a new world of connectedness and to become a new human species. Measured by the criteria of the American dream turned nightmare, we may not only not be deemed crazy, but may be perceived as living and learning in ways that resonate with an aspect of the psyches of fellow earthlings that they are coming to recognize as essential to their emotional and physical health. Heinberg's "seeming intangibles of life" could also be called "the sacred," and they have been systematically marginalized by modernity for millennia. The sacred must now constitute the foundation on which any alternative to industrial civilization is constructed, for therein lie the fundamentals of sanity and wholeness.

Carolyn's forthcoming book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition will be available for purchase within the next month. Stay tuned to her website at www.carolynbaker.net for publication details.

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Anyone drawn to the Transition or Permaculture models is likely to stand in awe of Alexander's work and his capacity for envisioning the revolutionary potential in both models. Enchantment with Alexander's discoveries and his writings about them is inevitable the more one grasps their profundity, but often overlooked is what Alexander calls the "luminous ground" on which the pattern language theory is built. 

Vermont author, Karen Speerstra, has researched Alexander's luminous ground concept which is described in depth in Book Four of his Nature of Order series. When one grasps the implications of Alexander's understanding of luminous ground, one must also acknowledge that at its core, pattern language is a theory based on profoundly spiritual principles. In her article "Our Luminous Common Ground," commissioned by the Fetzer Institute, Speerstra extracts from The Nature of Order a number of statements from Alexander indicative of the place the sacred holds in his world view. 

The "ground" to which Alexander incessantly refers is, in his words, "The I which lies behind or inside all matter...an underlying substance, or 'original substance' [it] partially reunites us, part of the way, not all the way, towards a world of spirit. It does not make a separation between spirit and matter." 

This "I", according to Alexander, resides within us and is eternal. In fact, he asserts that it "does contain all that is in us; it gives primacy to the fact that this void is already in us; that it is a part of the human being which exists already, and is available to us...It is that which makes it powerful, which makes it useful." 

But Alexander takes this further: "To really make living structures, it seems almost as though somehow, we are charged, for our time, with finding a new form of God, a new way of understanding the deepest origins of our experience, of the matter in the universe so that we, too, when lucky, with devotion might find it possible to reveal this 'something' and its blinding light." 

In creating something beautiful, he says, we are not only deeply nourished, but we come alive and are filled with inner light. We are most nurtured and feel healed and whole when we are joining with others in creating living structures. In fact, "When we are in touch with our inner landscape, 'the ground,' we become a more 'rounded, more satisfied, more satisfactory being.'" 

Alexander sees no duality between the "inner ground" and our outer human-ness: "When you really put your humanness into the things you make, then you genuinely reach the wholeness we are striving for in the external structure we call order...it is at that moment that we reach the ground." 

Christopher Alexander has been called an architect, a builder, a mathematician, and a scientist, but throughout the passages from The Nature of Order cited by Speerstra, not out of context but very much in context, what we are hearing is nothing less than the musings of a mystic. Alexander is telling us that each of us has an "I" that goes beyond what we normally see and that it is connected with all other "I's." Moreover, "Each of us is connected to the world." In his mind and heart, the ultimate goal is wholeness--connectedness with ourselves, other "I's", and "a genuine desire for all things to be one...." In fact, he says, "Any trace of a desire for separateness will destroy completely my ability to hear the one, whispering through...." We might summarize all of his mysticism in just this one sentence offered by Speerstra: "Everything is filled with its living spirit." 

Why is a closer examination of Alexander's world view important, particularly in relation to Transition? In recent months, a healthy and heated debate regarding the place of the sacred or what some call spirituality in the Transition model has been occurring alongside much fascination with pattern language and its application to Transition. Surely, if those who embrace the Transition model find themselves resonating with Alexander's perspective on pattern language, then it seems imperative to understand the foundation on which it is built which happens to be unequivocally grounded in the sacred. 

At the end of her article, Speerstra suggests a number of questions about our ways of being together and our work in groups which emerge directly from a pattern language perspective and which are exceedingly relevant to the functioning of Transition initiatives and projects:

• What is the "felt reality" of the gathered people?
• When we meet other people, to what degree do we feel connected to them?
• Can groups model an improved "world picture"--one of already existing wholeness?
• How can a group of people be led to appreciate remarkable new results that embrace and foster unexpected and complex behaviors?
• How can each person in the group be more like their "eternal selves"?
• Are mental events connected with physical phenomena?
• How do we experience the unfolding of our centers?
• How can each person feel more "related" to the gathering place and to each other?
• What is the spiritual depth of what is achieved in "the work"?

What are we to make of mysterious terms like "an 'I'", "the something", "the luminous ground", "the eternal self", and oh dear, the word "God"? Above all, how do we relate such esoteric expressions to the nuts and bolts of the Transition model and other efforts to create sustainable communities? I would answer by saying that Alexander is showing us what the sacred looks like and that it is a thousand miles removed from organized religion, ideology, or some sort of New Age "grow, flow, and be" cultism. Furthermore, he is demonstrating that as we implement the Transition model, we stand together on luminous (sacred) ground and that knowing that in our bones may facilitate our capacity to experience unprecedented personal and collective transformation. 

What is more, it appears that Alexander's work serves to create not only sustainable communities, but sustainable people--individuals and groups that literally thrive on connectedness with each other and the earth community, for indeed, as he says, what really matters is "the degree of connectedness a given place, or thing or event has with the ground." 

In summary, we cannot consider pattern language and its application to any structure or group unless we are willing to open-mindedly engage with and integrate its sacred origins. Otherwise, we perpetuate a binary perspective which our species may soon discover is the root cause of the rise of an endless growth model and its current demise.  The history of modern humanity has been a sorrowful saga of abdicating the sacred because we were unable to appreciate its presence in the material world. The current collapse and transition is and will be an onerous, but perhaps ultimately joyful journey, in rediscovering and re-embracing our luminous ground. Out of this return to the mysteries of which Alexander speaks, an opportunity for unprecedented patterns of wholeness and relationship offers itself to human egos weary of pretending that disconnected matter, people, and places are humanity's final frontier.

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A Zoo Of Our Own Making: We will kill for empire and a parking space

By Phil Rockstroh

In an age, when nature is besieged and the political landscape blighted, and one stands, stoop shouldered and wincing into the howling wasteland of epic-scale idiocy extant in the era, a solitary person can feel lost ... marooned inside an increasingly isolated sense of self. Whether urban, suburban, or rural dwelling, the sense of alienation, for an individual, is profound ... as discernible to the eye as the constellations of foreclosure signs stippling overgrown front lawns across the land ... as hidden as the abandoned dreams within.

The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.

After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward ... becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) -- with I- Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.

While above the street -- corporate towers -- that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension -- blot the skyline ... these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.

This is architecture as blind hubris: creations made by the hands of mortal men ... yet failing to have any connection to the ground, these buildings crowd out the real estate of the sacred. Moreover, their manic skyward thrust leaves them, and those imprisoned within, bereft of roots that reach down into the renewing loam of the earth, to where mortal vanity is delivered to dust and desperate hopes rot and transubstantiate into the compost that nourishes new life.

And blooms of renewal, I suspect, will not be found online as well. The electronic sheen of social media sites is no substitute for communal fabric. There is no animal musk nor angelic apprehensions to en-soul the flesh and tease wisdom out of obdurate will ... No matter how many restless shades want to friend you on FaceBook nor ghostly texts descend upon you in an unholy Pentecost of Tweets, online exchanges will continue to leave you restless, hollow, and yearning for the colors and cacophony of an authentic agora.

The adolescent purgatory of FaceBook -- with its castings into the Eternal Now of instant praise, acceptance, and rejection -- reflects, magnifies, and acerbates the perpetual adolescence of the contemporary culture of the United States, intensifying its shallow longings and displaced panics, its narcissistic rage and obsession with the superficial. It devours libido, by providing a pixilated facsimile of the primal dance of human endeavor, leaving one's heart churning in thwarted yearning, locked an evanescent embrace with electronic phantoms, as one, paradoxically, attempts to live out unfulfilled desires by means of hollow communion with the soul-negating source of his alienation.

One can never get enough of what one doesn't need. Ergo, the compulsions and panic of millions of hungry ghosts will hold an ongoing, hollow mass online, in a futile campaign to regain form, gain direction, and walk in meaning and beauty among the things of the world, but instead will remain imprisoned within the very system that condemned them to this fate.

And this is the place, we, as a culture, will remain, for a time. This electronic inferno will be our vale and mountaintop, our sanctuary and leviathan. We will stare baffled into its vastness, stupefied and lost within its proliferate array of depersonalizing distractions and seductions. The more we try to lose ourselves in it, by surrendering to its shimmering surface attractions, the more tightly we will become bound in the bondage of self.

Naturally, living in the grinding maw of such monsters of alienation will engulf one with ennui and angst. Moreover, the judgment of anyone claiming not to be afflicted should be regarded as suspect.

Possessed by this mode of being: we languish in a zoo of our own making where we gaze, without comprehension, at the confines of our enclosure, chew our paws, pace the cage, and are restless for mealtime. Like an animal in a cage, we are no longer what we were meant to be ... we have forgotten what it is to be alive. With the exception of superficial form, we begin to lose our affinity to what makes us recognizable as a human being and as an animal -- for we have become simply a sad thing that waits for lunch. And I defy any caged clock-watcher in a cubicle to defy that point.

Restless and agitated in our confinement, we sink further into anomie ... into the benumbing embrace of comfort zones (over- eating, anti-depressants, consumerism as emotional distraction, addiction to electronic media) where we chose safety over the truth of our being. In these cages of inauthenticity, our heart's longings and human needs are held in stasis by the perfunctory persona we cultivated for approval and acceptance; there, consigned to a barren region of mind where one is rewarded for docility and duplicity, one languishes, bereft of eros and pothos ... unconsciously self-convicted and sentenced for the crime of being a serial betrayer of one's essential self.

So much of the criteria of the modern condition has atomized us, stripped us, collectively, of ritual, purpose and meaning, and placed us in the midst of what T.S. Eliot expressed in prosody as a "heap of broken images."

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

--From: The Waste Land

There is danger, of course, in such places -- but there is also the possibility of renewal.

Personal and historical traumas leave a legacy of bewilderment. And being bewildered i.e., being in a psychic wilderness, lost, having wandered or been cast past the known horizon of experience ... is to be in position to engage the novel, be in the thrall of unfolding mystery, and wander in a soul- suffused landscape of the sublime.

A state of alienation is right where we should be: To be able to adapt to a culture dedicated to little more than finding efficient means of exploiting the hours of the greater public's lives for the benefit of a greedy few ... would be a tragedy. Living within this culture should bring on despair ... It is a leviathan that has devoured your existence. Do you think you can renovate the belly of the beast ... set up a time-share with Jonah and Pinocchio there ... and live in comfort?

Should not one stagger and stammer in mortification when shown a handful of dust?

Moreover, the solution we are offered -- making ourselves a dwelling within a prison of consumer kitsch -- should and does only bring on more anomie. Eliot wrote the following regarding a psyche attempting to adapt to a dying culture

[...] Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

--From: The Journey of the Magi,

One of the notions, as Rilke might put it, that is "brooding like a seed" in my psyche has been the distinction James Hillman makes between civilization and culture. Hillman avers that, and I agree, civilization is a dead thing -- an edifice of crumbling marble enshrined in an eros-devoid museum of the mind where we do little more than give empty, obligatory homage to a fossilized tableaux ... our forced reverence is but a perfunctory prayer muttered before the iconography of a dead religion; in contrast, culture is a living, breathing phenomenon of the collective mind, heart, and soul of the people within it. Its logos inhabits the very air of existence, permeating it like the sound of birdsong, and cricket and cicada stridulation throughout a high summer night.

Moreover, he avers that culture is akin to a madhouse; in fact, the solution lies in the back ward of the asylum, the area where are housed the hopeless cases. In other words, like Dante ... proceed to the place you most fear looking upon, embrace it, and hear its awful keening and heart-opening agonies. There is the location of rebirth, the last circle of hell ... retreating to a comfort zone will simply leave the situation is stasis.

So the question arises: How does one enter the soul-making shabbiness of the human condition, even though, as always, we are powerless against the trajectory of history and lost within the mad proliferation of culture -- and, as Bob Dylan limned in lyric regarding the alienation this situation evokes, "[one has] no direction home?"

Try this: embrace the bracing pain of your alienation: make a home in being lost. Gaze with wonder of upon the sacred scenery of your bewilderment ... Wandering in the wilderness is a holy state.

Wendell Berry believes such ventures to be one of the true vocations of the soul:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

--Wendell Berry

In other words, in times such as ours, when we embrace our alienation then we will be welcomed home ... to share a common shelter with the multitudes who are also lost.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: [email protected] Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/ And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

Angela Tyler-Rockstroh is a Broadcast Designer/Animator who has worked with major Networks such as Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, HBO Family, PBS, as well as, with Michael Moore on his documentaries, "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Sicko."

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Structural arrangements in the US society buttress the belief system that reinforces the misuse of resources and abuses the ecosystem. (Tiemann, McNeal Jr., Lucal, & Ender, 2009) Polity, a particular system of government, created the need for nuclear technology and the need for Hanford. Structural polity and its creation of the Hanford site displaced many local residents through eminent domain, a governmental policy that allows the government to seize land from private owners with due compensation so long as it is used for civic or public use. Bad government policy such as this exploits the land and the people who use it. The hidden costs to society definitely outweighed the social benefits of the land. To make way for the Hanford Site, the government evacuated the towns of Hanford, White Bluffs and surrounding farmland; these people were given thirty days to do so. This area was needed to build the required factories and to create a buffer zone around the top secret site. Between 500 and 600 families were affected as well as many Tribes native to the area. Many families moved to the growing town of Richland, which was receiving many displaced families as well as housing government officials. Housing shortages consumed the surrounding areas and folks were forced to live in trailer parks and other temporary housing units. Livelihoods were lost as farmers had to sell off their land to the government. Displaced tribes were offered land for reservations, insignificant compared to what was lost of their livelihood and culture. Government structure, through bad policy, surely created social problems for the residents of eastern Washington and surrounding areas due to the construction of the Hanford Site.

The US's political hubris for ultimate power superseded the well-being of their people when they created Hanford. Systems of stratification such as environmental racism were perpetrated against the Native American tribes whose cultures rely on the local land. In 1855, when the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation signed a treaty with the US, they handed over 6.4 million acres while reserving land use rights pertinent to their survival. The effects of exploitation to the land and natural resources in the area by the Hanford Site have gravely disturbed the tribes' cultural relationship with the land for generations. (Wolf A. , 2007) Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla representative Stu Harris spoke eloquently about the long-term impacts of Hanford on his people. He observed that in less than one generation Hanford has become so contaminated that "my people will be left with a contaminated land so severe for 10,000 years." (Carpenter, 2010) As the Tribes exercised their right to fish, hunt, and gather on the land surrounding Hanford, the US government withheld pertinent information regarding exposure to contaminated land, water and air, including the dispersal of ionizing radiation. Particularly vulnerable to these exposures were the members of the Yakama Indian Nation, the reservation of which is located west of and "downwind" from the Hanford Nuclear facility.

They used their knowledge to further exploit a group of people who had no way of protecting themselves in their daily struggle for survival. The tribes have vital interests in any Hanford activity that risks any right or resource assured by the 1855 Treaty both then and now. That includes threats to the fishery from radioactive and chemical contamination in the Columbia River an economic livelihood for these tribes.

Another structural source creating social problems for American society via Hanford is the US's capitalist economy. A strong capitalist economy creates profits and continues to grow them and often, profits take priority over safety. Although the Tri-party Agreement was signed in 1989, so many amendments have been made that decades have been added to the timeline. It seems that the longer cleanup is put off, the more contractors and corporations make. There is the inevitable fact of inflation and causing bids/fees to increase as time increases. There is also the necessity to train new workers as time goes on and previously trained workers leave. Although many will get rich throughout the multi-billion dollar cleanup, stalling only hinders the safety of the people and the environment. Profits were also found through the displaced families who created great economic stability for the surrounding areas such as Richland and Kennewick. Goods and services were needed by not only these folks but also the 50,000 plus workers brought to the area by this new "atomic industry." Hanford successfully created a new and diverse economy of industry, tourism and agriculture. Rather than question the effects of this unknown energy source on themselves and their environment, the area jumped at the chance to grow economically.

This last point also touches on a cultural ideology that dominates the US and fostered Hanford's success and tragic legacy; a backstabbing growth ethic. Americans hold strong to the idea that growth means prosperity which equals success, usually at whatever cost necessary. The surrounding areas of Hanford relished their population increase, economic growth and affiliation to something so extraordinary, the nuclear bomb. "We see ourselves as a community with a major industry," one Richland resident claimed. Another resident so strongly believed in the prosperity of Hanford he cried out, "Nuclear is a religion!" (Edelstein, 2007) Nationally, this sentiment was felt all over America as safety was felt once again post WWII. The Cold War perpetuated nuclear science as America once again felt comfortable in its own shoes. Nuclear power brought a stagnant, war torn America back to a vibrant, safe place that could start to grow again, an ideology that trumped safety of the people and protection of the environment.

Another cultural belief that is the downfall of Hanford is America's belief and faith in technology and its mastery over nature. America was unprepared for the consequences of nuclear waste and assumed that as time went on, technology and science would be able to fix any current or future problems. For decades, waste disposal was haphazard and considered temporary, with few records remaining or ever kept. At one of Hanford's earliest documented waste burial grounds, notes on contents that included pyrophoric uranium chips "were written on little telephone notepads," says Jon Fancher, field remediation manager for Washington Closure Hanford. (Rubin, 2008) Lack of properly containing and disposing of waste has contributed to contaminated groundwater found on Hanford land, a fact that was covered up by the government when two whistle blowers produced evidence of the 250 foot seepage, a potential for great danger once it reaches the Columbia River. These problems were largely withheld from the public, thanks to national security restrictions on information about making bombs. When the leaks finally became public, Hanford managers maintained the 66 known leaks from the older tanks hadn't spread far (Steele, 1997), a negligent statement at best. Technology was also supposed to stop the release of chemicals into the air or into the ground. Unfortunately, mastery of this atomic force was not great and people were exposed to the airborne radiation by breathing the air and consuming certain foods, especially milk from goats or cows that grazed on contaminated vegetation. In 1948, the first crude filters were installed on the plant stacks, technology that was supposed to protect residents from release of radioactive materials but even after this, radioactive materials were found as far as Montana and Idaho. The quest for technology and science that could save America from enemies across the globe proved to be more dangerous to the creator itself as people were affected by cancer and other ailments directly related to this radiation exposure.

It is hard to know if the US truly grasps the monumental and maybe even impossible cleanup of Hanford or its long term effects on human survival. Current policy trends indicate nuclear power to be a viable option to fossil fuels, and the Obama Administration has offered over $50 billion in loan guarantees to utilities that will continue to build nuclear plants. This is astonishing as there is still no disposal remedy for nuclear waste. In 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a legally-binding agreement to build a Waste Treatment Plant to convert the nuclear waste and hazardous waste into leak-proof glass logs for safe, permanent storage but this process remains an enigma as its completion seems decades off. "The cleanup of Hanford is complex, enormously expensive and controversial. There is always someone in power who would like to simply build a fence around Hanford and walk away. Every new administration tries to find ways to cut corners and do it faster, cheaper." (Carpenter, 2010) Structural and cultural sources still dominate the Hanford mess just as they created it.

Carpenter, T. (2010, July 14). Report from the Blue Ribbon Commission meeting. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Hanford Watch, Portland, OR: www.hanfordwatch.org

Edelstein, M. R. (2007). Hanford: The Closed City and it's Downwind Victims. In M. T. Michael R. Edelstein, Cultures of contamination: legacies of pollution in Russia and the U.S. (pp. 253-303). JAI Press.

Porter, L. (2004). Introduction to Hanford Issues. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Hanford Watch: www.handfordwatch.org

Rubin, D. K. (2008, November 19). Huge Cleanup at Bomb-Making Megasite Is The New Atomic Fallout. Retrieved December 5, 2010, from ENR.com: http://enr.construction.com/infrastructure/environment/2008/1119-HugeCleanup.asp

Steele, K. D. (1997, September 1). High Country News. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Radioactive waste from Hanford is seeping toward the Columbia: http://www.hcn.org/issues/113/3592

Tiemann, K. A., McNeal Jr., R. B., Lucal, B., & Ender, M. G. (2009). The Intersection Collection. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing.

Wolf, A. (2007). The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation: Culture, Renewable Energy, and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

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Food is essential to the survival of all humans. It is recommended that a person eat at least three meals a day. It is an absolute necessity, without it, a person will die. It should also be a basic human right, one which is available to everyone everywhere regardless of race, ethnicity, religious belief and wealth.

How are rights decided? Rights are social constructs decided by society, and simply declaring that it should be a basic human right doesn't automatically make it so. We, as a society, collectively decide what rights can be distributed and allocated to each individual in society. There needs to be a strong enough consensus amongst those in power to officiate a right. To make social changes and improvements requires convincing those in power.

There are many layers to the social structure of any particular society. These layers could be political, social, economical, legal, environmental, cultural and ideological. And ultimately, these layers impact who goes hungry in the world. To be able to successfully make positive impacts in reducing hunger then strides must be made towards progress in changing the layers of society.

McCue eloquently writes, "We are each diminished for allowing such hunger in the midst of plenty." He notes that there is a false belief to many that the problem of hunger is solved. It is his assertion that many people, including the government, see the hundreds of shelters and volunteers helping to feed the poor and conclude that the poor has been fed. He points out that these various charities don't help solve the problem of poverty and hunger. Every day, the hungry return to whichever charity they frequent for more food. He argues that the handouts should be a basic right enforced by the government. He advocates better social problems, extending food stamps to more in need and redefining the poverty line.

He believes that one of the social structural problems that contribute towards poverty and hunger is the gap between the "haves" and the "have nots," this is particularly apparent when comparing the wages of a frontline employee to that of the CEO. A solution would be to remove ownership from profit-driven corporations, and redistribute ownership in a way that allows the corporation to exist for the benefit of bettering the lives of the employees who work hard for them (McCue, 2004).

The victims of hunger that strike the most visceral images are those of children. Malnourished children are more susceptible to illnesses. Studies show that hungry children are sick on an average of one hundred and sixty days per year. There are approximately 32.5% children who are hungry or malnourished in developing countries. This would be the equivalent of one in three children going hungry. Asia has the largest population of hungry children with 70%. Africa comes second with 26%. Hunger and malnourishment can begin before birth--in the womb. As a result of hunger, one in six children is born with a low birth weight as well as with many birth disorders and diseases (Hunger Notes, 2010).
Hunger Notes states that global agricultural production actually produces sufficient food to feed everyone. There is actually more food available now then there was thirty years ago, despite a growth in population of 70 percent. The food production is about 2,720 calories per capita. This is more than sufficient, especially given that various health articles state that the average person needs roughly 2,000 calories a day. World hunger, therefore, is not caused by lack of food.

Unfortunately, there are social barriers in place that provide many from having land to grow food on or the means to purchase food. Some people live in rural areas and are too far from steady food supplies. Some people do not have tools or any place to grow food. Some can grow food but live in areas where they are subjected to war, disease, natural disasters and other causes that destroy their food or make it difficult to grow food.

There are many different causes of hunger including poverty, economic environment, war and conflicts, lack of power, discrimination and climate change. Shah lists some heart-wrenching facts about poverty. They include:

• Almost half of the world lives on less than $2.50 a day.
• There are one billion people who cannot read or write.
• One billion children live in poverty.
• 640 million live without adequate shelter
• 400 million do not have access to drinkable water
• 270 million do not have access to health care
• 10.6 million (29,000 per day) children died before they reached the age of 5 in 2003

Shah goes on to express his opinions that poverty is a result of the decisions of the rich and powerful. Essentially, it is a social problem based on the social constructs of society. In many ways, it is dependent on the policies of those in power, whether they are in government or lead a major global corporation (Shah, 2010).

The social problem of poverty is often blamed on individuals, with censure placed on the poor for not taking steps to improve their situations. This demonstrates a flawed understanding of the bigger social picture and wrongly removes onus from society. Better social programs and policies need to be developed that allow the poor access to education, good housing and healthcare.

Many studies demonstrate a strong correlation between lack of education and poverty. There is research that reveals that every dollar that is invested in providing a good early start to a child saves about seven dollars costs for health care and other needs that arise when children do not have access to basic needs.

It is not just developing countries that have people living in poverty.
• 15 million Americans live in poverty.
• 25% of the homeless community is children
• 50% of the poor are children. C
• Child poverty can be eradicated at the cost of $45 billion, which is less than tax breaks given to the wealthy in the 1980's and 1990's (Free the Children).

Poverty is just one cause of hunger. Another big contributor towards hunger is war and conflict. Hunger Notes explains that one of the most obvious impacts that conflict has on hunger is the deliberate use of hunger as a weapon. They state, "Food shortages and famine deaths occur when adversaries starve opponents into submission." In times of war, many inhumane acts are committed in effort to win. Soldiers will often destroy crops and livestock, or they will confiscate land. They may seize food holdings for their troops. They might even engage in poisoning water sources. As war ravages the land, food sources end up being reduced or depleted. Another result is that farming communities and agricultural activity wanes or comes to a complete stop.

There are many examples of acts of conflict contributing towards the ever increasing social problems of hunger. In Ethiopia, the Mengitsu government first starved their opposition and then when humanitarian organizations sent in food aid, they seized the food supplies. Since the 1980's, warring forces in southern Sudan have continuously used famine as a weapon of war. In almost all cases, situations were created to foster hunger, and then remaining food was controlled by those in power.

The effects of war are likely to remain long after the conflict has ended. Many victims of war have been driven into poverty, had their entire communities destroyed and created social situations where many no longer have access to education or healthcare or other basic needs. This ensures that hunger will be an ongoing problem. Conflict-based poverty and hunger often causes a state of "food insecurity," where there are constant food shortages and barriers obtaining food, which may not have existed without war (Food Shortages).

The reasons that conflict even exists is frequently due to "structural violence," which has roots in vicious regimes and exclusionists governments. There are often governmental policies that are racist and discriminatory to certain ethnic groups, religious beliefs and cultures. Many of the conflicts center around natural resource shortages, inequity of wealth and social resources (education, health and so on), unfair legal treatment, and denials of social and civil liberties based on religion, sex and so on. Conflict can lead to hunger and then hunger can lead to further conflict. When people are hungry, they can become desperate. It can turn into a terrible cycle that is hard to break (Hunger Notes).

Climate Change is also an impact on hunger. Studies show that climate change will lower grain yields and increase crop prices, which in-turn will increase child hunger by 20%. Ooko's article states that millions of people in East Africa face climate related hunger. His article is an analysis of a report released by Oxfam International. The way that climate change is impacting hunger in East Africa is due to the changing seasons, which are destroying harvests and increasing hunger. Ooko notes that impacts from climate change could set back strides to improve hunger by fifty years (Ooko, 2009).

Climate change will gradually become an even greater impact on hunger. Scientists are predicting that billions will suffer water shortages and the number of people who are hungry will increase in the millions (200 to 600 million is predicted). Scientists are estimating that between one to three billion people with feel the impacts of water shortages by as early as 2080. As with most impacts on society, the impacts will be greatest felt by those who are poor (Climate change means hunger and thirst for billions: report, 2010).

The social problem of hunger is complex. There are many different factors that contribute towards it, and many issues that need to be addressed before steps can be taken towards solving hunger. There needs to be many societal structure changes such as, political and policy changes. Policies need to be implemented that address other social problems that lead to hungry like poverty. Some recommendations would be better food stamp programs, investment in local agricultural economies or more funding towards education?
There also needs to be strategies in place to tackle growing issues like climate change, or increased funding into developing technologies that will better combat climate change and reduce hunger. Governments of the world need to play major roles in fighting hunger, many do (to some extent) but the involvement needs to be greater. For example, the US government could spend less on defense and more on humane causes. Greater support could be given to the many non-profit organizations that are actively working to reduce hunger. The richer governments need to continue to provide aid and resources to the poorer governments. For our governments to be effective in solving hunger, we need governments who are more diplomatic and less antagonistic.

The huge social problem of hunger cannot be solved overnight. It requires a restructure of society and many deep changes. The reality is that there is enough food to feed the world, there just needs to be more momentum towards feeding the world. Some of this may involve continued education and awareness to others. The first step is acceptance and realization of the issue, the next is taking action.

In summary, hunger is a social problem that affects societies around the world. Although, it can be more obviously seen in poorer and developing countries, industrialized and wealthier countries also suffer from high levels of poverty. Hunger is a social issue that has many societal impacts on society such as in increased health costs and more causes for social conflicts. Hunger is one of the most prominent and vital social problems, and one that needs to be addressed by all societies around the world.

Works Cited

Climate change means hunger and thirst for billions: report. (2010, January 30). Retrieved December 5, 2010, from BreitBart: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070130081454.ieaxdzu8&show_article=1

Food Shortages. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3, 2010, from Hunger Notes: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/fall2000/messer3.htm

Free the Children. (n.d.). Child Poverty. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Free the Children: http://www.freethechildren.com/getinvolved/geteducated/childpoverty.htm

Hunger Notes. (n.d.). Armed Conflict and Hunger--Underlying Causes of Hunger and Conflict. Retrieved 5 2010, December, from Hunger Notes: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/fall2000/messer5.htm

Hunger Notes. (2010). World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2010, from Hunger Notes: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Mas, M. (2010, October 28). Hunger: a structural problem. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from Social Watch: http://www.socialwatch.org/node/12289

McCue, B. (2004, 20 April). Nation's most pressing problem today: hunger. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from Bnet: http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/intelligencer-journal-lancaster-new-era-combined-saturday-edition/mi_8130/is_20040420/nations-pressing-problem-hunger/ai_n52718350/

Ooko, D. (2009, July 6). Oxfam says millions face climate-related hunger in East Africa. Retrieved December 6, 2010, from China View: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/06/content_11661972.htm

Shah, A. (2010, November 28). Causes of Poverty. Retrieved December 5, 2010, from Global Issues: http://www.globalissues.org/issue/2/causes-of-poverty

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For those of us who had already been working towards relocalization for some years, the community-wide Transition process that Rob Hopkins and his fellow pioneers began developing in Totnes in 2006 was the very first sign of a clear and replicable pathway to community resilience and self-reliance in the face of the converging global crises of fossil fuel depletion, global warming, and economic collapse.

In Boulder County, we had well understood the urgent need for relocalization since we began in mid-2005. Inspired by Julian Darley's Post Carbon Institute, then located in Vancouver, we joined the Relocalization Network early on, and did our best to follow the principles and guidelines that flowed from Post Carbon Institute's Richard Heinberg and the early "Post Carbon Outposts," most notably in Willits, California. The tag line in those early days was, "Reduce consumption, produce locally." Some took that as a kind of tough love. This early movement was focused on an understanding of the peak oil crisis, and was driven by people who Darley called "the walking worried."

That primitive relocalization movement grew surprisingly rapidly. At its peak, probably early 2007, there were reportedly some 200 such Post Carbon Outposts in a dozen nations or so, and founder Julian Darley predicted in an interview I did for HopeDance Magazine in July 2006 that the network would continue to grow exponentially. But it didn't happen. And at the moment Darley was saying this, it was already beginning to collapse. Groups were disbanding, giving up. The Relocalization Network turned out to be unsustainable, partly (perhaps) because it lacked precisely the kind of replicable process for relocalization that Transition provides.

This experience has perhaps provided me a healthy skepticism. But I think it needs to be said that the Relocalization Network was very effective in raising awareness of the implications of the coming calamity that we call Peak Oil.

It also gave us in Boulder County a profound experience of confusion, frustration, disappointment, and sometimes even despair--for while we understood that relocalization urgently needed to happen in our community (and in every other community, of course), we were painfully aware that we certainly didn't know what we were doing or how to do it. And to our dismay we discovered that no one else knew how to do it either!

As in all relocalization efforts, we had been trying our best to discover the ways to prepare our communities for a crisis that was just over the horizon and had not yet quite arrived, and attempting to do this without being seen as alarmists, doom-and-gloomers, or inciters of fear and anxiety.

Meanwhile, we were watching what was happening in the UK. The earliest indication that something new was brewing came with the Kinsale (Ireland) Energy Descent Action Plan, produced in 2005 by a group of Permaculture students, led by Rob Hopkins, which was ultimately adopted by the town council of Kinsale. But it was essentially a student project.

In 2006, we heard that Hopkins had moved to Totnes, England, where he was prototyping a community-wide process to achieve local resilience and self-reliance. It seemed ambitious, but possible. We eagerly awaited news.

The forthcoming news was very encouraging. A robust, seemingly viral movement was soon underway, and we soon learned that Rob Hopkins was writing The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependence to Local Resilience to help fuel the movement.

Shortly after it was published, in early 2008, I hurriedly read The Transition Handbook on a plane to the UK, on my way to see for myself if the burgeoning Transitioning movement really lived up to the glowing reports we had been reading on the Internet. I had to know if it was actually working, and to somehow gauge whether the movement could possibly be sustainable.

My first stop was Dundee, Scotland, to take the two-day Training for Transition with Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande, two of the co-founders of Transition Town Totnes. I'll just say that my experience there was entirely unexpected. Somehow Transition just landed in me, in my heart, and I saw that Transition was a living, breathing being. Transition was alive--and alive in me!

Afterwards, I made the long train-trek down to England to make my pilgrimage to the birthplace of the movement, Totnes. And there I was able to spend some time with founder Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn, who headed up the Transition Network. I got to see the movement "on the ground," not only in Totnes but in several communities in England. I saw that Transition had become a household word in the UK, and that the movement was indeed spreading virally. It looked like this was going to work!

I came back to the states deeply inspired, carrying the fire of Transition, determined to ignite this nation.

Amazingly, both Hopkins and Brangwyn candidly admitted to me that while considering Transition in the U.S., they felt it was too daunting a task. This country seemed unimaginably large to them, and too difficult to deal with. They had figured they would just forget about the U.S.! So there were no plans to bring Transition to the U.S., but I knew it was essential.

On May 1, 2008, our relocalization organization in Boulder County became the first officially recognized Transition Initiative in North America (number 53 in the world, the 5^th outside the U.K.), and in September of that year Lynette Marie Hanthorn and I (she's the co-founder of our organization) held the first Training for Transition, with 61 people participating. That spawned 20-some local initiatives in Colorado, five of which became officially recognized (so far). That spurred us, perhaps a bit prematurely, to become Transition Colorado, the first statewide Transition Hub.

As certified Transition Trainers, Lynette Marie and I have trained hundreds of people all over the country in the Transition process, and have conducted numerous Transition Clinics both online and in person.

I also became part of the original "initiating group" that sought to develop Transition U.S., which was formally birthed in January 2009 with the support of Post Carbon Institute, and served on its board of directors until April of this year.

And of course, through all this we've greatly expanded our Transition efforts in Boulder County, primarily focusing on catalyzing something of a revolution in local food and farming. Lately, we're in the process of launching a Local Food and Farming Enterprise Investment Fund, which has already been seeded by an extraordinary commitment of capital.

THE CONTEXT FOR TRANSITION

Enough for backstory. What I want to address here is the evolution of the Transition movement, particularly in this nation, and to reflect on where it's gotten to and where it's headed.

There are three principal themes I'd like to consider. First of all, the context for Transition (or at least our understanding of it) has changed dramatically since the model was first articulated. In other words, we have a much more sharply defined sense of what we need to be preparing our communities for.

Secondly, the Transition model first emerged from a culture very different from ours. And I think we've already seen indications that just transplanting the UK approach to Transition here may not work very well. We will need a uniquely American approach to Transition, and that is just beginning to take shape--but I think it will require that we once again declare our independence from England, and establish our interdependence.

Thirdly, Transition itself is in transition. Transition is a self-organizing, emergent, "open source" movement that is evolving in sometimes unexpected ways (perhaps always in unexpected ways). And this, to me, demonstrates one of the great strengths and resiliencies of the movement, that it is flexible enough to adapt locally and evolve globally. What's beginning to emerge in the movement, particularly around what we could call the Inner Transition, is of special significance--and it's here that I would like to go a little deeper, suggesting an approach to Transition that is both uniquely American and that can perhaps breathe new life into the movement here.

To begin, let's look at the current state of the context for Transition, the reasons why Transition is so needed, so urgent--in other words, what we are preparing our communities for. I'll try to talk about these things in a very succinct, bottom-line manner, without building the arguments or citing the data--which are now abundantly available.

Peak Oil

First, it's become quite clear that we must quickly prepare our communities for sharp fluctuations in fossil fuel prices and a general decline in fossil fuel availability. This will plunge our national and local economies into chaos, for they are built on fundamentally wrong (and profoundly unsustainable) premises. In the next few years, give or take, it's likely that we will all finally come to understand that Peak Oil is upon us.

The hope that we'll be able to maintain our current way of life by substituting renewable energy for fossil fuels is wildly unrealistic and perhaps even dangerous. We now know that renewable substitutes will not come on line quickly enough or at large enough scale to be able to maintain our current way of life. We're going to be facing a future with far less energy available to us. So this is not just Peak Oil, but Peak Energy! This is a reality we're going to have to come to terms with, and we need to allow this to really sink in to our consciousness. It will change everything, and much sooner than we care to think about.

It's unavoidable that we will be going through a wrenching energy transition--likely beginning in the next couple of years--which will change profoundly how we live, where we live, and even who lives. This tells us that we simply can't adequately prepare our communities with new technology alone, or with incremental decreases in energy consumption. We will need to live very differently--and we will have to hurry.

Climate Change/Global Warming

The second thing we need to talk about is that climate change/ global warming is already upon us, and here we are woefully unprepared. Sadly, recent data from the United Nations Environment Programme reveals that we're unavoidably on track for at least a 6.3-degree Fahrenheit temperature rise globally by the end of the century--even if all governments meet all their most optimistic targets (which is highly unlikely). And this could happen even by mid-century. This will change the face of the planet radically, and the trajectory of human population.

A couple of things became very clear out of the muddle in Copenhagen last December and in the subsequent embarrassing spectacle in our own Congress. First, the scientific consensus is that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are already having a devastating impact on the ecosphere that supports all life, and this will get very much worse in the future. Secondly, we see now that our governments are simply not going to be able to rise to the occasion in time to mitigate the impacts.

In his recent book, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change, Australia's Clive Hamilton suggests that "We will be powerless to stop the jump to a new climate on Earth, one much less sympathetic to life. The kind of climate that has allowed civilization to flourish will be gone and humans will enter a long struggle just to survive." This means a very profound shift for human existence, one that we have hardly begun to accept.

So this is not merely climate change we're talking about, but climate disruption, and it may ultimately give our species the equivalent of a "near death experience." We know that those who have had near-death experiences or life-threatening illnesses are often transformed, so that they see their previous lives as empty and self-centered. So if we survive as a species, perhaps we will be likewise humbled, and devote the rest of our days to service.

Economic Decline/Collapse

The third area we must talk about is the economy, and this is precisely the arena that the founders of the Transition movement in Totnes have been so skittish about taking on as part of the context for Transition--until very recently, thanks to American Chris Martenson and Canadian Nicole Foss (who writes under the name "Stoneleigh"). Here, we need to know that economic decline will soon accelerate to inevitable collapse. There will be no long-term economic recovery. The underpinnings of modern human society (and the global economy) as we have known it are fundamentally unsustainable, and they are beginning to unravel before our eyes.

This is partly because the entire globalized economy is based on the U.S. dollar, which is based on cheap oil. And now the whole system is beginning to come apart.

When you hear predictions of economic recovery, just remember that those economists and politicians who are making these predictions are the very same ones who were predicting not so long ago that there was virtually zero chance that we could slip into an economic recession--and we now understand they were saying this at a time when we were already at least a year into recession.

We need to recognize these rosy predictions for what they are, and prepare for the end of economic growth as we have known it.

In our lifetime, we will most likely experience roller-coaster periods of global recession followed by weak and partial recoveries; this will ultimately give way to grinding, long-term global depression. In the process, many of the institutions on which we have come to rely as anchors for certainty and normalcy and sanity will surely fail, some of them slowly, some of them suddenly and spectacularly. It will be a chaotic time for the next several decades, and the chaos will prevail long after most of us have left this planet.

--

Over the last few years I've noticed that we tend to think of fossil fuel depletion, climate change, and economic decline as three separate global crises. But of course they are all deeply interrelated. When we say this, it seems so obvious. But we're just beginning to wake up to this reality: Our growth economy is based on cheap fossil fuels, and burning fossil fuels is obviously dramatically altering our climate. Therefore, economic growth as we have known it cannot and will not continue. Our Industrial Growth Society cannot and will not continue.  

This is what James Howard Kunstler has called The Long Emergency. And this is really what we are preparing ourselves and our communities for.

Clearly, we are entering into a prolonged period of profound change, an era of "unintended consequences." The changes that are coming our way will profoundly alter not only how we live, but even how we conceive of ourselves, how we think about the world, and how we see the future. And not only will we have to learn to cope with severe disruption to our conception of ourselves and the world, but we will also need to forge a new vision of the world that we can live by. Where will that vision come from?

The larger context for the Transition movement, of course, is that all communities are in transition, whether we realize it or not, whether there is a formal Transition Initiative present or not--and so are all cultures, all nations, and all institutions. We are in a transition as a species, even as a planet in a larger Universe. Of course the outcome of this great Transition is profoundly uncertain and unpredictable, perhaps even unknowable. But this is what we're all preparing for.

Awareness-Raising

We will need to tell and retell the story of how we got into this predicament. It would be the story of the rise of the Industrial Growth Society, and how it has deeply wounded every single human living today, and how it has devastated the entire biosphere. It would be the story of how we're learning that the Industrial Growth Society--in the form of economic globalization--is the culprit that has been pushing us to the brink of The Long Emergency, the brink of economic collapse, even the brink of civilization's collapse.

It is this deeply dysfunctional mindset--insane, really--from which we must all learn to decolonize, recover and heal. That's a process that's going to take a while. But it won't happen at all unless there are those of us who are holding that possibility, holding the space for healing and regeneration.

One of the key roles of Transition that sets it apart from other efforts is a commitment to continually raise awareness about our collective predicament. We're sometimes criticized for this. I find it very helpful that Gus Speth recounts that in The Death of Environmentalism the authors remind us that Martin Luther King, Jr., did not proclaim, "I have a nightmare." Speth's incisive reply to them is that "King did not need to say it--his people were living a nightmare. They needed a dream. But we, I fear, are living a dream. We need to be reminded of the nightmare ahead. Here is the truth as I see it: we will never do the things that are needed unless we know the full extent of our predicament."

I believe that our Transition initiatives need to be dedicated to informing our communities about the full extent of our predicament, and that we must not shrink from this task.

TOWARDS AN AMERICAN TRANSITION

There are now 77 officially-recognized Transition Initiatives in the U.S., along with 17 in Canada (and none in Mexico). But this is a nation of some 300 million people. Canada has about 35 million.

The UK claims 170 officially-recognized Initiatives, with a population of just over 60 million. Granted, the movement in the UK has been ongoing for a couple of years longer than in the U.S., but the rate of adoption does seem noticeably slower here. To approach a similar level, we'd need to somehow get to nearly 400 official Initiatives over the next 18 months. That would be truly extraordinary growth, and I'd really like to see that happen.

Sadly, however, the rate of adoption in the U.S. seems to be slowing. Transition is hardly a household word in this country, and mainstream media have given the movement scant attention. What's happening here?

I don't know if ever there will emerge a coherent and robust and truly viral Transition movement in this nation. I do know that we need it urgently. But today the movement here seems to me to be somewhat fragmented. Surely there are very inspiring and important things going on in a number of communities--as in Sandpoint, Idaho--and truly I'm grateful for all of that. But in several other communities, the effort for relocalization has already essentially stalled. For many, it just seems too difficult, too big a challenge.

But we need Transition to work here, especially in this nation--because the U.S. is ground zero for The Long Emergency. We are the world's largest user of fossil fuels. With less than five percent of the world's population, we burn about 25 percent of the world's oil (two-thirds of which we have to import). We are also the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for at least 25 percent of the total. Some would have us believe that China is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, but this ignores the fact that much of what China produces is for consumption in the U.S. In fact, one-third of the world's industrial products come to the U.S.

We are the world's most significant contributor to fossil fuel depletion, and environmental degradation, and global warming. And now, with the entire globalized economy based on the U.S. dollar, which is based on an abundant supply of cheap oil, we are also the world's greatest contributor to economic decline--which is likely to soon become economic collapse, or at least long-term economic depression.

Make no mistake, the U.S. is the belly of the beast. Given this situation, it's hardly surprising that it's very challenging to get Transition to catch fire here. There may be no other nation on the planet where denial and greed are more deeply rooted.

I appreciate the assessments of David Orr at Oberlin College, who observes, "Conventional wisdom maintains that we are slowly recovering from a recalcitrant recession. As we are now entering at least the third year of real economic contraction, continue to reel from the predations and corruption in a financial sector the federal government treats as sacrosanct, are in the sixth year of a plateau in worldwide oil extraction, and climate change is essentially unmitigated, it should be obvious that American society is arrantly unsustainable--ecologically, fiscally, economically, politically, and ethically... We've got a whole culture locked in the first stage of Abraham Maslow's five stages of human development: infantile self-gratification."

But we have a unique history and heritage here in the U.S., and in many ways a painful legacy, and all this needs to deeply inform our approach to Transition.

Geologian Thomas Berry helps us to understand our particular predicament here:

When we came to this continent, we saw ourselves as a people with the most sublime spiritual insights... as the most intellectual people of the world... as people with the most human political traditions of the world, with our democratic political commitment; as a people, through our technologies, most able to deal with the daily needs of the world for food, clothing, and shelter. Now, after four centuries we find the North American continent toxic in its air, its water, and its land and gravely diminished in the variety and abundance of its living forms. We must ask ourselves what happened? The answer is simply that we have lost our awareness that the human community exists only as a component of the larger Earth community. Instead of an intimate presence on an abundant continent that could inspire our minds and imaginations while providing for our practical needs, we became a predator people on an innocent continent.

The North American continent will never again be what it once was. The manner in which we have devastated the continent has never before occurred... It is clear that there will be little development of life here in the future if we do not protect and foster the living forms of this continent. To do this, a change must occur deep in our souls. We need our technologies, but this is beyond technology. Our technologies have betrayed us.

What we are learning is that what has gotten us into our collective predicament is a deep disconnection from the natural world, from life itself. And this separation between humans and the earth and the fundamental processes of life is nowhere more dramatic or more devastating than right here in the U.S.

"You and I are not people who live in communion with the earth," says Chellis Glendinning. "We exist instead dislocated from our roots by the psychological, philosophical, and technological constructions of our civilization, and this alienation leads to our suffering: massive suffering for each and every one of us, and mass suffering throughout our society."

As Americans, we will need to come to own all of this, to allow it to sink deep into our conscious awareness, and to learn to heal from it together.

TRANSITION IN TRANSITION

In his Cheerful Disclaimer, Rob Hopkins candidly and humbly admits that Transition is a massive social experiment and we really don't know if it will work. Well, with the stakes as high as they are, I think we need to explore finding the ways to help ensure that it will work, especially here in the U.S.

I want to be very clear here. I do think the Transition model or process is a revolutionary development, one of the most important we've seen to date. But we should recognize that Transition itself is now undergoing radical change, one that is most especially needed in the U.S.

The important thing to acknowledge here is that Transition is evolving very quickly--based both on what has been experienced in communities all over the world, and on what is seeking to emerge in and through this movement. You could say that Transition is in transition! And pehaps the most visible sign of this evolution is a radical reframing of the Transition model by Rob Hopkins himself.

To his credit, Rob Hopkins was horrified to see that his early attempts to articulate a Transition process became a sort of catechism for emerging Transition Initiatives, so he is now in the early stages of a valiant attempt to sweep away the rapidly-forming accretions of tradition--how is it possible for a movement to establish "traditions" in a scant four years?--and to replace them with a re-conception of Transition as something called "a pattern language," following the example of famed architect Christopher Alexander.

Shortly before the international Transition Network conference in England in June, Rob sent out this message, which took many by surprise:

In the interests of promoting non-attachment to ideas and enshrining the principle that none of us really know what we are doing, as encapsulated in the 'Cheerful Disclaimer', for the Transition Handbook 2.0, I am taking the original Transition model and throwing it up in the air, using 'A Pattern Language' as a way of re-communicating and reshaping it.

With some excitement, we had learned early this year that Rob was heading in this direction. And now we see he is slowly writing the Transition Handbook 2.0, pattern by pattern, on his blog, inviting input and feedback. It's a very ambitious and creative project. Not everyone is happy about this reframing, however, including some of Alexander's long-time students--but it's on its way nonetheless.

What is the meaning of all this? What is emerging in the Transition movement? And what is all this about Pattern Language?

I can only point to this in the briefest way here, but let me give you a few thoughts from Christopher Alexander himself that give us a clue to this very rich understanding. Just let this wash over you--like poetry:

The specific patterns out of which a community is made may be alive or dead. To the extent they are alive, they let our inner forces loose, and set us free; but when they are dead, they keep us locked in inner conflict.

The more living patterns there are in a place, the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name.

And when a community has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety created in the presence of the fact that all things pass. This is the quality itself--the quality that cannot be named.

To work our way towards a shared and living language once again, we must first learn how to discover patterns which are deep, and capable of generating life.

We may then gradually improve these patterns which we share, by testing them against experience: we can determine, very simply, whether these patterns make our communities live, or not, by recognizing how they make us feel...

So, pattern language is about discovering the inherent patterns that bring aliveness, wholeness and healing to our communities. This is potentially an extremely potent development for the Transition movement, for underlying the Transition process is the healing impulse. In fact, it's the same impulse that's underlying Permaculture.

It's been hard for us to find the ways to talk about this. But just at the moment we're exploring a deeper integration between the principles of Permaculture and Transition, we're discovering just how extraordinary Alexander's contribution really is. Here's an excerpt, adapted from A New Theory of Urban Design:

Let us consider what kind of process might be needed to let a community become gradually whole.

In nature, the inner laws which make a growing whole are, of course, profound and intricate...

What happens in the community, happens to us. If the process fails to produce wholeness, we suffer right away. So, somehow, we must overcome our ignorance, and learn to understand the community as a product of a huge network of processes, and learn just what features might make the cooperation of these processes produce a whole.

We must therefore learn to understand the laws which produce wholeness in the community...

The process is a single process because it has only one aim: quite simply, to produce wholeness, everywhere...

Now all this may seem rather mystical, even spiritual. Well, perhaps it is. We eventually discover that what Alexander is pointing to is that wholeness and connectedness and aliveness and sacredness and holiness are all one seamless unfolding evolutionary process. 

In the UK, this bold re-conception is being delivered under the banner of "Assembling Transition" and Hopkins has taken to call the patterns he has identified as "Transition Ingredients"--as if Transition is some sort of recipe to follow, a kind of cake we can just cook up! Unwittingly, Hopkins may be condemning Transition to the same kind of fate that has befallen a mechanistic view of Nature and the Universe.

Language matters here. It's not trivial. Brian Swimme laughs at earlier scientists who imagined that the Universe had somehow been assembled from parts--and imagined that the human had no integral connection with the process. As I delve deeper into all this, I find myself suspecting that Rob may be ignoring the deeper aspects of Christopher Alexander's work.

THE EMERGENCE OF DEEP TRANSITION

One of the core principles of Permaculture has to do with valuing what's happening at the edges of a system. As David Holmgren says, "The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system."

For the last two years, we've been exploring some of these edges at Genesis Farm in Northwest New Jersey, where--after thirty years as a center for the study of Earth Literacy and "The Great Work" of Thomas Berry--Sister Miriam MacGillis has opened the door to a profound exploration of how to help foster the Transition movement in this land, how to regain within it with the sense of sacred energy revealed through the story of the emergence of the Universe itself and the evolution of our own Earth, and how to cultivate a truly bioregional context for reinventing and relocalizing our way into the future (in other words, becoming native to our place).

At Genesis Farm, in a rich and deeply supportive environment, working with Miriam MacGillis, Seanna Ashburn (another Transition Trainer), and others, we've held dialogues, presentations, and an ongoing series of two- and three-day workshops for Transition leaders.

Out of this exploration, several key themes have emerged:

Seriousness and urgency. First, there is a growing and indisputable recognition that our collective predicament is far more serious and more urgent than many of us had been willing to actively contemplate. This is being increasingly reflected in the larger Transition movement, sometimes to the apparent dismay of its founders. Part of the discomfort, of course, is the unavoidable recognition that, as John Michael Greer tells us, the situation we face is not a problem that can be solved, but a predicament of our own making to which we must now quickly adapt. It's very important to name our predicament, and to name and express how it's impacting us, what we are feeling about all this.

And with this comes the realization that while the long-term Energy Descent Action Planning process is essential in our communities, we must also quickly develop short-term plans to respond to likely near-term events--things like breakdowns in food or fuel supply chains, or a sudden collapse of the stock market, or a weather catastrophe, or even a widespread health crisis. Richard Heinberg has been pleading for this kind of emergency planning for years now as a core part of every resilience program. Few in this country have listened, and now time is very short.

Emergence. Second, we're beginning to learn about Emergence--or what Christopher Alexander calls "Unfolding," the evolutionary process by which the universe itself self-organizes, finding profound and practical lessons in how to catalyze Transition in our communities. We're in the process of learning about what is emerging in the Transition movement itself. In our communities, we're learning about what it is that's wanting to emerge there, far beyond our hopes and fears and desires. And in ourselves, we're discovering what it is that's wanting to emerge in us--and through us.

Self-organization. Third, in a closely-related way, we're also beginning to learn the meaning of "self-organization," which is actually a core principle of Transition, though little discussed. We're discovering that catalyzing self-organization of a community around relocalization or Transition is entirely different from community organizing!

Permaculture principles and ethics. We're also beginning to understand how essential the principles and ethics of Permaculture are to the Transition process. These have not been translated very explicitly into the Transition literature, and yet they are fundamental to Transition. This translation will become increasingly important over time, because Permaculture is based on a very deep understanding of how life works.

New Cosmology/Universe Story. We're also diving deep into the story of the evolution of the Universe, of the Earth, and of life itself. As Thomas Berry explains, this New Cosmology "explores the contemporary, scientific story of the origin, nature and function of the Universe from its beginning, through its galactic phase, its supernova events, the shaping of the solar system, Earth, life, human life and self-reflective consciousness as a single, unbroken series of events." It's often framed in terms of "Earth Literacy," because we humans are so illiterate about the place where we live and how we got here. But the New Cosmology is helping us to recover our sense of the sacredness of life itself, and our fundamental connectedness with the processes that make life possible.

When people hear the word "cosmology" they sometimes automatically think that it's somehow religious. But in reality it's based on a very deep understanding of science, the story of the evolution of the Universe. And, surprisingly, it brings us to a profound sense of the sacredness of life.

This perspective is even embedded in the Preamble to the Earth Charter, which says: "We are part of a vast, evolving universe. Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life." This is not a mere metaphor.

In an interview with Derrick Jensen, Creation Spirituality's Matthew Fox says, "I maintain that the best, most profound mystical literature today is coming out of science. The new creation story is that everything--each of us--is mystery. What we're finding is that the smallest part of the atom is mystery. It's dancing. And then of course the macrocosm is a mystery. In the previous scientific worldview, mystery was 'just what we don't know yet. We'll solve it.' It's not that way. Death is not something you solve. Love is not something you solve. A broken heart is not something you solve. It's something you experience. It's Moses on the mountain. Moses had his experience with the burning bush. We're learning that every bush is a burning bush, burning with photons and photosynthesis and this amazing cosmic process that was invented a few billion years ago, a process that goes back to the original fireball." This perspective is deeply enlivening!

Pattern Language. As an important adjunct to the New Cosmology, we're beginning to discover the importance of the patterns of evolution itself--and patterns of wholeness and healing. That's certainly possible with Rob Hopkin's infusion of Christopher Alexander's extraordinary work into the Transition process. We'll see. What's happening at Genesis Farm is we're finding that our understanding of how Transition works and how real community works are being radically reshaped by our understanding of how the Universe itself evolves, how life evolves and how life works.

Inner Transition/Heart & Soul. Finally, we're beginning to appreciate the centrality of Inner Transition, what is frequently called "Heart & Soul" work in the Transition movement, a recognition that Transition in the outer world cannot occur without an Inner Transition. Holding the space for this--including the psychology of change; the whole broad field of ecopsychology;  dealing with grief, anger and despair; and Joanna Macy's "Work that Reconnects"--is to me one of the most refreshing and endearing aspects of the Transition movement. This may turn out to be a more powerful attractor to the movement than the issues of peak oil, climate change, and economic decline!

As Sophy Banks in Totnes reminds us, "Part of the human condition is an experience of inner woundedness or brokenness. We want to be whole again, and some part of us knows how to do that. We yearn for wholeness and integration." And her partner, Naresh Giangrande, says, "Transition work is a manifestation of the healing impulse. We're making a plea to bring love into Transition." These things are not often openly stated in the Transition movement, but they are being uttered in Heart & Soul groups that are meeting even in the most unexpected places.

It's a long and intense process, but we're beginning to see (and communicate) how the New Cosmology, the Universe Story, Permaculture, Heart & Soul, and Christopher Alexander's work are very closely related--and how they're just beginning to land together in the Transition movement. What this means, to me, is that we're finally beginning to understand Transition itself as an evolutionary process, one of the most intriguing and promising processes to emerge on this planet! And it's all absolutely integral with the 13.7 billion year process of the unfolding of the Universe--which of course is a continuing emergent unfolding.

In short, at Genesis Farm we're beginning to catalyze the infusion into Transition of new perspectives and leading-edge processes that are absolutely necessary in order for Transition to be ultimately successful. The emergence of these new perspectives is encouraging and inspiring. To me, these are all signs that Transition is working.

TOWARDS DEEP TRANSITION

Alastair McIntosh gives us some wonderful context for all this in his book, Hell and High Water, where he writes about climate change (but he could just as well be speaking of our total predicament). He says, "To mitigate climate change--and even to adapt to its consequences--without losing our humanity, there needs to be a radical reactivation of our inner lives."

He continues, "Inner climate affects outer climate because inner hubris drives outer hubris in a spiral of mindless economic frenzy." That's very powerful!

"I perversely hold out hope for humanity," he says, "not in spite of global warming, but precisely because it confronts us with a wake-up call to consciousness. Answering that call of the wild to the wild within us all invites outer action matched by inner transformation."

And that's part of what we've been attempting to cultivate at Genesis Farm. We're exploring these things out of a deep and urgent sense that these perspectives, these tools and processes will be absolutely essential for Transition leaders as we move into a very uncertain future.

We're finding that this perspective about the inner work is fundamental to Transition, and opens the door to what we've begun calling Deep Transition.

While these things may not be a "traditional" part of the Transition orientation, Deep Transition represents an opening where breakthrough understandings and processes can readily emerge and make significant contributions. After all, since no one anywhere has yet successfully relocalized a community, it is quite likely that approaches both ancient and new will be needed.

As David Orr says, industrial civilization destroys communities. And at its core, Transition is about healing and regenerating community. This is deep and profound work, and it is the very epicenter of the Transition process, even though we haven't talked about it publicly very much--yet.

This is what Alistair McIntosh calls the Cycle of Belonging--where we help one another to re-member what has been dismembered, to re-vision how things could alternatively be, and then organize to re-claim what is needed to regenerate and heal community. This Cycle of Belonging offers meaning and direction in generating the responsibility necessary for community regeneration and healing.

But in the long run, I feel our Transition efforts may not be sustainable or resilient or self-reliant unless we place the Sacred at the very core of our work and at the center of all our activities.

For Transition is not a movement for bringing about change. Change is coming, with us or without us, whether we want it or not--profound change. Transition is a movement for preparing our communities for the changes that are coming. And our preparation is likely to crumble unless we are able to connect with and cultivate the aliveness, the wholeness, the healing, and the sacredness that underlies the Transition process.

Buried deep in the Transition literature, there is a reference to core principles that should guide the practice of Permaculture and presumably Transition itself. These are not discussed at any great length, but perhaps we can sense that they are fundamental:

• A sustainable human presence on the planet must align its systems with how life works.
• As long as our human culture is based on unsustainable assumptions, those systems will fail.
• A reinvention of a sustainable human culture must be in alignment with the rest of life.
• The laws of life can be seen and experienced in the natural world and many indigenous cultures.

There is aliveness here, and great wisdom. I propose these as foundational principles for Deep Transition.

I remember Christopher Alexander saying that aliveness and wholeness begin with something small. If it's authentic, truly alive, it spreads or unfolds--often in mysterious ways. It's eerily contagious, and uncontrollable. This is not something to be "organized." Instead, it grows--organically. This is as true for a community as it is for an organism.

The challenge for those of us involved in Transition is to be able to see such pockets of aliveness and wholeness in our communities, and to support them, to protect them, to lovingly shine the light of day on them, to cultivate them, to catalyze their replication--and then to see what's possible and needed next. This is how communities are healed and ultimately made whole.

We're learning that none of us can make Transition happen in our communities. But we can surely be a catalyst for this emergence. All it takes is seeing what is possible, and beginning right where we are.

I'd like to close with an authentically American perspective, from the late Floyd Red Crow Westerman, speaking from the Native American tradition:

Time evolves and comes to a place where it renews again. There is first a purification time, and then there is renewal time. We are getting very close to this time now.

We were told that we would see America come and go. And in a sense, America is dying--from within--because we forgot the instructions of how to live on Earth. Everything is coming to a time when prophecy and man's inability to live on Earth in a spiritual way will come to a crossroad of great problems.

It's our belief that if you're not spiritually connected to the Earth and understand the spiritual reality of how to live on Earth, it's likely you will not make it.

I think that's true for each one of us, for this nation, and for the Transition movement itself. We need to regain and reclaim the sense, as Red Crow proclaims, that everything is spiritual, that this planet, this Universe, this continent, and this movement are all about the Sacred. Perhaps this is ultimately the only thing that will truly ignite the Transition movement in America, and the only thing that will enable this land and its people to fulfill our common destiny.

Michael Brownlee is co-founder of Transition Colorado. This essay was adapted from a presentation at Xavier University in Cincinnati on Nov. 7, 2010, as part of a lecture series on Ethics, Religion, and Society.

This article reprinted from TRANSITION TIMES

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The patent grab on 'climate-ready' crops is a bid to control not only the world's food security but also the world's yet-to-be commodified biomass. In the fog of climate chaos, the 'Gene Giants' hope to ease public acceptance of genetically engineered crops and make the patent grab more palatable. It's a fresh twist on a stale theme: Crops engineered with 'climate-ready' genes will increase production and feed the world, we're told. Plants that are engineered to grow on poor soils, with less rain and less fertiliser will mean the difference between starvation and survival for the poorest farmers.

To gain moral legitimacy, the Gene Giants are teaming up with high-profile philanthro-capitalists (Gates and Buffett Foundations), big governments like the USA and UK and big-box breeders (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) to donate royalty-free genes and technologies to resource-poor farmers - especially in sub Saharan Africa. The quid pro quo is that African governments must 'ease the regulatory burden' that might hinder the commercial release of transgenic crops and embrace biotech-friendly intellectual property laws.

CLIMATE-READY PATENT CLAIMS

ETC Group's report identifies 262 patent families (subsuming 1663 patent documents worldwide) published between June 2008 and June 2010 that make specific claims to abiotic stress tolerance (such as drought, heat, flood, cold and salt-tolerance) in plants. Just six corporations (DuPont, BASF, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dow) and their biotech partners (Mendel Biotechnology and Evogene) control 201 or 77 per cent of the 262 patent families (both issued patents and applications). Three companies - DuPont, BASF, Monsanto - account for 173 or 66 per cent. The public sector has only 9 per cent. A detailed list of the patent documents is available here (see Appendix A).

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WHAT IS A 'PATENT FAMILY'?

A patent family contains a set of related patent applications and/or issued patents that are published in more than one country or patent office (including national and regional patent jurisdictions). Issued patents and/or applications that belong to the same family have the same inventor and they refer to the same 'invention.'
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In a recent interview with Business Week, Syngenta's CEO, Michael Mack, explains the corporate grab on climate-ready traits: 'Farmers around the world are going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to technology providers in order to have this feature [drought-tolerant maize].'[2]The global market for drought tolerance in just one crop - maize - is an estimated US$2.7 billion, but the US Department of Agriculture predicts that the global bio-based market for chemicals and plastics alone will top US$500 billion per year by 2025. For the Gene Giants, the goal is to become the world's 'biomassters.' The aim of corporate plant breeding is no longer to feed people, but to maximize biomass.

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WHAT IS BIOMASS?
The term refers to material derived from living or recently-living biological organisms: including all plants and trees, microbes, as well as by-products such as organic waste from livestock, food processing and garbage. ETC Group warns that the bio-economy is a catalyst for the corporate grab on all plant matter and the destruction of biodiversity on a massive scale. An estimated 86 per cent of global biomass is located in the tropics and subtropics. With extreme genetic engineering, the world's largest corporations are poised to manufacture industrial compounds - fuel, food, energy, plastics and more - using biomass as the critical feedstock.
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PROFILE OF MAJOR PLAYERS

The patent grab on climate ready crops is not limited to food and feed crops - the major players also support research related to biofuels and industrial feedstocks (i.e. biomass).

In 2007 BASF and Monsanto initiated the world's largest agricultural research collaboration, jointly investing US$1.5 billion to develop stress-tolerant maize (corn), soybean, cotton and canola crops. In July 2010 BASF and Monsanto announced an additional investment of US$1 billion - which now extends to abiotic stress tolerance in wheat - the world's second most valuable crop commodity after maize. Monsanto and BASF claim that the world's first-ever genetically engineered, drought-tolerant maize variety will be the first product to emerge from their joint pipeline - scheduled for commercial release around 2012. Monsanto also is engineering drought tolerant cotton, wheat and sugar cane.

In January 2010 BASF announced a new collaboration with KWS (Germany-based, top 10 seed company) to develop sugar beets with improved drought tolerance and 15 per cent higher yield. Agrofuels - including genetically modified trees - are one of the big targets: BASF also collaborates with Brazil's Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (CTC) to develop sugarcane with better drought tolerance and 25% higher yield.[3]

Mendel Biotechnology, collaborating with Monsanto since 1997, is a major player in climate-ready crop genes. Monsanto has exclusive royalty-bearing licenses to Mendel technology in certain crops and vegetables. Mendel also partners with BP and Bayer. Since 2007, Mendel has been working with BP on second-generation biofuels.

DuPont (Pioneer Hi-Bred) refers to its work on drought tolerance technologies as 'the next great wave of agricultural innovation.' Pioneer focuses on both conventional breeding as well as transgenics. Pioneer also collaborates with Israeli biotech company, Evogene, on maize and soybean drought stress and with Arcadia Biosciences.[4] In August 2010 Evogene revealed its 'Athlete 3.0' - a proprietary computational technology for 'cross-species discovery of genes, based on genomic data of over 130 plant species.'[5] The company claims it holds over 1,500 novel genes for key plant traits.

Arcadia Biosciences (Davis, California), founded in 2002, is collaborating with some of the world's largest seed companies to develop genetically engineered, stress-tolerant crops. Although Arcadia is privately held, BASF's venture capital fund has invested in the company since 2005. In 2009, Arcadia entered a partnership with Vilmorin (world's fourth largest seed company, owned by Groupe Limagrain) for the development of nitrogen use efficient wheat. Arcadia has agreements with Monsanto, DuPont, Vilmorin, Advanta (India) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on projects related to nitrogen use efficiency, drought and salinity tolerance.

Syngenta unveiled its first generation drought-tolerant maize ('water optimized hybrids') in July 2010 - the result of conventional breeding (non-transgenic). According to Syngenta, the product offers the 'potential to deliver 15% yield preservation under drought stress.' Syngenta predicts that its second-generation maize hybrids - genetically engineered for drought tolerance - will be available post-2015.

MULTI-GENOME PATENT CLAIMS... AND BEYOND

Many patent claims related to climate-ready DNA are sweeping in scope. Most of the Gene Giants are staking claims on key nucleotide sequences - trying to convince patent examiners that the same bits of DNA identified in one plant are responsible for endowing similar traits across other plant genomes (known as homologous DNA). Because of the similarity in DNA sequences between individuals of the same species or among different species - 'homologous sequences' - the companies seek monopoly protection that extends not just to stress tolerance in a single engineered plant species, but also to a substantially similar genetic sequence in virtually all transformed plants. Armed with genomic information, Gene Giants are making claims across species, genera and classes.

The patent grab on key gene sequences in the world's major crops is neither trivial nor theoretical. A decade ago, genomic companies and Gene Giants were routinely filing 'bulk' claims on huge numbers of DNA and amino acid (i.e. protein) sequences - over 100,000 in some cases - without specific knowledge of their function.

In 2002, rice (Oryza sativa) became the second plant genome to be published, and the first major crop genome to be fully sequenced; it quickly became the target of monopoly claims. In 2006, Cambia, an independent non-profit that promotes transparency in intellectual property, used its 'Patent Lens' project to conduct an in-depth analysis of US patents and patent applications that make claims on the rice genome. Patent Lens revealed that, by 2006, roughly 74 per cent of the rice genome (Oryza sativa) was named in the claims of US patent applications - due, in large part, to bulk sequence applications. They discovered that every segment of the rice genome's 12 chromosomes was recited in patent applications - including many overlapping claims. Patent Lens' remarkable visual display is available here.

Fortunately, Cambia's 2006 analysis concluded that the corporate quest to win monopoly patents on molecular-level chunks of the world's most important food crop had only partially succeeded - so far - and that most of the rice genome remains in the public domain. That's due, in part, to recent decisions (by courts and patent offices) that attempt to restrict the number of DNA sequences claimed in a single patent application.

NEW RULINGS ATTEMPT TO CURB MONOPOLY CLAIMS ON DNA SEQUENCES

In 2001 and 2007 the US PTO put a brake on 'bulk claims' by issuing new rules requiring that claimed inventions must have 'well-established' utility, and then limiting the number of sequences claimed in each patent application. In July 2010, Europe's highest court - the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the EU - made a ruling that significantly restricts the reach of agricultural biotech patents on DNA sequences - and specifically reigns in the breadth of Monsanto's monopoly on herbicide tolerant soybeans. The European Court affirmed that the purpose (function) of the DNA sequence must be disclosed in the patent, and protection of the sequence is limited to those situations in which the DNA is performing the function for which it was originally patented.

Recent rulings to restrict monopoly claims on DNA sequences are significant, and a major upset for Monsanto, but that hasn't stopped the scramble for gene-based patents. In the words of one patent lawyer, 'The challenge for patentees in this area will be to find alternative ways to protect these products.'[6]

Although some of the most egregious examples of sweeping patent claims identified by ETC Group are found in patent applications that have not yet been issued, there's ample reason for concern. According to Patent Lens, applications alone may be used to scare off potential infringers, or used as leverage in licensing negotiations. The mere existence of the designation 'patent pending' is a powerful deterrent that may discourage others from using, making or selling a technology that is claimed in a patent application. The practice of over-reaching patent claims and unjust monopolies is far from over.

CORPORATE-LED PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLIMATE-READY CROPS IN AFRICA

To gain desperately needed moral legitimacy, Gene Giants like Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta and DuPont are forging high-profile partnerships with public sector institutions that aim to deliver proprietary technologies to resource-poor farmers - especially in sub Saharan Africa. The public/private partnerships are hosted by a growing web of South-based non-profit institutions that exist primarily to facilitate and promote the introduction of genetically engineered crops. The immediate impact of these partnerships is to enhance the public image of Gene Giants that are donating royalty-free genes to needy farmers. But the longer-term goal is to create the 'enabling environments' (biosafety regulations, intellectual property laws, positive media coverage to promote public acceptance) that will support the market introduction of genetically engineered crops and related technologies. It's a package deal - wrapped in a philanthropic façade - and it comes with strings attached.

--
'What we need in order to effectively contribute...are enabling business environments.' - Gerald Steiner, Executive Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs, Monsanto Company, testifying before the U.S. Congress, July 2010.[7]
--

The Nairobi-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) is one of the primary deal-brokers in the South. Launched in 2003, AATF is a non-profit organisation that promotes public/private partnerships to ensure that resource-poor African farmers have royalty-free access to proprietary agricultural technologies that improve their productivity. Start-up funds were provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). Two of AATF's five projects are dedicated to the development of abiotic stress tolerance in crops:

1) Water efficient maize for Africa (WEMA)
2) Rice varieties suitable for soils that are low in nitrogen, and for drought and saline tolerance.

In addition to its role as African-based broker of public/private deals, AATF aims to 'continuously monitor and document the evolution of regulatory frameworks for GM crops in African countries.' AATF plays a major role in promoting and facilitating regulatory frameworks, by influencing public opinion and 'overcoming the misconceptions about genetically modified organisms that slow down the adoption of biotechnology products' in Africa.[8]

Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) is one of AATF's five projects. The public/private partnership involves Monsanto; BASF; the CGIAR's flagship research centre - the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); and national agricultural research systems in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. Launched in 2008 with US$47 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, WEMA's goal is to develop new drought-tolerant maize varieties that are adapted to African agro-ecologies using conventional breeding as well as transgenics. In addition to proprietary germplasm, advanced breeding tools and expertise, Monsanto and BASF announced in March 2008 the donation of royalty-free drought-tolerant transgenes. Monsanto describes its donation as a 'gem' in its technology pipeline and predicts it could result in new white maize varieties that increase yields 20-35 percent during moderate drought.[9]

According to AATF, during the project's first two years, more than 60 scientists have worked together to build 'the necessary scientific testing, regulatory procedures and protocols for the proper evaluation of the maize in this project within each of the five countries.'[10] Non-transgenic water-efficient maize varieties (conventionally-bred) are now in the second year of field trials in Kenya and Uganda, and Tanzania recently planted trials for the first time.

As of September 2010, South Africa is the only one of five WEMA countries to conduct field trials of transgenic, drought tolerant maize. WEMA's first transgenic maize varieties were planted in November 2009 at Lutzville, a testing site in the Western Cape of South Africa, to screen for drought-tolerance performance. According to AATF, 'In the next 12 months pending necessary regulatory approvals, it is expected scientists will be able to proceed with the planting of biotech trials in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Mozambique will take steps towards completing the development of testing sites and secure regulatory approvals with a goal of planting in 2011.'[11]

Monsanto's drought tolerant gene in adapted African maize lines will undergo 'preliminary testing' in Kenya and Uganda in late 2010.[12] According to AATF, WEMA partners are parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and 'they have all committed to building functional national biosafety frameworks for managing GMOs.'[13] As of this writing, however, Uganda's government has not yet approved its biosafety bill.

Another AATF project related to climate-ready crops seeks to develop rice varieties suitable for soils that are low in nitrogen, and for drought and saline tolerance. The project claims that rice varieties with these traits will help African farmers increase yields by up to 30 per cent. Partners include USAID, Arcadia Biosciences (USA), National Agricultural Research Systems in Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Colombia), and PIPRA (USA).[14] Arcadia will provide a technology license to make the new rice varieties royalty-free to smallholder African farmers.

In February 2010 Pioneer (DuPont) announced its collaboration with 'Improved Maize for African Soils' (IMAS), a partnership that aims to increase maize yield's in Africa by 30-50 per cent over currently available varieties - with the same amount of fertiliser. The project is led by CIMMYT, with US$19.5 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. Other partners include the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) and the South African Agricultural Research Council. Maize varieties developed with the technologies and intellectual property donated by Pioneer (transgenes and molecular markers associated with nitrogen-use efficiency) will be made available royalty-free to seed companies that sell to the region's smallholder farmers (meaning that the seed will become available to farmers at the same cost as other types of improved maize seed.) The project will initially introduce conventional maize varieties (non-GM). Varieties with transgenic traits will be available in approximately 10 years.

In April 2009 the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) signed a 3-year, US$1.2 million agreement 'to strengthen the capacity for safe biotechnology management' in sub Saharan Africa. The project is managed by FARA and implemented by the National Agricultural Research System in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi. As Ghana Web reports, FARA is urging Ghanaians 'to embrace the use and application of modern biotechnology to effectively solve food insecurity and the likely impact of climate change on farming.'[15]

CORPORATE RHETORIC VERSUS TECHNICAL COMPLEXITY

The extreme complexity of engineering abiotic traits in plants is a technical feat that far surpasses what genetic engineers have achieved over the past quarter century. Fourteen years after commercial sale of the first genetically engineered crops, the Gene Giants have brought to market only two major single-gene traits - herbicide tolerance and insect resistance - in a handful of countries. A 2010 study points out: 'The acclimation of plants to abiotic stress conditions is a complex and coordinated response involving hundreds of genes.'[16] The authors point out that a plant's response to abiotic stress is affected by complex interactions between different environmental factors. The timing of the abiotic stress, the intensity and duration of the stress, and the occurrence of multiple stresses in the field must all be taken into consideration.

Setting aside the adverse social and environmental impacts of these products, the advantages of GE crops - even for industrial-scale farmers in the North - are elusive. In October 2010 the New York Times acknowledged that industry analysts are questioning whether 'Monsanto's winning streak of creating ever more expensive genetically engineered crops is coming to an end.'[17] The company's newest product, 'SmartStax' maize - loaded with eight foreign genes for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance - has been deemed a commercial flop. But that's not all. A huge percentage of the global area devoted to biotech crops contains at least one engineered gene for tolerance to Monsanto's Roundup - the company's blockbuster herbicide. But Roundup-resistant weeds are popping up all over the world, a reality that is 'dimming the future of the entire Roundup Ready crop franchise.'[18]

ALTERNATIVE PATHS FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE

The world cannot rely on technological fixes to solve systemic problems of poverty, hunger and climate crisis. A highly centralised agro-industrial food system controlled by a handful of corporate Gene Giants is incapable of providing the systemic changes needed to re-structure agricultural production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Proprietary research on genetically engineered abiotic stress tolerance is already diverting scarce resources away from more affordable and decentralised approaches to cope with climate change. Meanwhile, peasant farmers, civil society and social movements are actively building alternative food systems built on resilience, sustainability and sovereignty.

Climate resilience ultimately depends on agricultural biodiversity, local seed systems and agro-ecological processes in the hands of farming communities. Support is needed for breeding work with under-utilised crops and with plant diversity that offers natural tolerance to harsh conditions. Indigenous and local farming communities have developed and managed that diversity and their role in developing strategies for climate change adaptation must be recognized, strengthened and protected. Instead of being on the receiving end of corporate-inspired, high-tech 'hand-outs' - farming communities must be directly involved in setting priorities and strategies for climate adaptation and mitigation.

CONCLUSION

The Gene Giants are leveraging the climate crisis to win monopoly control of key crop genes and gain public acceptance of genetically engineered seeds. The corporate agenda focuses on proprietary, high-tech seeds that won't be accessible - or suitable for - the vast majority of the world's farmers. There is no societal benefit when governments allow a handful of corporations to monopolize climate-related genes and traits. Genetically engineered, climate-ready crops are a false solution to climate change, and the patent grab must be stopped.

* Hope Shand is former research director at ETC Group. She writes on issues related to technology, development and diversity, and continues to work closely with ETC Group on special projects.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

NOTES

[1] http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5221
[2] Kaskey, J. and Ligi, A. 'Monsanto, Dupont Race to Win $2.7 Billion Drought-Corn Market,' Business Week, 21 April 2010, available at: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-21/monsanto-dupont-race-to-win-2-7-billion-drought-corn-market.html
[3] Peter Eckes, President of BASF Plant Science, 'A grounded approach to agricultural sustainability,' Media Summit, Chicago, Illinois (USA), 9 June 2010. http://www.agro.basf.com/agr/AP-Internet/en/function/conversions:/publish/upload/news_room/peter-eckes-presentation-chicago.pdf
[4] http://www2.dupont.com/Media_Center/en_US/daily_news/august/article20100805.html
[5] http://www.evogene.com/news.asp
[6] Ibid.
[7] Statement of Mr. Gerald Steiner, Executive Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs, Monsanto Company, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 20, 2010, available on Monsanto's website: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Feed-the-Future-Initiative.aspx
[8] Bernard Muthaka, 'New maize variety to counter drought,' The New Vision website, 21 July, 2009. http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/9/37/688561
[9] Statement of Mr. Gerald Steiner, Executive Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs, Monsanto Company, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 20, 2010, available on Monsanto's website: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/Feed-the-Future-Initiative.aspx
[10] African Agricultural Technology Foundation, News Release, AATF Marks Second Anniversary Since Formation of WEMA Project, 19 March 2010.
http://www.aatf-africa.org/userfiles/PressRelease-WEMAAnniversary.pdf
[11] Ibid.
[12] Personal communication with Grace Wachoro, AATF, September 17, 2010.
[13] Ibid.
[14] PIPRA is an organization that supports intellectual property and commercialization strategies for non-profit and humanitarian projects. http://www.pipra.org/
[15] General News of Africa (GNA), 'Experts urge Ghanaians to use and apply modern biotechnology,' 26 August 2010. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=189187
[16] Mittler, Ron and Blumwald, Eduardo. 'Genetic Engineering for Modern Agriculture: Challenges and Perspectives,' Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. 2010. 61:443-624.
[17] Andrew Pollack, 'After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto,' New York Times, 5 October 2010.
[18] Ibid. Collapse

Reprinted from COLLAPSENET

READ MIKE RUPPERT'S REVIEW OF SACRED DEMISE: WALKING THE SPIRITUAL PATH OF INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION'S COLLPASE

November 1, 2010 - Arguably, the cause of the collapse of human industrial civilization has been a fundamental disconnect in consciousness that has led humankind to tell itself that it is exempt from the laws of physics and nature - that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet. That certainly defines the issue in terms of our survival because nothing less would permit continued expansion of human population and resource consumption.

Mankind is essentially expecting (or demanding) that technology overturn the laws of physics, chemistry and especially thermodynamics/energy. By definition, anything that can overturn natural laws is God. Under this construct, technology is, in fact, a religion. I think its, perhaps unwilling, "messiah" was René Descartes - the guy who said that empirical knowledge was the supreme knowledge (another disconnect) and therefore, by implication and application, the God of Knowing. This was a perfect mate for an infinite growth monetary paradigm and we are just awakening to the fact that its actual imperative is to kill us and all life on the planet.

Today we are awash in technology... and we are also dying. We are, in fact, killing ourselves with it. We make better weapons. We make better devices that require the extraction and consumption of more raw materials and then require us to throw away the energy and resources in old ones. We poison ourselves and our environment with chemicals and then we turn to chemistry to create drugs (using a lot of oil and energy) to imperfectly cure the diseases we ourselves created.

Having recognized that technology is essentially a religion we can also - without great emotional charge - say that technology can be judged as a religion to be either a success or failure; either outcome being measured by whether it adds to the health, longevity and survival of our species or hinders it.

I think the same tests are beginning to be applied to all religions. Soon they will be applied with a fury.

DOMINION -- THE FUNDAMENTAL DISCONNECT

An essential component of all of western (Abrahamic) religions is the theme of man's "dominion" over the earth. That is the disconnect which is killing us.  All other life obeys physical laws. In fact our so-called dominion depends on that. But we have believed, justified and acted as though we were exempt simply because we are "man".  This is a distinct difference between western religions and "eastern" religions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism which loosely place man as an integral part of - but not supreme - in a spiritual universe.  If however, we consider the Church of Infinite Growth - as expressed through fiat currency, fractional reserve banking and compound interest - we see that Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist faiths have, by (to one degree or another) encouraging detachment from or acquiescence to the material world, not prevented their adherents from suffering the same fate as we Westerners. We're all going down more or less together and no religion anywhere has spared its adherents from what's taking place. While western religions preached the unsustainable and the impossible, eastern religions have acquiesced to infinite growth saying essentially that the spiritual world is more important and the physical realm can be discounted. -- So much for those belief systems. The Abrahamic religions offer the ultimate bailout if the books aren't balanced here -- there's always the Afterlife. I personally believe there is an afterlife, but not like this one. According to those following what Moses (allegedly) wrote, there has to be someone/thing to be rewarded and someone to be punished.

There's an old saying that says that there are no atheists in foxholes. As the world marches headlong towards places that make foxholes look cozy, what will be demanded by humankind is a spiritual construct or cosmology that actually and tangibly deals with the crisis at hand.

I love a line I heard Bruce Springsteen deliver at a concert. "The Church of Rock and Roll doesn't promise you life in the hereafter. The Church of Rock and Roll promises you life... right now!" - Cartesian science cannot measure heart and soul. Music and art most certainly do. That is why music and playing in my band New White Trash figure so prominently in my life now, just as music, dance and art did in the lives of our ancestors. And that is why CollapseNet will always encourage these as an essential part of Lifeboat building. Man indeed, does not live by bread alone.

A good question to ask then is, "Are there any spiritual practices which originate from and teach a way to live rightly and in balance with this world?" Is there an instruction manual that teaches us how to live here?

A THIRD VIEWPOINT - Meet Red Elk

Earth-based, native belief systems have never to my knowledge relied on printed and codified rules. A book cannot be an ultimate authority. The earth is. It is possible, however, to direct you to an indigenous elder named Red Elk who conveys, as clearly and as eloquently as I have ever seen, what I understand to be earth-based spirituality. I strongly encourage everyone to take the time to watch this short and poignant video which well-summarizes earth-based spiritual philosophies as I know them and what we ascribe to here at CollapseNet. [I urge the reader to stop and watch this wonderful video here and return to this essay.]

I am no expert on these beliefs, merely a beginning student. I remember once asking one of my teachers, Skip Mahawk, an elder of the Dakota Sioux in Oregon, if I had a chance of becoming a human being in the way indigenous spiritual traditions defined them - that is, people who lived in complete or near-complete harmony with nature and who had respect for the earth and for all living things. I have never seen a Native American laugh so hard.

I have a lot to learn.

My limited experience and study has led me to believe that earth-based spiritual practices are rooted in the concept that God never made any mistakes. (Who's going to argue with Him?) Somebody who knows please correct me if I'm wrong.

One of the greatest crimes, in my opinion, of Abrahamic religions has been to falsely associate earth-based faiths such as paganism and Wicca with devil worship. I just saw it again on a NATGEO Special and it made me cringe. My research shows that paganism, Wicca, the Druids and native/indigenous faiths (all centered on the earth and spirit rather than man) do not even recognize an Abrahamic devil, let alone worship one. I have not found one which looks for, or even recognizes, a "Number-One Bad Guy" with a nameplate on his desk.

The lie about earth-based religions was convenient because these spiritual practices stood in the way of "progress", control, expansion and infinite growth.  Calling pagans and Druids devil worshippers justified their slaughter in the eyes of misguided Christian theologians.

Even within the Abrahamic religions evidence can be found of an understanding of the perfection of creation. As an example of that, in the Old Testament book of Isaiah and the prophecy of Habakkuk appears the statement, "God's eyes are too pure to behold iniquity."  -- There are no such things as iniquities in God's world. How could there be? God, by definition, does not make mistakes. The universe that God created and which was described in John1 which says that God (the Word) created everything that was created and there was nothing that was not created by God.

What Abrahamic religions have done is to interpret that God won't tolerate iniquities and that has been the rationale for all the abuses which have followed, "In the name of God I kill, loot, plunder, rape or exterminate you." To tolerate something gives it existence and power.

I have experienced earth-based religions referring to good and bad or darkness and light but I have yet to encounter one that advocates an "overcoming" or final victory of one over the other. As with Taoism and Buddhism, what I have encountered thus far in my study and experience of earth-based spirituality is an emphasis on balance between the two on this plane and a loving acceptance or embrace of both as elements of a cyclical rhythm of existence, like the seasons; like day and night.

Essentially, humankind's biggest and most-enduring spiritual activity -- living in an earth-based consciousness -- was as valuable (if not more so) to people as a flint, an axe, water, food or shelter. And it was treated as such.

So where does that leave us?

In the many successful 12-Step recovery programs, the Second Step says that we "came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." (12-Step programs originated from mystical teachings found in and common to almost every religion). And - distilled down - the only real things this step requires are a recognition that there actually is a power greater than us and that we (either as individuals or collectively) are not it. Those facts are already in evidence. What the step calls for is a conscious connection to that higher power and an appropriate (i.e. working) relationship with it.

What I am suggesting in this article is a simple concept: Healing the disconnect between ourselves and the rest of creation and the laws which govern this universe is an essential step in saving our own lives, perhaps all life on the planet. Throughout most of man's history this cosmology was referred to as relating to the spirit world, in recognition of the fact that everything, whether animate or not, whether visible or not, has a spirit. In historical perspective, "religion" is a very new word. The concept of spirit is as old as mankind itself.

SEEING THE DISCONNECT MORE CLEARLY

Judging from the abundant evidence around us, not only have we taken exceptional and unjustifiable liberties with the construct of dominion, we have completely trashed our only source of life (the planet) in the process. At minimum, we have been disgraceful stewards and poor husbands.

A psychology experiment from the 1970s really unmasks the fundamental flaw that comes, I believe, with the Great Disconnect. In that study a group of well-adjusted, pre-screened college students from Stanford University were arbitrarily separated into prison guards and inmates. In relatively short order the situation deteriorated to the point where the experiment had to be terminated. Brutality, psychosis, breakdowns and a continued escalation of conflict required the expenditure of more and more physical and emotional resources until serious harm and injury was imminent... and chaos (entropy) the unavoidable and looming end result. What happened in this experiment is a compelling and a stark metaphor for the Great Disconnect as human industrial civilization flails helplessly, creating ever more chaos with every new solution it proposes. At this level of consciousness there are no solutions.

This study went sideways almost immediately. So did mankind's internalization of the Great Disconnect which is essentially the knowledge of "good and evil" as described in Genesis 1. The difference is that there was always room to expand, start over, and deny. There were other lands to explore and conquer, people to exterminate, resources to use and plunder, all the while repeating the catechism, "We'll get it right this time, or next time and we'll be forgiven even if we don't"... Not anymore.

This disconnect has severed our species in just the last few hundred years from the intuitive and innate wisdoms and philosophies that protected us as a species for our first two million years of existence. That's a lot of stored up wisdom and experience that has been pushed aside... as if by an oil-powered bulldozer and a Rockefeller-owned printing press or a Murdoch-owned TV station. And that disconnect has been hugely reinforced and facilitated by the influence and power of organized western religions, namely Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

OK BUT WHAT ABOUT...?

Organized religion has been a major player in bringing us to this horrific crisis. The cozy co-existence between "religions", politics and money is revealed pretty clearly if one steps back and examines the historical interactions with the leaders of these religions and the expansion of industrial civilization over the last four centuries. Let's face it; Christianity has obviously had the best "business model", but only in an infinite-growth paradigm.

Perhaps nowhere is this historical "coziness" revealed more starkly than in the almost-

perfect alignment with Catholicism's need to proselytize, expand and convert the heathens with Spain's hunger for resources, territory and wealth from the 1400s through the 1800s. Protestant Britain's ruthless oppression of pagans and Druids accomplished the same thing. The same can be said of American bible-thumpers who demonized native peoples and exterminated them "in the name of God" in North America in the 1800s, or the way in which Christian Evangelism worked hand-in-hand with the CIA and the Rockefeller family to colonize and subjugate Latin America.* And it is abundantly true of the emerging spiritual theme of the Tea Party movement which, according to several recent polls is populated by the same people who would burn the Koran and exterminate Muslims. Those same polls also showed that a dominant belief among Tea Party members was that the United States is a Christian nation.

As long as continued and wasteful expansion produced tangible, if imperfect and unequal "progress" that symbiotic partnership worked by enabling secular and clerical power elites to consolidate and enlarge their control and influence over... us, the people. I would include financial elites as a separate class in this trinity as well.

But as collapse unfolds and as religions fail to adapt to or address changing needs and circumstances, the flaws in mankind's disconnect become more apparent and more manifest.  We have now come full circle back to the imperative of having a cosmology that shows us how to get along in this world. The laws governing the physical universe are real limits to our self-indulgent behavior. They are real limits to growth. They have been a very effective, unbreachable and arguably essential playpen.

WHAT DOES COLLAPSENET OFFER?

The fundamental or non-negotiable truths of CollapseNet's philosophy are articulated in our Compass Points. The Compass Points originate in the laws of physics, so I have complete confidence in their relevance to the world in which we live and their usefulness in helping as many people as possible (regardless of belief) to survive. I wrote them coming almost purely from a rational, rather than a spiritual perspective. And yet, as I look at them in the context of this article I see and feel how much they resonate and align with this spiritual belief which I also hold. I see and feel no disconnect, no division.

In our Lighthouse Directory you will see many entries for spirit-based teachings and resources. We will actively seek out and list ones that are earth-centered because of their direct relevance to and alignment with our Compass Points. We will not exclude any other religious or spiritual links on any basis unless they contradict the Compass Points. For example I would love to see a directory link to a black Baptist congregation in Manhattan I heard about that is actively preaching that its members must become debt-free as a part of their spiritual health. All we ask is that if one submits a link or article that reflects or supports a religious group or philosophy that you clearly identify it up front, as we have done here.

I have drawn a clear differential boundary here between spiritual beliefs that mandate living in conscious partnership with all of creation as the foundational step in sustainability. Those that promulgate humanity's superiority to and division from the rest of creation are on the other side of that line. This, I believe, is a clear description of where we are going in the next step of our conscious and chosen evolution. This is not a step backward, because if we take the consciousness and knowledge attained through five centuries of Cartesian worship - rebalanced with the imperatives of partnership and respect - we will indeed be a "new and improved" species.

The bottom line to all this is that when and if mankind is able to free itself from the labels of good and evil, victor and vanquished, and especially the concepts of dominion and servitude, the only thing left to do with all things that exist in this universe will be to respect them.

•·         -- I strongly recommend "Thy Will Be Done - The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil" by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennet (1995, Harper Collins). This seminal work is the book I modeled "Crossing the Rubicon" after. It remains the most chilling and abundantly documented work showing the deep, dark and very ugly, bloody and brutal connections between Christian missionaries and intelligence services I have ever seen.  In a book ostensibly about religious work one finds some of the most horrific and brutal acts or murder, treachery and betrayal by the CIA and its forbears ever produced.

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The US mass media is rife with imagery of vampires, werewolves, zombies and other symbols of suppressed rage, insatiable craving and submerged terror. These narratives, resonate with the warnings implicit in nightmares, reveal the culture's tormented soul. By foisting imagery so arresting that it cannot be ignored, nightmares break through the ego's wall of denial; their disturbing imagery can be read as a wakeup call from the psyche that augurs warning and insists upon change.

On a cultural level, a profusion of nightmare imagery warns: paradigm shift or perish. Accordingly, the hack-scripted B-movie of the current political system could be titled: Duopoly Of The Dead: The Democratic/Republican Zombie Apocalypse. By their almost exclusive devotion to maintaining the status quo, these hulking, putrefying parties of the undead shamble through public life ... risen from the mouldering grave to tear the flesh from the present and eat the brains of the living. Neither party questions the zombie values of empire. Hence, in a soul-defying attempt to reanimate, by imperial might, the decomposing corpse of US power and influence, both parties are culpable for the senseless deaths of multitudes worldwide.

This zombie empire and its planet-decimating, neo-liberal death cult are marching toward the boneyard of history. What an empire contributes to the world is equivalent to the carnage an army of zombies inflicts upon the scenery of B-movies. Zombies (neither living nor dead creatures that create exponentially larger numbers of themselves) are an apt metaphor for the entropy inherent to closed systems -- the exponentially destructive force of The Second Law of Thermodynamics.

That is why I'm not a member of either party extant in our current duopoly: I'm betting on the emergence of the Entropy Party. It is the only party with a plausible platform; the only party that will keep its promises.

The US Empire is dead meat. We should lose the imagery of a noble and lofty bald eagle: rotting road kill should be proclaimed our official national animal.

When I hear people respond to a request or brush off a small affront with the popular rejoinder, "no worries, " I think, you have no worries, how is that even possible? Are they now selling nitrous oxide balloons at Starbucks?

Empire inflicts a warped and hyper-attenuated state of being upon its citizens: all the distortions of national character present in privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.

The metaphor of monsters can be appropriated to illustrate selfish drives and unexamined impulses. Withal, a common trait of monsters is to take and destroy while giving back nothing in return. Accordingly, what do the big monsters of the corporate and political elite take from us -- the little monsters? To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. Corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on the time lost -- languishing in office cubicles, in commuter traffic -- or simply numbed-out and exhausted from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state. The corporate state not only devours our time, but demands, as is the case with the charges of a vampire, one grow dependent and slavish in return. Afflicted by this bloodless state, one begins to lose the vitality gained from participation in the abiding resonances of human life.

Life in the US is becoming creepier and creepier. From the cuisine, mummified in preservatives, served to insatiable shades at an off-the-interstate Cracker Barrel Restaurant to the cracked-brain casuistry marshaled to preserve the mummified empire itself, Milton, Dante, and other chthonic travel writers who chronicled the empty rage, endless craving, and other deprivations of the human spirit evinced by the damned of the underworld might recognize the psychic terrain of the present hellscape. This stanza from Milton rises to mind:

Farewell, happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors! hail, Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor! One who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven

John Milton, Paradise Lost - Book I

The damned, as imagined by Dante, are creatures of grotesquely narrowed perception who are locked into endless feedback loops of obsessive, self-imprisoning thoughts and actions that the poet metaphorically limned as the circles of hell.

"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. -- Ivan Illich

In contrast, we, the living, are beckoned to exist in a world of dappled light, and myriad shades of color, of a million gradations and combinations of sight and sound ... It is complex, nuanced, multi-faced, haunted by many gods ... It is anything but monomaniacal and one-sided. That is why the reductionist, materialistic obsessions of the corporate/consumer state drive its adherents flapping bat-wing crazy (like Dante's description of Satan, in the inner most, frozen circle of the Inferno).

The neoliberal corporate paradigm is based on the fallacy of exponential growth. In cybernetic theory, this is akin to "systemic runaway" i.e., analogous to a runaway steam locomotive, careening, at an exponentially faster rate of speed down the tracks because its governor function is stuck. Empire is a monster of systemic runaway; its collective mind doesn't contain an operable governor's function (that also could be termed the stuck-on-stupid override switch).

In a similar manner, a vampire is seized by a singular hunger for blood and a zombie for living flesh, our context-narrowed, consumer consciousness allows too many of the US populace to deny, diminish, or remain toxically innocent of the whole of contemporary scientific evidence regarding the gargantuan rampage of environmental destruction we have inflicted on our planet. This monster-sized denial allows us to collectively knock aside the verities of exponential mathematics, chaos, cybernetic and systems theory, and oceanographic and meteorological science like Godzilla knocks over the architecture of downtown Tokyo.

Ruthlessness, exploitation and insatiable craving define the corporate/consumer vampire's mode of being: When we dream of only money to purchase disposable things, the collective mind of the corporate state dreams we are disposable as well. Ernest Becker counseled: "Once you base your whole life striving on a desperate lie, and try to implement that lie, you instrument your own undoing."

Conquest and murder abroad, anomie at home: This is the way empires bring themselves down. Sadly, anyone and anything it meets on its way down stands a good chance of coming down with it.

A monstrous emptiness gnaws at the core of the US empire; this emptiness is the progenitor of its destructive nature. Its rapacious, insatiable appetite devours all in its path: coastal wetlands, Arctic glaciers, the lives of the people of occupied lands, the hours of an individual's life, as well as one's hopes and longings.

"The destruction of the world is the last, almost desperate attempt to save myself from being crushed by it."
--Eric Fromme

Although tacitly, the monster confronts us with this imperative: the hour has come round where we must face the abyss. In doings so, one will see one's image framed in the void. Inevitably, empires will stand at the edge of the abyss, yet its leaders and ordinary citizens alike refuse to gaze into the howling darkness.

Mark Twain had this to say on the subject: "Man cannot tell the whole truth about himself, even if convinced that what he wrote would never be seen by others. I have personally satisfied myself of that and have got others to test it also. You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it. You are too much ashamed of yourself. It is too disgusting."

It has long been apparent: Those benefiting from the present system have become so ruthlessly driven that they have become bereft of the ability to reflect on their own actions. Apropos, we've witnessed the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to these aggregations of preening narcissists to report the truth of our condition: After all, a mirror cannot reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect. Regarding this contemporary class of vampiric careerists who haunt the electronic mass media, there is no one there beneath the coiffure of immaculate hair.

In an era as fraught with peril as ours, it is imperative we act with mindful urgency. Yet, we, to our detriment, have been conditioned to ignore the up-welling of our inner visions and instead allow ourselves to be drawn by mass media nixies into a holographic sea of electronic imagery ... We stare at our glowing appliances while exquisite things are extinguished, forever ... mistaking configurations of pixels for the breath and brilliance of the world.

Instead, we might scan the waters of the abyss for the gliding form of a black swan.

"True sanity entails, in one way or another, the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: [...] and through the death a rebirth, [...] the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer." - R. D. Laing (excerpt from The Politics of Experience)

How does one begin to reclaim one's soul from the usurpers of one's true self? Start with this: Embrace an exuberant fatalism in regard to the dark side of human nature -- the very essence of the forgotten symbolism of Halloween.

Of course, this world can never be made perfect ... How dull would that be? No errors committed to tease wisdom out of obdurate will. But change only comes through renunciation of the old order, and a commitment to walking into the yawning breach of the unknown. The mapmakers of antiquity stated the principle with the concision of poetry when they scribed on the edges of their maps indicating the demarcation point of the known world: "Beyond this place there be dragons."

To transform the situation: drag the deceptions that allow one to rationalize one's place in this house of horrors into the sunlight where they will burn to ash. Only by apprehending the monster within does an individual stand the chance of holding on to his humanity. A confrontation with the monstrous compels one to face mortality and human limits. This is why Gothic, even B-movie, metaphors are not an overwrought description of our present condition.

As a late friend of mine use to quip when folks were waxing grim, "It is always darkest, right before it goes completely black."

And as Henry Miller counseled: "There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy."

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phi[email protected] Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/, and at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

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Kunstler's non-fiction research on the likely consequences of peak oil is superbly documented and therefore, exceedingly plausible. His fictional pieces are as astonishingly engaging as they are deeply disturbing.

His most recent masterpiece is The Witch of Hebron which, like his 2007 novel A World Made By Hand, is set in upstate New York where Kunstler has spent most of his life and paints a bleak but beautiful and strangely riveting picture of life in a small community, Union Grove, after the collapse of industrial civilization. Remarkable indeed is the resourcefulness of a population that has been traumatized by cataclysmic events, some of which have occurred over time, others which erupted suddenly. Having researched as Kunstler has the likelihood of industrial civilization's demise, I find the fictional world depicted in his novels highly plausible and not the least bit exaggerated. He has masterfully created a mood that is eerily beautiful and beautifully eerie. Yet one cannot help but marvel at the serene contentment of most of Union Grove's residents even as they are surrounded by a milieu of unremitting death and dissolution. Kunstler's capacity for illustrating the heartwarming alongside the horrific is nothing less than uncanny. While he may not agree, he has clearly depicted a world in which the sacred elements of humanity have not been decimated and are exquisitely demonstrated by acts of unpredictable and fortuitous compassion.

My enchantment in reading both novels, however, has been profoundly subdued by Kunstler's disappointing portrayal of women. All female characters without exception are either spouses or partners of males or are in some way engaged in the world's oldest profession. The witch of Hebron, herself a prostitute, is a beautiful, charming, intelligent caricature, overly-idealized by Kunstler who argues that in a post-collapse world, the rights of women and minorities, so dramatically achieved in the twentieth century, will become virtually extinct in a "world made by hand."

Kunstler is remarkably dogmatic (as the dictionary defines it: "inclined to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true") in both his fictional depiction of women and in his perspective in the Long Emergency regarding regions of the United States that are more or less likely to successfully navigate industrial civilization's demise. Not surprisingly, it is the Northeastern region which Kunstler finds most potentially livable in the aftermath of the unraveling. Of this area he opines that "...the region possesses the residue of a preindustrial or protoindustrial civic infrastructure, based on established habits of group covenant and, ultimately, a respect for the rule of law."

Like Kunstler, I believe that the collapse of industrial civilization is certain and that it will be profoundly shattering to individuals and institutions. However, the assertion that all humans in all places will revert to barbaric, pre-humanistic interaction as if the twentieth century never occurred, is absurdly implausible-as is the assumption that the demise will unfold uniformly in every venue in the same manner. In a "world made by hand" it is very likely that some indigenous people and some indigenous women in particular will survive and thrive and will offer their ancient survival wisdom to others in their milieu. Likewise, surviving women professionals of all ethnicities in small communities emerging in the aftermath of collapse are as likely as males to provide essential services such as nursing, law, and the operation of local general stores. I would fully expect to see myriad "Union Groves" emerging throughout the United States, perhaps in places most unlikely to Kunstler, demonstrating aspects of diversity that a stupendous but somewhat myopic author is not yet capable of imagining.

Carolyn Baker is the author of Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse (2009) and manages her website at http://www.carolynbaker.net/.

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CB: So Michael, as a subscriber to Truth to Power's Daily News Digest, I know that every day you see the headlines regarding skyrocketing food prices. Can you say a bit about why you think this is happening?

MB: Well, I think what we're seeing with food prices, with spot shortages and commodities in various places around the world is just the beginning of a much larger situation. Fundamentally, what's happening is that as the cost of fossil fuels goes up, then the whole agricultural production system is affected because the whole system is dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers for fuel, pesticides, and herbicides. The cost of all of these is going up, and we're just now reaching the point where, as the era of cheap fossil fuels ends, and as fossil fuels continue to become increasingly expensive, the entire global industrial agricultural system is going to collapse. We are seeing the very beginnings of that right now, and for most people, especially here in America, it seems very remote, but it will have tremendous impact here in this country within the next two or three years.

CB: What would you say to people who would argue that actually the price of oil has gone down and doesn't seem to be rising much?

MB: Well, the price of oil fluctuates a lot, but the trajectory is steadily upward. Since we've reached the point on the planet where we're beyond Peak Oil, that is, we've burned more than half the oil that's on the planet, it is inevitable that oil from here on out will be harder to get out of the ground and more and more expensive. This is not a bullet we can dodge.

CB: Currently Transition Colorado is working very hard at finalizing your first Eat Local Campaign for Boulder County. You have the Boulder County Commissioners on board and the Boulder City Council as well. Transition Colorado could have chosen to focus on a number of other issues this year. Why is this event so urgent, in your opinion, and what do you hope to accomplish by organizing it?

MB: As we've been emphasizing the need for relocalization and our community's needing to be able to meet our most essential needs locally instead of being dependent on globalized systems, we've seen that the area where we are most vulnerable here in Boulder County is food. At the moment we're spending about $700 million a year on food. From all that we can tell from the limited data that's available, less than 1% of that is being spent on food being grown in Boulder County. That's a tiny, tiny amount. So currently, our food shed, which is kind of like a watershed, stretches across the globe. We're bringing in food from China, South America, Europe, and as the industrial agricultural system begins to fail, we have no choice but to shrink our food shed to be much, much more local. And it looks like we don't have much time to do that. The impact on industrial agriculture will begin to unfold within the next two-three years, so we need to quickly rebuild local food and farming.

Fortunately, there has been a tremendous amount of work done by people like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Joel Salatin-people who have been working on these issues for years and have helped to educate millions and millions of people about the importance of local, organic food. So there's a great readiness and a rising demand for locally grown, organic food. So what that means is that this is an area where we can have the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time. It's not everything that we need to do in terms of relocalization, but it is maybe the most important thing.

There are lots of reasons for this besides needing to meet our food needs locally. There's a benefit to health that comes from local, fresh, organic food. One of the most important but perhaps least recognized issues in the transitioning from an industrial, fossil fuels agricultural system to a localized organic system is that the latter will greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're beginning to understand now that the way we grow and process our food, the way we ship it-all of that, contributes about 31% to our greenhouse gas emission. So here in Boulder, while there's a lot of effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through pretty advanced climate action plans, there is no discussion of the impact of food and farming and greenhouse gas emission. So this is one area where we can make a huge difference in a very short period of time. And since no one else locally is taking that issue on, we will and we are because we must. This is also an area where Transition initiatives around the country can demonstrate leadership.

CB: This leads me to ask the next question which is: What should individuals be doing in terms of creating their own food security? And what should neighborhoods and communities be doing to create food security for their place?

MB: For a long time now we've been saying that it's a good idea for everyone to learn to grow at least some of their own food. This is something that everyone can do, no matter where they live, even if they live in a high-rise apartment building. They can grow at least some of their food. Initially it's not so much about how much food they might each produce, but it's about learning the skills. It's about reconnecting with the natural processes and cycles of life and beginning to understand soil, how to build it and restore it. These are skills we have become very disconnected from and that will be essential for all of us in the future.

So we think that those kinds of skills are going to be more important to food security than storing up lots of food. We can always grow food. As we're compelled increasingly to eat seasonally again, we're going to have to learn how to preserve food from harvest so that we can consume it during the winter months. So we get to learn all those things like canning, drying food-ways that we can feed ourselves year-round. We've gotten so accustomed to being able to eat whatever we want anytime we want it. We just go to the grocery store. We've become totally dependent on this system, and we've lost those basic skills. That's the more real aspect of food security.

On a neighborhood level, I think one of the most important things we can do is to organize as neighbors to support each other. A lot of people can't have their own gardens. They might be able to have a window box garden or some tomato plants on their porch, but they can't really produce much. But community gardens can easily be organized. Again, it's not so much about the amount that's grown, but rather about the process of people working together and rebuilding those fundamental connections between people. Those kinds of connections have been at the heart of civilization from the beginning, and they have eroded away the last two hundred years or so.

On a broader level within a local food shed, let's say an area of a couple hundred miles or so, such as in Boulder County, we need to focus collectively on greatly increasing food production. 75% of our agricultural land here in Boulder County is being used either for pasture land for animals or to grow crops to feed animals. We need to be using much more of that land to grow food for our own people. Agriculture has gotten focused over the last century on exporting commodity crops to other countries and has totally lost site of the need to feed our own people. We need to reverse that priority and make the purpose of local farming and the whole food system to feed our own people first, then export surplus once those local needs have been met. It's a huge transition we have to go through, but that's ultimately where our food security will come from.

CB: One of the presentations you frequently do is entitled "The Extent of Our Predicament". In a few words, what is the extent of our predicament, and what should we be doing to deal with that predicament?

MB: First of all, what inspired me to talk about this is Gus Speth's book The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability where he concludes that we will never do what is necessary until we understand the full extent of our predicament. So I've been speaking more and more about our predicament in terms of first of all, the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels-the reality that we will never be able to replace the amount of energy we're burning in fossil fuels today and that we will have no choice but to dramatically reduce our energy consumption. That's the first realization that we have to come to.

The second is that climate change is going to change the face of the planet and will certainly change the trajectory of the human presence on the planet, and this will happen much more quickly and much more painfully than almost any of us is willing to think about. But we need to begin. Primarily because of our use of fossil fuels and our profligate burning of fossil fuels, we've unleashed profound changes in our climate that are probably going to give us the equivalent of a species near-death experience. The near-death experiences for many individuals will be a profound wake up call and will produce a shift from an aimless, dissipated, wasted life to a focus on purpose and service. Climate change is likely to be affording us as a species, that kind of opportunity.

The third aspect of our predicament is the reality is that our economic system will not recover but will go into a steeper decline, eventually plunging into an irreversible global depression that will last beyond our lifetimes. Of course, it's because our entire global economic system has been based on cheap fossil fuels and the American dollar. The whole system now is beginning to collapse. So we need to understand that the global systems on which we've come to depend are already failing, and they will fail dramatically in the future. So we have to rebuild from the ground up our capacity to live well, to live meaningfully, in a healthy and productive manner on this planet.

CB: Michael you often speak of the "evolutionary threshold" on which humanity stands in the present moment. What do you mean by this?

MB: I think that where we are as a species and what gives me hope perhaps, is the realization that we are a very young species in the universe. We are living in a time where we are beginning to emerge from our species adolescence into adulthood. It's not a very comfortable time just as is often the case for adolescents when they begin to shift into early adulthood, but that's what's up for us, and as we shift into adulthood, we'll have to live very, very differently. But seeing it that way is very good news because it means that as a species it means that we're not doomed, we're not fatally flawed-it just means that it's time for us to grow up together. Of course, in order to do that, we're going to have to make some pretty significant changes. We're going to have to put behind us our childish way of living, our very selfish way of living, but we certainly have an opportunity to begin to realize the potential and destiny of the human species.

There's no guarantee that we'll make this transition. In fact, there are a lot of reasons to doubt that we'll be able to do this. In our adolescence, the problems we've created for ourselves are so overwhelming that if we don't make the course correction very quickly, the window of opportunity will have passed, and we will not survive. But right now, the window is still open, and if enough people can wake up to our predicament and put into place the basic processes and structures that will enable what's best about the human species-what's the most important, what's the most precious about our species in order to survive beyond this transition, then ultimately humanity will fulfill its purpose and destiny.

CB: Thank you Michael for taking this time to talk about the crucial role of local food and farming. For readers in Boulder County, please attend the Eat Local Campaign. For readers elsewhere, check out the Eat Local website and think about how you might implement a local food and farming campaign in your place.

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Brownlee is the Co-Director of Transition Colorado, Boulder County

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The "worst case scenario" has gone from neglible according to BP's site specific plan, and the BP Regional Gulf of Mexico Splill plan, the likelihood of well problems was infinitesimal and the damage should that occur minimal. The plan for dealing with a well blowout more than a mile under water were essentially the same as if that well were on dry land. I suspect that such an insane assumption also impacted the environmental impacts. On land, one could do a number of things to isolate a blown well - containment dams, moats, etc. However, even in shallow water such containment is not possible.

That "worst case" has grown and grown. The implications magnifying as people look at what is happening, and what is happening goes far beyond "decades to return to normal." The "worst case" could mean more than the Gulf of Mexico becoming a dead zone, to damaging the oceans and its inhabitants beyond recovery. In other words, the worst case could be an ocean killer and that would decimate - if not ultimately eradicate - virtually all life on the planet.

Before one leaps to the conclusion that the claim of possible planetary death is "tin foil hat" alarmism, think a moment about what is peice-meal coming into reality. The oil is not just on the surface, but throughout the entire water column from ocean floor to surface. Those plumes in the water column that BP denied, are now proven. The dispersant (Corexit) that BP continues to liberally dump is full of toxic chemicals, and does little more than make it look like there is less oil on the surface. In other words, liberal amounts of poison are being dumped in the Gulf for cosmetic purposes. The dispersant is making cleanup more difficult, and introducing another slew of toxicity into the ocean food chain.

We were told, that the oil would remain in the ocean and not be transported by rain. Now we know that it is raining oil from Louisiana to Florida (and perhaps beyond). Oil (and dispersant) continues to push into the marshes an bayoos of the Gulf coast, but has also jumped a steady progression of disaster by showing up in Lake Ponchartrain in New Orleans.

The Gulf Coast houses 40 percent of the breeding and nursing grounds for the entire United States. All of that is at risk - or already damaged. It is almost a certainty that the oil will leave the Gulf and enter the Atlantic. There is little doubt that it will impact the East Coast - and its fisheries. Once in the Atlantic, it will have various sea life impacts all the way to the Arctic - including hitting the North Sea fisheries of Europe. Along the way, it will decimate - if not drive into extinction - a number of species. One that is already endangered because of its desirability and over-fishing is the blue fin tuna. This fish breeds and migrates through the Gulf of Mexico.

We then have a different toxic effect from the well blow out. One is the dramatic increase in methane which is now at levels which are "one million times greater than normal" in some areas of the Gulf. This is enough to "potentially deplete oxygen" in those areas and create dead zones. Methane is also a highly potentn global warming gas. The massive amounts of oil are also raising arsenic levels in the Gulf. This is happening because oil is interfering with the normal process whereby arsenic bonds with material on the seabed and then gets buried by sediment. The oil in the water means that arsenic is staying suspended and then aggregates in the the food chain. Arsenic bio-accumulates - meaning that lower level food chain absorbs arsenic which is then taken up by others who then are eaten by another species etc. At each step along the way the accumulation of arsenic increases. Those at the top of the food chain (humans, the fish we eat, etc) end up ingesting the highest levels of arsenic.

Much of the environmental impact concern has been to species in direct contact with the oil and other toxic substances. Increasingly, there is concern for species that migrate through the region (birds and aquatic life) who are nwo likely to be negatively impacted. Over a million birds migrating between North and South America, as well as a feew species which migrate globally are now in the crosshairs of the toxic stew that now makes up the Gulf and Gulf Coast.

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has an ever-growing footprint that is extending far beyond the Gulf and could become hemispheric at least. With that growing wave of destruction goes the human and social impacts. These casualties include tens of thousands jobs and multi-generational, regional cultural decimation, destruction of a significant food supply for the U.S. and elsewhere, loss of entire communities, and unknown health impacts which may go on for decades at the least.

Even if the well was killed today, the damage has been done, and it is possible that BP will have difficulty killing the well. It is within the realm of possibility that the well casing is damaged beyond usefulness. It is possible that given the nature of the seabed around the well, that the seabed could collapse and create and ongoing oil seep of unknown proportions. It is possible that the pipe will collapse as they try to shoot drilling mud at high pressure.

So what does responsibility mean? What does "making it right" mean? The damages from BP's disastrous activity in the Gulf of Mexico go beyond any type of economic damages. You cannot bring back people's livelihood when the basis of that livelihood is detroyed. You cannot bring back species driven into extinction with a few well placed donations. You cannot put global warming gases back in the bottle.

Certainly there are things that BP can and should do. Among those things is to NOT continue reckless drilling around the globe.

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The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.

After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward ... becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) -- with I-Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.

While above the street -- corporate towers -- that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension -- blot the skyline ... these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.

This is architecture as blind hubris: creations made by the hands of mortal men ... yet failing to have any connection to the ground, these buildings crowd out the real estate of the sacred. Moreover, their manic skyward thrust leaves them, and those imprisoned within, bereft of roots that reach down into the renewing loam of the earth, to where mortal vanity is delivered to dust and desperate hopes rot and transubstantiate into the compost that nourishes new life.

And blooms of renewal, I suspect, will not be found online as well. The electronic sheen of social media sites is no substitute for communal fabric. There is no animal musk nor angelic apprehensions to en-soul the flesh and tease wisdom out of obdurate will ... No matter how many restless shades want to friend you on FaceBook nor ghostly texts descend upon you in an unholy Pentecost of Tweets, online exchanges will continue to leave you restless, hollow, and yearning for the colors and cacophony of an authentic agora.

The adolescent purgatory of FaceBook -- with its castings into the Eternal Now of instant praise, acceptance, and rejection -- reflects, magnifies, and acerbates the perpetual adolescence of the contemporary culture of the United States, intensifying its shallow longings and displaced panics, its narcissistic rage and obsession with the superficial. It devours libido, by providing a pixilated facsimile of the primal dance of human endeavor, leaving one's heart churning in thwarted yearning, locked an evanescent embrace with electronic phantoms, as one, paradoxically, attempts to live out unfulfilled desires by means of hollow communion with the soul-negating source of his alienation.

One can never get enough of what one doesn't need. Ergo, the compulsions and panic of millions of hungry ghosts will hold an ongoing, hollow mass online, in a futile campaign to regain form, gain direction, and walk in meaning and beauty among the things of the world, but instead will remain imprisoned within the very system that condemned them to this fate.

And this is the place, we, as a culture, will remain, for a time. This electronic inferno will be our vale and mountaintop, our sanctuary and leviathan. We will stare baffled into its vastness, stupefied and lost within its proliferate array of depersonalizing distractions and seductions. The more we try to lose ourselves in it, by surrendering to its shimmering surface attractions, the more tightly we will become bound in the bondage of self.

Naturally, living in the grinding maw of such monsters of alienation will engulf one with ennui and angst. Moreover, the judgment of anyone claiming not to be afflicted should be regarded as suspect.

Possessed by this mode of being: we languish in a zoo of our own making where we gaze, without comprehension, at the confines of our enclosure, chew our paws, pace the cage, and are restless for mealtime. Like an animal in a cage, we are no longer what we were meant to be ... we have forgotten what it is to be alive. With the exception of superficial form, we begin to lose our affinity to what makes us recognizable as a human being and as an animal -- for we have become simply a sad thing that waits for lunch. And I defy any caged clock-watcher in a cubicle to defy that point.

Restless and agitated in our confinement, we sink further into anomie ... into the benumbing embrace of comfort zones (over-eating, anti-depressants, consumerism as emotional distraction, addiction to electronic media) where we chose safety over the truth of our being. In these cages of inauthenticity, our heart's longings and human needs are held in stasis by the perfunctory persona we cultivated for approval and acceptance; there, consigned to a barren region of mind where one is rewarded for docility and duplicity, one languishes, bereft of eros and pothos ... unconsciously self-convicted and sentenced for the crime of being a serial betrayer of one's essential self.

So much of the criteria of the modern condition has atomized us, stripped us, collectively, of ritual, purpose and meaning, and placed us in the midst of what T.S. Eliot expressed in prosody as a "heap of broken images."

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
--From: The Waste Land

There is danger, of course, in such places -- but there is also the possibility of renewal.

Personal and historical traumas leave a legacy of bewilderment. And being bewildered i.e., being in a psychic wilderness, lost, having wandered or been cast past the known horizon of experience ... is to be in position to engage the novel, be in the thrall of unfolding mystery, and wander in a soul-suffused landscape of the sublime.

A state of alienation is right where we should be: To be able to adapt to a culture dedicated to little more than finding efficient means of exploiting the hours of the greater public's lives for the benefit of a greedy few ... would be a tragedy. Living within this culture should bring on despair ... It is a leviathan that has devoured your existence. Do you think you can renovate the belly of the beast ... set up a time-share with Jonah and Pinocchio there ... and live in comfort?

Should not one stagger and stammer in mortification when shown a handful of dust?

Moreover, the solution we are offered -- making ourselves a dwelling within a prison of consumer kitsch -- should and does only bring on more anomie. Eliot wrote the following regarding a psyche attempting to adapt to a dying culture:

[...] Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
--From: The Journey of the Magi,

One of the notions, as Rilke might put it, that is "brooding like a seed" in my psyche has been the distinction James Hillman makes between civilization and culture. Hillman avers that, and I agree, civilization is a dead thing -- an edifice of crumbling marble enshrined in an eros-devoid museum of the mind where we do little more than give empty, obligatory homage to a fossilized tableaux ... our forced reverence is but a perfunctory prayer muttered before the iconography of a dead religion; in contrast, culture is a living, breathing phenomenon of the collective mind, heart, and soul of the people within it. Its logos inhabits the very air of existence, permeating it like the sound of birdsong, and cricket and cicada stridulation throughout a high summer night.

Moreover, he avers that culture is akin to a madhouse; in fact, the solution lies in the back ward of the asylum, the area where are housed the hopeless cases. In other words, like Dante ... proceed to the place you most fear looking upon, embrace it, and hear its awful keening and heart-opening agonies. There is the location of rebirth, the last circle of hell ... retreating to a comfort zone will simply leave the situation is stasis.

So the question arises: How does one enter the soul-making shabbiness of the human condition, even though, as always, we are powerless against the trajectory of history and lost within the mad proliferation of culture -- and, as Bob Dylan limned in lyric regarding the alienation this situation evokes, "[one has] no direction home?"

Try this: embrace the bracing pain of your alienation: make a home in being lost. Gaze with wonder of upon the sacred scenery of your bewilderment ... Wandering in the wilderness is a holy state.

Wendell Berry believes such ventures to be one of the true vocations of the soul:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
--Wendell Berry

In other words, in times such as ours, when we embrace our alienation then we will be welcomed home ... to share a common shelter with the multitudes who are also lost.

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: [email protected]. Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/ And at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000711907499

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About one year after Barack Obama became President, I noticed on one radical left website the words "the ‘hopium' is wearing off." While the majority of Americans believe that Obama is a better President than George W. Bush, Jr., it has now become painfully obvious that Obama's leadership has offered little divergence from the policies of the Bush administration. In the throes of what can only be described honestly as the Second Great Depression, Americans suffering from a deluge of unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, loss of health insurance and retirement savings have not yet fully confronted their despair. They pretend that a return to unlimited growth and delirious consumerism is possible and even likely in the long term, but all the while, just beneath the surface of that chimera the demon of despair is growing increasingly restless and ominous.

Despair moves us to confront existential questions, and let's remember that that big word isn't just a philosophical term but directly refers to our existence. Existential questions are questions of meaning and purpose-questions about the human condition such as: Why do the innocent suffer? Why do those who commit brutal acts so often go unpunished? If there is a God, why do these things happen? Why am I here?

Despair also brings us face to face with an emptiness that is at our core, regardless of how fulfilled and serene we feel. And while some theologians would assert that the emptiness is a God-shaped void that only religion can fill, I would argue that the emptiness cannot be filled by anyone or anything because it is a fundamental reality of the human condition. However, I hasten to add that the pain of the void can be minimized in a variety of ways.

Citizens of industrial civilization have attempted for centuries to fill the void by cherishing the delusions of unlimited growth, unbridled progress, the acquisition of material wealth, the sanctity of the family, the piety of organized religion, the status of obtaining advanced degrees, and of course, the use of substances to obviate or medicate the sensation of emptiness. As civilization continues to deteriorate, and as fewer and fewer options for filling the void are available, the masses will be brutally confronted with their own despair. When the people, things, and activities that have provided meaning for them throughout their lives no longer exist, we are likely to witness madness and suicide on an unprecedented scale. I state this, dear reader, not to incite fear, but to prepare us for a milieu of chaos resulting from a pandemic of meaninglessness as nearly all of that which has provided meaning for so many is swept away.

What is more, I realize that anyone reading these words may be at times overwhelmed with despair. This is difficult to avoid when contemplating the scale of horror that humans have inflicted on the planet in terms of wars, resource depletion, environmental devastation, and innumerable forms of injustice and brutality. Unless one lives a hermetically sealed life, one encounters these realities daily.

When I first published Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, I was afraid that it would be reviled at the worst and virtually ignored at best. While it is true that it did not and will not become a best-seller, I have been astounded at the book's success and the comments I have received from readers. Consistently they report that Sacred Demise profoundly lowered their level of despair by catalyzing a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. In most cases, readers completed the book, or re-read it, and took away a palpable appreciation of the demise and what is truly sacred about it.

As I engage with collapse-aware individuals and communities throughout the world, what I consistently hear is the profound alienation they feel in a world unraveling. We all have personal wounds that evoke despair, but as psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan notes in her book, Healing Through The Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair, "Despair grows not only out of our personal wounds, losses, and disappointments, but also out of our needs for community and a shared sense of meaning-spiritual necessities for which we harbor a profound and aching, though largely unconscious, nostalgia."

Greenspan also notes that often our personal despair will not let up until we confront our despair for the world. You may be familiar with Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment workshops, designed to help people face their despair and create community with others who are engaged in similar work. Macy believes that despair is to be trusted because it is a natural, visceral response to a planet in crisis inhabited by beings who are committing suicide.

Generally, the psychotherapy profession does not address despair for the world. In fact, if you were to walk into a therapist's office and say that you feel grief and despair for the world, you are likely to be labeled depressed, paranoid, phobic, or pathologized in some other way, presented with myriad reasons why your despair is unwarranted in a world so full of glorious potential, and probably asked to consider taking an antidepressant. It is likely that unless you consult a therapist who is fully informed regarding the coming chaos, you will need to find support from other individuals similarly informed and share your feelings about the future with them.

Joanna Macy speaks to this directly:

But because of the individualistic bias of mainstream psychotherapy, we have been conditioned to assume that we are essentially separate selves, driven by aggressive impulses, competing for a place in the sun. In the light of these assumptions, psychotherapists tend to view our affective responses to the plight of our world as dysfunctional and give them short shrift. As a result, we have trouble crediting the notion that concerns for the general welfare might be genuine enough and acute enough to cause distress. Assuming that all our drives are ego-generated, therapists tend to regard feelings of despair for our planet as manifestations of some private neurosis.

This is precisely why in recent months I have begun a Transition Counseling practice, which some people have called "Collapse Coaching", that offers people an opportunity to share their feelings about the future and receive support and practical input regarding preparation. I believe that increasingly we will need this kind of coaching in our communities as the wheels fly off of a civilization dependent on cheap fossil fuels for its operation and the illusion of endless growth and consumption for its motivation.

When we do not acknowledge despair, it reinforces our tendency toward numbness, the preferred "feeling state" of most citizens of modern culture. If we remind ourselves that emotion has the word motion in it, and if we consciously allow the despair, yes even dialog with it, asking it what it wants from us, we may find that it is indeed an ally.

In reality, despair presents us with an opportunity to enhance our sense of meaning and purpose. As Greenspan states: "Despair is faith's darker handmaiden. There is no faith without doubt and despair, just as there is no good without evil, no day without night. To be authentic, faith must be all-inclusive-encompassing Auschwitz as much as it encompasses paradise." If you bristle at the word faith, feel free to replace it with meaning, purpose, inspiration, or some other word.

The human psyche is extremely comfortable in the territory of despair. For this reason, we need to trust our despair and allow it to guide us to the transformation that is waiting to happen within us. We also need to remember that we feel our despair in the context of a world that is withering and a species that is rushing headlong toward extinction. Our personal despair and the wider story of despair cannot be separated. This does not mean that we stay stuck in blame and abdicate personal responsibility where it should be claimed. What it does mean, however, is that suffering is both personal and collective, and that the latter is larger than our personal egos. It may be that despair is a catalyst not only for our personal transformation, but also that of our species.

Thus arises another opportunity to remind us all that service in the world is often an excellent antidote to despair. Service can give our lives meaning and help place our personal story in the context of the larger story of a civilization that has reached its growth limits and is currently in demise. However, we do not need to reach our limits of soul growth as individuals. In fact, the more we acknowledge our limitations of material growth, acquisition, and control, the more expansive our souls are likely to become, and service frequently enhances the process.

Yet another tool for soothing our despair is to follow the example of Wendell Berry in his beautiful poem which opens this article. In it he states that when despair for the world grows in him, he consciously enters nature and allows it to comfort him so that for a time, he can rest in the grace of the world and experience himself as free. Yet it is not only comfort he receives but the "peace of wild things." But how can "wild" be synonymous with "peaceful"? Isn't wild unpredictable and therefore anxiety-producing? Could this actually be one of the most important antidotes to despair: Wild, unpredictable, capricious, even dangerous? Is not part of our death-like despair the lack of wildness? Psychologist Bill Plotkin states in Nature And The Human Soul that "Something in us is truly wild and wants to stay that way through our entire life. It is the source of our deepest creativity and freedom."

I want to underscore Wendell Berry's advice. I am blessed to live in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. Recently, I have committed to journeying twice a month into the mountains and spending sacred time in some isolated places there. It may be as short as one hour or as long as an entire day. While I have taken many extended trips into the mountains earlier in my life, having lived at the foot of Pikes Peak in my late-twenties, I now journey into the mountains more contemplatively and for shorter periods of time.

My intention when taking these short trips is exactly the same as Wendell Berry's. I go in order to "rest in the grace" that is there. It is a comforting, soothing, inspiring, and restorative experience. However, without exception, grief comes, whether I invite it or not. It is quite simply, ever-present these days as I allow myself to become intimate with nature--and I give my grief to the earth. Sometimes I do it by lying face down on the earth and sobbing. Sometimes by standing with my back pressed firmly against a towering pine tree and feeling its strength coursing through my body until I break into laughter. Sometimes by sitting in the soil and sifting it tenderly through my fingers as tears of both sorrow and joy flow.

Part of me realizes that it is only a matter of time until the lush landscape into which I have immersed my body and soul will be destroyed by climate change. In Colorado, this is already happening with the death of incalculable numbers of trees infected by the pine beetle. Another part of me is also keenly aware of the earth's magnificent history of regenerating herself. The very elements of nature in which I revel on these journeys are remnants of the earth that have been destroyed in eons past. Perhaps in a million years, the landscape in which I sit, that may be destroyed in my lifetime, will metamorphose into another lovely landscape or other elements that will provide comfort and revitalization for some other members of the earth community.

Somehow, when I return from my short mountain getaways, I am buoyed; I feel some distance from my despair for the world, and I am renewed in body and soul. It is as if I have spent hours communing intimately with a dear friend. And even as I return to the low-intensity urban community in which I live, my "friend" remains in my heart. She is still up there in the mountains, and I can return to her, but more importantly, she is in my body, and I take her with me as I do the work I came here to do. Even if she is made extinct, she is within me, and her palpable sacred presence within cannot be made extinct. I am exhilarated by her effervescent, wild fecundity, and my despair recedes. I feel my wildness; industrial civilization has not killed it because my wildness inspires me to find meaning in the madness of a collapsing world. And it compels me to write these words and to invite you to immerse yourself in your wildness, as well as your gifts of service, because when you do, it will be impossible to be driven by despair.

___________________________________________________________________

This article is an excerpt from Carolyn's forthcoming book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit For Inner Transition which will contain a treasure-trove of exercises and resources of emotional and spiritual preparation for an uncertain future.

In October, 2010, Carolyn will lead a 2-day workshop in Boulder, Colorado on "Sacred Demise and The Soul of Transition". For more information, contact [email protected]

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No wonder that people easily spend decades eating unhealthy foods or living a sedentary lifestyle, or both, without appreciating or internalizing the inevitable negative and serious health impacts, from heart disease to all kinds of cancers, for example.

No wonder that all kinds of technologies that offer immediate rewards or benefits are embraced while long term negative impacts are easily ignored. Maybe cell phones really do cause brain cancer. Maybe deep ocean drilling for oil will fail and cause exactly what we are now witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP fiasco.

But we like cell phones and we refuse to take the many actions to rid society of its addiction to petroleum and so we willingly accept our time blindness no matter how many experts and researchers try to warn us about the terrible long term impacts. In other words, near term benefits blind us to long term costs. As economists might say, those long term costs are heavily discounted.

It is not just that individuals are time blind, but that there is collective time blindness. It is so powerful that conventional institutions we think of as protecting people and society are impotent. That's how powerful time blindness is.

Worse yet, the really smart people know how to take advantage of mass time blindness. Think of business and corporations that create mass market products and technologies that seduce people because their negative consequences fall victim to deeply embedded time blindness. Think of all the Ponzi schemes that have victimized so many people out of many billions of dollars. By the time that negative impacts occur it startles and amazes people as if they could not have been predicted. Wrong! In all cases of catastrophes and crises there is always a record of some people correctly forecasting them. But they are ignored. Why? Time blindness. That vision of an awful, deadly future becomes invisible because of our time blindness, or it merely is seen as fantasy, speculation or entertainment.

Want another example? Try the classic one of over population: Too many humans on planet Earth using too many resources. Those not falling prey to time blindness have been trying to warn humanity for a very long time that a lower birth rate and fewer people would actually result in high quality of life for people, with less social conflicts, wars and terrorism. Also think global warming or climate change. Though there are clear impacts now, major calamities will become future shocks because of so much time blindness.

We ignore time blindness at our peril. The real lesson of the BP oil disaster is far more significant than merely one technology or one incompetent and immoral company that wrecks havoc and pain on so many people as well as ruining so much of the natural environment. We need to spend a lot more time understanding intrinsic time blindness as a kind of mental disability, and how to teach people to avoid it. One person has been doing just that for decades. Check out the work of Jack Alpert at skil.org.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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There is magic about those sun-sparkled coasts, translucent, shimmering, sapphire sea, later turning peach, apricot, deep blush, then seeming near blackberry as the sun falls and the dusk, then dark, takes over. Then the great pelicans sit sentry, on remains of old breakwaters, silhouetted against the moon's silvered light.

An all time memory is of the Mexican coast on the Gulf. One day remains apart, on some special mental shelf for treasures, oft taken down, wondered at, minutely re-savoured. Four of us hired a boat for the day, the others wanted to fish for marlin, I to relish the glittering ocean and sun. Lying below the little open wheelhouse, the old, toothless boatman and I quickly formed a bond. His boat was his life, he was an extention of it and it of him. His eyesight was phenominal. "Look, look", he'd say, pointing somewhere into the distant horizon: "tuna .." I could see nothing, but a few miles towards the spot, sure enough, the ocean boiled and churned with the great shoal.

Shark fins often glided along side the boat, their sleek elegance visible below the surface

Another: "look ..", a pointed, gnarled finger, and there would be the unmistakable spout from a whale, then a great, seemingly ocean-shuddering, roll or two. The Gulf hosts twenty nine marine mammal species, alone, including blue, beaked, fin, dwarf sperm and humpback whale. On 16th June, the first whale, a sperm whale, was found dead off Mississipi. Whales are thought to live up to one hundred and thirty years. The July 1st issue of "Nature" reveals remains of a sperm whale in Peru, thought to be thirteen and a half million years old. The whale is also thought to possibly be the world's oldest species. If the oil industry turns out to be the biggest threat they have ever faced, that will be quite a first.

As ever, the old man of the sea, saw the dolphins before I did : "look, look, look ...." they leapt, in their joyous pairs, in perfect synchrony. As the boat neared, they surrounded it, cavorting in fours, sixes, eights, twelves, higher and higher, over and over. Attempting to capture the images, the lens appeared less than clear, then I realized it was not the lens, but the tears streaming down my face, in response to witnessing overwhelming minutes of beauty beyond imagination. Suddenly, was a certainty of feeling blessed, to understand poet John Gillespie Magee's words : "...in the sunlit silence, put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Fifty dolphin have so far, been reported found dead. Experts estimate only one tenth of species which die will be washed up. The full toll of big oil's "collateral damage", now, previously and in the future, will likely never be known.

When my friends hauled in a huge marlin, which had fought for its life with wile and valor, the old man of the sea said again: "Look. Watch." The great creature lay in the sun, gasping on the deck, its body glittering all over, in sequin-like, opalescence. "Watch", he repeated. In seconds, the lights started to go out and the magnificent creature became just a very large, dark, lump of flesh. Killing for sport is another obscenity.

As the sun lowered, we headed for the shore. Approaching it, the boatman ("Watch...") put his arms above his head, steering with his knees. Instantly, the sky darkened with birds, appeared seemingly from no where. They called, swooped, rose, fell, circled. He leant in to the bait bucket and threw the remains, bit by bit, in to the air. Every morsel was expertly caught. Not one missed, dropped. The bucket empty, his hands went back on the wheel, the birds did a farewell fly past and departed in to the dusk. In the shallower waters shoals of vibrantly coloured fish, darted between the delicate coral reefs.

Bird species of the region include albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, frigatebirds, cormorants, gannets, boobies, gulls, terns and skimmers. With temperatures of one hundred degrees and birds becoming oil covered, experts warn they are boiling, alive. The thick, tarry oil, absorbs the heat

The many turtle species lay their eggs on or near the beach where they were born. Conservationists are removing eggs to unpolluted shores hundreds of miles away, where hopefully they will survive but another extraordinary natural miracle will have been severed. Four hundred and thirty two turtles have been found dead since April.

The Gulf's Loggerhead turtle's hatchlings follow the light of the moon to reach the ocean and swim to safety, away from land's predators, when they emerge from the egg. For the tiny moon followers, the ocean itself has become their ultimate predator.

Inspite of the scale of this environmental death warrant, Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal, supports a legal action to reverse the Presidential six month moratorium on deep water drilling, in place to allow time to determine the exact cause of the spill, thus, hopefully, avoiding a repetition. Jindal views the cost in jobs as too high. Oil jobs, that is. And as the hurricane season has moved in with the great winds spreading unleashed deadly pollutants, farther and wider.

Dahr Jamail, in Louisiana, writes of a poignant, differing view. Locals have erected white crosses, each representing something loved and lost: "Family time, crabs, white trout, camping, diving, walking the dog on the beach, sea shells, sea turtles, dolphins, barbecues, shrimp, shark, sand between my toes, boogie boarding, mullet, marsh, palm trees." (Christian Science Monitor, 22nd June 2010.) The crosses will undoubtedly multiply.

Mexico's ancient mariner was utterly in tune with with his universe and all which shared it with him. A reverence a million miles from those who think only to ravage it.

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Television, cell phone, computer glowed before me: The media nimbus boiled: its hypnagogia-like flux of imagery, its counterfeit immediacy and proffered flummery insistent to drowned out auras of extinction rising from veritable nature; the earth's warnings rising like musical notes ... swelling, reverberating, enveloping us. In the Gulf of Mexico ... literally falling to earth as chemical rain.

I stood dazzled before the scintillating doomscape of the Anthropocene Epoch. It has entered me ... It has made me and undone me. It tells me who I am; it holds me near, enclosing me in the thrall of the false intimacy of its endless spectacle.

Some mornings, I don't think I can compose myself to face it.

But, most days, I make a start: Gathering up and patching together this tattered flesh-garment of DNA. Then: I call to order my swarming termite-cathedral mind ... take a head count of this aggregate of disparate personage deemed me ... attempt to quiet this nattering self nettled by formless dread ... console this besieged I who awakens in redemptive bed ... torn from reverie with dreaming-ocean cosmos to shuffle to toilet for Newtonian piss, to sink for anti-entropic teeth brushing, then commit to wave-particle duality decision of dressing ... in order to meet the manifold machinery of the empire's manifest death-urge revelry.

Awake, dressed, and partially reconstituted, I left the house:

The age of insistent junk rose to meet me: junk groaned and snarled past me on roadways; junk words -- mouthed into junk cell phones; junk pixels -- texted and twittered into meaningless air.

So many enchanted by junk incantations, staring at glowing, tinny appliances like idiots entranced by shiny objects ... giving over the fleeting hours of finite life in the service of Lord Junk -- as sky and sea choke in the miasmic wake of our joyless binge -- and the earth's entropic furies gather.

We stare at our glowing appliances while exquisite things are extinguished, forever ... mistaking configurations of pixels for the breath and brilliance of the world.

I thought of Lorca; in truth, preposterously, I attempted to pray to Lorca who advised that one should listen for the heart of god beating within the monster of the world.

But I am losing heart searching for the monster's heart. Thus far: finding only my own spleen. For this reason: our collectives striving and private equivocations seem the thanotopic dream of destroyer gods: The nightmare manifested before us as strip malls and shopping plazas ... constructed of bones of extinct species; interiors of suburban subdivisions shuffling with resentful phantoms ... estranged from the libido of culture and communion; dead zone freeways ... the air shaken and riven by the roar of its death-enamered fury.

Before me: Atlanta Georgia, USA ... glazed in asphalt inferno of late-June.

Yet, held in the heat-pummeled air above, I saw fuchsia mimosa blossoms hoisting defiant flags above the misery of traffic.

The effrontery of those spindly blooms of fuchsia, its colors as raw as my own nettled heart. It hurt deep within my chest even to gaze upon such a shade of unconquerable pink.

I want to shake branches of flowering mimosa in the faces of the ministers and minions of junk ... to see ... if they become stricken as I was -- as tickled pink as I am.

Later, will I hear reports on the evening news of a million human beings in their offices and cubicles afflicted with seemingly out-of-context desires ... suffering from spontaneous longings for the caress of blossom-scented winds ... suddenly struck by an ungovernable need to emerge unto city streets and genuflect before the spindling glory of these seditious flowers?

So, in short, the ministrations of the mimosa convinced me to keep on living. But I had little appetite for the endeavor.

The meals prepared from this harvest of junk turned my stomach. I clamped my teeth tight against it. I kept searching for hope's greenhouse -- where blooms of human understanding open and breathe -- but I kept wandering into the empire's slaughtering barn.

I began to mutter, "awful."

"Awful. Awful. Awful."

Then I chanted it aloud, "Awful. Awful. Awful."

Then and there, I decided I would make "awful" my morning and evening prayer.

"He's awful, She's awful -- This food is awful -- The news is awful -- Our leaders are awful. You awful people have created such an awful mess by living out the awful implications of your awful lives that all mirrors should be renamed awful frames.

I ask you, Rilke: What awful angels swim through the poisoned sky?

Anticipating the question, Rilke, a century prior, answered:

" I don't have much knowledge yet in grief --
so this massive darkness makes me small.
You be the master: make yourself fierce, break in:

then your great transforming will happen to me,
and my great grief cry will happen to you."

So I riffed on it and rasp it, snarled it and sobbed it, whispered it to myself and posited it in public places. I warbled it and choked on it, laughed about it and wept over it.

I returned home laughing and sobbing. I could no longer keep the floodgates closed: The things of the world, massive and minuscule, tragic and preposterous, came coursing into my consciousness: giant squids and chihuahuas arrived, death camps and Dollywood arose, diamonds and Skiddles were proffered, world-destroying comets and blue snow cones hurdled through deep space, while killing sprees and hand jobs, inspired exchanges and insipid palaver, grace and goofiness transpired on earth as always.

My wife found me in this state, both yearning and mortified, hungry and queasy, desperate for solitude and yet longing to be touched.

She reached for me as the two fronts within me met, merging the moist breeze of the tropics and the cold wind of the Arctic ... creating pelting hail and huge, warm raindrops ... engendering weeping and caressing -- as inundating sorrow mingled with torrents of desire.

All the while, I was stammering, "awful, awful, awful," but the pleasure struck me momentarily monosyllabic and only an ecstatic "A-W-E" issued from me.

Shuddering ... awestruck, awfully grateful, I collapsed onto her -- awed by the sublime of our simpatico breathing -- awed by the soft light of scented candles lambent upon her skin --awed by her generosity in faking her own orgasm concurrent with my own (sometimes there is surpassing grace in such small, selfless lies).

And of equal importance: awed by all the awful things that waited outside of our room that I resolved I would try to endure and transmute into song.

As I drifted towards sleep, I said Kaddish for my convictions. I dreamed my lips left impressions traced in ash. Braille sheet-music caressed me from the breeze of an electric fan. All of my points of reference floated away from me like transmigrating galaxies. Everything was adrift: mind, sorrows, heart and heavens.

Upon awakening in bed with my wife of many years, I turned to her and asked, "Pardon me, but have we met?"

I fumbled for conversation ... wanting to make a good first impression.

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky." --Rainer Maria Rilke

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: [email protected] Visit Phil's website http://philrockstroh.com/

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In some spiritual and psychological circles we often hear unambiguous proscriptions against the emotion of anger. However, in many indigenous traditions, anger is not experienced with the same suspicion one finds in Western psycho-spiritual circles. While ancient teachings regarding anger do not condone aggression, they do not unequivocally assume that feeling the emotion of anger will lead to hostility or violence. In fact, they tend to revere anger as an innate human emotion which may be utilized on behalf of the earth community without inflicting harm. Ancient teachings often include practices for "uploading" the raw emotion of anger to higher chakras or physiological energy centers on behalf of preserving boundaries or protecting the innocent-both of which are characteristics of the non-aggressive warrior.

 

Anger is one of the Five Stages of Grief articulated by the death and dying researcher, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. As I noted in Sacred Demise, in the context of those stages, anger shows up in reaction to a loss. First we feel shock and denial, then move into anger which may include frustration, anxiety, irritation, embarrassment, and shame. Subsequently, we move into depression and grief, followed by bargaining, then acceptance and re-investment in our lives. As Kubler-Ross emphasizes, none of the stages are neatly detached from the others. We tend to move through them fluidly, with each stage somewhat blurring into the next stage or containing remnants of the last one.

 

In the process of preparing emotionally to navigate the coming chaos, it is crucial to examine each stage of grief, to note where we have been in the process, to look at where we are in the moment, and to honor each emotion along the way. Many people today are stuck in anger because they have not allowed themselves to move through it into mindful grieving. In fact, I believe that the United States, and many nations throughout the world are currently mired in anger. In 2009, author and spiritual teacher Caroline Myss, stated in her article "An Epidemic of Global Anger": "We are a community of nations on fire with anger. And we are getting angrier by the day. Whether we look at the increase in uprisings occurring around the world or at the escalating tension brewing in America, what is becoming more apparent is that we are witnessing a rapidly increasing rate of global anger, so much so that it qualifies as an epidemic."

 

Many Americans are enraged at their government. Some who have been researching the demise of the current paradigm and understand the self-destructive aspects of corporate capitalism, the limits of economic growth, and the unsustainability of a civilization dependent on fossil fuels feel angry because their leaders refuse to acknowledge what is so. As their minds have been awakened, so have their emotions, and anger has been part of the process. But as they have come to understand that industrial civilization itself is collapsing, they are likely to have stopped wanting to repair and improve it and have begun to entertain a larger picture of how they could join with allies in constructing a new paradigm and a new culture.

 

It is likely that for these individuals, anger metamorphosed into deep grief or despair as a feeling of powerlessness to "fix" civilization set in. Implicit in the emotion of anger is the sense that something can or must be done to alter the that has evoked anger. As one comes to understand the inevitability of the unraveling of industrial civilization and the futility of attempting to prevent it, one may in fact experience a sense of relief that collapse is beyond control and proceeds in its own way, in its own time. One grasps that our mandate as a species is to move with the demise, not against it, and find within the unraveling a greater purpose than the one civilization has offered, proceeding with the work we came here to do. At that point, even though we may carry some residue of denial or anger, and even though our willingness to see what is so puts us directly in the path of deep grief, the embrace of our purpose and our role in the collapse process, is in itself a re-investment in our lives and the well being of the earth community.

 

However, the individuals I have just been describing do not comprise the vast majority of those in the United States or the world who are fixated in anger because they are also fixated in denial. One cannot move through the Five Stages of Grief if one does not move beyond denial. Refusing to see what is so guarantees that the journey through the stages will not occur. So whether one is an enraged Muslim suicide bomber or a vitriolic white, middle class Tea Party enthusiast, one's emotional state and behavior belie an inordinately diminished perspective of reality, resulting in a desperate need for vituperative scapegoating. In other words, fixation in anger.

 

The Mary Oliver poem above about loving the world which in part means reveling in the sensual delight of nature which means becoming "accustomed to savoring that which is momentous, concealed within bare bones simplicity." It also means a profound gratitude which the poem describes as "mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here." The world has given us stupendous gifts which Oliver says causes her to "stand still and learn to be astonished."

 

But does our gratitude for the world mean that we should never be angry about the injustice or self and eco-destruction its inhabitants have perpetrated upon each other and the earth community? Certainly not, but being deeply connected with our purpose in the world provides perspective that buoys us and allows us to keep moving forward when the magnetic pull to become fixated in anger may feel irresistible.

 

When we are intimately familiar with our purpose, we understand that the world is not paradise, it is not a vacation resort, and it is not a place to which we have come to live in perpetual bliss. Rather, the world is comprised of both the magnificent wonderment and extraordinary beauty depicted by Mary Oliver as well as the horrors engineered by a species about to become successful in its incalculable attempts to commit suicide.

 

Author and spiritual teacher, Marshall Vian Summers, writes in his book Greater Community Spirituality:

 

Be without judgment of the world. If the world were a perfect place, you would not need to come here. If the world were a place that functioned harmoniously, without friction or conflict, this would not be the place for you....The world is your place to work and to give. Its pleasures are small but real. Its pains and difficulties are great. The world cannot give you what you seek, for what you seek you have brought with you from beyond the world.

 

That which we have brought with us from beyond is something greater than our personality or human ego. Summers refers to it as Knowledge, and others use terms like the sacred, spirit, the Self, the divine within. However we choose to name that part of ourselves, it comprises our core. I believe that the more intimately familiar we are with it, the less we expect from the world, and the more we are willing to serve the world in order to imbue it with the sacred. Loving the world, as Oliver names it, is not about sentimental emotion, but about a commitment to the work we came here to do which by definition, serves the earth community.

 

The mathematical cosmologist, Brian Swimme, in his extraordinary lecture series, "The Powers of The Universe"clearly articulates this concept. Cataclysm, he notes, is one of the inherent powers of the universe, and "it is currently happening on our planet. The choice before us is whether we will participate consciously." Participating means that "as all the structures that are destroying the earth are collapsing, they are releasing us into the essential nature of who we are." While this awareness does not remove our anger or our anguish, it brings us face to face with the deeper meaning of the collapse of industrial civilization and our purpose in it.

 

I believe that the world of the future will be a chaotic world which will be, among other things, an angry world, especially in the initial stages of the demise of the current civilization. In a December, 2009 article "America The Traumatized" , Adele Stan argues that a series of events that occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century have made us a PTSD nation--and that was before the BP oil disaster of 2010. Until we understand trauma and post-traumatic stress, the need to blame the traumatizing event or person(s) who inflicted it is exceedingly compelling. When we do grasp the magnitude of trauma and its consequences, we come to understand how futile is our rage in the face of an inundation of horror.

 

I write these words more than two months after the BP Gulf of Mexico cataclysm. Am I angry as I witness the horror? Am I enraged at the lies of BP with regard to its prior knowledge regarding the safety of the Deepwater Horizon rig? Am I livid when I hear the stories of people who tried to warn the corporation that its bypassing of standard international safety regulations would result in catastrophe? Does white hot rage pulse through my body as I witness BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, taking a yachting trip and begging to "get his life back" as the entire world lays the blame for this debacle at his door and as the entire ecosystem is now in the path of the destruction visited upon it by a multitude of corporations and CEO's of BP's and Tony Hayward's ilk? Am I incensed when I see millions of people immersed in an epic blame-fest, pointing fingers and mouthing incessant sentences beginning with "they shoulda, coulda, woulda"?

 

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding "yes", and from the moment the catastrophe was first made public, I realized the probable scope of it, and I saw the word t-r-a-u-m-a writ large all over it. What purpose at this point will my anger serve? How could I be seduced by the inherent assumption in my anger that the there is a possibility that the situation can be remedied? In my opinion, the BP oil disaster of 2010 is nothing less than 100 Hurricane Katrinas in slow motion. It is an unfathomable game-changer-perhaps the tipping point in humanity's destruction of this planet. As I witness countless animals dripping and dying from disgusting quantities of crude oil resembling raw sewage suffocating their bodies; as I consider that perhaps 40-50% of the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico will soon be covered with petroleum; as I reflect on the spread of the spill into other oceans and the death of plankton and the ultimate devastation of the food chain; as I consider the economic devastation of a section of the country that comprises about 20 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, and as I speculate that perhaps the entire Gulf Coast region may become uninhabitable, I see, hear, and feel nothing but trauma. Furthermore, if the entire population of the United States were not already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, it is now.

 

Yet what I have personally discovered about my anger over the years is neither that I shouldn't have anger or that I should discharge it whenever I feel like it, but rather, to approach my anger mindfully. A stellar article by Holistic Psychologist, Jennifer Franklin, entitled "Mindfulness In Practice: Anger Management" defines mindfulness this way: "To be mindful is to be conscious, more awake, more informed about how one lives one's life.

Being more mindful, therefore, allows us to make more awake or informed choices in every moment. Our words and actions would be more mindful if we were more awake or conscious in those moments in which when we choose them." According to psychotherapist Richard Pfeiffer, quoted in the article, anger is a neurological response process that essentially prepares us to fight or flee.

 

We have many options for creating more mindfulness within ourselves. Meditation is, of course, one of the principal tools for strengthening mindfulness, even if the meditation is not the specific technique called "mindfulness meditation." It is important to remember that mindfulness isn't so much about becoming mindful of the world around us, although that generally accrues from a meditation practice, but rather, mindfulness is about being mindful of ourselves. It helps us become centered observers of our own process.

 

For example, the Dr. Franklin's article offers the classic example of road rage and how it can be handled mindfully instead of reactively:

 

When you exercise mindfulness, you exercise non-reactivity or the capacity to stay centered, grounded, and unshaken in response to a stimulus. Now, don't confuse non-reactivity with non-feeling. Let's use road rage as an example. You're driving, and someone cuts you off, and in response to being cut off you flip the driver the bird. You've just behaved reactively.

 

Contrast that with what non-reactivity would look like in that scenario: You are cut off by the driver, and rather than focusing your attention on the event itself, you focus it on you. You focus it on the sensations you are feeling in your body, most likely a fast heart rate, perhaps a tightness in the chest, or constricted breathing. Then you shift your attention to your breathing, sending the breath into the parts of your body that are feeling the anger-your heart, your chest-wherever it is for you. In the time it took you to do this exercise, you never even thought about flipping the driver the bird because you were too busy focusing on your reaction; that driver has probably gone on his or her merry way by now. This is non-reactivity.

 

Non-reactivity allows us to feel all of our feelings but not react to them. We feel them until we organically feel something else or until we decide mindfully, with awareness and choicefulness, that either we want to focus on something else or we want to act.

 

As I sit with the BP disaster, other emotions course through my body-deep, deep grief; fear, despair, and helplessness, and I have to wonder about the emotions of the earth itself. And since I believe that Gaia is a living, breathing organism, I must correct my use of "the earth itself" and state unequivocally that I believe she must be very, very angry. Within the past two years prior to the BP disaster, we have witnessed what many believe is an unprecedented number of natural disasters. Although officials from the U.S. Geological Survey insist that the number of earthquakes has not increased in recent years, many question that conclusion. Is Gaia "working through" her Five Stages of Grief? And if she is angry, what might she do next?

 

Perhaps those questions feel too anthropocentric to the reader, so I refer to the natural process of homeostasis which is "the ability of a system or living organism to adjust its internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium." When a system is out of balance, some internal process attempts to adjust the imbalance and return it to a state of balanced functioning.

 

In a 2008 interview with C-Realm Podcast, Albert Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of The Essential Exponential for Our Planet, stated, regarding population and unlimited growth, "If we don't stop it now, then Nature will stop it through a big die-off." Bartlett argues that population and growth spell annihilation for the planet if humans do not radically change their ways of occupying our planet.

 

One might argue that if Bartlett's theory is so, it is all a matter of simple physics and that speaking of earth's anger is pure anthropocentrism. Yet the distinguished doctor of medicine and biophysics, James Lovelock, who penned the book The Revenge of Gaia, argues in that work, as he does in many places, that humans have created out-of-control global warming and climate change which are now wreaking revenge on our species. Lovelock too may be indulging in rampant anthropocentrism, but if the earth itself has conscious self-awareness, both Bartlett and Lovelock may be onto something.

 

While we cannot validate with certainty earth's anger, we can certainly attest to our own in the face of humanity's devastation of the ecosystem. And while I do not concur with some in the field of psychology who argue that anger isn't really a fundamental human emotion but a kind of mask for other feelings such as fear and grief, I do believe that in the case of our anger toward members of our species who are committing ecological suicide, it is crucial that we connect with our grief and terror regarding the state of the planet and the dire consequences of the project of industrial civilization which we are now beginning to experience.

 

In the short term, anger may be useful in motivating us to act-to prepare for the coming chaos, to help raise the awareness of others, and to inspire others to prepare, but if we allow ourselves to fully grasp the calamitous reality of the future into which we are moving, I believe that our anger will soon be eclipsed by fear, grief, and despair. My forthcoming book, Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit for Inner Transition, provides an extensive array of options for utilizing all emotions we might encounter in a world unraveling in order to sustain and protect ourselves.

 

Among the myriad reactions I hear to the BP disaster from the folks with whom I interact, the one that overshadows all others is anguish. We hold hands across the sand and bodies of water, we pray, and we talk to our friends, but fundamentally, we are absolutely powerless to remedy or reverse what occurred on April 20. We knew our planet was in a state of full-blown collapse, but we didn't expect it to unfold this way. As one friend recently said to me, "It's just a matter of time now." I could have said, "Until what?" but I long ago learned not to ask questions I already know the answer to. My friend and I could just as well have been standing on the deck of the Titanic having the same conversation.

 

In an angry, chaotic world, it will be important for us to read the deeper emotions that underlie the rage we are likely to see erupting in society and in our communities. We will need to fortify ourselves emotionally and logistically from the collateral damage that myriad wounded-animal outbursts from others could inflict upon us, and even more importantly, not allow our egos to succumb to the momentary pleasure our own indulgence in rage might afford. At the same time we validate the rage our fellow humans feel, our compassion must penetrate the vitriol and understand the shipwreck that any human soul might become after years of sailing the waters of dogged denial and unwarranted faith in the American dream. If you are reading these words, it is likely that you have awakened from the dream or are in the process of doing so. Millions more never have and never will. How will we hold all of our emotions in the face of the rage their sense of betrayal will evoke in them? How will we go on loving the world?

 

**Portions of this article are excerpted from Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit For Inner Transition, By Carolyn Baker,  which will be submitted for publication in the fall of 2010.

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President Obama missed what the BP oil spill disaster is really about. Though unquestionably an environmental disaster, the BP oil spill is much much more.

The BP oil spill is part of the same problem as the financial crisis: The BP oil spill and the banking crisis are two examples of the era we are living in, the era of corporate anarchy.

In a nutshell, in this era of corporate anarchy, corporations do not have to abide by any rules--none at all. Legal, moral, ethical, even financial rules are irrelevant. They have all been rescinded in the pursuit of profit--literally nothing else matters.

As a result, corporations currently exist in a state of almost pure anarchy--but an anarchy directly related to their size: The larger the corporation, the greater its absolute freedom to do and act as it pleases. That's why so many medium-sized corporations are hell-bent on growth over profits: The biggest of them all, like BP and Goldman Sachs, live in a positively Hobbesian State of Nature, free to do as they please, with nary a consequence.

The added bonus to this, though, is that the largest corporations have convinced the governments and the people of the "Too Big To Fail" fallacy--they have convinced the world that if they cease to exist, the sky will fall atop our collective heads. So if they fail, they must be saved--without argument, without penalty, and without reform.

Let's take BP: British Petroleum caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There were various Federal Government agencies charged with supervising their operations--but all of those agencies deferred to BP, before the accident. As a large corporation--one of the largest oil companies in the world--BP operated more or less without any Government supervision. As is emerging, because of this lax and toothless supervision, safety rules and procedures were ignored. Insane risks were taken. No safety contingency plans were drawn up.

From what some memos are saying, disaster was inevitable.

Once the accident happened, BP controlled the information it released concerning the disaster. BP unilaterally decided not to proceed with an immediate top-kill of the well--instead, BP risked a wider disaster, in order to save the oil field by drilling a "relief well". BP's reasoning was simple: By implementing an immediate top-kill, BP would have sacrificed the oil field (and lost its investment) in order to save the environment. BP did not do this. Instead, it tried to stretch out the process, so as to salvage the oil field (and the profits) with the "relief well". But when it became impossible to hide the extent of the damage--when the smell of oil permeated the clear skies of Louisiana a hundred miles from the site of the spill--BP tried to implement the top-kill. We know how that ended.

Where was Authority? Where was Someone In Charge? The fact was, there was no one in charge. There was no one supervising--or at any rate, the ones who were supposed to be supervising had had their teeth yanked. And BP knew it--so they did whatever they wanted, regardless of the risks, or the costs.

Worst of all, BP realizes that, if it finally cannot get a handle on the oil spill disaster, they can simply fob it off on the U.S. Government--in other words, the people of the United States will wind up cleaning BP's mess. BP knows that no one will hold it accountable--BP knows that it will get away with it.

No one was holding the banks accountable either. It's no accident that American and European banks nearly went broke, but banks here in Chile sailed along smoothly: That's because banks here are regulated up the wazoo. They literally can't fart without an independent banking inspector supervising them, and then getting a stamped form in triplicate. When Chile's banks went bust in the crisis of 1980, it put paid to any illusions that the banks knew what they were doing--the government bailed out the banks then, but kept them under glass ever after.

But in Europe and America, the story was the Greenspan Put. Easy Al was so convinced that the banks would "self-regulate" that he pulled the teeth of the Fed, the banks regulatory agency, and let the "free market" have its way.

With this free pass, what do you think the banks did? They went anarchic--they invented all sorts of clever "financial products" that exponentially increased risk, rather than mitigating it. We all saw how that movie ended. When Lehman busted and the credit markets froze, a slap-dash improvised "rescue package" was drawn up, then the $700 billion TARP, then Quantitative Easing, all of these efforts lubed up with a lot of talk to "strengthening the regulatory environment" and "protecting the financial markets".

The upshot? The banks did whatever they pleased--with no supervision. And when their recklessness led inevitably to the catastrophe in the Fall of '08, the banks got bailed out--with no repercussions. The biggest ones even managed to turn a profit off the tax payer-funded bail-outs!

Even after the worst of the crisis--when the effects of no regulation and no supervision were clearly understood--nothing happened. The zero-regulation, zero-supervision regime continued.

This isn't the case for people, for individuals: People are regulated, people are controlled. Individuals are supervised and limited in what they can do and say--and no one complains. On the contrary--everyone is relieved, because it protects us all from the unreasonable behavior of an individual.

As an individual, I am limited in countless ways, from the trivial, like jaywalking, to the severe, like murder. I can't even speak up and yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater--I would be arrested for inciting a panic, the general good of avoiding a potentially lethal stampede overriding my need to express myself by yelling "Fire!" when there is none.

Curiously, individuals--ordinary people--are being supervised and regulated more and more stringently. Yet at the same time, corporations are becoming more and more free to do as they please. No one notices how strange this is--we have even lost the social framework to even talkabout regulating and supervising corporations, because too many foolish pundits equate supervision and regulation with Socialism. Yet curiously, personal freedom is being chipped away, day by day, without a peep from these pundits.

Meanwhile, the banks run amok.

Meanwhile, BP runs amok.

We can look at other industries--Big Pharma, for one--but there's no real need: Big Pharma will fit the same pattern as BP and the banks. Get so big that you can do whatever you want, and no one will challenge you, not even the government. Carry out practices that will inevitably create a crisis--like unsafe drilling, like toxic bonds--and be confident that you will be bailed out.

Bailed out, and allowed to continue, unfettered. "Allowed" to continue, unfettered? I'm sorry, I mis-spoke: Encouraged to continue, unfettered.

This era of corporate anarchy is reaching a crisis point--we can all sense it. Yet the leadership in the United States and Europe is making no effort to solve the root problem. Perhaps they don't see the problem. Perhaps they are beholden to corporate masters. Whatever the case, in his speech, President Obama made ridiculous references to "clean energy" while ignoring the cause of the BP oil spill disaster, the cause of the financial crisis, the cause of the spiralling health-care costs--the corporate anarchy that underlines them all.

This era of corporate anarchy is wrecking the world--literally, if you've been tuning in to images of the oil billowing out a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico.

I think we are at the fork in the road: One path leads to revolutionary change, if not outright revolution. The other, appeasement and stasis, as the corporations grind the country down.

My own sense is, there will be no revolutionary change. The corporations won. They won when they convinced the best and brightest--of which I used to be--that the only path to success was through a corporate career. No necessarily through for-profit corporations--Lefties never seem to quite get how pernicious and corporatist the non-profits really are; or perhaps they do know, but are clever enough not to criticize them, since those non-profits and NGO's pay for their meals.

Obama is a corporatist--he's one of Them. So there'll be more bullshit talk about "clean energy" and "energy independence", while the root cause--corporate anarchy--is left undisturbed.

Once again: Thank God I no longer live in America. It's too sad a thing, to watch while a great nation slowly goes down the tubes.

Gonzalo Lira, a novelist and filmmaker (and economist) currently living in Chile and writing at Gonzalo Lira

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Big oil spills are no longer news in this vast, tropical land. The Niger Delta -- where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface -- has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years by some estimates. The oil pours out nearly every week, and some swamps are long since lifeless.

BP is talking about cleaning up the mess they made. But what does clean-up really mean? Is it no visible oil on the surface of the water?  How can life survive after being embraced by oil?  What fish or birds would ever want to make love?  

In the Niger Delta the villain is Shell. Oil leaks in the region are also a result of oil thieves and aging pipelines, no longer properly being maintained. The people in the Niger Delta have been battling for years to control their destiny and protect their environment.

One wonders what will happen here in the United States? Will a populist movement organize against a big oil company? Will the "small" people fight back?

It might be a good idea to bring Nigerian fishermen and folks from Louisiana to Washington and have them sit side by side and tell their stories. There is a similar (if not singular) narrative taking place and it is beginning to sound too much like science-fiction.

The fear of a black planet could be one engulfed by oil.

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Writing way back in the year 1900, poet James Elroy Flecker summed up the view the Western world held of the region at the time;

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells, When shadows pass gigantic on the sand, And softly through the silence beat the bells, Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Dating back over 6000 years, some of the earliest indications of mining anywhere in the world come from Afghanistan. Afghanistan, for example, has always been a well-known source of precious and semi-precious stones and above all its lapis lazuli. The blue lapis lazuli stone in the famous funeral mask of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen was reportedly exported from Badakhshan in Afghanistan to Egypt in 1300 BC.

During the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, geological investigations were closed to the Western world. The Soviets, however, did carry out sporadic mining surveys in the country neatly cataloguing these on charts and maps. Though much of this record was destroyed during the armed resistance to the Soviet occupation, and later during the messy Taliban rule, some did survive.

It was thus that in 2004, when the Americans undertook the so called reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, some geologists came across fascinating sets of old Soviet charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul. The information more than hinted at major mineral deposits in the country.

That got the US Geological Survey team's antennae up. They promptly got an old Orion P-3 aircraft, configured it with advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment, loaded it up with the Russian survey charts and maps and began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan's mineral resources. They flew well over 70 per cent of the country in the year 2006. The data they put together was so promising that they returned in 2007, this time with instruments that offered a 3-D contour of mineral deposits deep below the surface. In the end, what was started as a hunch turned out to be the most wide-ranging geological survey ever conducted in Afghanistan. The results, not shared internationally till then, were breathtaking.

Due to the universally slow pace of bureaucracy, however, files containing this astonishing array of records kept gathering dust for next the two years in US filing cabinets. It was only in 2009 that a Pentagon task force called 'Business Development Task Force' (whatever it stands for) stumbled upon this wealth of information. Not very much later the Pentagon task force brought in teams of American mining experts and had them poring over the survey's findings. Eureka!, the experts shouted to themselves at the end of the study, with their head honchos reaching for the nearest telephones simultaneously.

The Times broke the story in a screaming headline on June 13, 2010. Reportedly, the deposits are so rich in quality and quantity that according to the NYT "Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world." Having a worth of approximately one trillion US dollars, Afghanistan is said to be loaded with bulging veins of gold, copper, iron, cobalt and critical industrial metals like Lithium. The country's present gross domestic product stands at a puny $12 billion.

The biggest mineral deposits discovered so far are of iron and copper. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, and some rare earth elements. An internal Pentagon memo, according to the same report, states that "Afghanistan could become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium'." Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command called it a 'stunning potential'. Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines, said, "this will become the backbone of the Afghan economy."

Intriguingly, the Times slipped in another interesting report the very next day i.e. on June 14th. According to this one, the bidding for rights to explore the reserves could begin in as little as six months and that Afghan officials believed that there was even more wealth than announced so far. According to these officials, it was so because, "in part the surveyors did not examine closely the entire country and at least 30 percent of it has yet to be fully investigated."

The NYT articles of the 13th and 14th June surreptitiously raise two other issues. One, the Taliban could now fight ever more viciously for their country's untapped wealth. And two, regional actors like China are likely to warm up to the idea of having these untold riches just in their backyard.

Well!!! One could let the two stories go by as straightforward reporting but for one other report. In this report of 14th June, the viability of President Obama's plan to begin pulling out by July 2011 has been questioned. Ever ready regional specialist Bruce Reidel of Brookings Institution, who helped formulate the administration's first Afghan strategy in early 2009 has been reported as saying, "things are not looking good, there's not much sign of the turnaround that people were hoping for." While Mr. Reidel did say that pouring in more troops was politically infeasible, he also added, "pulling out altogether would make the United States vulnerable to a terrorist attack organized by Al Qaeda and originating in a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan."

Now the scribe could have simply said 'eat your heart out Dick Cheney' and let the news slip by as sensational but routine, or draw certain not so routine conclusions from the reportage. Just some of these are;

1. The mineral finds were too big a news to keep under wraps any longer.

2. The time to share the lolly i.e. the bidding time, was just around the corner at which time the sudden announcement of the finds would have looked even more suspicious.

3. The current American Administration, which had promised a pullout in a rush of blood at the start, is increasingly finding out that the withdrawal option not only means a loss of face, it is also not possible to just fold up and go home. (discussed elsewhere in greater details)

Essentially, then, it all boils down to this for the good old US of A. Cut and run and be damned, or stay and fight and be damned but have your pockets full by the time the bullhorn is sounded.

So yes, eat your heart out Dick Cheney for you missed it by a click but urge Dubya's successors to start building the world's second largest embassy in Kabul, the first one having been already built in the other colony.

To the grand strategic thinkers of Pakistani variety especially, therefore, one has this to say; start getting your danders up, but make haste slowly this time for no one is going any where any time too soon. Let the grand masters have their fill of the Manna first.

And to the poor Afghans unable to extract from the bowels of the earth what is rightfully theirs, this, "God sends the meat but the devil sends the cooks."

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The latest International Energy Outlook, an annual forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, provides a cautionary "what if" for the global energy future if current policies remain unchanged. Driven by population and economic growth in developing countries, the world in 2035 would be more dependent on fossil fuels than ever, it finds. Countries overall would be consuming 49 percent more energy and spewing 43 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2035 than in 2007.

Highlights of the international outlook were released in late May, and the full report will be available in July. Earlier this year, Miller-McCune.com reported on the administration's energy forecast for the U.S. to 2035.

The burgeoning world demand for energy comes in part from an extra 1.8 billion people by 2035, for a total population of 8.5 billion. The fastest-growing regions are India, the Middle East, Africa and Central and South America -- in short, much of the developing world.

In addition to population, the outlook finds, strong growth in gross domestic product would help fuel an 84 percent increase in energy consumption in those countries and China by 2035, absent any new national policies or binding international agreements on climate change. Coal consumption would increase by more than 50 percent, with most of the increase coming from Asia, minus Japan and South Korea. In 2035, coal still would fuel the largest share -- 43 percent -- of the world's electricity.

At the same time, 30 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Iceland and much of the European Union, would see an increase of 14 percent in their energy consumption by 2035. These countries have been undergoing a transition from manufacturing to service economies, and their gross domestic product is projected to grow only half as fast as in the rest of the world. Their population also would grow more slowly. Europe, for example, would grow 0.2 percent yearly, compared to a 1.7 percent in Africa.

The global recession has had a profound impact on energy demand, causing it to contract by 1.2 percent in 2008 and 2.2 percent in 2009, as manufacturing sharply declined, along with consumer demand for goods and services. But the outlook shows that oil consumption will rise again this year and every year after that, and oil will remain the world's largest energy source. If energy policies remain unchanged, an estimated 26 million extra barrels of oil per day would be needed by 2035 to meet the world demand.

As the price of oil increases to $133 per barrel in 2035, the outlook finds, nuclear power would become competitive with fossil fuels, resulting in a 70 percent increase in electricity generation from nuclear power, mostly in Asia and Central and South America. With the exception of hydropower and wind power, most renewable sources of energy would not be economically competitive with fossil fuels.

"Typically," the outlook states, "government incentives or policies provide the primary support for construction of renewable generation facilities."

Of course, energy policy is not likely to stay static for the next 25 years.

The U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 approved a bill that aims to cut greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, roughly in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Senate Democrats introduced similar legislation last month.

Getting the votes for policy change will be an uphill battle, though. Today, the Senate debated a resolution that challenges U.S. regulatory power over greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It would bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases at power plants, oil refineries and other large-scale industrial facilities. The resolution, introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was defeated on a 47-53 vote.

"The Clean Air Act was written by Congress to regulate criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases, and its implementation remains subject to oversight and guidance from elected representatives," Murkowski said in a press release earlier this year. "We should continue our work to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation, but in the meantime, we cannot turn a blind eye to the EPA's efforts to impose back-door climate regulations with no input from Congress."

Senior administration officials have said they would have recommended a presidential veto if the Senate approved the resolution. In a statement to the Senate this week, the Office of Management and Budget said the resolution would block the administration's efforts to promote fuel economy standards, reduce the impacts of catastrophic oil spills and jump-start investment in renewable energy.

Further, the office said, the resolution "would increase the nation's dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and block efforts to cut pollution that threatens our health and well-being"; and is "contrary to the widely-accepted scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are at increasingly dangerous concentrations and are contributing to the threat of climate change."

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Among the principal factors leading up to the April 20 oil rig explosion, and the subsequent uncontrolled eruption from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was the absence of any regulations on the profit-driven operations of the energy industry. Government agencies under both Bush and Obama pushed for the expansion of deep-sea oil drilling and rubber-stamped all the decisions made by BP.

One measure of this influence is money. Through a combination of large individual gifts, Political Action Committees and other indirect channels, the oil and gas industry pumped over $250 million into federal campaign coffers over the past 20 years, according to a new report from the Center for Responsive Politics.

This does not include lobbying. The industry spent $174 million last year alone on lobbying the federal government, the third largest of 121 industries. BP, for its part, spent $16 million last year. All told, since 1998 the oil lobby has committed $1 billion to exert its influence on public policy.

"The oil and gas industry has long been one of the most influential in Washington. They are truly a powerhouse industry," Center for Responsive Politics Communications Director Dave Levinthal told the WSWS.

Levinthal explained, "At any time there are dozens of pieces of legislation on the table and lots of diverging interests. Still, the confluence of all this oil industry money in politics above all purchases access. It gets company executives into the game. The amount of influence they get one can only dream of if you don't have millions to spend."

One direct result is that the industry has been allowed to regulate itself. The federal agency with responsibility for oversight and regulation of oil drilling, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), routinely allows extensive offshore drilling without requiring obligatory environmental reviews and permits. MMS waived basic safety precautions that might have prevented the spill.

While the public disgust in the wake of the disaster has skyrocketed, it has not stalled the collusion between government and Big Oil. In fact, the opposite is true. Halliburton, the energy company involved in making the cement casings for the rig, which may have ultimately contributed to the explosion, last month ramped up its political spending to the highest levels since just before the 2008 elections.

Just one week prior to appearing before an investigative subcommittee of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to the campaign fund of the ranking Republican, Joe Barton (Texas), according to a report by Politico.

In May, Halliburton also contributed donations of $1,000 on Senator Mike Crapo (Idaho) of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Senator Richard Burr (North Carolina) of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Both committees are holding their own hearings to investigate the oil disaster.

Along similar lines, Democratic Senator turned lobbyist John Breaux, who now represents some clients in the oil and gas industry, is working to ensure oil industry representation on the five member "independent" presidential commission to investigate the spill. Breaux told the New Orleans newspaper Times-Picayune, "The commission shouldn't consist of all environmentalists, or all industry people. You need to have a mix."

One of Obama's two choices to head the commission is former Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly, who currently sits on the board of directors of oil giant ConocoPhillips.

Congressional donations, not surprisingly, are highest to committee members who play integral roles in crafting legislation affecting the oil industry. Members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee received an average of about $52,000 from individuals and groups associated with the oil and gas industry this election cycle. However contributions are near ubiquitous: 78 percent of House members and 84 percent of Senators received funding from oil and gas this past election cycle.

Both parties have received millions, though donations to Republicans have outweighed Democrats over the years about three to one. Nonetheless, President Obama was the second largest recipient of all candidates for federal office from the oil industry in 2008, pulling in just shy of one million. Only Republican presidential challenger John McCain received more.

BP executives, however, contributed twice as much to Obama, the largest single recipient of the company's funds.

This current election season, several candidates have already received over $100,000 from the oil industry. Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) leads the way with over $280,000 collected thus far. Lincoln currently sits on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Republican Senators David Vitter and Lisa Murkowski--from the oil states of Louisiana and Alaska, respectively--both pulled in over $200,000 to date.

The influence extends beyond the executive and legislative branches of government. According to the National Law Journal, seven of the 12 federal judges in the Eastern District of Louisiana have recused themselves from hearing oil spill cases, citing connections to the oil industry.

The ties uniting government officials with the oil industry are intertwined further by the "revolving door" between political office and industry employment. Just within the Department of Interior, these connections are everywhere.

The Obama administration appointed Sylvia Baca, a BP executive, to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Baca was appointed last June by Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, who himself has extensive ties to the oil industry and has long promoted off-shore oil drilling.

Bush administration Interior Secretary Gale Norton, after leaving the government took a position as general counsel for Royal Dutch Shell.

Outside the Interior Department, Obama's Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, headed a research institute at the University of California, Berkeley, which was funded by BP with a $500 million grant. On becoming Energy Secretary, Chu selected BP's chief scientist, Steven Koonin, to be the DOE undersecretary for science.

One of the most egregious examples is Steve Griles, who served as Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department and a representative on Dick Cheney's energy task force. After leaving office to start up his own energy lobbying firm, Griles was convicted of obstructing justice in the investigation of lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff. A federal judge sentenced Griles to 10 months in prison.

The movement between political positions and lobbying firms is very widespread. Of BP's 37 registered lobbyists identified by Center for Responsive Politics, 22 have held positions within the executive or legislative branches or as senior staffers.

Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall underscored these connections in an investigation released last month that confirmed allegations of MMS employees accepting gifts from oil and gas companies and other misconduct. In the report she wrote, "Of greatest concern to me is the environment in which these inspectors operate--particularly the ease with which they move between industry and government."

Mandy Smithberger, from the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight put it more bluntly in an interview with the Associated Press. "To say that MMS has had a revolving door problem doesn't even begin to describe how profoundly this agency has entangled itself with industry. The revolving door has spun so readily in this case that the lines between the regulators and the regulated are now virtually nonexistent."

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Somehow I cannot do that, and it leaves me 'dazed and confused' when the mass of information that is available reveals quite transparently that all the major disaster news items are related and that the sum total of them all is that on our current course, we are all facing dramatic and perhaps traumatic changes to our lifestyles. Today's news items that leave me dazed and confused run the full spectrum of scary items: Euro devaluation; massive oil pools in Gulf of Mexico heading towards Gulf Stream; Arctic long term ice rotting away; 145th Canadian and 1000th U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan; Israel continues occupying Palestine.

Economics

The global economy appears to be nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme that will fall apart as soon as a critical person, institute, or mass of investors stops believing they can reap more profits from it. Finance capitalism displays its fault lines all across Europe as the EU in conjunction with the IMF and World Bank - the Washington consensus - bailed out Greece. This imposes on Greece an austerity program that has long proven that it does more to impoverish the middle and lower classes offering more regressive taxation accompanied by a decline in social services and social benefits ranging from medical services, through education to pensions and income assistance.

The bailouts in Greece and the resulting market chaos from a frightened financial sector will take its toll, as usual with the masses absorbing most of the losses in the form of higher taxes and degraded services, public and private. With one big thump, neo-liberalism and its finance capitalism has arrived in Greece, soon perhaps to be followed by Spain, Portugal, Italy and who know what others to join Latvia, Estonia, and Iceland as failing Euro-states.

For all the rhetoric spewed out by global economists, it only goes to strengthen my long held belief that economists are essentially useless and the "science" of economics is an oxymoron as it is based on invented formulas from imagined markets. It also strengthens my fear that sometime soon, combined with all the other elements in the economic news concerning banks and mortgages and employment stats, something catastrophic will happen to make everyone's savings and earnings next to worthless.

Oiling the Military

And then when it costs an estimated one million dollars a day to maintain one U.S. soldier in the Middle East, it only emphasizes how the military is very much involved with our current global economy, in more ways than one. Along with the cost of the war - in the hundreds of billions of dollars, leading into the trillions - are the costs to the occupied countries from a wide range of parameters including civilian infrastructure (housing, water, electricity, schools, and hospitals), chemical poisons (from various ordinances including depleted uranium and white phosphorous), internal refugees, and the destruction of local economies, increasing the chances of graft, oppression, and criminal activities.

Which still omits the purpose behind the wars in the first place, supposedly based on a global war on terror, and the spreading of democracy and freedom throughout the Middle East...while the reality of the wars is the opportunistic events of 9/11 enabling an excuse to become a global military hegemon trying to capture the oil, gas, and mineral wealth of the region at the same time containing the rising power of China and the re-assertiveness of Russia.

Of course the part of the military news reported this week is the 145th Canadian soldier and the 1000th U.S. soldier to die in Afghanistan, most of them from IEDs buried at roadside or in car bombs, as with this incident in Kabul. Broadly suggested on the patriotic front is that we must all support our troops, something I find hard to do when Canadian troops are not much more than allies for the U.S.'s intent on military control of the world. Seldom is mention given to the thousands, hundreds of thousands, of the local populations killed directly from military action or indirectly from its many collateral consequences. An indigenous person who fights against foreign occupation immediately becomes a terrorist, yet the real terror being spread comes from the reported imminent assault by U.S./NATO forces against Kandahar, even though similar actions in the much less populated villages of Marjah has been an understated failure.

Another tie in militarily is of course Iran and Israel. With Israel thumbing their collective noses at the U.S. administration, unthreatened by U.S. military strength as it has its own finely tuned military - supported in a large part through U.S. 'aid' and supplies of high tech military equipment - the U.S./Israel/Iran triangle creates the fearful situation of another impending military action, perhaps leading into the use of nuclear weapons depending on the fierceness or not of Iranian resistance. That scenario is currently tempered by the news report of Brazil's Lula reaching a limited agreement with Iran and Turkey on the transportation and servicing of enriched uranium, but it waits to be seen how the U.S. and Israel argue their way around this diplomatic action that bypasses their efforts at control.

And then on into Pakistan, 'Obama's war' of choice, undeclared, fought through covert operations within the population and within the government agencies, while a large clear majority of the citizens see the U.S. as the biggest threat to the country. It is also fought through high tech warriors at computers well away from the actual situations, relying on nothing more than their own gut level despisal of the indigenous populations. The Pakistan situation goes to show that the main U.S. response to its declining global economic role, its reliance on oil for the vast majority of its economic demands, its only true method of resolving any situation it does not like, is to send in the military. Who's next? Iran? Venezuela? Korea? As the U.S. empire becomes even more aggressive militarily, I can only think again, we're all facing something quite dramatic and traumatic!

More oil

Totally unrelated to all this military and economic garbage, at least as presented by the media, are the two news items this week that supposedly have an impact on the environment. Which they do, but their impact and significance go far beyond the reporting of the actual information as narrowly presented in the news and most commentaries.

The biggest news is that of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It has had no real impact on the economy, other than the regional economy of tourism and fisheries along the Gulf Coast, but no earth shaking effect on the dollar or the overall economy, perhaps more significant if it reaches the Gulf Stream and on into the Atlantic.... Yet it is all too representative of the overall economy. The necessity for oil in our high energy, easy energy economy, the disdain for environmental safeguards, placing profits above the environment we live in, the ignoring of information concerning the drilling operations such as the partial failure of a rubberized protective pressure gasket signals that the corporate world, the supra-national corporations that have effectively superseded governments in many areas, could care less about anything but their own profits.

Our easy energy economy relies on oil and its derivative products. Everything we do, everything we have, is all related to the easy energy provided by oil, a resource that is at or very near its peak, with not a slow rundown on a bell curve at the end, but a roller coaster style drop off as extraction becomes more difficult for a variety of reasons. Our agriculture runs on oil, from the fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides through to its transportation thousands of miles away to the homes of those that can afford the luxury of thousand mile meals. Our health structures, medicines, tourism, our whole civic structure based on the automobile, the world of plastics, the energy needed to make and use all the consumptive demands of our society rely on oil.

All that consumption is expressed in the other news item concerning the Arctic ice cover. The climate change deniers will not go away, but there is irrefutable evidence that the climate is changing. That evidence comes in part from the Arctic ice, now with only twenty per cent of it remaining as long term multi-year ice, the rest is new annual ice. The surprise comes from the awareness that although the winter ice appeared to have regained its cover - as it had - the multi-year ice had diminished greatly and what was left was a conglomeration of rotten ice and new ice. More evidence comes from the indigenous people, the Inuit, who have lived there for millennia and now are unable to read the ice and weather patterns as they change rapidly from their long ancestral observations. The culture changes with it as new names for new phenomena of weather and flora and fauna are being introduced.

All that oil, coal, and natural gas, our natural heritage from millions of years ago when the climate created an enormous energy bounty harvested naturally from the sun, we have squandered on an easy fast paced uncaring life in the short term for a decidedly undetermined, uncertain, and freaky future. The developed countries bounty comes from the easy energy domination of oil and the corporate structures controlling global wealth and global finances. Our changing climate with its wider range of variability is very much still an unknown...but what is known is that the ice cover, which was forecast to be gone in a century or so from the Arctic ocean, is now possibly going to disappear completely (except for winter ice cover) within a decade or so.

There in the Arctic is the confluence of our oily greed, our uncaring effluent affluence, our military solutions to world problems. When I look at the responses to natural and man made disasters around the world I shudder to think what would be the consequence of another major military action that could result in the use of nuclear weapons. I shudder to think what the climate might throw at us as it continues along its unpredictable responses to the carbon energy we are pumping back into the atmosphere. The economy, which in the news is generally front and center, becomes a matter of worthlessness when faced with what could be large and sudden changes in the status of global energy and weather systems.

Solutions....

I sometimes wonder if there are any realistic solutions given human nature, its short term perspectives, its vanity, and its supposed intelligence that somehow always seems to create some form of blowback for its actions. There are solutions, ones that would still create dramatic change but hopefully soften the trauma for everyone. The changes need to be significant and not just the cosmetic panaceas that cover - and conceal - the symptoms but do little for the actual underlying problem of living in a militarized consumptive finance-oriented society

In no particular order, as they are all complementary actions, there are several ideas that need to be put into action, hopefully through a rapid evolution of common sense intelligence toward the planet and its inhabitants, as revolutionary ideas while founded on good ideas and great plans, often create a deterioration into violence that nullifies the intent of the actions in the first place.

Israel/Palestine/Iran and the rest of the Middle East

Israel/Palestine are the symbolic focus of the militarized activity in the Middle East and South Asia. The tie in between the Israeli and U.S. military in all its components (industry, politics, technology, finance) demonstrates the perversity of human nature in relation to a falsely created 'other'. The 'other' for the Israelis occupying Palestinian lands are the Palestinian 'terrorists' conveniently supported by the U.S. designation of any thought or action against their occupying forces as being terroristic. The solution to any problem in for both countries has proven to be some kind of military violence, neither truly wishing to negotiate, with its implications of equal bargaining rights and acknowledgement of legitimate grievances on the part of the occupied and subjugated peoples.

This part of the solution is simple but I do not see it happening. The occupiers need to go home. The brief spate of democracy that went awry - with Hezbollah gaining recognition in Lebanon, Hamas defeating Fatah in Palestine, the Shia's gaining power in Iraq with a challenge to U.S. occupation, and Egypt cracking down violently on its renewed opposition to autocratic rule - challenged the very theoretical philosophical rhetoric of democracy and freedom that these countries pretend to uphold. This part of the solution should happen, but it won't, as the other imperial factors of resources and finances are slowly nibbling away at the security and wealth of the 'homeland'. The empire will not go away peacefully.

Corporations

Another solution not likely to happen due to the power structures involved and the political and military tie ins is that of controlling the corporations. The supranational corporations - many larger than governments, most having entitlements to sue, threaten, lobby and challenge national governments that even the local citizens do not have, all provided by agreements that were decided upon in thoroughly non-democratic fashion - need to be shut down. Perhaps not totally disbanded, but they need to have their political and legal powers greatly curtailed if not abolished.

Corporations are set up for one purpose - to create wealth for the owners and avoid legal responsibility for anything else while doing so. The big corporations need to be brought under national civilian control, meaning essentially under national law based on human rights, social rights, and environmental responsibility. Responsibilities for the environment, workers conditions and rights, product recycling should all be implemented at both the global and national level. The cost of doing business should include the real costs on the environment and the people that work and live in that environment. Failing that, they should simply be disbanded - nationalized and broken apart.

There would be of course much screeching and crying about the loss of wealth and the loss of employment and the crashing of the global GDP and all the other economic ills that our current finance capitalism and debt burdened financing are creating anyway. With the environment threatened and in return giving humanity a literal unexpected blowback, with the economy teetering on the edge of chaos, the main solution will come from taking away the power of the corporations over the legitimate concerns of a country's citizens.

Many of these corporations rely on the 'hidden fist' of the military for their survival, both for capturing and harnessing resources and markets, but also as part and parcel of the militarily financed corporations that create so much havoc globally. To think they will go peacefully away when their very foundation is threatened by the shrinking energy resources of the world is illusory. Citizens and duly elected governments need to stand up for their integrity and get rid of the power of the corporations that truly rule our lives.

Think skeptically, act positively - live locally, think globally

The foundations of a soft-landing for the restructuring of our relationship with the environment and the decreasing ease of carbon based energy resources needs to start with information and education. With human intelligence and craftiness much could be done to alleviate any hard landings from environmental change, economic collapse, and the loss of easy energy. I have to question whether any government, whether any group really has the power to do this as the inertia within a society based on fast fuel and ease of transportation and manufacturing energy will be hard to transform.

The elites in society will wish to remain the elites and hoard as much wealth and power they can retain as events change around them. Very few people will be accepting of giving up their privileges, very few will be accepting of giving up their easy entertainment and comfortable thoughtless manners that lead us closer and closer to an ultimate need to change and restructure. Change is certain. The environment will dictate that to us very soon, denial or not. The loss of carbon energy will dictate that to us very soon, denial or not.

I expect the news not to change much. What I can hope for is that as many citizens as are able will read and inform themselves about all the global concerns by comparing and contrasting the words with the actions of the current powers, corporate, political, and military. They truly create a dissonant sound, confusing, obfuscating, lying and concealing. Read, be informed, think skeoyically, act positively (act actively - be an activist, let your voice be heard), live locally while thinking globally. In the meantime, I remain, still, dazed at the possible significance of it all for my future and current and future generations of my family, confused by the apparent inability of others to see that action and not complacence is needed to make real progress towards a successful future.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

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As hundreds of thousands of gallons a day of oil (liberally seasoned with the Corexit dispersant) flow into the Gulf of Mexico, but we are told that the Gulf is large and the spill a minute amount within that vastness. Now we are watching the viscous oil killing the marshes of Louisiana and making its way around the Gulf - to Florida today.

And within that stinking sludge we see the birds and wildlife who have become so coated it is difficult to tell what they are.

Across the Gulf is an ever-growing "sheen" of oil - moving with the wind and the tide. However, not all the oil is on the surface. An unknown amount moves through the various depths and are subject to the complex edies and currents of any large body of water. In the Gulf of Mexico, the strongest current is the "Loop Current." That flow is already circulating the oil around the Gulf of Mexico including towards Cuba.

As the gushing oil has moved east, there is now public admission that the Atlantic is also at risk - particularly the East Coast of the U.S. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research produced a simulation (below) and reported "Ocean currents likely to carry oil along Atlantic coast".

From YouTube posting by ncaruar

The simulation shows that the oil could hit not just the East Coast of the United States, but continue to drift towards the Mid-Atlantic - and the North Atlantic current. That path will ultimately take it to the Arctic. In its wake, will swim and feed the marine life of the coasts and marshes; the fish and mammals, the plankton and crabs. It will impact the entire marine food chain. While most of the impact will likely contaminate the life of the Gulf, it seems highly unlikely that it will stay there.

The BP disaster, also known as the Macondo Prospect well, could continue to gush until at least August 2010 - and perhaps much longer. Millions of gallons of oil and natural gas will create growing dead zones and plumes that capture all life in its wake. The Gulf of Mexico could indeed become a "dead sea" for decades. The question is whether the Atlantic will share that fate.

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President Obama has shown no effective leadership or any proportional response to this multi-catastrophe. All those who rightfully criticized President George W. Bush for his mishandling of the Katrina nightmare should wake up and see that Obama is failing to use every ounce of federal resources to compensate for the total failure of BP to stop the oil hemorrhaging from the floor of the Gulf. The BP failure to stop the gushing oil spill is sadly consistent with its failure to prevent the firestorm on the oil rig to begin with.

Where is the national outrage? Where are the loud calls from everyone and the media demanding a stronger a federal response? Where is Obama's clear anger and appropriate firing of many federal officials, starting with the Interior Secretary? Where is the Justice Department doing its job of quickly starting criminal prosecutions of BP and its two major contractors?

All Americans, regardless of their partisan positions, should be hollering incessantly for Obama to wake up and take this catastrophe a lot more seriously.

We should be sending a clear message that this BP oil spill catastrophe will justify preventing Obama from getting a second term. Maybe that would work to get this smarmy politician to do what is right and necessary for millions of Americans that will suffer a long time because of this corporate failure.

Obama should have seen this BP oil spill as an environmental invasion just as serious as a traditional invasion by an armed force or some awful terrorist attack. He should have mobilized the enormous federal resources in countless areas to not only deal with the oil invasion and contamination of countless natural resources but, even more critically, to stop the damn gushing of oil at the sea bottom.

It is only a matter of time until the horrendous quantities of oil wrap around Florida and then up the East coast. Maybe then more Americans will get as excited and alarmed as those poor people along the Gulf directly in the path of the oil invasion.

Maybe then President Obama will finally and belatedly show some presidential leadership. Maybe not.

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]

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Access to safe water is essential for life. People need water to drink, for cooking, for laundry, dishwashing and personal hygiene. When safe water is not readily available, life becomes extremely difficult.

While the tap water was not safe on the night of May 1 and into May 2, there was a rush on bottled water in stores all over the area. Along with the rush for safe water came reports that store chains and owners were taking advantage of the situation and overcharging customers. According to the Boston Globe, one resident of the Jamaica Plain neighborhood found a case of water being sold for more than $52 in a 7-Eleven store in her community.

Water should be a guaranteed right for all and it should be free. But under capitalism, it is a commodity sold to make a profit. Those who cannot afford the asking price must simply suffer.

Many truck drivers and grocery store workers in the Boston area were called in and forced to work on Sunday, their day off, in order to meet the city's demand for bottled water. With jobs under constant threat in our current economy, these workers likely did not feel that they could say "no" to "requests" from their bosses to work these extra hours.

On May 3, it was announced that local towns in the area would distribute water to residents for free. The locations for distribution included surrounding suburbs and towns but not a single location within the city of Boston. Working people within the city, many of whom do not have access to a car, had no way to access these free supplies.

The clamp that broke and caused the crisis was less than 10 years old, said officials of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. According to the Boston Globe, the state Water Infrastructure Finance Commission met for the first time after the crisis was over to discuss the water system, which probably needs billions of dollars in upgrades and repairs.

The recent emergency may seem like an unusual event. However, lacking access to safe tap water is not a new scenario to many working people in and around Boston. An organization called Massachusetts Global Action has found that people who live in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan, which are low-income communities of color, are 10 times more likely than residents of wealthier neighborhoods to experience a water shutoff as a consequence of bill non-payment. Further, as the proportion of people of color increases in a city ward, there is a disproportionate likelihood that water will be shut off in a resident's home if a bill is not paid, according to Massachusetts Global Action. So while all 2 million people in the Greater Boston Area experienced this water crisis together, it is a constant threat for many working people in the city.

Water is a human right that should be guaranteed to all people. This "crisis" revealed that it is not guaranteed to the working people of Boston, nor is it freely available to most working people around the country. We must fight back against the system of capitalism that puts a price on a most basic and necessary resource for human survival, water.

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Essentially what Williams tells us is that the Deep Water drilling operation was under unparalleled pressure to drill faster and deeper, cutting corners and defying essential aspects of the industry's well established drilling protocol. We can argue about whether BP and other oil giants are ramping up drilling due to the end of cheap and abundant oil on this planet or simply because of greed and a voracious obsession with profits. To engage in that kind of debate, however, is to ignore the most fundamental issue at the root of this disaster. Corporate culture, media, politicians, and the misguided American public are all failing to grasp the issue, and I suggest, are behaving like enablers responding to an addict's fatal overdose, as well as failing to recognize the extent to which they themselves are addicts.

Let me clarify: The addict is the oblivious citizen of industrial civilization who delusionally demands that he/she must at all costs maintain a lifestyle made possible by cheap hydrocarbon energy. That citizen overdosed on April 20, 2010 and may have taken the planet to their grave with them.

Now let me count the ways in which this cataclysmic oil spill is very much like a fatal drug overdose. In order to fully understand the analogy, it's necessary to grasp the extent to which the culture of industrial civilization is addictive. What makes it addictive?

Quite simply, an uncompromising-yes relentless insistence on maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become addicted, and like the addict, willing to do whatever it takes to do so, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence that the addiction itself will ultimately and invariably prove fatal for the addict, for the addict has little interest in rational, scientific research. He is obsessed with only one thing: lifestyle. It doesn't matter what it costs him or anyone else. Life is all about the next fix, period. The fix could be a possession, a person, or a position in life.

So when the addict, the culture of empire, overdoses and takes everyone and everything with him, he can use the defense mechanism of blame. It wasn't my lifestyle that caused this, he says, but the corporation that pumped the oil. Furthermore, it was the administration's fault for not adopting tougher regulation. While these factors may have entered into the equation, they are not the fundamental issue. Focus on blame works beautifully for awhile to distract attention from the devastation caused by the addict. But eventually, it wears thin.

Another favorite distracting tactic of the addict is "Look how I'm trying to fix it." He mobilizes his enablers to convince the world that something is being done to reverse the repercussions of his latest shitstorm. First we'll try a dome structure to cover the oil leak and capture the oil. Or if that doesn't work, we'll blast garbage into the leak. Or if that doesn't work, we'll use a siphoning tube. In fact, even as I write this article, BP is proclaiming that it has "turned a corner" in the oil spill. This should reassure all the oil addicts, facilitating their craving and assuaging any embarrassing traces of guilt. It's all better now; this temporary nightmare is going to go away. Ya see, human ingenuity, especially of the corporate kind, will solve all problems and clean up all messes created by the addict.

Then there's my favorite addict appeasement approach: alternative energy. Don't worry, says the enabler. We'll get wind or solar or something online for you as soon as we can so that your lifestyle won't miss a beat. Yes, that may take fifty years, but meanwhile, we'll think of something to keep it going for you because this is America, and the lights never permanently go out here.

Before the addict experiences a fatal overdose and ravages everyone and everything around him, there is always the choice to end the addiction and enter treatment. Treatment involves withdrawal from the substance, then taking a long, exhaustive, meticulous look inside oneself to confront the demon of the addiction. Much support is necessary; the addict cannot make the journey alone.

The Transition Handbook frames our dependence on hydrocarbon energy in terms of an addiction. We can blame, rationalize, project, deny-we can employ whatever defense mechanism we choose from humanity's vast repertoire of them, but like the hard core addict, the human race is committing suicide. It is willing to kill every form of life in the oceans, cause the extinction of every species on earth, pollute every cubic inch of breathable air, poison every drop of water on the planet, and yes, enable an unfathomable cataclysm such as we are witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico at this moment, in order to perpetuate the lifestyle to which it feels entitled. Like all addictions, this one is both irrational and insane.

Every person who has chosen to research Peak Oil, climate change, global economic meltdown, species extinction, and population overshoot is not unlike an addict who has some moment of clarity in which he can actually choose to walk to the nearest rehab facility and fall on his face screaming for help. None of us can do that investigative work without the massive support of other "cheap energy addicts in recovery". None of us can do it without a spiritual as well as a logistical recovery program which all authentic recovery absolutely requires.

Like the recovering addict there will be moments of terror about what the future holds, and the greater the devastation we have created, such as the largest oil spill in the history of the world, the more daunting the future will feel. Like the recovery of the addict, our recovery will require rigorous honesty and a commitment to finding meaning and purpose, not in the substance, which is killing us and the planet, but in a different kind of lifestyle. This will be a lifestyle of simplicity, cooperation, and deep connection with nature and our fellow humans. It may mean alterations in our behavior that feel like sacrifices until we realize that the joy, meaning, and contentment they bring us are what we wanted all along.

Therefore, as we witness the spread of the most devastating and widespread oil slick in history; as we see the photos of oil saturated wildlife and watch frantic fisherman in despair because they have lost their livelihood; as we watch enablers blaming and scrambling to fix the un-fixable, let us do as they say in Twelve Step programs, and take a searching and fearless moral (and energy) inventory of our lives and notice where we are in our recovery from addiction to cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over documents how brief in the history of the human race the party was, how much fun it was, and of course, how lethal it was and is. So while the enablers are blaming and fixing, it behooves all of us to ask of ourselves the toughest question of all: What are we doing to recover?

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These days, wherever I speak or conduct a public event, and whenever I check my inbox for email, I hear similar stories of conflict or estrangement in the lives of courageous men and women who have chosen to dig deeper into the state of the macrocosm, only vaguely aware of what it might bring forth within the microcosm of their own lives. Onerous it is to be preparing for the future-contemplating and acting on the weighty issues of where to live, how to earn a livelihood, what skills to learn, and how best to fortify oneself for survival in an unraveling world, but it is nothing like having loved ones distancing or parting ways when one wants and needs them now more than ever.

Sometimes it's about fear for the well being of loved ones; sometimes it's about wanting to share something as momentous as collapse and transition with our best friend who also happens to be our beloved. Sometimes it's about wanting to be validated, heard, and seen. Maybe it's just about wanting help with the extensive, arduous tasks of preparation. But sadly, perhaps tragically, in countless instances, the kind of joining for which our hearts desperately yearn cannot happen-for whatever reason. That doesn't make our loved ones sick, bad, crazy, or stupid, but it does mean that we have reached a threshold in our relationship with them that will result in distance, perhaps permanent estrangement.

How do we cope with this? After all, isn't human connection the larger hope we hold for this transition? Isn't that what's it's all about?

Nothing I could say would make this easy, but perhaps the pain can be tempered with a larger perspective.

First, we need to remind ourselves that in the milieu of industrial civilization, we have all been thoroughly indoctrinated in the "necessity" of romantic partnership. If by a certain age we don't have a partner or have lost too many of them, we are deemed terminally defective. This is, like it or not, particularly true for women.

Furthermore, facing the future alone is frightening, and again, I believe this is especially true for women. Wouldn't it be nice, we think, to go through the transition with a partner or with all of our family members? We'd be safer, and so would they. And what a bond we could forge with each other, holding each others' hands at the end of the world as we have known it and working together to create a new one!

Yet I am becoming increasingly convinced that the transition we are heading into is going to change everything, and I mean everything. Far beyond the amount of oil we use, electricity we have available, food we grow, or skills we learn, if we survive physically, we will be transformed, re-made, and utterly metamorphosed at our core. In fact, this process challenges us, I believe, to become a new kind of human being. Can this happen if we are surrounded by exactly the people we would like to be surrounded by? Perhaps-and then again, perhaps not.

What is certain is that we cannot navigate collapse and transition alone; we must have allies, but it may be that we do not get to choose entirely who those allies are. Our most intimate companions may be strangers we barely know, and our strongest adversaries may be people we thought we could always rely on.

What I'm referring to here is the non-rational, soul level of transition that is beyond our control or reasoning or planning. It has to do with doing what we have come here to do and fulfilling a greater purpose-one that may be only dimly visible to us now. This may require joining with people we do not even yet know and parting with those who cannot walk where we feel compelled to journey.

Not for one moment would I minimize the grief many people are walking through as they find loved ones distancing from or leaving them. The loss is heart-wrenching, and it must be felt.

All of this is part of the burden of letting ourselves know what is so. Truth is no free lunch; it always exacts a price. Small wonder then that the overwhelming majority of humanity has no interest in knowing it. And really, why would anyone sign up for knowing the exact state of our planet? As my friend Mike Ruppert says, it really is much easier on a sinking Titanic to state unequivocally that the ship is unsinkable or to saunter into the bar and order a drink.

In a chaotic world of endings, unraveling, catastrophe, or protracted demise, relationship will be a pivotal issue. For this reason, the survivalist mentality which purports to "go it alone" with an "every man for himself" attitude, not only will not serve those who embrace it, but will profoundly put their physical survival at risk. For our well being, we will absolutely require connection with other human beings in times of chaos and crisis. Therefore, cultivating a broader perspective of relationship in advance of the coming chaos may be exceedingly useful in learning how to navigate relationship challenges in the future-challenges on which our survival may depend.

In today's affluent milieu of social networking, fitness and body obsession, tanning salons, fine dining and dance clubbing, the roles that civilization has proscribed for men and women are maintained and nurtured impeccably. In navigating the dating scene in an effort to secure a partner, men generally prefer to present themselves as well-groomed, sensitive gentlemen, and women typically project intelligence and self-sufficiency alongside beauty and sexual prowess. The protocol for relationships between the genders is civil and respectful. But imagine a world in chaos where projecting the current popular persona of one's gender is rendered irrelevant or even dangerous. Stereotypes and the roles we consent to play will no longer serve us because in that world, survival will be paramount.

For this reason, it behooves anyone consciously preparing emotionally and spiritually for a chaotic future to forge strong relationships with friends, neighbors, and family members. In fact, I believe it is wise to consider all of the relationships we have in our lives as sacred in that they are venues for learning about and cultivating our inner world. Even more importantly, they are opportunities for serving the earth community with whom we are inextricably connected by living out our purpose. In this way we begin to understand the relationships in our lives as part of our preparation for the future because they are as essential for our inevitable well being as food, water, shelter, or weapons. In fact, they may constitute the ultimate advantage.

And if relationships are part of our preparation for the future, we will need to forge ones that are mutually supportive and sustainable. We will need to deeply evaluate our relationships and ponder which ones enhance our preparation and which ones do not. While this may sound heartless, we have only to recall the familiar example of the airline flight attendant who admonishes us to first put on our oxygen masks before putting them on our loved ones.

As we allow ourselves to be schooled by our relationships, we recognize places where we have fallen short of how we prefer to relate to another, places where we have transgressed boundaries, failed to be present, subtly or blatantly abandoned others, failed to speak our truth, or perhaps, spoken our truth so forcefully and insensitively that we have inadvertently hurt the very ones we care about deeply. From our errors we can learn how we need to be in relationship and increasingly glimpse the momentousness of our connection with every person in our world. Quite naturally we may entertain the notion that people are in our lives and we are in theirs for specific purposes, and though we may never know the totality of the purpose, from hindsight we gradually understand that some purpose was served.

Not only must we, in my opinion, contemplate relationships between ourselves and other humans, but between ourselves and everything in our lives, for the truth is that we have a relationship with our homes, our possessions, our pets, our careers, our roles, our communities, our neighbors, our past, our present, and our future. If we are willing to consciously examine each of those relationships in terms of the purpose they serve in our lives, we participate in a deeper evaluation of them and thereby clarify their place in our lives. As a result, we counteract a tendency to wed our identity to people, places, and things while paradoxically making it possible to cherish them more because we are more keenly aware of their purpose in our lives. Likewise, this deep evaluation may precipitate a natural letting go of those things in our lives which drain our energy or finances or which make our lives more complicated and less resilient at a time in human history when survival depends on simplicity and the ability to adapt.

Stripped of that to which we have wedded our identity, collapse and transition will compel us to confront questions of purpose on a regular basis, perhaps hourly-perhaps moment to moment. We are likely to find ourselves contemplating every meaningful relationship in our lives, and many that seem devoid of meaning. Relating to diverse human beings and their idiosyncrasies, even depending for survival on individuals we may never have encountered in a less chaotic world, could become our new normal.

Schooled as we are to grapple with the tangible, logistic aspects of the "End of Suburbia" such as being forced to downscale everything we do as a result of Peak Oil, we may have failed to notice that the collapse of industrial civilization will produce not only an outer transition but an inner one as well. Are we preparing for the inner transition to the same extent that we are preparing for the outer one? The relationships in our lives may be the first, but not the last, arena of our lives that compels us to address inner preparation.

Poetry, the language of soul, often captures meaning more aptly than rational, linear prose. The Spanish poet, Juan Ramon Jimenez, in his poem "Oceans" captures best the distress, as well as the possibility that unwanted losses offer us even as we agonize through them:

I have a feeling that my boat

Has struck, down there in the depths,

Against a great thing.

And nothing happens!

Nothing, silence, waves

Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

And we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Portions of this article are excerpted from Carolyn Baker's forthcoming book Navigating The Coming Chaos: Tools For Inner Transition.

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Here is how it's done.

The indoctrination lectures proceed from the general to specific. Throughout these lectures, the teachers convince the young recruits, of whom there is no dearth in the impoverished region they come from, that their religion is the most superior in the universe. That theirs is the only true religion with all the rest being false or erroneous. And that the adherents of those other religions are actually an impediment in the total spread of the one true religion. These initial lectures are given with a fiery rhetoric, laced with suitable quotes from the holy book and traditions.

Next, through daily teachings of hour's long sessions, it is instilled in the recruits' minds that the path they have chosen i.e. the propagation of this one true religion and the subjugation of all the rest, is essentially struggling in the cause of God. That this struggle (fight, jihad, sacrifice), though difficult, is ordained by God. They are constantly bombarded by relevant verses. They are told that heavens and its untold pleasures are the reward for those who die while fighting in the cause of God.

This first indoctrination step, acting as a foundation for what is to come, is easy really. The students having been born into their religion are already convinced of everything that is told to them. The lessons only come to them as reinforcements to what they already believed. Yet the fierier the rhetoric, the better is the impact on the young minds.

Soon afterwards they are introduced to the implement that will launch them on that one-way journey to the heavens--the suicide jacket.

Starting from the trigger mechanism to its contents and effects, with painstaking thoroughness, the children are taught about the suicide jacket. They are taught that it usually consists of several pockets filled with plates or sticks of explosives. That the explosive is surrounded by material for fragmentation effects. That the resultant shrapnel is responsible for most of the bomb's lethality i.e. about 90% of all casualties caused by an exploding suicide jacket. That a "loaded" jacket may weigh between 5 to 20 kilograms, with 60-40 ratio of explosive to shrapnel material and may be easily hidden under loose flowing garments. That for excellent shrapnel effects, any small metal pieces could be used but the best are ball bearing, nails, screws, nuts and metal wire. That the most dangerous and widely used shrapnel are ball bearing that are 3 to 7 millimeters in diameter.

In the evenings further indoctrination classes are held. In a sweet lilting voice the teacher explains to the children that modernity and secular culture of the West are abominable sins. That the import of Western culture is leading the faithful away from God. That the unbelief of the West is so grave a sin that it merits death whenever it becomes a hurdle to the spread of the one true religion. That God has humiliated the recruit's nation only because his brethren have strayed from the path of God. And that is why He has made the infidel, sin-loving people masters of the entire planet. Why else would God allow the 'Jew loving Americans' to be present in the Holy land?

By the end of these lectures, the recruit is usually filled with a feeling of utter humiliation and blinding rage. A consuming hatred for infidels and their local lackeys (no distinction is made between the two) comes as a natural accompaniment of course.

At night the children are made to sleep cuddling their suicide jackets to get used to a garment they will be wearing till the gates of heaven. From their onwards, of course, it will be silken robes till eternity. They dream of that through the night.

So goes the cycle of lectures and practical drills for months. On the last day of the training, they are taken to a special hall. Painted on the walls of which are beautiful images of lush green vistas, dotted with fruit laden trees, interspersed with streams of milk and honey. In attendance in the images are lovely dove-eyed females that are beaming inviting smiles at the onlookers. Here the recruits are told that their training is over and they now have to wait for the calling--a proposition almost unbearable for some of the impatient ones. Two last instructions are given;

1. Not to feel guilty for the victims. The suicide bomber is carrying them to the heavens with him. They will in fact be waiting at the gates of heaven to greet him with garlands.

2. To look down while pulling the handle on the suicide jacket. This will ensure that their faces are blown in to a million little pieces. That not only guarantees that the infidels cannot track down their identities to this training institution, others' chances of ascension to heavens are also preserved.

The Unmaking?

To decide whether an unmaking of a suicide bomber is really possible in the short term, is easy really. All we have to do is ask a few questions of ourselves. Done honestly, this exercise will throw up the answer by itself. These are;

Is a suicide bomber just a madcap or a coward? Is he not a child of faultless faith only carrying out his duty to his beliefs to the very end? It's just that he is extreme in his faith. Does he not think that he is acting rationally within the framework of his religious beliefs? And if we all kneeled to his brand of divinity, will he stop killing us? And what are the guarantees that after him, no other group will arise that wants to kill us "within the framework of their religious beliefs"?

Can some of the leading problems in trouble hotspots of the world i.e. the Palestine, Kashmir or the Darfur region of Sudan, to name just three, not be solved in a jiffy if the protagonists in these disputes convert into the religion of the opponent? That is to say that all the Jews of Israel and Christians of Darfur converted en mass into Islam and the Muslims of Kashmir into Hinduism--or vice versa. What is left to fight over? Did God first make us to be born into different religions and then gave us more reasons to kill each other than to love? Is that what it is?

Is a suicide bomber, an extremist basically, not a weed that only grows in a garden of the faithful sustained by the 'holy' water of faith? After all, he can never take life form in societies whose maintenance is done on a diet of reason, logic, evidence and rationality. No one has ever heard of an extremely reasonable person killing others in the name of reason. In other words, while the rest of us may take refuge in the fact that perhaps 99% of us are just moderates in faith, is this '99% moderates' in faith not essentially the environ for a suicide bomber to germinate in?

And what is religious moderation any way? Will religious moderation allow us to think that our rival belief systems are equally true, or even moderately true? Can we then make a moderate move from one religion to another and not be labeled as apostates and killed? Can a moderately religious person think that stoning to death (a Jewish practice originally) is a barbaric punishment or that there is no place for such a punishment in a religion and escape being branded as non-believer by the rest? Or would a moderate think that the punishment may be given sometimes only to erring adults but the stones be of 'moderate' i.e. medium size? What religious moderation?

Is not the only reason why anyone is "moderate" in matters of faith these days is that he has absorbed some of the progress of the last two thousand years of human thought in philosophy, science, politics, jurisprudence, etc., just to name a few? Is it not that religious moderation originates in the fact that today even the most illiterate person among us simply knows more about his surroundings than anyone did two to three thousand years ago?

Is it not that that religious moderation does not allow us anything very critical to be said about religious extremism? Yes, moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but do they not want us to keep repeating basically the same mantra that the extremist does?

These questions, I am afraid, have to be asked, however terrible their implication. The moment these are answered honestly, and the answers contemplated upon with continued honesty, the unmaking of the suicide bomber begins.

Till then--Bon voyage!

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Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world's supply. If the leak from 5,000 feet beneath the surface continues for weeks, or months, that stockpile could run out.

On Thursday BP began using the chemical compounds to dissolve the crude oil, both on the surface and deep below, deploying an estimated 100,000 gallons. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.

The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

"There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil," said Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills who is a senior policy advisor for Marine Programs for Defenders of Wildlife and is chairman of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. "It's a trade off - you're damned if you do damned if you don't -- of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore."

BP did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Dispersants are mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other additives that break up the surface tension of an oil slick and make oil more soluble in water, according to a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences. They are spread over or in the water in very low concentration - a single gallon may cover several acres.

Once they are dispersed, the tiny droplets of oil are more likely to sink or remain suspended in deep water rather than floating to the surface and collecting in a continuous slick. Dispersed oil can spread quickly in three directions instead of two and is more easily dissipated by waves and turbulence that break it up further and help many of its most toxic hydrocarbons evaporate.

But the dispersed oil can also collect on the seabed, where it becomes food for microscopic organisms at the bottom of the food chain and eventually winds up in shellfish and other organisms. The evaporation process can also concentrate the toxic compounds left behind, particularly oil-derived compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.

According to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report, the dispersants and the oil they leave behind can kill fish eggs. A study of oil dispersal in Coos Bay, Ore. found that PAH accumulated in mussels, the Academy's paper noted. Another study examining fish health after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 found that PAHs affected the developing hearts of Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos. The research suggests the dispersal of the oil that's leaking in the Gulf could affect the seafood industry there.

"One of the most difficult decisions that oil spill responders and natural resource managers face during a spill is evaluating the trade-offs associated with dispersant use," said the Academy report, titled Oil Spill Dispersants, Efficacy and Effects. "There is insufficient understanding of the fate of dispersed oil in aquatic ecosystems."

A version of Corexit was widely used after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and, according to a literature review performed by the group the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, was later linked with health impacts in people including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders. But the Academy report makes clear that the dispersants used today are less toxic than those used a decade ago.

"There is a certain amount of toxicity," said Robin Rorick, director of marine and security operations at the American Petroleum Institute. "We view dispersant use as a tool in a toolbox. It's a function of conducting a net environmental benefit analysis and determining the best bang for your buck."

Charter, the marine expert, cautioned the dispersants should be carefully considered for the right reasons.

"Right now there is a headlong rush to get this oil out of sight out of mind," Charter said. "You can throw every resource we have at this spill. You can call out the Marine Corps and the National Guard. This is so big that it is unlikely that any amount of response is going to make much of a dent in the impacts. It's going to be mostly watching it happen."

Ryan Knutson contributed to this report

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The media has largely kept quiet on the human impact of the disaster, with only the occasional local paper bearing a story on one or another of the missing workers.

One of those killed on the rig was Karl Kleppinger, 38, of Natchez, Mississippi, who leaves behind a wife, Tracy, and a 17 year-old son, Aaron. The World Socialist Web Site spoke with the Kleppingers' attorney, Steve Gordon, whose law firm, Gordon, Elias, & Seely L.L.P., is representing the family against British Petroleum, rig operator Transocean, and other rig subcontractors.

"The human tragedy has been less visible, because the workers who were killed came from all over the Gulf Coast, from Texas, Louisiana," Gordon said.

Gordon said that Kleppinger was a "simple man" who had fought in the first Gulf War before beginning work on oil rigs.

"Karl was a floor hand, worked for Transocean for 10 years," Gordon said. "He never missed one hitch." Gordon said that Karl once volunteered to rescue a deep-water drill ship in the gulf and helped save the vessel from going under, even though he was never trained as a diver.

The family is suing the company for damages under the Merchant Marine Act, also known as the Jones Act, which requires the owners of ships and oil rigs to pay reparations to families killed in "unseaworthy" craft or under unsafe conditions.

Gordon said that the Kleppingers' employer, Transocean, bears the main responsibility for his death, but that other parties are guilty of negligence, including BP and Halliburton, which was contracted to do cementing work on the rig.

"The impetus of these companies is profit, not safety," Gordon said. "As a result, a horrific event occurred that will affect the lives of a lot of people, and certainly the environment for decades."

"The companies like to say that there is a safety culture." Gordon added, "But the safety culture is subordinate to the profits culture."

Gordon said that in the immediate aftermath of the explosion survivors were held offshore and not allowed to talk to their families until 3:00 in the morning on Thursday, 29 hours after the blast.

"The company lawyers took statements from them and would not let them talk to their families," Gordon said. "So for about 17 hours they played around with these guys. They're not even admitting they did it."

Gordon said several other lawsuits are being launched by survivors and the families of the victims.

Thus far BP has admitted responsibility for all environmental damage due to the spill, but the company has refused to accept responsibility for its role in the deaths of the workers.

The men killed in the disaster leave behind mourning families and communities. They include:

• Adam Weise, who was mourned at a vigil attended by hundreds of people in his community of Yorktown, Texas, last week. "Adam was my baby, just 24 years old," the man's mother, Arlene Weise told reporters.

• Aaron Dale Burkeen, a 37-year-old resident of Neshoba County, near Philadelphia, Mississippi. A local paper reported that Burkeen was responsible for getting the other crew members to safety before leaving, but was unable to get off the rig in time. He is survived by a wife and two children, ages 14 and 6.

• Donald Clark, 49, of Newellton, Louisiana, was scheduled to leave the rig on April 21, the day after the explosion.

• Roy Kemp, 27, Jonesville, Louisiana, leaves behind two daughters, one three years old, the other three months old, and his wife, Tracy.

• Jason Anderson, of Bay City, Texas, also leaves behind two children.

• Stephen Curtis, 39, of Georgetown, Louisiana, is also survived by two children. He had been working in the oil industry for 17 years, following in the footsteps of his father, Howard, who worked as a diver-welder for 34 years.

• Gordon Jones, 28, of Louisiana, leaves behind a son and a pregnant wife, Michelle.

• Blair Manuel, 56, of Gonzales, Louisiana, worked as a chemical engineer on the rig. He had three daughters and was engaged to be married.

• Dewey Revette, 48, from State Line, Mississippi, worked for Transocean for 29 years as a driller, and was also a father.

• Shane Roshto, 22, was from Franklin County, Mississippi. His widow, Natalie Roshto, has also launched a lawsuit against Transocean, BP, and Halliburton.

These men add to a large death toll on Gulf Coast oil rigs in recent years, giving the lie to claims that offshore oil drilling is now a safe industry. A recent review by federal regulators found that on Gulf of Mexico oil rigs there have been, since 2001, 69 workers killed, 858 fires and 1,349 injuries.

A search of its web site reveals that the White House has issued no statement of condolence for the victims of this most recent disaster.

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Hey! let's do this everywhere! The Arctic Ocean and off the coast of Alaska where the conditions are far more extreme and the environment is also incredibly fragile.

Yes. Drill baby drill. Getting the oil and natural gas (and coal) are worth any cost.

Of course, now the news has changed. President Obama has placed a moratorium on exploratory off-shore drilling until the investigation into this incident is done. That 1,000 barrel oil leak has been upgraded to 5,000 barrels a day - or a quarter million gallons of oil into the Gulf a day. There are no real estimates of how long it will take to stop three leaks from this one well. (Don't you think there is a certain irony to calling 5000 barrels oil a day blasting into the Gulf of Mexico a "leak." )

The media is doing the usual - not challenging outright lies. The clip below is from MSNBC Nightly News for April 29, 2010 (full segment). In this 30 second clip, the BP representative boldly claims that "No one in the history of the industry has ever had to fight a leak 5,000 feet down."

Now that isn't really true, and there is at least one very recent example. In November of 2009, the Montara oil leak in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia was finally stopped after leaking an estimated 300-400 barrels a day for more than two months. As with the BP leak, the Montara platform caught fire, but that was after the leak - not before it. That raises the question of which came first with the Gulf platform - the leak or the fire. Also, the Montara platform did not collapse into the sea. However, the Montara leak was also deep water - namely it was almost 1.5 miles down, and not the supposed 1 mile of the BP well.

Currently, the leak is big news as it hits the sensitive U.S. coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico. However, this leak could continue for months - and into the depths of hurricane season. Do you think we will get the ongoing reports of what is happening with the "leak," or with the 250,000 gallons of oil per day that will flow unchecked into the Gulf? Somehow, I doubt that. Just as the "recovery" from Hurricane Katrina has largely slipped off the public radar.

The Montara well was owned by PTTEP Australasia which is a company based in Thailand. They have refused to release final report from their leak, but the Montara well was insured, but the capping operations reportedly exceeded their insurance. I have seen no reports thus far regarding how much insurance BP has on their platform.

Perhaps we should put BP in touch with PTTEP for a few pointers on dealing with a deep drill "leak." Perhaps we should ask MSNBC why they don't challenge blatant lies from officials (corporate or political).

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Montara Oil Leak - Australia
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Biodiversity survey of the Montara field oil leak. World Wildlife Fund.

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Yes, to the number. I was Number 15. I needed to remember this fact at all times. I also needed to be constantly aware of the identities of Number 14 and Number 16. This was to ensure the lineup was adhered to without fail wherever we were - whether lining up outside the Great Hall of the People, standing in line to shake Li Changchun's hand, or sitting in the large, well-lit room among a circle of editors. The editors sat and assiduously listened to Li, who spoke with the authority and power of a man known to be Number 5 in China. Or was it Number 3? Frankly, I cannot remember; I was nervously trying to remember my own number, and the ones before and immediately behind me.

I was in Beijing to attend the China Daily-Asia News Network Conference. This was focused on climate change and the environmental challenges facing Asian countries, especially following the failure of the Copenhagen meeting last December. Media producers grappled with their responsibility towards the increasingly pressing subject. Chinese government officials labored to showcase their country's efforts in lowering carbon emissions, carefully juxtaposing their success with the failures of Western governments, and the US government in particular.

Major polluters took on the position that their companies were incessantly trying to curb emissions, and some went as far as to discuss the need to "educate the public" regarding their responsibility towards the environment. It took me a while to wrap my head around this one: the world's largest contributors to environmental damage reaching out to the public and asking them to play a positive role in challenging global warming and climate change? Go figure.

At times, and despite clearly sincere efforts put forward by newspaper editors, the whole event seemed an exercise in futility. The government official, as all government officials everywhere, blames some other official of some other government. The polluters argue that they too are doing their part, and are in fact practically adopting progressive stances.

A leading Coca-Cola Company executive who addressed the conference, for instance, sounded more like an environmental champion, a Greenpeace activist even. In the meanwhile, media men and women stood quietly puzzled; they needed the ad revenues from the company (and other similar companies), along with governmental approval to make their work possible. At the same time, they are, in theory, the voice of the voiceless, the representatives of those who are suffering, and will continue to suffer, as a result of the dramatic, rapid and destructive environmental challenges.

It's a stand-still. The trio has every interest in keeping the discussion alive, but very little reason to move forward in any substantive way. Any discussion of lowering carbon emission becomes immediately political: fingerprinting, accusations and more. A new cold war around the theme of global warming is already underway. The "US vs China" scenario will remain until a paradigm shift takes place. Meanwhile, the Maldives will continue to sink, followed by 14% of Bangladesh.

So what are the media to do? Most of them rely on the same business model that requires the constant funding of the same companies, and often governments that have themselves disproportionately polluted our environment. These companies and governments have also stifled the debate on finding a sensible exit from the quagmire in every way imaginable.

Perhaps the media should be reconsidering the entire business model. Those who are sincere in wanting to educate, engage and influence the public sphere need to first liberate themselves as far as possible from the controlling grip of corporations. Only then will they be able help us to act upon the challenges facing our world as a result of man-made environmental disasters

Until this happens, we will continue to talk gibberish, using all the right terms, all the positive clichés, and yet we will achieve nothing but a few feel-good moments at yet another conference in yet another crowded city, itself polluted to the core.

Now back to Li, No 5 (or 3). The man was in fact much more pleasant than one would expect, considering the very rigid protocols and security checks that greeted us. He spoke comfortably and freely. He joked often. He spoke of the need for a unified Asian media voice to counter the influence of Western media. He challenged accusations that China is a closed society, and spoke of the rapidly growing number of websites, blogs, and the increasing access of foreign journalists and media to his country.

In fact, the discussions at the forum by various Chinese officials and by Li himself were filled with juxtapositions and comparisons between China and the West, "us vs them", "they say, we say ..." The editors from Number 1 through Number 18 (myself included) listened and politely nodded.

If the world can indeed afford a new cold war on political, economic and trade grounds, the environment can hardly afford such quarrels. The icecaps are melting; the Borneo rainforests are shrinking by the day; the list of endangered species is growing; drought, floods and other such tragedies are affecting millions, destroying lives and scarring generations.

The fact remains that human suffering simply cannot be politicized. And it must no longer be held hostage to numbers, clichés and slogans.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon..

Check out this short film (in English and Arabic) about my latest book: My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.

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Intersecting with the water crisis is the current economic situation with the rising economic power of India and China and their roughly 2.5 billion population making increasing demands on energy and food resources. Oil is at or near its peak, and while it may not be noticeable in the near future, its increasing scarcity and difficulty with extraction will cause the price to rise inexorably, creating further economic hardship and alternate demands on the environment.

Global Warring

A new text by Cleo Paskal [1] highlights the intersection of these environmental, economic and political crises and how they will redraw the world map. Her writing is not of the apocalyptic nature, not describing the horrors of a post-nuclear holocaust period nor the horrors of the survivalist's imagination when the economy and the environment tank together and suddenly we need to become self reliant in a much more primitive sense.

Instead, it is a strong academic analysis of the current geopolitical/environmental interactions that could possibly - in spite of the denials above - spell 'doom'. Her information is concise and wisely presented, without exaggeration or resorting to hyperbolic disasters. She describes the rising power of China and India, beset with their own environmental challenges, but "planning for the [long-term] future" as they "graduate more than half a million engineers and scientists a year." The U.S. is viewed from the Katrina perspective and its demonstration that the U.S. cannot manage a single environmental disaster let alone be "prepared to manage repeated major domestic environmental disasters."

Paskal is clear with her goal of using "the best science available to understand the implications of the inevitable in order to minimize the geopolitical, economic and security fallout" of climate change. [italics added]. She is not operating from theory but from history with "myriad examples of the environment affecting war and politics." Her stated goal, with which she succeeds is to "demonstrate that environmental change is about to have enormous, and specific, geopolitical, economic and security consequences for all of us."

The chapter on the Middle East is titled "Today's Weather - Intolerable with periods of Uninhabitable." Historically the problem with the fertile crescent "was too many people, too little food and water, and too few places to secure more supplies."

Her closing, after many well argued presentations says that with "all the threads together, the world of tomorrow looks chaotic and violent. Even more so than usual. And even more than expected." Our current "social, political, security and economic structures [are built] on the assumption that there are certain geophysical and climatic constants to act as a foundation. There aren't. There never have been. And there never will be." So now you can go read the apocalyptic and survivalist authors, as this relatively calm academic analysis arrives at a pretty gloomy and scary picture.

Water...and Israel

Water is a large part of Paskal's discussion. Storms are becoming more violent and less predictable. The monsoons are undergoing new vagaries. Rivers are exploited to make them toxic sewers and/or to have them run dry before they reach the sea. All this is supported by the current National Geographic special issue "Water - Our Thirsty World." [2] After discussing the current fresh water status, the glacial melt of the Himalayas, the monsoons, the 'holiness' of certain water sources, the "burden of thirst", California's "Pipe Dream" situated on a highly active seismic zone, the topic of water in Israel is addressed.

Generally I have criticized the Geographic for its frequent attempts to 'balance' arguments, arguments often between powerful corporations and weaker NGOs and citizens groups, or between environmental agencies and the more powerful governments. Balance is not good journalism when the power of circumstances and events lies strongly and critically with one side, at which point an analytical advocacy is by far the greater route to take.

I feared this article on Israeli water might strive for 'balance' but there are some strong references that indicate that the National Geographic editors are beginning to question the power equation in Israel. The article, "Parting the Waters", [3] is essentially about the Jordan River, that a " six-year drought and expanding population conspire to make it a fresh source of conflict among the Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians vying for the river's life giving supply." The article continues that the "lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste that ranges from raw sewage to agricultural runoff....The fight over the Jordan illustrates the potential for conflict over water that exists throughout the world."

Yet it is more than potential in Israel/Palestine, it is kinetic...actualized. While the politicians describe the occupation and annexations in terms of religion, the building of the wall as a prevention against terror, and the savage attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan as attacks against terror, one of the principal underlying causes is water resources. Of global military conflicts over water "since 1950, 32 took place in the Middle East, 30 of them involved Israel and its Arab neighbours."

The article tries to be optimistic, quoting one source as saying "water is just too important to go to war over...people need water, and that's a huge incentive to work things out." Unfortunately, that optimism is not apparent in the actions of the Israelis. The author recognizes that the West Bank Palestinians are under Israeli military rule, that Israel harvests much of the ground water and of the flow of the Jordan, denying access to the Palestinians. Turn about, when water is scarce, the Palestinians must buy it from Israel, paying money for water removed from their territory, water that lowers the water table for the fewer and fewer remaining wells. Another source is quoted, while looking at a Mekorot [Israel's national water authority] well, "This is what water theft looks like in this part of the world."

Balance and context

The attempted balance is interesting. The chief Israeli water negotiator (and one has to wonder how much 'negotiation' actually takes place under military control), Noah Kinnarth, tries to argue that the underground water "knows no borders" and that the Palestinians think that the water that falls in the West Bank belongs to them." What a novel idea, your own rainfall belonging to you. Kinnarth's final twist is that with Oslo "we agreed to share that water. They just can't seem to get their act together to do it."

I am uncertain of the author's intent here. The latter statement is obviously completely out of context - as a militarily occupied territory under variable and oppressive military law, with valuable agricultural land and water resources being remove through illegal expropriation and the winding turns of the Wall, with its leaders continually being arrested, tortured, and or assassinated - could hardly be expected "to get their act together." Does the author let the statement stand out of context through his own prejudice or ignorance? Or is he allowing it to stand on its own demerits, expecting the readers to fill in the nuances of his presentation, combining his statements about military occupation, the drilling of wells, and the ignorance of the Israeli 'negotiator's' statement?

I will give the benefit of the doubt to the author this time, as the final comment goes to a Palestinian farmer, Muhammed Salamain in the village of Auja. He has had no running water for five weeks, does not have enough water to irrigate crops, cannot access the aquifer, and summarizes, "we are powerless to do anything about it." To get to the water he needs in the Jordan, he would "have to jump an electric fence, cross a minefield, and fight the Israeli army." And he can't get his act together? No wonder.

Israel, war and water...and the U.S.

The Israeli's have always wanted the full landscape of Eretz Israel, purportedly for religious reasons, but geopolitically the scarce water resources have had significant influence on their actions towards limiting access to the Jordan, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and the occupation and attacks on Lebanon. Combining the geographic narrative with the Paskal presentation, Israel sits in a precarious yet powerful position.

With the strongest military in the region, one of the strongest in the world with many nuclear devices, with its need for control of water for a burgeoning population - the Palestinian population growth rate is higher - and its short lines of access to oil and gas resources for energy and industry, Israel is well situated to take advantage of any turmoil caused by the intersection of global environmental catastrophes and geopolitical catastrophes of its own or others making. Should the rest of the world devolve into chaos without taking Israel with it, the water is there for the taking, the oil is there for the taking, and the Palestinians are there for removal.

This is a rather grim finale to the interpretation of these two items. However, both geopolitics and the global climate are unpredictable, with many unexpected occurrences and outcomes. Again Iran enters the picture, not as an imminent threat, but as a created threat that will allow Israel to rationalize more authoritative action of whatever kind it wants in order to secure its future needs.

The U.S. plays a large role in this, but as per Paskal, "power is imperceptibly shifting away from the United States....there is a growing movement away from overt alignment with the States....Authoritarian regimes benefit from having an enemy....the US military is becoming [?] unpopular and politically marginalized globally...." China and India are taking up the slack.

Israel is powerful, yet at the same time extremely vulnerable, sitting in a precarious geopolitical situation. Surrounded by hostile yet compliant neighbours - ranging from the U.S. supported Egyptians, Saudis, and Jordanians, and the more antagonistic governments of Lebanon and Turkey - relying on power alone, as seen with the U.S. and its attempts at global military control, creates many unexpected feedbacks, many distortions in the economy and social/cultural fabric of the country. Israel has recognized the environmental threat, and is using its military to control as much of it as it can.

The lessons of history, natural history and geopolitical history, would indicate that a different approach is needed. Restoring the rights of the Palestinians in either a functional contiguous independent state or in a truly democratic bi-national state, would relieve enormous geopolitical pressure, and make the quest for environmental survival that much stronger.

[1]Paskal, Cleo. Global Warring - How Environmental, Economic and Political crises Will Redraw the World Map. Key Porter Books, Toronto, Canada. 2010.

[2] __________ "Water - Our Thirsty World." National Geographic, April, 2010.

[3] Belt, Don. "Parting the Waters," National Geographic, April, 2010. pp. 154 - 171.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

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I was inspired to focus on Kathleen because she is a friend and because I had firsthand awareness of her passionate commitment to a local cause-a commitment that shared by a small community of activists, has now made an enormous difference not only for Vermonters, but for all of New England and perhaps the rest of the country also.

In fact, in an article "David vs. Goliath Vermont Style", Charlotte Dennett, who ran for Attorney General in Vermont in 2008 stated on February 26:

A driving snowstorm could not keep Vermonters away from the statehouse in Montpelier yesterday as the Vermont Senate convened a historic debate and then voted on the future of the state's aging nuclear power plant.

Some 1300 people - most of them standing before live video coverage outside the small, overcrowded Senate chamber -- listened to several hours of respectful debate that even included the proposition of building a new nuclear power plant in Vermont as per President Obama's pro-nuclear agenda. But when it was all over, senators from both parties resoundingly voted against a last-minute amendment for a new plant to replace the old one, and similarly defeated re-licensure of Vermont Yankee in 2012 by a vote of 26 to 4. Amidst cheers, clapping and hugs from the victors, it was clearly another Vermont moment for a state that prides itself on being cutting edge on social, political and environmental issues. As the only state in the nation that by statute allows its legislature to decide whether to re-license a nuclear power plant, the vote is likely to have wide-reaching ramifications, including for residents of Massachusetts who live near the Vermont Yankee plant.

I caught up with Kathleen by phone on the day of the Senate's historic vote and she graciously gave me this interview. 

Kathleen, please tell us what motivated you initially to begin organizing for the closure of Vermont Yankee.

In my work, I am standing on the shoulders of many anti-nuclear activists who have worked tirelessly over the years fighting a corrupt nuclear industry that cares more about its proliferation than the health of the people who are affected.

Last week's vote against the relicensing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant near Brattleboro is considered historic because it has allowed the voices of Vermont people to be heard through their elected leaders who voted against allowing Vermont Yankee to continue past its expected lifetime of 2012. It has allowed the people to say what Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been doing: Allowing contamination of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and that is not acceptable. The NRC has never said no to the nuclear industry, and I feel that the NRC is corrupt and is in collusion with the industry, allowing aging nuclear power plants numerous license amendments and exemptions from safety testing over the years.

What specific research did you do on the medical dangers of Vermont Yankee? Tell us a bit about what you discovered.

 As a registered nurse and after many years of working in the medical profession, I am acutely aware of the health and environmental dangers that make people sick. Myself a breast cancer survivor, I have watched over the years as the incidence of breast cancer continues to increase with nobody asking the right questions. One out of 13 women got breast cancer when I was first diagnosed in 1984. Today the incidence is one woman out of eight. What is that about? Passionately wanting to protect my family and my community, I have committed myself to the crusade to stop the relicensing of what my research revealed: that thyroid cancer, a marker for radiation exposure was on the rise in women not only in Vermont but across the country.

Although I am only one of hundreds of Vermonters against Yankee I was irate when the Vermont Department of Public Health re-wrote Vermont's radiation protection regulations weakening the laws to allow Vermont Yankee an uprate in 2006 which also allowed greater amounts of radioactive contaminants to be emitted from the site. The ionizing radiation to which people are exposed as a result of Vermont Yankee's operations is a known human carcinogen. No dose is without risk, and the best science today tells us that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk over a person's lifetime.

The NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who are in charge of radiation protection are still using standards that do not take into account the differences in susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer, with women facing a risk about 50 percent higher than men while the risk for children is several times higher. What is happening to the health of women and children is not being captured in national or state health statistics because the data being publicized on men and women is condensed and aggregated over 5 years so that the public health significance is being lost. It is a national issue because the Center for Disease Control (CDC) does not have jurisdiction over the NRC. Nobody does. The NRC is charged with protecting the public, but all we see here in Vermont is the NRC protecting the industry that pays their salaries 

Tell us what else motivates you.

I have been an activist my whole life. My parents instilled in me that it was important to contribute to community life and work toward making this world a better place for the children and generations who come after us. Being political is one way but not the only way. Choices we make, where we live, what we buy, who we support, are all ways we can make a difference. You find your passion. What I am doing to expose the corruption of the NRC and the nuclear industry and its health effects on future generations is mine. 

What specific research did you do on Vermont Yankee? Tell us a bit about what you discovered.

In the United States, the NRC's technical and safety regulations governing nuclear power plants are developed by the private nuclear industry using voluntary consensus standards. The owners of the nuclear power plants, the suppliers and manufacturers who sell the nuclear fuel, as well as the builders of nuclear power plants, are providing the oversight on themselves--policing their own industry just like the banking and financial industry did before their massive taxpayer bailout. Most of those standards in use are outdated but are still in use by the nuclear industry. They would never pass muster today knowing what we know.

Of course, what we know today as far as the effect of radioactive contamination is being ignored. The NRC is allowing radioactive tritium contamination across the country. Tritium caused mutagic effects on DNA especially in the unborn, but the NRC thinks it's OK for the decrepit, aging plants to wash it away in our rivers. That's OK with them, but it's not to the kids or women drinking that water downstream. The NRC tells us it will not harm us and no one has the jurisdiction over them to dispute what they say or are allowed to do.

One of the arguments against voting down Yankee's relicensing was economic. Supporters of Yankee argued that closing the power plant would hurt Vermont economically and cause utility rate increases. Opponents of Yankee argued that closing Yankee would provide an excellent opportunity to enhance the state's economy by investing in renewables and making the state more self-sufficient. Tell us your thoughts on this issue.

Vermont needs jobs but not at the cost of the health of our women children and future generations. Besides, look at all the work they are doing there now digging wells to see if they can make the tritium disappear. Today it's reported that the cesium they found deep in the ground was from Chernobyl.  Believe that one. A nuclear accident from 1986 is still contaminating our soil in Vermont. That does not make me feel any safer. There will be plenty of jobs cleaning up the radioactive contamination at Vermont Yankee. However, the industry is not mandated to clean it up. Besides that, there is nowhere to ship the radioactive waste on site, so Vermont Yankee supporters can work there guarding it for infinity. Vermont wants the site returned to a green field. Let's see what the NRC does about that.

The industry's rhetoric about jobs and such is not trumped by the deceit and lies they have demonstrated, and I believe those are only the tip of the iceberg. It was recently revealed that Neil Sheehan, our NRC spokesman, did not think it was a public concern nor important enough to report to the public that over a million gallons of tritium- laced water was dumped into the Hudson river by Entergy's Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant--the drinking water supply of New York  City! We only find this out because of a whistleblower. If a whistleblower goes to the NRC with a complaint, the NRC does not have to report it to the public. In my opinion, the NRC is deeply corrupted.

I know that you and your family have made some personal changes in lifestyle in order to utilize renewable energy rather than rely on the conventional power grid in Vermont. Can you tell us about those?

Changing one's lifestyle is a personal process that is never finished as there is always more you can do. Reducing our carbon footprint one step at a time is the right choice for us. What we do is personal for us, and everyone needs to be thoughtful to make that commitment. Our biggest commitment is choosing to live in the city of Rutland and help the city survive rough times. We can walk or bike anywhere we need to go. 

I'm also aware that you are passionately committed to your local community of Rutland. You are involved in the local food coop there and in the arts in your town. Tell us more about what you're doing and why you feel it's so important.

Rutland is a city without an interstate so it is not easy to get here. We are surrounded by mountains and farmland, and some of us want to keep it that way. We don't have urban sprawl. We have no buses into the city but we do have Amtrak, and that needs to be seriously upgraded.  Vermont relies heavily on the economic engine of tourism. Many of us rely on the Killington Ski Area and tourism for work even though those are seasonal and minimal wage job opportunities for a relatively well educated population. It is a choice many are making, and we all come together as a community via the local food coop and a year-round farmer's market. Our family is promoting walking gently on the earth with the annual Rutland Long Trail festival coming into its fourth year, celebrated in August in the heart of Rutland. As the city goes, so does the rest of Rutland County, so what we do here is very important. We need to be vigilant in preserving and developing the assets we do enjoy.  

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about your journey of activism in the past couple of decades or that you'd like to add about Vermont's decision not to relicense Yankee?

This fight is far from over. The people of Vermont through this vote have flexed their muscle. The NRC is put on notice. They are not considered trustworthy. Will they mandate that Entergy clean up its mess and leave Vermont Yankee as a green field? The fight has only begun.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The February 24 decision by the Vermont Senate not to relicense Vermont Yankee was a stunning triumph of activism and local political action by citizens passionately committed to their place and its environment. When we juxtapose it with the paralysis of our pathetically corrupt federal system, it is all the more remarkable. It is testimony to the power of local communities cooperating to defend and protect the integrity of their place, their people, and their land base. I reiterate what I have stated repeatedly: All solutions are local, and if it's not local, it's not a solution.

Kathleen Krevetski lives with her husband Wayne in Rutland, Vermont, and they have come to think of themselves as urban homesteaders. Check our http://www.longtrailfestivalvt.com/ or visit the festival on August 7, 2010

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I have lived with a pack for almost 20 years. I can say with certainty that they have a life of their own. The dynamics of relationships among the dogs are fascinating and they fit their pack life and responsibilities around our human doings. The dogs within the pack all have their own responsibilities from who watches the door and warns of intruders to who "relay" barks, to who has perimeter duty. In packs which howl, there is the one who starts the howl and who ends it. The order of the pack and who has what rights in what area is made by some determination of their own.

In relationship to the human members, they each have their own relationship, but there is a pack influence that is clearly evident. Who is responsible for keeping an eye on what member. Who follows and who watches. While we humans are officially in charge, there is only so much intervention into the actual day to day functioning of the canine members that is effective. In my experience, determining who has what job is not a human's to determine.

When a member of the pack is lost, it is crushing for the entire pack. The loss is felt on many levels, and they grieve. This is not anthropomorphism on my part. I have watched that grieving process too many times. While each dog expresses their loss in their own way, it is clear that they mourn the loss in an emotional way. Their process is also much different in some ways that human grieving. I believe this is because their sense of smell plays such a big part in their lives. When they smell the missing pack member, it reignites the hope they will reappear. It also reignites the sense of loss.

I am writing this now because we have lost two members of our pack in a short period of time. While the loss of these two close companions is huge, so is the potential loss of the pack continuity.

We spay and neuter our dogs, so our dogs do not reproduce. However, they do pass on the pack knowledge and (dare I say) culture. Our most current pack was Ben and Grady's pack. We have had dogs come into this pack. First Aerie, and then for a period of time Maddy and Buddy who eventually moved to Seattle. But Ben and Grady moved from becoming two dogs as part of the household to a pack when Aerie came to us. Sadly, she died an untimely death due to being poisoned.

What had been forged with Aerie was a pack. I don;t know that I can explain the transformation even though I lived through it. With Aerie's entrance into the family the whole dynamic among the dogs changed. The relationships became much more complex and richer in some ways. Their relationship to the human members of the pack also changed in more subtle ways. Humans calculated into their lives in a different way. They became more emotionally complete and balanced somehow. When Aerie died, the "pack" component remained, but it was clear that the balance was wrong.

By the spring after Aerie's death two pups - Crow and Fox - came to join Ben and Grady. They trained those pups to be dogs, but they also formed a complex pack with a rich life that we were honored to be a part of. As they started reaching adolescence, Ben and Grady went from being a pack with pups for who they were surrogate parents (a task Grady definitely did not like) to a rebalanced pack again.

First, Ben passed and the pack went on with Grady essentially taking on full pack leadership. One of the most amazing things was Ben's passing. He had seriously injured himself and could not stand any longer. Grady, Fox, and Crow all kept a close eye on him. Each would check on him. Crow took a tennis ball down and carefully placed it within his reach (Ben was an avid ball player). It was one of the most touching things I have ever seen.

When Grady passed, Fox and Crow were adrift. They clearly carried the social "mark" of Ben and Grady, but they were a pack missing something. Neither had ever had to be "in charge" and they leaned on each other heavily. The following summer Cody joined us. He raised his share of hell in terms of how things were supposed to work He was nine months old and not a malleable puppy. However, over time things settled down and Cody took his place in the pack and learned our pack's rules. He was a "pushy" dog and He and Fox came to a compromise. Fox was in charge outside and Cody was in charge inside. Crow of course refused to acknowledge either of them being in charge and was the real leader of the pack.

Cody was the anchor of the next generation of our pack which started with Ben and Grady. Then, on December 31, 2009, we lost Cody to a hemangiosarcoma. There was nothing to be done. Crow and Fox were stunned and bereft, and so were we. We had not just lost a dear companion, but now the future existence of this pack was at risk. We had been keeping an eye open for another pack member before Cody's death. We now started looking more closely, but no likely dog presented him or herself.

Then, just as we were starting to adjust to the loss of Cody, we got hit with another loss. Our dear Crow went into massive convulsions which were caused either by a brain tumor or pancreatic cancer. The prognosis was more than grim for even a short term (week or two) improvement, and virtually no hope beyond that. So we gave her back to the universe. This loss was devastating on so many levels. It was devastating as the loss of a dear companion, particularly following on the loss of our Cosmic Clown Cody. It was a devastating loss to Fox who had now lost his entire pack, but also his sister from whom he had never been separated. It was also the loss of a significant part of the pack's knowledge.

With the loss of both Cody and Crow, all of the pack's responsibilities fell on Fox. He was now a pack leader without a pack - they had all been ripped from him. He was not just a dog alone. He was a grieving one dog pack. His response, and our own loss, was tearing us all apart.

We checked the Humane Society site for the 100th time, and there was a dog who had that certain look in her eye. So we immediately loaded Fox into the car and headed off to the shelter. Upon arrival, we said that we wanted to meet "Missy." We met her and she seemed a sweet and calm creature, so we asked to have Fox meet her. The meeting went better than we ever expected. It seemed that they could become friends so we adopted her and brought her home. She and Fox are still figuring each other out, and "Missy", who we have renamed Mossy, is trying to adapt to living in this new home.

We are not sure what will happen from here. We do not know if Mossy will learn the pack knowledge. We will likely be getting another member once Mossy is secure and settled in and Fox feels more confident with her. Our pack - Ben and Grady's pack - is still at risk of "dying." That will only magnify the loss.

The dying out of a pack is like the dying out of a tribe. Once it is gone, it is gone - forever. You can build a new pack, but it will be another pack. While over the years, as members come into and leave the pack the individual personalities leave their stamp, there is a certain "feel" to the pack. I can't explain it.

For now, we grieve the losses and cling to each other (human and canine) to find what comfort we can. We hold hope for a firm bonding of Mossy into our lives, our hearts, and our pack.

The founders of our current pack Ben and Grady. Ben is the German Shepherd, and Grady a dingo and border collie cross.

Ben (right) and Grady were joined by Aerie (left).

Grady, Fox and Crow.

Cody

Fox (foreground) with Crow and Rowan.

Sir Fox

Mossy on her first night in her new home.

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During the past year, Hollywood has brought forth an array of post-apocalyptic movies such as "2012" and "The Road", but "The Book of Eli" is unique in this genre by way of a message that supersedes a abject survivalism as the bottom line theme. The message was intentional for screenplay author, Gary Whitta, who comments that "faith and hope have as much value to humanity as sustenance and safety." In other words, "The Book of Eli" is about much more than first-chakra survival in a world where little else matters and where most people are fighting, moment to moment, to simply stay alive.

The story focuses on a man in the not-too-distant future who has become a warrior, not by choice but by necessity, 30 years after what is referred to as "the flash" and the subsequent war that left the earth a catastrophic wasteland. Few people are alive who remember what the world was like before those cataclysmic events, and the rest are illiterate with no sense of history or purpose beyond finding food, water, and shelter.

For three decades, Eli (Denzel Washington) has been walking and wandering in response to a voice that he says came from inside him to protect the book (a bible) that he found amid the rubble of cataclysm, and keep heading west. Along the way he witnesses myriad injustices and wrongs he could help right, but instead, he chooses to abide with his instructions and avoid such entanglements.

We wonder why a bible in such a world makes any difference, but we soon discover that the war may have erupted in part because of religion and the power and control some people usurped in its name. Almost all bibles were burned after the war, and we assume it was for this reason. One man besides Eli in the current intellectual wasteland understands the power of books and reading them, and especially the power of the bible as a tool of control. That man is Carnegie (Gary Oldman)-an ironic name given that the nineteenth-century steel tycoon, Andrew Carnegie, donated millions to the building and maintenance of libraries in the United States. After encountering Eli and learning that he has a bible, the Carnegie of Whitta's screenplay is relentless in his quest to obtain it and is willing to do whatever it takes to do so because he shamelessly declares that "if we have the book, we can control people". But from Eli's perspective, nothing and no one will stand in the way of fulfilling his mission and following the instructions to keep walking west.

Some reviewers have described the milieu of "The Book of Eli" as a "Mad Max" scenario, but it seems important to note that the latter movie was made in the 80s in the throes of Reagan's "morning in America" when consumerism on steroids and off-the-scale narcissism ruled. Thus, in those days, movie-goers could only find the world of Mad Max bizarre and purely mythical whereas today, as we find ourselves sinking deeper into the Second Great Depression, fraught with the ramifications of Peak Oil, climate change, and global economic devastation, that particular scenario feels increasingly more plausible.

In Eli's world of abject lawlessness, ruled by roving gangs and petty dictators like Carnegie, life is all about survival and the physical strength it takes to maintain it. What we consider today basic necessities of life, such as soap, toothpaste, and shampoo have disappeared, and most humans are creatures that can only be described as vile in their lack of hygiene as well as their lack of any moral compass.

For Eli, however, life is about so much more than food, water, and shelter, and that is precisely what makes his character and this particular movie unique. He is cherishing what seems to have eluded everyone else around him-a profound spiritual connection. Forget that it's a bible he's carrying. Forget that his spirituality has a distinctly Christian flavor. As anyone who sees the movie is likely to agree, he could have been carrying the I Ching or the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran. Please dear reader/moviegoer, do not get ensnared here by whatever axes you have to grind with religion. The point is that it was Eli's connection with the sacred that sustained him emotionally in a world of madness and mayhem.

And yes, a world of cannibalism where people who eat human flesh develop uncontrollable, chronic trembling, particularly of the hands, and those whose hands do not tremble are proud to be "not one of them". It's a world of ghastly abuse of women-gang rape and sexual slavery. In fact, as I witnessed the treatment of women in this film, I reflected on complaints I've heard from many of my female friends about the portrayal of women in James Howard Kunstler's novel A World Made By Hand. And while I agree that the portrayal in that novel was grim, what I also believe is that it was probably understated in terms of how life for women in a post-collapse, savage world is likely to become.

As a result, Eli holds values unknown to those around him. He's kind and caring, but he's not a pacifist; he kills to defend his life and protect the innocent. He feels and expresses gratitude before meals for the food he is privileged to have and for the mentoring friendship he develops with a young woman who insists on walking alongside him as he continues his journey. Her insistence is driven by her admiration of him as well as the misery of her life in the town controlled by Carnegie. She is Solara (Mila Kunis), and she has no concept of life before "the flash" and "the war"-a time when Eli says, "We had more than we ever needed, we didn't realize how precious it was, and we threw stuff away that people would kill for today." Sound familiar?

Eli further shows us how human he is as he cherishes a battered IPod he charges along the way from parts of an old car battery or wherever he can occasionally find electricity. Early in the movie he falls asleep to Al Green singing "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?" In fact, the lyrics are quite ironic given Eli's situation:

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart

And let me live again

I have stated repeatedly that I do not know how the collapse of industrial civilization will play out, and I have also stated in my book, Sacred Demise, and elsewhere, that without a profound spiritual connection-a solid sense of meaning and purpose for our existence, a collapsing, transitioning world will be untenable and unbearable. "The Book of Eli" portrays precisely why that is so. And like no other futuristic movie of our time, it depicts poignantly why and how the demise and its ensuing journey are sacred.

Curiously, this movie appears in our culture at the same time as James Cameron's latest blockbuster, "Avatar." Deeply embedded in many of Cameron's movies is a spiritual or archetypal theme, and "Avatar" is perhaps the most obvious example. Although it offers a much more pleasant viewing experience, it is profoundly connected with "The Book of Eli" on one level because if the lessons "Avatar" illustrates to the human race are not learned, the irrevocable result will be "The Book of Eli."

I could say much more about the movie depicting Gary Whitta's screenplay which I passionately urge you to see, but I really do not want to dilute its impact. While it is not all darkness and horror, it doesn't offer the traditional happy ending but rather one possibility of transition to a new paradigm of wisdom our species. "The Book of Eli" reveals where we are headed, but more importantly, the difference one human being's relationship with something greater makes for himself and for future generations.

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Then along came Mr. Wonderful with his irresistible smile and infectious inspiration. He wooed you with his charm, that smile, and his engaging discourse-so articulate by comparison with the unintelligible babbling you had put up with for eight years. He cared about you and your children. No longer were you alone; like Martin Luther King, he had a dream-a dream congruent with yours, and the passion you both shared for the dream was hypnotic and felt deeply spiritual. You actually thought that he was a messenger sent from another world to rescue you and take you out of the nightmare. He used transcendent terms like "hope", "change", "yes we can." And not only were you totally surrendered to his embrace, but you begged everyone else to do the same. He's our only hope, you told them and yourself. You could scarcely contain your ecstasy when they all chose him in the last hours of the eight years you had all excruciatingly endured.

It was a new day, one year ago at this time. Your sighs of relief could not have been longer or deeper. You and your children were now safe at last.

But today, you ponder reflectively the past year, and what you have now come to understand is that the hero you married is a prisoner. You believed him when he told you he was free and at liberty to make the changes he proclaimed. You trusted him, committed yourself to him, and fought for him. And now you discover that he's betrayed you and that his actions really aren't that divergent from his predecessor's. In fact, he is a prisoner of the same forces that terrorized you for the previous eight years. Fooled again. Betrayed. You sink into despair and depression. You talk to your friends-the others who also believed in him. You feel those old and familiar emotions you felt from 2001-2008 that you thought you'd never have to feel again. "What can we do?" you ask. "What are our options?"

The affair is over, and you don't know whether to cry, rage, get drunk, stay stoned, or rethink leaving the country. You've married a prisoner; you've made another bad choice. You feel bitter and perhaps a little self-loathing. In fact, you want to take a shower because you feel dirty all over.

OK, I could be talking about a real love affair here between two people-one a professional con artist and the other, an enabler. Or I could be talking about a nation of hopeful citizens who wanted to believe so desperately that their new hero would reverse the course set forth by the sociopaths of the previous administration and lead them forward to a better, more humane life, a more bonded community, a saner world for themselves and their children.

What we all must ask ourselves at the end of a relationship that turned out badly-a relationship at the end of which we felt betrayed and disappointed is quite simply: What is my part? Why did I make this choice? What did I not wish to see? What were the red flags I chose to ignore?

This week, Michael Moore was interviewed by Democracy Now and confessed his sense of betrayal and disappointment with Obama's first year. What I heard from him and hear from almost every progressive liberal who expresses similar sentiments is a jaw-dropping naïveté regarding the nomination of candidate Obama and the system he represents. It is the epitome of the definition of insanity: repeating a behavior proven erroneous without exception, time after time, yet expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

Yet both sadly and fortunately, as is true whenever the betrayer shows his true colors, this is a teaching moment for the enablers. And this particular teaching moment is more important, more momentous than any in our national history. Why? Because of what is at stake in terms of the future of the planet, and that future is inextricably connected with a paradigm to which we have been "married" as a people since the birth of our nation.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on campaign financing by corporations was truly the last nail in the coffin of democracy and sealed the fundamental definition of fascism attributed to Mussolini which was simply, "the corporate state." Abramoff rules, and politicians no longer have any reason to function other than corporate whores. As a friend suggested to me a few days ago, members of Congress should now dress themselves in NASCAR uniforms indicating which corporations own them so that we don't need to bother researching the facts but can see them wearing the information on their bodies.

During the 2007-2008 hyperventilating euphoria of progressives regarding the candidacy of Obama, my website, Speaking Truth to Power, was exposing Obama's corporate connections and forecasting that little if anything would significantly change with his election. I was labeled Debbie Downer from Doom and Gloomville and called a conspiracy nut. And so here we are: Revelations from Matt Taibbi and others regarding Goldman Sachs as the largest contributor to Obama's election campaign, an escalation of war in Afghanistan above and beyond the proportions of Bush's war in Iraq, Obama's sanctioning of Bush's policies on torture, Obama's prone position in relation to Wall St. and his choice to surround himself with economic advisors who were directly responsible for creating economic collapse-I could continue ad nauseum. The similitude between the policies of Bush II and Obama are so glaring that last week, progressive journalist, Danny Schechter, asked, "Has Obama Become Bush II?" (I am particularly fond of the Photoshopped image attending the article-a picture worth more than a thousand words.)

In this teaching moment, those disappointed and despairing of their tryst with Obama have a golden opportunity to ask themselves what his betrayal of them reveals regarding the political and economic systems of America and the reality that no politician can even be nominated for the Presidency by the two-party monstrosity, let alone elected, unless that candidate is permanently dressed in his or her NASCAR uniform. If you do not ask this question, you will continue living out the definition of insanity with every national election because you refuse to look deeply at the fundamentals of how the corporate state functions. You will cover its rotting stench with come cloying cologne of "hope" and thereby not only enable your betrayers but waste precious time by not attending to life and death issues.

My 2006 book, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, endeavored first and foremost to leave the reader with an understanding of who owns and operates the American political system. Others have offered their brilliant analyses-Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine, Mike Ruppert in Crossing The Rubicon, and Kevin Phillips in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. Your failed love affair with Obama is now your teaching moment-a critical opportunity to research these four books above and buy out of the putrid, perfidious American political system and buy into making your local community resilient and self-sufficient.

I have long since rejected the American political system and have not voted in any national election since 2000, nor will I again in my lifetime. To do so is to buy into a system that has created what for years I have termed the Toxic Triangle of energy depletion, economic meltdown, and environmental devastation. Every drop of human energy I invest in that system is energy divested from working with my community, my neighborhood, and my loved ones to respond to the current and coming horrors that have been wrought by the three "E's": catastrophic climate chaos, multitudes of environmental refugees, impending global food shortages, the depletion of safe and clean drinking water worldwide, widespread droughts and environmental disasters, unprecedented energy depletion, environmental illnesses and pandemics, and global economic cataclysm.

Visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller, E.F. Schumacher, and Herman Daly have demonstrated that global challenges are most effectively addressed on the local level, where pragmatic responses and options can be created as an alternative to investment in the fantasy of global solutions. That is to say that in the 21^st century, "global" is synonymous with "corporate" and therefore guaranteed to exacerbate rather than grapple with the daunting issues confronting the earth community.

Some individuals argue that focusing on re-localization forces us to ignore the global corporatism of an international ruling elite. My response is to ask why we must do one or the other. It is crucial in my opinion to be aware of the powers that be and their machinations, but I must also ask, what realistically, any of us can do to alter or avert their agenda? The answer is nothing; however, there is much we can do to protect ourselves and our communities from it by becoming self-sufficient and resilient.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, I was intrigued as I watched the swearing in of Obama, by the presence of one man standing behind and to the right of Obama--none other than Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. I doubt that the positioning was intentional, but for me, it was symbolic. It forces me to ask, which interests, which ruling elite families are "standing behind and to the right" of Obama? To what extent is he their creation and theirs alone? For that reason, I chose a photo of that symbolic moment to accompany this article. Take a closer look and think about it deeply. On Inauguration Day, I scoured the internet to find a photo of Rockefeller standing behind Obama during the Oath of Office because I knew its symbolism would later be appreciated by many more Americans than just me. This moment is the moment I had in mind.

Some enablers are capable of changing their behavior and making saner choices. For example, those that have a magnetic attraction to prisoners might find themselves losing interest because they have discovered the deeper meaning of freedom-the ability to create with the support of others, authentic, meaningful responses that do not seduce one into the prison system itself.

This particular affair is over. The "hopium" has worn off. It's time to choose whether you will pursue another affair with another prisoner or walk away from all forms of incarceration, theirs and yours. This is your teaching moment.

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Create pressure on governments to keep the assistance flowing? Perhaps, but there is no shortage of assistance being sent to Haiti. There is however a huge problem in Haiti's limited ability to absorb the assistance.

Whether it's small and inefficient sea ports, one small and inefficient airport, a lack of decent roads, and a lack of government direction - all aspects of any place as poor as Haiti - it takes time for outsiders to come in, unload their cargoes, and organize a distribution network from scratch.

Certainly the disturbing reports and pictures are useless from the point of view of prevention. It was a natural disaster, not to be predicted, not to be prevented. One could argue that post-disaster investments could ameliorate events the next time there is an earthquake. But the kinds of images and reports being broadcast will be long forgotten if and when the world's governments get around to re-building.

So the question for me remains, what are we to do with such information?

I am reminded of another disaster, one that happened in the last few years. It was not a "natural" disaster but the deliberate work of the immensely powerful.

In this other disaster, roughly a million people died, about five times the current estimate of death in Haiti. I don't know how many were crippled, but it must have been a great number. This other disaster created more than two million refugees fleeing for their lives. Most of them fled to poor but generous countries, not being welcome by the rich and powerful, and especially not by the country responsible for the mayhem.

As far as pictures and reports, most of them seen in North America were sanitized. Many if not most of the reports were dishonest, clearly not informing people of the magnitude of the horror as it happened. There was a brave group of reporters who produced images every bit as terrible as those we see from Haiti, including scores of hideously mangled children.

But those pictures were not broadcast in North America, were not published in The New York Times or other newspapers "of record." Indeed, the reporters taking these images and writing tough reports actually became targets of the forces causing all the horror.

I'm referring, of course, to the invasion of Iraq, an event whose toll of killing and damage easily compared to the dropping of a thermonuclear bomb on a good-size city.

Of course, the great and bitter irony is that that disaster was both preventable and could even have been stopped once it had started. One could almost guarantee that publication and broadcast of pictures and reports comparable to what's now coming from Haiti would have stopped that demonic brutality. Here indeed gruesome, truthful press coverage could have made a difference, but not in Haiti.

And there was another, smaller disaster recently, smaller but still terrible, and it was completely preventable. In this one about 1,400 people died, including 400 children, and a great deal of the infrastructure of a relatively poor people was destroyed. The damage cannot even be repaired because those responsible for the horror maintain a siege on the victims, allowing no material assistance to be delivered.

Here too you likely will not have seen the kind of pictures or read the kind of stories coming out of Haiti. Some were available - I recall one of poor people trying to avoid stepping in a stream of blood flowing down a narrow street - again the work of amazingly brave reporters, but their work could only be found at not-widely known sites on the Internet. None were published or broadcast by the establishment press in North America. These events occurred in a place called Gaza.

If you think the press is objective, if you think the press does not slavishly serve the interests of the powerful, you just might want to think again.

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I used to ponder at that admonition every morning back in 1962, and its message did sink in, as I think it did in the minds of every student in the class who wasn't just falling asleep in the back of the room, or idly daydreaming. Students in that class went on to become brain surgeons, genetic engineers, writers, computer scientists, horticulturalists and lawyers. I don't think too many of us are conspiracy theorists.

Malone encouraged me and my classmates to pursue a science track. He selected a fellow student and me for an experiment, shifting us midway through the fall term to an 11th grade advanced physics class, where we learned to calculate vectors, understand wave behavior and the peculiar nature of light, and where we experimented with electricity (I learned its power when, during a boring lecture, I absent-mindedly stuck two straight pins into the electric outlet on my science desk and crossed them, causing a flash and pop, burning the outlet cover and my fingers, and casting the whole classroom into darkness). Sometimes I was lost, but most of the time, I was simply captivated, learning about the inner workings of the atom and the universe.

The public school I attended was excellent, featuring a number of iconoclastic teachers, who taught us to question, not just to memorize.

Sadly, I have learned that this is not the norm in American education, which many explain why the country is so prone to conspiracy theories.

What can we expect when polls show that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution (no surprise since fewer than 33% even know about DNA and its role in heredity)? What can we expect when one in five Americans, or about 20% of us, think that the sun revolves around the earth, or that 55% believe that they are protected by a "guardian angel"?

Conspiracy theories abound where people are fearful and ignorant. There is the conspiracy theory that Americans never really landed on the moon, the conspiracy theory that Jews run the world, the contradictory conspiracy theory that the Freemasons or Opus Dei run the world, the conspiracy theory that President Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya. The list goes on and on.

I'm not saying there are not good reasons for considering 1some conspiracy theories. Certainly the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was more complicated than the work of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. Too many things had to work perfectly, and there are too many conflicting pieces of evidence, from the poorly adjusted sight on his gun to the Zapruder film and the alleged trajectory of one incredibly destructive "magic" bullet, for the official story to work. Ditto the assassination several years later of Martin Luther King.

Nor, or course, is the official story of the 9-11 attacks credible, and indeed even the participants in the 9-11 Commission are now refusing to stand by the commission's conclusions about what happened. There are too many gaping holes, from how planes hitting the tops of buildings and creating fires that were far below the melting point of steel could have caused those buildings to dissolve into dust from the bottom up to why another building, not hit by any plane, would collapse in exactly the same fashion for no reason.

But not accepting an official explanation is different from adhering to a full-blown conspiracy theory, and Americans seem amazingly inclined to do the latter.

The most stunning example of this is the popularity of the global warming conspiracy theory.

Despite all the terrifying evidence before our eyes-the rapid disappearance of the North Polar ice cap, the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the shrinking back of mountain glaciers all over the world, the frightening acidification of the upper layer of the global oceans, the measurable and accelerating rise in sea levels, and the thousands of years of data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that can clearly be linked to temperature changes around the world, only half of Americans even believe that global climate is changing, and even fewer, just 36%, believe that the rising global temperature is caused even in part by human activity. Even more astounding is the fact that the number of Americans who believe the earth is heating up has fallen over the last few years from 77% to 51%.

Parallel to this is a growing support for an elaborate conspiracy theory that postulates that governments around the world, in collusion with virtually the entire scientific community, are working collectively to make up and promote a bogus story about global warming.

With other conspiracy theories, from the swine flu vaccination conspiracy to the lunar landing hoax, there is little need for concern. People have their belief system and go about their lives harmlessly. But with the climate change conspiracy, there is a terrible danger that it is leading to government inaction that could ultimately doom the human race, and indeed many of the earth's myriad life forms, to extinction.

Let's look at what the climate change conspiracy advocates are saying. They argue that the governments of Europe, of the US, of Canada, of China and India, and indeed of much of the rest of the world--governments that rarely agree on anything, I might point out--are acting in concert to promote a bogus claim that the earth is heating up because of man-made release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They claim that this conspiracy is being supported by the almost universal connivance of the world's scientists, who are collectively falsifying data and hiding countervailing data. And all this is happeningthey assert, despite the almost universal opposition of the world's corporations, most of which, we know, are resisting having governments take any serious action to combat climate change, and in many cases (look at the US Chamber of Commerce), are actively challenging the whole notion of climate change.

To believe in such a far-reaching conspiracy theory, one would have to first deny all the evidence before our eyes. But then one would also have to believe that the US, China, and Europe, as well as other countries, are in league. You would also have to assume that thousands of tenured scientists--a group with a disproportionate number of large egos and people with a penchant for disputation and controversy, I might add--are all working in concert to bury information and create a false theory. Finally, you would have to believe that all this effort is being made in order to pursue an economy-crippling strategy of making fossil fuels more expensive that is directly in opposition to the wishes of virtually the entire capitalist system.

When, I have to ask, has the US government ever acted deliberately against the interests of the major capitalist enterprises? When, except during revolutionary moments, have any nations acted against the wishes of the assembled commercial interests within their borders? The short answer is: never.

Unless you think the Jews, or alternatively the Freemasons or Opus Dei or the Federalist Society, or maybe all these disparate groups together, are behind this vast conspiracy, and have successfully terrorized and bribed the tens of thousands of scientists and government officials into complicity, the idea of a conspiracy so huge and far-reaching is simply laughable.

And yet with almost half of Americans ready to believe it, the corporate media, eager for ratings, are playing along, giving equal billing to the global warming deniers. Just last night, ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson offered a story on climate change that featured competitor Fox TV's ardent climate change denier and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck as a suppsedly credible advocate for the argument that global warming is an elaborate hoax.

We might as well be watching news stories about how we've all been duped into believing that the earth revolves around the sun, or that, god help us, the damned thing is round.

The truth is, if there is a conspiracy regarding climate change, it is a conspiracy by our government to minimize the threat (we saw that concretely with the attempt by the Bush administration to muzzle climate scientists like NASA's James Hansen), avoid taking serious action, and pretend that the actions being proposed, like "cap and trade," will solve the problem.

As I sit here in southeastern Pennsylvania on December 10, looking out at the green grass on my lawn, which has yet to feel a hard frost just two weeks before Christmas, I'm reminded of Mr. Malone's old banner: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." The corollary is clearly: "If you can measure it, it does exist."

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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The dialogue is not yet complete, but rather than wait for a natural end, I thought it would be nice to publish the text now, and keep adding to it as the questioning process progressed.


December 9, 2009

Keith Farnish:  Carolyn, thank you very much for agreeing to this "back and forth" interview. With your book Sacred Demise very much still in my mind, I would like to ask what led you to take such a pragmatic approach to the collapse of Industrial Civilization; in other words, what makes you so sure it will happen soon?

Carolyn Baker:  You ask why I take such a pragmatic approach to the collapse of civilization and what makes me so sure it will happen. In order to answer that question, I must give you some background. First, I was an adjunct professor of history for over a decade, and I authored a book called U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You. Some people have called it "Howard Zinn on steroids". In the year 2000 I was introduced to Mike Ruppert's From The Wilderness website and a couple of years later through his site to Peak Oil. At about the same time, he began writing about a coming economic collapse, somewhat but not entirely, related to 9/11. He featured articles analyzing the likelihood of an impending housing bubble and a global economic meltdown. The site also explored climate change and its relation to Peak Oil and economic meltdown. In fact, as a writer for From The Wilderness mid-decade, I began using the term "toxic triangle" to explain the relationship between Peak Oil, climate change, and economic meltdown. For almost a decade, I have been researching how we got to the current state of affairs. In 2007 the most powerful documentary I have yet seen on these issues, specifically the reality and certainty of collapse, What A Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire was released. Superbly researched (all sources may be found at the movie's website at whatawaytogomovie.com), this documentary removes all "yes-but's" about collapse.

In Sacred Demise, I cited What a Way to Go numerous times, but I avoided going into the research validating the inevitability of collapse because the intention of the book was not to "defend" collapse but to assist the reader in preparing emotionally and spiritually for it. At the end of the book I presented a list of reading and viewing resources for any reader desiring additional resources on the topic of collapse.

That said, the real issue is that collapse is not a future event; it's happening as we speak. At least 80% of what was forecasted by From The Wilderness in the past decade is now occurring. As Mike Ruppert states in his current magnificent Collapse movie, it's a waste of time and energy to debate the reality of Peak Oil and climate change because they are happening as certainly as is global economic meltdown. So in summary, I'm certain that collapse is happening and that it will only exacerbate in the coming months and years.


December 11, 2009

Carolyn Baker:  In Time's Up! you have wisely distinguished between hope that is useful and harmless, and hope that abdicates responsibility. I'd like to hear more about this distinction and in terms of the ten Tools of Disconnection. As you know, the current president of the United States sealed his electoral fate by running on a platform of "hope" and "change". Almost two years later, we are now seeing the pathetic results of those two shibboleths in terms of what's happening on the ground rather than in the vacuous minds of Obama enthusiasts. Please elaborate.

Keith Farnish:  "Vacuous minds", I like that! As you know, in modern civilized cultures we hang on to the idea of Hope as though it has some kind of innate power; I described it in my book as "Secular prayer". Its use in the Obama camp up to the election and now in the wake of the Copenhagen summit has been in this very form, taken to its apotheosis by writers like Bill McKibben who seem to feel that simply by hoping hard enough for a positive outcome, along with a series of time-wasting symbolic actions, the corner will be turned. As your previous answer spells out succinctly, a corner has indeed been turned, and we are headed down Collapse Street. In the face of a series of ever-worsening news items, the latest being evidence of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melting, it is actually not that surprising people feel powerless. As I see it, this powerlessness is being exploited by both the political system and the environmental mainstream to ensure we continue to support the "business as usual" agenda - and yes, I am saying that Bill McKibben and the 350.org team are supporting business as usual; why else would they ask us to appeal to "our leaders".

The Tools of Disconnection were something I laid out to simplify to methods that Industrial Civilization uses to keep us disconnected from the real world (in essence, the natural world of which we are part) in favour of a synthetic creation that exists to create wealth, and give power to the latest people who crawl their way to the top of the global hierarchy. Among these tools are things we are very familiar with, such as advertising ("Sell Us A Dream"), authority ("Exploit Our Trust") and violence ("Abuse Us"). Hope is the tenth, and possibly the most powerful of these Tools, because it is a practice carried out by so many different groups of people, some of whom we consider to be on our side.

I have no problem saying to someone "I hope you have a nice day", but I will never say to someone "I hope we have the energy and commitment to make things better". That's worse than naive, it is dangerous. As Derrick Jensen wrote, so clearly as he always does: "When hope dies, action begins."


December 18, 2009

Keith Farnish:  As collapse starts to take hold, what will you be doing?

Carolyn Baker:  What I will be doing as collapse takes hold is what I've been doing for many years. The first activity and the one that started my awakening was and is to become and remain informed about what is actually happening as opposed to what the media of civilization is telling us is happening. I have done many things logistically to prepare--things like food storage, creating a community of allies around me, and of course, relocating to a more sustainable and conscious part of the United States. My most significant relationships are with people who are collapse-aware and with whom I am able to talk about the inevitable--people who are also preparing. Above all, I see the world these days through the lens of collapse which causes me to appreciate all of the modest comforts I have, the supportive people in my life, the food I eat, the clean water I drink, and the health I'm privileged to enjoy. I am consciously preparing myself emotionally and spiritually for the unraveling. I know that some have a difficult time with the word "spiritual", but actually, what I mean by that is beautifully echoed in one sentence in your chapter in Time's Up! on "Being Ourselves" when you say that "If you are prepared for it, then the journey and the eventual destination can show you what it is really like to be human." For me, that is the essence of "spiritual." Civilization has robbed us of our intimate connection with our own humanity--something that I sometimes call our "indigenous self", and like indigenous people revolting against colonization, collapse is offering us the opportunity to uncolonize and reclaim the indigenous self within us.

Another part of preparation - and it is of course fundamental to the reconnection of which you speak - is my connection with nature. That connection, if deeply felt and viscerally experienced, will inform our priorities, our relationships, our parenting, how we eat, travel, spend our time--virtually every aspect of our lives. A fellow blogger, Guy McPherson names his blog, Nature Bats Last. I endeavor to live my life listening to nature and allowing it to have the last word in my life as much as possible. Of course, that doesn't mean that if I'm in the forest and see a bear, I'm going to run toward it and embrace it, but it may mean that after removing myself from its territory, I reflect on the encounter and what nature might be trying to communicate to me. And while I admit that imagining myself in a post-collapse, post-petroleum world is difficult, I know that my current logistical, emotional, and spiritual preparations will serve me well and far better I hope, than the person who refuses to look at what is actually happening to this planet and its inhabitants.


December 20, 2009

Carolyn Baker:  I'd like to hear your thoughts on the recent Copenhagen circus and how that relates to what you've written in Time's Up! Even mainstream media is using that phrase (time's up) in relation to the farce that Copenhagen has proven to be. Please elaborate.

Keith Farnish:  There was a part of me that, at least for a while, thought the insertion of the phrase "Be aware that authority figures within the system, such as political leaders and corporations, will attempt to provide you with 'green' advice: this advice is designed to ensure that civilization continues, and should be ignored," in the Eco-Meme was a little long-winded and even too obvious to include. It has sadly turned out to be right on the button. Given that the watching public had their expectations wound up to a screaming frenzy with phrases like, "Copenhagen is our last hope", it is clear that - in the wake of its utter failure to deliver anything substantial - the world has once again been duped. This blame lies not only with the Corporations (who lobbied like fury to ensure there was disagreement and doubt) and the Politicians (who simply did what they were told by the system they a part of), but also to a great extent the absurd behaviour of the environmental NGOs, filling us with a false and dangerous hope - precisely what I alluded to in my previous answer.

Jim Hansen, eminent climate scientist at GISS, said of the Copenhagen Summit: "any agreement emerging from the summit is likely to be deeply flawed; suggesting that the best way to tackle global warming may be to let future generations start from scratch." This was, of course, decried by the civilized world as flying in the face of reasonable opinion, whatever that is; clearly there is nothing reasonable about condemning the Earth to a mass ecological die-off, but in order to prevent such a scenario, we have to "condemn" the world to economic failure. What came out of Copenhagen was a big thumbs-up to economic growth, and a big "F*** you!" to ecological survival. No wonder a growing number of people are realising the folly of trusting our future to politics.

In as far as the actions towards the end of my book go; the Copenhagen farce simply reinforces the need to undermine the system, because clearly we don't have a future if we allow it to remain.


December 24, 2009

Keith Farnish: In your book, 'Sacred Demise' you are keen to stress that there is a better world after collapse if you are prepared to embrace it. I wholeheartedly agree, and wonder if you see encouraging the collapse process to be a corollary of this view.

Carolyn Baker: I absolutely believe that encouraging the collapse of industrial civilization is desirable and necessary. Some would disagree and argue that that would lead to more suffering and loss of live. I'm not sure that the suffering and loss of life resulting from civilization "running its course" would not be as bad or worse and quite simply be a wash. Derrick Jensen has given us voluminous evidence that civilization is like the perpetrator of abuse in a family system. The entire system is set up to protect the abuser, and everyone in the family has bought into the belief that the consequences of busting the abuser are much worse than remaining silent and allowing the perpetrator to continue abusing. Occasionally, a member of the system "buys out" of it and blows the whistle by screaming the secrets within and/or outside the family. This is profoundly liberating for the person breaking silence and ultimately, whether they realize it or not, helps liberate the family. In such cases, even if abuse continues and some of the family members defend and enable the perpetrator, the system can never be the same and will slowly or quickly implode.

I have to say that even now, I see signs of this same dynamic occurring in civilization. Millions of people are buying out of it, even as millions more are waiting for a "return to normal." Recently, I attended a meeting of the New Unemployment  here in Boulder, Colorado in which people are networking and dialoging about the "gift" of being laid off or being unable to find a job because they now finally see through the capitalist system and realize that it is taking them and the earth nowhere except to death and destruction. These folks are using their unemployed time to first of all, discover what it is that they really want to do with their lives, and also using the time to create things they have wanted to create all their lives. This doesn't mean that they don't have bills to pay; it doesn't mean they aren't scared and anxious about how they will pay them, but it does mean that they will now move forward to structure a livelihood that departs from the values of industrial civilization in ways that will bring meaning and purpose to their lives.

I believe that we can assist the collapse process by both buying out of civilization and by actively undermining it as you explain so articulately in your book. In my recent Winter Solstice article, I talked about indigenous cultures in which the elders or wisdom leaders of the tribe or clan, have two very important roles. One is to speak the truth about whatever they see that is wrong or right with the community. They are not concerned with being liked, but only with speaking the truth so that the community continues to adhere to its values so that it can sustain itself. The other job of the elder is to help create things of beauty. In that way, he or she is both a prophet and an artist. I believe that this is what we must be in our efforts to undermine civilization. Moreover, I believe that we must be discerning and stealthy in our efforts to undermine, and you refer to this as well in "Time's Up." It is very important that we speak the truth when that is appropriate, be discreet, and create as much beauty in our lives and communities as possible.


December 31, 2009

Carolyn Baker: My next question for you has to do with the second suggestion you make on Page 221 of "Time's Up" in which you admonish us to live in ways that do not contribute to the global economy. Would you elaborate and give specific examples of what that would look like for most people.

Keith Farnish: This is a very timely question indeed, for two reasons: it coincides with a variety of reports that the global economy is starting to pick up again in the aftermath of the global recession; it also comes shortly after a comment was made on the Orion Magazine web site, in response to another great article by Derrick Jensen. The comment was made with regards to the possible ways we can help undermine Industrial Civilization:

"Do nothing. The industrial complex thrives on activity. It churns activity like corn in a mill. If you do nothing (not buying stuff, not watching tv, not doing overtime) you remove the paste from the millstone and the wheels destroy themselves in a great roar of economic hunger - no help needed."

I don't claim anything I write is other than common sense, so for me to say this comment was inspired by anything I have written would be boastful, although these words are reflected in what I say in my book, which makes it particularly heartening to see someone else writing almost exactly the same - I guess it means I must be onto something:

"Your place in the system is as a component in a massive food web. Like all food webs, it is driven by energy; physical energy sources like oil, gas, coal and radioactive materials drive the machines that ensure money keeps floating to the top of the vat where the Elites skim it off to add to their wealth. If you are resourceful or in a role that holds some status, you can have some of this wealth too, and the material trappings that come with it. Without the energy that drives the web, though, there is no money, and there is no web. It is not just the oil, gas, coal and various sources of radiation that keep the web operating though - people are equally vital, more so, in fact. Unless people run the machines, staff the shops, build the products, drive the lorries, create the advertisements, read the news and enforce the law, the web will collapse upon itself, bringing the entire hierarchy down with it."

In that respect, the answer to your question revolves around the idea of, initially, a clear recognition that much of what you do is actively contributing to the larger process of global ecological destruction, simply by virtue of your being a part of the system; and then progressively withdrawing from the system so that you (a) don't play your part in this destructive process and (b) weaken the system that requires your input to thrive. The "recognition" stage is the trigger, and is very difficult for most civilized people to attain due to the "Tools of Disconnection" keeping us active contributors; but once this stage is attained, the "withdrawal" process can proceed with aplomb.

I would probably recommend, if I was forced to be prescriptive, the following first stages of withdrawal:

1) Reduce your consumption of new, non-perishable items to an absolute minimum, which will require a certain level of willpower and tenacity, particularly if you have children and live in an urban or suburban location. Combine the reduction in "newsumption" with the purchase of pre-owned items and the repair of existing items, and this becomes a lot easier.

2) Localise your activity, including where your food originally comes from (if you grow it yourself or communally, then you cut out all sorts of economic ties); how far you travel to obtain goods and services - including how far people providing these to you have to travel; how far you travel to "work" (see later); and where your energy comes from, so if you can generate it yourself, so much the better.

3) Taking the first stage into account, if you can reduce your expenses to a bare minimum, then you will almost certainly need to do less paid work, and can potentially work for yourself rather than for the Man. Not only will you have a lot more time to spend with your family, friends and your own efforts to make your life uncivilized; you will also be out of the industrialised "work-play-work" loop, which determines to a great extent how people live.

Of course there are many other things you can do, but that's already quite a lot to be going on with for the average civilized, commerce-soaked individual. Anyone reading this will no doubt be able to work out many other withdrawal activities they can carry out and, just as importantly, help and encourage others to also take part in.


January 4, 2010

Keith Farnish: In your latest article on Speaking Truth To Power - a brilliant analysis of the relevance of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to the industrial world - you touch on the way that many activists throw themselves into work in order to avoid facing up to the reality of the situation. This is, effectively, the first and most potently destructive stage of the Kübler-Ross Grief model, i.e. Denial. Speaking as a psychotherapist, how important to you feel a pragmatic attitude to bereavement is, in the face of the world we are now facing?

Carolyn Baker: In the face of the world we are facing, I believe that authentic grieving is more important than it has ever been. Psychological research repeatedly confirms that "good grief", that is grief that is fully felt and allowed, is healing, cleansing, and empowering whereas blocked grief is terribly toxic and leads to depression, anxiety, and suicide.

Grief is another one of those realities in industrial civilization that has repeatedly been swept under the rug as not worthy of our valuable time which should be spent colonizing someone and making a profit off of something. In fact, on one blog (which shall remain nameless) where I posted my article on Transition Trauma, I received, (exclusively from men I might add) comments like, "Rubbish! We need to grow up, grow a pair, and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and not rely on 'support' from other people." I was appalled because I thought this was 2010 and that John Wayne was dead. But this is the legacy of civilization. In fact, I would not hesitate to declare that blocked grief is one reason (besides cheap and abundant oil) that industrial civilization has been so wildly "successful" until recent years in which many humans and certainly all other species recognize what a nightmare it really is.

Now more than ever, we need to grieve, and if we think there is much to grieve now, we ain't seen nuthin' yet. Paradoxically, grief, while it might appear to "weaken" us, if fully experienced, empowers us to rise up and say, "No more!" One classic example I can think of is Cindy Sheehan here in the U.S. When she allowed herself to go to the depths of her grief regarding the loss of her son Casey in the Iraq War, she rose up in wizened rage to stop the war machine and the politicians waxing fat and happy from it. Hell hath no fury, you might say, like human beings who feel the depths of evil and injustice in the fibers of of their guts. So rather than grief paralyzing us so that we can't act, it has the capacity to take us to passion and fervor that we never knew we had. In this sense, grief is now more "pragmatic" than it has ever been. Through allowing ourselves to experience it, we reclaim the humanity stolen from us by civilization, and accessing that treasure, I believe, gives us the compassion, spine, and deep conviction to resist and stop civilization's madness on behalf of ourselves and the entire community of life.

So I say, bring on the grieving--now more than ever.


January 8, 2010

Carolyn Baker: As I look at the world in the first days of 2010, I see anything but a pretty picture - more real or bogus threats of terror attacks, a widening war in the Middle East - I won't bore you with the list because I know you see it too. Yet what I see among most members of industrial society is mind numbing, insipid apathy and mediocrity and the delusion that things will somehow return to normal in 2010 - or at least by 2011. This is frightening to me, and I am inclined to believe, given the state of the world, that a dramatic event of gargantuan proportions will be necessary to alter this apathy. In fact, I believe that if we don't receive some kind of wake up call in 2010, we can pretty well kiss our butts goodbye. I hope this question isn't too open-ended or broad, but I'm wondering what you see in that regard.

Keith Farnish: This is a fascinating question for all sorts of reasons, but particularly for me because it is something I have had at the back of my mind since October 2007; this was when a friend of mine sent me a report about a drought in Atlanta, Georgia, to which she appended this comment:
  
"The ominous lesson: if most people can't understand something as immediate and simple as seeing their own reservoir for drinking water going bone dry, they won't change for any less obvious threat.  They have to experience seeing their grass and trees die while they drink bottled water and go unwashed. Anything mechanical needing water won't have any, such as turbines in power plants.  (And the southeast relies heavily on coal for electrical power plants.) Like you say, they are totally disconnected from the natural world and how it sustains them."
  
It resonated like a gong in my head, yet I hadn't been able to find an appropriate place to reflect on this until now. My initial response was harsh, but I expect quite a few people will have sympathy with it:
  
"Wow! What a thought! You may not have said it directly, but what we need is real sufferance that is the direct result of human activity - sufferance  that doesn't take the rest of the ecosystem with it but acts as a big pointy stick to the people causing the problem. Localised droughts are certainly that - wouldn't you love to see Las Vegas run out of water or have a huge blackout?"
  
What would be the reaction to Las Vegas running out of water? It's a difficult one to call, but have no doubt politicians and corporations will clamour to gain advantage from the situation; blame will be apportioned, authorities will be sued, profligate businesses may even be held to account so long as the concept of "Las Vegas" can somehow be maintained. New pipelines will be constructed with the Bechtels of this world getting the contracts; wells will be dug deeper and rivers will be sucked dry...the machine must keep turning, the people mustn't know it is fallible! There will be water riots, most likely, and some people might just realise that things are not how they should be.
  
I never made it to the end of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" -- it was simply too bleak, and the point had been awfully well made within a couple of chapters. Klein's analysis suggests that a disaster of any type that presents an opportunity for further social suppression and free-market economics will be seized upon by those best placed to do so. If this sounds bleak then it shouldn't do, because - as was seen so vividly in post-Katrina New Orleans and as is being seen as I write across the Northern Hemisphere in this period of uncharacteristically heavy snow - in periods of crisis people become remarkable resourceful; they return to basic human instincts of co-operation and survival. I believe that even though such events are exploited by the system for the benefit of its elite members, they can also be times where the best in humanity is revealed.
  
If those among us that want to rid the world of the hyper-exploitative industrial consumer culture are ready to act in times of hardship, then the fuse for genuine change may be lit at times like this. It would be morally wrong to hope for truly distressing events - we should not hope for anything - but when they do come, we must be ready to hold peoples' hands and tell them that there is another way to live. Collapse

As institutions crumble and the global economic meltdown worsens and morphs into irreversible collapse, many people feel lost and disoriented, especially if they have lost jobs, health care, experienced foreclosure or bankruptcy, and of course, if they have lost the funds which they may have spent decades assuming would be there for them in retirement. The seemingly endless losses of collapse can be terrifying and paralyzing, and it is always easier to complain about the culture than to take action to empower oneself and serve the rest of the community of life on this planet. It may also be tempting to assume that since collapse is inevitable and now moving along unstoppably with a life of its own, there isn't any point in exerting any effort to alleviate the misery it is manifesting everywhere by compassionately serving others, even those who may know or care little about collapse. On one level, it is easier to just sit than to act.

One woman who does not embrace that perspective and who beautifully exemplifies empowerment and service is Kathleen Byrne, R.N., who works essentially two full-time jobs as a hospice nurse and as the proprietor of a cheery boarding house and hostel in rural Vermont. Despite numerous challenges in the past year, Kathleen has been able to thrive by working in two industries which not only pay the bills but feed her soul, namely, hospice care and hospitality. A former restaurant owner and gourmet chef, she offers housing but also serves up a sumptuous cuisine which enhances the feeling of home her guests already experience.

I can't help notice that the words hospitality and hospice come from the same root word having to do with kindness toward guests. For this reason, Kathleen's two jobs complement each other, and she is the perfect person to perform and embellish both tasks.

CB: Thank you Kathleen for your willingness to do this interview. Please tell our readers your thoughts on the current and worsening collapse of industrial civilization. How have you seen it playing out in the past two years, and where do you think it's going to go, particularly in terms of its effects on healthcare and housing?

KB: I saw "The End of Suburbia" and experienced the catastrophe of Katrina within weeks of each other in 2005 and knew then that the dark times were upon us. I have not watched tell-a-vision in over 15 years and so have been able to detox from the nightly news and American culture. Like a character in an apocalyptic novel, I gauge the level of collapse we are experiencing by the news that people bring me from away-such as Truth to Power's Daily News Digest.

This summer, two different sets of environmental refugees came to the Inn. Two Alabamans came to Vermont looking for property because "the summers are too hot in Alabama now." A couple with a two year-old child stayed with me for a few days while looking for property here, fearful over the water supply in Boulder, Colorado.

This week, I received a call from a mental health counselor who wanted help for his 56 year-old client. The man had long been cared for by his father who was now a resident in a nursing home. The placement the counselor had found for the man was no longer suitable, and the only other option was a hotel or homeless shelter.

I have patients who are faced with the option of buying food or medications. I don't need to tell you how this will all play out. We have all read Grapes of Wrath. Eventually, I will be inundated with the homeless and hungry.

CB: As you know, I live in Boulder, and what we know for sure is that there is plenty of water here-for now, but what is alarming is the misuse of it and the possibility of millions more people moving to Colorado. Nevertheless, there will be many communities across the nation and the world in which collapse will produce environmental refugees.

So my next question is: Why do you think it's important to take action in the world, even as everything around us seems to be collapsing?

KB: The answer to this question lies in my Catholic upbringing and the kindness of my mother. The dictates of those early years were to give back to those less fortunate since we had been given so much. I am grateful to my father who emphasized the importance of education, my mother who taught me to read before I started kindergarten and showed me by example to be kind and loving, and the many others I have met in countless books who have reinforced the values of hard work and purpose. My favorites are Howard Zinn, Pema Chodron, and Joseph Campbell. How could I not absorb all this and be grateful and lovingly give back?

A miracle occurred on December 17th, my 64th birthday to underscore this. I celebrated by listening to the Beatles famous song "When I'm 64" and was flooded with emotions as I remembered what life was like in the 60's in our country and for me as a young woman. Life seemed simple then, but I was unformed and unfulfilled and had not yet traveled the path to adulthood. Later in the dark of my birthday night, a former boarder came in out of the Vermont cold, a homeless 68 year-old with a limp and emotional problems. I asked no questions and welcomed him into the warmth of the inn, making sure he had eaten recently. Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in." By trusting me and returning, this man gave me the birthday present that clarified my life's purpose. I am reminded of the stories of countless hobos on the byways during the (other) Great Depression who drew the smiling cat logo in chalk on the sidewalk of the house of the kind-hearted woman. I aspire to be her.

CB: Tell us about your work as a hospice care nurse. What makes it so enlivening and enriching for you personally? How do you feel you are making a difference in a collapsing world?

KB: In 1971, I was a VISTA Volunteer assigned to a Community Action Agency in Anadarko, Oklahoma . It was there that I saw an Indian child with fetal alcohol syndrome, a result of the rampant alcohol abuse among the Indian population. That one shocking moment directed my rather drifting 60's life to nursing school to "make a contribution to the world."

I had felt that this promise would never really come to fruition, but now, after 33 years in the profession, I have the job that allows me to fulfill this promise. I am a nurse for a home care-hospice agency in Vermont. I am privileged to care for people in their own homes with the mission of keeping them there safely. My life's purpose of being of service is fulfilled by every person I am privileged to care for: the Viet Nam Vet with PTSD and a recent amputation; the 75 year-old Vermont farm woman with ovarian cancer; the oxygen dependent woman in a trailer park that lost power after a high wind storm. One morning at 4 AM I drove over a daunting Vermont mountain to help an elderly man living alone in the house in which he was born. He was in pain and had no one to call for help but the home health nurses. The essence of nursing is to care for such an older man who is alone and in pain in the middle of the night. These older Vermonters are stoics who are used to adversity-- to the cold and snowy climate, rural isolation and the 40-mile trip for supplies. These people are my teachers, my sisters, my brothers, my mothers. And so, let me not sit lifeless and unfulfilled when there is so much work to do. Let me contribute to my community of patients bravely soldering on, teaching all of us so much.

CB: Now please tell us about your management of the hostel/boarding house you own. Has it been a profitable enterprise for you in the past year? How do you feel this work makes a difference? What has made it rewarding for you?

KB: The inn ! Oh, my! A huge blessing, great fun and a financial disaster all rolled into one! I think of Loreena McKennitt, the Canadian vocalist and composer, who said in a commencement address at Laurier College in 2002 , "No matter how much you think you know what you want, life sometimes takes you by the scruff of the neck and offers you surprises and changes, other possibilities and opportunities even in the heart of disappointments, and your talents and potential, your capacity to effect change may lie in completely different areas from where you thought they were and sometimes you need to go with this."

And so, the inn that I bought in 2008 with the hopes of it becoming an intentional community has become a boarding house and hostel where travelers and adventurers can find a good meal and a comfortable bed. The boarders get a furnished room and use of the kitchen and dining and living rooms. There have been 12 of them since March, some staying for two days and one for five months. There was a woman who left her husband and needed short-term, temporary shelter; a talented musician/botanist who works for the Forest Service; a writer/editor, and a student on his way to the Art Institute of Chicago. Sometimes there are even guests--like the two sisters cycling from California.

This 2.5 acres of permacultured land at the edge of the Green Mountains and populated by my 16 chickens, 8 cats and Rabbit is not Earth Haven. It is, however, community to the 10 of us who live here, and we have become a family who cares for each other. A baby will be born in March, and there is a beautiful, sweet 15 year-old who is home schooled. At a time in the history of the planet when we have peak oil, climate change, great unemployment and war, we have each other and gardens and the White River in our backyard and the beauty of the Green Mountain National Forest, the wilderness that is the "undiluted work of the Creator". These people and this place have pushed me far beyond my boundaries and are keeping me young....And I have found my community.

CB: You could be living a nice, quiet, isolated life in retirement, but you're obviously not. Tell us why.

KB: I always say with a smile that Goddess looks out for stupid women like me, and She has surely saved me from my father's retirement. My father retired financially secure to his bedroom where he sat for 25 years essentially going crazy from self-absorption. There I was, living in a house I had paid for with money in the bank collecting "social insecurity." The next thing I knew, my loneliness and fear over collapse had propelled me to Vermont. Who knew that I would find the light and the dark you talk about Carolyn - fun, tears, fulfillment , frustration - in other words, a great life.

As Pema Chodron says, "It's not about getting to a place that's really swell." So I have been saved from myself, the self that wanted safety and security where things were really swell. My path now is very different from any darn thing I could have imagined! Let my life continue to make a difference to others. Let me fulfill my purpose on this dark and scary planet. Thank you Carolyn for inviting me to talk with you.

Kathleen may be contacted at: [email protected]

Collapse

This winter solstice is particularly dark. I watch the blood drain from the faces of my progressive friends, disillusioned by their "yeswecan" poster boy who has accomplished little in his first term but the escalation of a despicable war for oil and drugs, and with the stroke of a pen, opened the floodgates for troops and military contractors to rape and pillage yet another piece of the planet. "Welcome to the Golden Arches of Kabul. May I take your order?" The "Hopium" wears off, and we're reminded that it's still winter, and it's still very, very dark.

I contemplate the word "apocalypse" which originates from the Greek word that means "the unveiling". The poster child wins the peace prize, but just hours beforehand, he unleashes hell on earth. Did you see that? The veil was lifted for a few moments and we saw who really owns him.

Humanity is committing suicide in a thousand ways. This week, they all shook hands in Copenhagen and agreed to throw a bone to the climate change militants while genuflecting before corporate capitalism as the supreme deity on earth. The gods have been appeased, but the veil was lifted briefly. Oh my, did you see that? Corruption, scandal, and one climate scientist, Jim Hansen, not only boycotts the entire spectacle, but hopes it will fail because he was able to see through the chicanery even as it was being orchestrated.

A Congress of solidly owned legislators shakes hands and agrees that healthcare has nothing to do with health but only profit for big pharma and the insurance industry. It's all there if you just look. You don't even have to read about it on an alternative news website. Open your eyes because the veil has been torn off, and if you ever wanted to see naked people who can't even find their clothes-who aren't even trying, this is it. But beware because you are a walking pre-existing condition simply because you breathe air.

Over two decades ago as a psychotherapist in training, I worked in the back ward. I have the scars to prove it. I'm fortunate not to have been more severely injured, but more fortunate not to be living the hell I witnessed in the eyes of the patients inhabiting the so-called "mental health unit." Yet unlike the inmates who run the current asylum that is empire, those folks, in that ward, really knew they were crazy. They wanted so badly to die, and they told you that, straight up. They didn't make delusional statements like "this is a necessary war" or "this climate deal was a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" or "hold your nose and vote for it." What's really crazier than the insanity these statements blatantly reveal is the attempt to keep the veil in place. Let's all pretend that industrial civilization is temporarily limping along in some "rough patch" that will invariably, inevitably (because this is America) turn around and re-establish itself in the land of "normal." I'll take a flagrantly violent and suicidal psychotic any day of the week who is excruciatingly aware of their anguish and begs to be allowed to end their misery. Please, I implore you, give me the certifiable schizophrenic who "knows" he is Jesus and that killer ants are crawling all over his body.

No darkness is as dark as that perpetuated by people who insist they are living in the light.

So what's the real deal with the species that sits, as Tim Bennett suggests, like Thelma and Louise, at the edge of the cliff, about to punch the gas of the '66 T Bird into oblivion while taking everything and everyone else in sight with it? Is it really all about hating the culture and its vacuousness that much?

I keep coming back to the dark-and the light. I can't forget how they need each other-like the North and South poles-like every opposite we can possibly imagine that is only truly defined and appreciated by what it isn't. After all I've written here, how dare I talk about the light? Isn't that all just theory? Where's the experience?

Every once in awhile, one of those patients in that back ward would receive the kind of treatment that allowed him or her to walk out the front door with fear and trepidation, but nevertheless committed to staying alive and finding many reasons to contribute to the lives of others. And even more frequently these days, I find individuals and communities that are discovering a deeper meaning and purpose in their lives that they are holding alongside the horrors created by an inexorably suicidal human species. I encounter in the most unexpected places people who are not just sitting and waiting, but working-working hard to contribute to the well being of the community of life. They wish to minimize the suffering that the collapse of empire will entail, but even more importantly, they are doing their work just because-because it makes a difference to others, because it empowers themselves and all the lives they touch, because they can't not do the work, because in doing whatever work they feel called to do, they are finding and fulfilling their purpose in being on this dark and scary planet.

You see it isn't just about jumping off a cliff to end the anguish. It's about finding meaning, and even if we build communities that look like permaculture design on steroids, even if we return to steady-state economics and create burgeoning economies of scale based on cooperation, compassion, creativity-even if we fashion intentional communities that approximate heaven on earth, even if we were to forge a culture of nirvana, it is only by immersing ourselves in the inner transition process that brings emotional and spiritual transformation far beyond anything traditional psychotherapy has to offer-it is only there that we find the meaning and purpose that will move us through the evolutionary threshold on which we stand and make the current cultural nightmare a bit more bearable.

A new kind of human is possible, but it will be experienced only as the old paradigm definition of humanity breathes its last breath. The veils keep falling off the things they have been concealing for more than 5,000 years. Let's keep assisting the unveiling and call what's underneath exactly what it is.

One way to do this is to find and do the work we came here to do and which massive unemployment and underemployment, vs. greasing the wheels of empire, now gives us an excellent opportunity to discover.

Our second job is to become in the indigenous sense of the word, elders of the community. The elder is not necessarily the older. His or her job always was and will be not only the preparation of youth for initiation, but speaking truth and creating beauty. These may seem like contradictory tasks, but they are profoundly complementary. In indigenous cultures, elders are truth-tellers who are often disliked for their directness and candor. Yet they know that this is the job of the elder, and that to do anything less is to betray succeeding generations. At the same time, the elder knows that the horrible truths unveiled must be balanced by the creation of beauty-poems, songs, stories, works of art, and music. In earlier definitions of the word "prophet", it meant not someone who tells what will happen, but what is happening and what is about to happen. Thus the elder must be both a prophet and an artist, for one needs the other and cannot exist without it.

I'm reminded of scenes from the recent movie and novel "The Road" in which "the man" teaches "the boy" that some individuals "carry the fire", and others don't. As the ending reveals, this instruction, as much as the incessant heinous experiences they encountered, made a permanent impression on the boy, and we are led to believe, would be the litmus test on which he relied in a world which many found impossible to endure.

Another poet who was roughly a contemporary of T.S. Eliot was William Butler Yeats. Both lived the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries, and both witnessed the global cataclysm of World War I. Yeats in particular was deeply troubled about where industrial civilization was taking the planet, yet he never relinquished his conviction that its horrors would ultimately bring forth that new kind of human.

At this solstice/nativity moment, Yeats speaks to us of the light that attends the darkness and cannot be extinguished:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And so I ask, on this longest night and shortest day: What beauty did you create today?

And in this very dark moment, are you carrying the fire?

Collapse

I was a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years, and 12 years ago, I felt compelled to leave the profession. At the time, I wasn't clearly aware of why, but today, I realize that some part of me knew that not only was the profession about to disintegrate, but that my talents and skills could be more effectively engaged elsewhere.

I currently live in Boulder, Colorado where I am developing a Transition Counseling and Spiritual Direction practice to reach out to individuals who may be experiencing unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, loss of benefits, loss of retirement, and other crises resulting from the collapse of industrial civilization. I'm also exploring options for working with people by phone as well as in person. As I interact with people hurting from a variety of economic, emotional, physical, and spiritual devastations, I notice that few of them have to be reminded that something is horribly wrong with the culture in which they live. They feel unspeakably betrayed and shattered as a result of the faith they invested in the American dream, and they are now experiencing the nightmare it has become in their personal lives.

Up until perhaps 2008, it might have been useful to bemoan the culture in which we live in an effort to teach our fellow humans that it is killing them and all other earthlings. Today, I find that even if people maintain a persona that we're simply passing through a "rough patch" and that things will get back to normal because after all, this is America, and we will bounce back - just beneath the surface of that particular mask is a profoundly disturbing awareness that we are in dire and unprecedented territory and that a "return to normal" is a tragic chimera.

Because few people are solidly convinced of what this pathetic culture can actually deliver, I'm finding it unnecessary and even counterproductive to keep whining about that reality. What people want and need is a sense that they're not alone, that they're not crazy, that there are many things they can do to enhance their personal empowerment in the context of an unraveling civilization, and very importantly, that there is work for them to do in their neighborhood and community - that they can invest their life force energy there and work with others to prepare for a deepening collapse. Curiously, I'm finding that the latter option is perhaps the most important of all.

I am currently working with Transition Colorado and networking with other Transition groups around the nation and world, but Transition is only one of many venues for involvement with one's community in preparation for the Long Emergency. The opportunities for doing preparatory work with others locally are infinite.

While I believe it is crucial to understand how we have all incorporated the toxicity of the culture on myriad levels, and while it is equally important to buy out of the dominant system, it is extremely important to engage with other awake individuals in preparing for collapse by doing that work together. The time of focusing exclusively on individual childhood wounding, individualistic self-empowerment, coping skills, and personal self-esteem is over. I'm not dismissing these as irrelevant, but humanity has now reached an evolutionary threshold in which we must grow up and evolve together or become extinct.

Evolving together means working together. Incessant navel contemplation and "woundology" enhanced by sitting in groups and attempting to create intimacy is not only narcissistic, but is in some sense, a crime against the earth community because it compartmentalizes humans from their inherent membership in the human and more-than-human families. It fosters a sense of "us and them" and propagates an odious arrogance that "our little group" is better than, wiser than, more evolved than, and more likely to survive than those others hoodwinked by the dominant culture. I'm not sure that at this point in the collapse process that we can engage in this kind of work without inadvertently perpetuating the culture of empire that we proclaim to abhor.

Perhaps even more counterproductive is isolation and an abdication of our human responsibility to serve the earth community. While it may be useful to sit in conversation groups with likeminded folks, it is, in my opinion, our moral obligation to serve the world in which we live, and as stated above, the opportunities for doing so are endless. This is tricky because it means we must create and maintain good boundaries. It means serving but also keeping some distance from the prevailing paradigm. Engaging in service does not mean wallowing in the system, but it does mean affirming that we are part of the earth community, not better than - that we are equally vulnerable, equally fallible, and that by serving, we are joining with our fellow earth inhabitants to carry the vision of a new paradigm, whether that paradigm ever prevails or not.

In her recent blog post, "Lessons From The Edge", Sharon Astyk reminds us of why it's important to carry the vision:

...at the end of the night the sense is this - that though the odds are increasingly small and the abyss below us increasingly vast, what matters most is that we live our lives as though we can succeed, because every bit of harm we prevent and every blow softened matters, and in the end, how you lived matters as much as the winning. Most of what we do may not work, in the sense of preserving it all, but ought to preserve some -and some is a great deal when measured in human lives and happiness.

You see, it isn't about "preventing" collapse or the triumph of a new paradigm, but rather about minimizing the suffering.

Some individuals believe that the ideal model for transcending the culture of empire is the ecovillage or intentional community. There may be a time, in my opinion, when this option is truly viable, but at this stage of collapse, I think not. People who do live in intentional communities usually report that because of the emotional baggage people bring to the community, it is necessary to spend hours daily "processing" these issues in order to resolve conflicts. Generally, if this processing is not done, the community falls apart. That, from my perspective, is because for the most part, non-tribal people are not yet in a situation where they need to create tribes. When they need to do so, they probably will. Until then, we will have isolated ecovillages held together by incessant psychological processing, and how, I ask, is this different from living in a gated community in suburbia?

As Kathy McMahon notes:

Rather than learning to speak more honestly, (a skill I value, highly, by the way), I think that the true therapist encourages people to do more listening and do more real honest work with other people they live around. Meaningful work means local work that will heal and repair the world around you.

I believe that in addition to service, we must also address our own personal shadow. The shadow is a Jungian term that simply means all within us that we have disowned and said, "That's not me." It can be the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and everything in between. It is more than just taking responsibility for "my part" in an event or an interaction. It is the willingness to explore how something we despise or loathe may actually be a part of us which we project outward onto other individuals and on the culture itself. In other words, how do I act out empire on a daily basis? How do I abuse, exploit, plunder, pillage, manipulate, and use power and control to get what I think I need? How do I subtly or blatantly perpetuate Western civilization's curse of entitlement and "specialness"? Of course, I wouldn't do any of this consciously, because I'm too "enlightened", right? Wrong. That's why rigorous exploration of the shadow is so crucial.

Doing shadow work is very humbling and radically diminishes arrogance because it reveals our sameness and what we have in common with our fellow humans, as opposed to how we believe we are superior. And in fact, in the same way that within the dark recesses of the earth we sometimes find gold, within the most despised parts of ourselves, we find treasures that if "mined" and worked with, provide the compassion, creativity, patience, and humility that allow us to transform the "emperor within."

One piece I found implicit but not explicit in both Erickson's and McMahon's articles is the importance of connecting with something greater than ourselves and other humans. I have attempted in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, to offer not only tools for emotional preparation for collapse, but options for enhancing our relationship with something greater. Some people abhor the word "spiritual", yet some of the most "spiritual" individuals I have ever met call themselves atheists and agnostics. Here again, the contamination of words with the semantics of empire challenges our definitions, but in my experience, I have met few people who aren't "spiritual" in the sense that they are able to stand in awe of forces greater than the personal ego, such as nature, love, beauty, joy, and sorrow - to name only a few. For me, "spiritual" means little more than having a heart and a gut, and where emotion ends and "spiritual" begins, who can say?

Here in Boulder, and in several places around the country, people have started Sacred Demise study groups which simply means they are using the book as a springboard for exploring many other topics. What I know of these groups is that they are not intended to be venues for ongoing inner work or the creation of intimacy, yet in the process of coming together to work with the book's contents, both seem to occur quite naturally. What I also notice is that folks in these groups are not isolated, but extensively involved in service in their neighborhoods and communities.

Much of the emotional work we may "think" we need to do at this stage of the transition - work that is still primarily optional, will pale by comparison to work that will need to be done as collapse accelerates. Some of the work we are doing now may seem almost irrelevant in the light of intensifying challenges down the road. But all of the work we do now or later will be informed and interpreted by the conditions around us and will only make sense in the light of them.

A very important question for those currently practicing psychotherapy is raised by McMahon:

When our neighborhoods are defined by the five-to-ten miles around our homes, we'll be forced to learn new skills, and being diplomatic will count a whole lot more than honesty all by itself. As therapists, we'd do well to encourage our clients to appreciate the qualities of human connections and interactions by doing thoughtful, tangible and useful things for others in our neighborhood, without an expectation of an immediate payoff. When we learn to be helpful and constructive to others, our oddness or emotional damage will become less important than the way we go about salvaging our humanity. We may well find ourselves in a time when it will be a rare person who has escaped true hardship. Right now, one of every six workers in the U.S. are unemployed or underemployed.

What will our job as psychotherapists be when that number grows to one in five or even one in three?

In the title of this article I have put the word "ends" in quotation marks because I do not believe that the world will end, but certainly the world as we have known it is ending. That includes the institution of psychotherapy which in its traditional form is collapsing as rapidly and as profoundly as every other institution of civilization. Two decades from now, it will bear little resemblance to its present form. One reality of that transition will be that if therapists expect to get paid for their work, they should plan to accept payment in vegetables or chickens because money as we know it, eventually won't exist. Regardless of what happens, however, it is only the work we do in the external world - in our particular places with real human beings, that gives meaning to the work we do in the inner world. If we can spend as much time in the community garden as we do on the couch, then perhaps it will serve us to have a shrink as the world ends. Or perhaps as awake individuals strive to maintain this balance, less therapy will be needed and our roles as therapists as we know them will become obsolete. We will then discover other gifts to offer our communities.

I have written much about initiation, more recently an article entitled "Humanity's Rite of Passage: A World Tended By Adults." The initiated woman or man knows that the world is not a perfect place and that if it were, he or she would probably not be here because his/her gifts would not be needed here. Contempt for the culture serves no one, nor does insistence that our roles in relation to a collapsing empire must function in traditional ways. Collapse will show us where we are most needed and how we can best serve, yes the operative word is serve, our fellow creatures.

Carolyn may be contacted at [email protected] This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Collapse

If incessant adrenalin rushes enhanced by stupefying special effects are what you desire, seeing "Collapse" should be postponed until you are ready to hear, see, and feel how Director Chris Smith's uncanny discernment is brilliantly conveyed in one of the most poignant, but inspiring movies of this decade.

When was the last time you saw a movie that opened with a plea for revolution-no, not the kind with bullets and bombs, but the kind Thomas Jefferson said should happen every twenty years-a revolution in our thinking? In fact, the kind of revolution Mike Ruppert calls for in the opening scenes is one that takes place inside us. In fact, that kind of revolution is one he's lived since he was a political science major at UCLA in the seventies. Whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not, you cannot argue that every word that comes out of his mouth in "Collapse", issues from bone-marrow experience-the kind none of us would ever welcome, the kind some of us would have long since committed suicide over, the kind most of us would gladly walk away from. Yet, Mike Ruppert is still alive, still speaking his truth, and amazingly, still able to laugh and play music.

From this point forward in this review, I will refer to Mike Ruppert as simply "Mike." That's because despite the fact that we've had our disagreements in the past and not a few "come to Jesus" moments, this guy named Mike--"Ruppert", "MCR", the LAPD narc, the investigative journalist, and "batshit insane conspiracy theorist" as he has been derisively labeled, is still my friend, and has been for almost a decade.

So what kind of movie opens with the main character coming in, sitting down, lighting a cigarette, and being asked, "So who are you?" Shortly, the viewer may be thinking, "Wish they hadn't asked that question because I really don't want to know." That means that by the time you've heard three minutes of Mike's personal story, you are already appalled and prepared to plug your ears and do anything but hear more. Your first response may be, "That can't be true", yet his story is fully documented in writing and by verified numerous eyewitnesses. In summary, his was no ordinary childhood and certainly no ordinary law enforcement career. All roads led to that career as a highly decorated Los Angeles Police Department detective, and everything after has been impacted by it. For as Mike very clearly states in the movie, that clean, dedicated, twenty-seven year-old cop is still alive in him and has always wanted some answers-and yes, some justice.

But to the same extent the conscientious cop lives within him, so does the cartographer, the map maker, whose life depended on finding out how the world really works as opposed to how we've been told it works. I would say that at least 80% of his work has evolved out of an attempt to save his own life. That brings it down from ivory tower speculation to a cellular, soul level.

PEAK OIL

So if you're still hanging out with doubts about the validity of Peak Oil, you won't be after you watch this movie's second segment. I've heard and read volumes on Peak Oil, but Mike's explanation always rings in my ears more loudly than that of any other because of its clarity and simplicity. However, he admittedly stands on the shoulders of numerous Peak Oil researching giants such as Dale Allen Pfeiffer and what he calls "The Three Wise Men": Colin Campbell, Matt Simmons, and Richard Heinberg.

Mike explains that it requires the mind of a cop to understand how Peak Oil fits into the rest of the map of events in terms of motive, means, and opportunity. It is now the fundamental underpinning of foreign policy-not only that of the United States, but of all industrial nations. Institutionalized denial of Peak Oil or the refusal by our government to tell the truth about it is nothing less than criminal, according to Mike, because it means that we are building our future as if Peak Oil doesn't exist-sacrificing the lives of future generations so that we can live comfortable lives based on a lie. As for "alternative energy options", I've yet to hear anyone surpass Mike's explanations of how futile and farcical this notion is in terms of sparing us from a global energy crisis. On a small, local scale, renewable energy is necessary and useful, but it is an untenable solution for the long-term, big picture reality of the end of the age of oil.

THE DEADLY ACCURATE MAP

About the same time that Mike's newsletter, From The Wilderness began publishing stories about Peak Oil, he started connecting the dots between a number of other issues, and several articles published on the website at that time by Catherine Austin Fitts and by Mike, revealed the likelihood of a massive housing and debt bubble that would inevitably burst and result in a global economic meltdown. In his numerous articles and lectures, Mike began admonishing people to get out of debt, buy gold, pay off credit cards, and learn to grow their own food. It is illumining to return to the From The Wilderness website from time to time and revisit the economic forecasts made there which predicted the current crisis superbly. Some aspects of timing and minor details may have fallen short of accuracy, but for the most part, the forecasts were spot-on in terms of the larger picture.

Others, including myself, read, wrote for, and published aspects of the From The Wilderness map which at the time resulted in being scorned and called crazy. Those years from 2001 to the beginning of the economic crash in September, 2008 were especially tough for many of us in terms of being labeled inveterate doom and gloomers. Some of my close friends who got it were calling me "Cassandra Baker" and with good reason.

But neither Mike nor I have broken out the champagne to celebrate how right on target we were during those years because the collapse of civilization and all of its attendant horrors is not something to celebrate. However, we are both buoyed by the number of people who paid attention and acted accordingly and are still doing so today. Likewise, we are inspired and encouraged by the people who have awakened more recently and all those who are just now connecting the dots and experiencing in their bones, the same revolution to which Mike refers in the opening moments of "Collapse."

Fiat Currency, Fractional Reserve Banking, and Compound Interest-these are the only three things you need to know, says Mike, about money. These three inherently comprise a pyramid scheme; in fact, the entire global economy is a pyramid scheme. It is based on the infinite growth paradigm which has now collided with something much more powerful. Our economy is collapsing, but many other countries in the world are collapsing much more rapidly. In summary, the people who have been running the planet are now losing control.

POPULATION

Anyone who has been researching the collapse of industrial civilization understands, as Mike clearly reminds us, that a global population explosion occurred almost simultaneously with the discovery of oil as the 19th century moved into the 20th . Population has steadily increased as the availability of oil has increased, and it is axiomatic that as access to oil decreases, so must the population.

A question that naturally arises from these disturbing realities is whether or not the human race can understand them and change its behavior in time to avert catastrophe. At this point, Mike reminds us of three types of responses to a Titanic-like situation. One is the deer-in-the-headlights response in which one is frozen with fear and surprise and begins to ask, "What does this mean? What do I do?" Another kind of response is, "We know this is happening, we know we're all going to die unless we build lifeboats, so let's get busy doing it." Another group says, "This is the Titanic; it's unsinkable."

Everything is going to break down differently in different places, according to Mike. Currently, we are seeing the bumpy plateau of energy prices which fluctuate wildly. The critical, lethal point of the plateau for the human race is when oil prices spike again, and no one can afford to buy the oil, at which point, everything will shut down.

THE TRANSITION PHASE

What is critical now is for us to begin to put new structures in place before the old infrastructure completely crumbles. That phase could last between 20 years (which would be incredibly fast) to 50 or 100 years. What is crucial is that we don't panic but rather analyze our own local situation to see what structures must be put in place there. Shortages will occur, but most likely, gradually as opposed to abruptly. Specific shortages will happen in specific places for a specific period. Thus, what is important is not to prepare for the end result of collapse, but to prepare for the transition.

When asked if a collapse be "prevented" by human ingenuity, Mike pensively responds with, "No amount of technology, no amount of human ingenuity can overturn the laws of physics and the laws of the universe." Humankind's greatest peril, he asserts, is to believe that it can overturn the law of the universe and "become God."

He very directly admonishes us to: Buy gold, insulate your house, restore the soil around you and grow food in the restored soil; get organic seeds and store them; get a land line and realize that your cell phone will not be available as the system's collapse exacerbates. Local food production is the most fundamental key to human survival in the collapse of industrial civilization.

For example, when the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea and Cuba were desperately dependent on Soviet oil. The two nations adapted to the loss differently. North Korea maintained its rigid communist system, and millions starved. The Cuban government, however, adapted by growing organic food almost everywhere, abandoning the agribusiness model. The idea was to grow food where people were going to eat food, and the result was remarkable resilience-and survival. The phenomenon to which Mike is referring in this section of "Collapse" is extremely well documented in the 2006 film, "The Power of Community". In summary, in the new human paradigm, everything will be local, and as all animals species know, survival must occur in community, not in isolation.

Director Chris Smith has succeeded in capturing the essence of Mike Ruppert, and one aspect of that essence is the monumental load of grief he carries regarding having spent three decades crying "from the wilderness" to humanity to awaken and embrace the new paradigm. Yet even as the grief is poignantly revealed to us through Mike's tears, so is the balance he maintains through savoring love, fun, play, and making people smile-all of which are very instructive to those of us who are consciously preparing for collapse.

Mike reminds us of Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief and comments that currently, our society appears to be caught in the Anger stage. Ironically, the day I began this review was the same day in which the Ft. Hood massacre occurred, followed by another terrifying shooting rampage in Orlando, Florida. The protracted debate on healthcare over the course of 2009 has been punctuated with numerous violent outbursts at town meetings and insane rages against "socialism" by thousands of hurting middle class Americans. Caustic vitriol pervades our crumbling culture, and that chilling reality is exacerbated by mainstream media's massive lies, distortions, and omissions. How we get through this phase, according to Mike, is critical, and unfortunately, we have little in the culture to assist us in moving through it. However, once we do, and once we begin experiencing acceptance, we are then able to discover like-minded "passengers" on the Titanic with whom we can ally to build lifeboats.

I was recently asked if I thought it was possible that I could be "wrong" about Peak Oil and climate change. My response is that it's possible to be wrong about anything. But as Mike so powerfully comments in "Collapse", there is no longer anything to debate. Engaging in debate on these issues is very much like debating whether the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Peak Oil and climate change are happening; what's to debate?

For those who expend energy with political solutions, Mike points out that capitalism, socialism, and communism are terms "that need to be put in the trash can immediately." The only thing the human race will be concerned with in the future is survival, and ideologies and political parties are showing us less than nothing about how to do this. Engaging in large-scale political processes is not only futile, but deprives us of the energy we need to be investing in survival. All these ideologies were created on the premise of infinite resources, and none offer a balance with the planet's resources and other species.

Yes, we have a sincere, likeable guy in the White House, but, says Mike: He's a prisoner-a prisoner of the government, of politics, of the Federal Reserve, of a system that's archaic. Don't make success or failure rest on his shoulders. The only thing any of us can possible change is our minds.

Stop running from your fear, Mike admonishes us, and starting moving toward embracing your fear because therein lies our ability to survive. This will be, he optimistically reminds us, the greatest evolution in human thinking our species has ever known. Do not run away from your fear, your love, or any emotion because that is the life experience. In those emotions we find the richness of art, music, poetry, and all human creations. Our greater work, he says, is to pull that richness out of the rubbish of civilization's paradigm--a comment which bears uncanny resemblance to what I have written in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse.

Asked if he would ever "walk away" from three decades of work, Mike asks: If there was a German in 1932-33 who had the foresight to look ahead and see what the end result of the Third Reich would be, could they have in good conscience turned around and walked away? We are collectively as a species responsible for what may be the greatest holocaust in human history-our own suicide.

While I have no negative comments regarding "Collapse", I do have concerns about two issues which could be interpreted as contradictions. One is Mike's statement in the movie that during the Bush administration, he believes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were paying very close attention to his work. The viewer is left to wonder about his rationale for this bold statement, especially as he concludes the comment with, "that's all I care to say." Three decades of persecution by the powers that be does not, in itself, indicate that any two members of those powers were intensely interested in Mike and his work. So I'm left wondering what he knows that we don't.

Those of us who have been close associates of Mike in the past witnessed his dramatic exodus from Los Angeles to Ashland, Oregon in 2006, based as he said at the time on what a horrible place he believed L.A. would turn out to be in collapse. Yet it is precisely to that city that he returned in 2008. One may be tempted to accuse him of hypocrisy, but only if one does not understand that Mike spent most of his life in L.A., and it is for him "home" in every sense of the word. Some people preparing for collapse choose to relocate to exotic locations; some choose what is familiar and comforting.

The movie draws to a close with Mike's recounting in detail the Hundredth Monkey story. For all its poignancy and sad moments, "Collapse" leaves us with great optimism, joy, possibility, and inspiration. While the logistical focus of the movie is on Mike Ruppert, the ultimate focus is on each of us-on that part of us that knows in every cell of our bodies that we are now in the throes of collapse and that our survival and the meaning of our very existence lies in embracing and to some extent living the Michael C. Ruppert that abides in all of us.

Collapse

One could believe that ocean drilling and oil platforms are old hat and incredibly safe. After all, we hear so little about the problems with drilling platforms. Instead, we are told that the companies can safely drill six miles down under the ocean and seamlessly deliver oil to the maw of the global economy. However, according to the Rig Incident List at Oil Rig Disasters, they list 198 incidents listed from 1956-2007 (most incidents listed are after 1976) which resulted in 1078 fatalities (though there is not fatality data on a number of incidents).

There is a more current example that could serve as a case study of why Arctic Ocean drilling should be avoided. The case study is the West Atlas drilling platform in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia. This oil platform title="Australia fails to plug oil leak , BBC, 10/14/2009">has been leaking for more than two months. Multiple attempts have been made to find and plug the leak; however, they have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, oil continues to pour into the sea, and into the migration route and habitat for marine life - including endangered turtles, humpback whales and others.

There is an attempt to build a nearby "relief well" and pump sludge into the existing well to stop the leak. However, there is now a new problem. The well and rig are now on fire. The fire is the result of another attempt to stop the leak, and efforts thus far have not stopped the fire. (All workers are safe and have been evacuated from the rig.) At this point, the drilling company's (PTTEP Australasia) plan is to continue with the "kill well." There are no estimates of how long that will take.

Now take this incident and move it to the Arctic. Move it to what is considered one of the most sensitive environments in the world with one of the the most extreme climate environments. How long might such a leak go on in those conditions? Months? Years? Until the well ran dry? What would happen if the Arctic ecosystem was drowned in oil? I have no idea, but shudder to think of the death of the Arctic and virtually all life forms within it. Certainly that destruction would not be confined to the Arctic.

Despite the risks and sensitivity of the Arctic, the Obama administration has given "Shell a green light" for offshore drilling in the Beaufort Sea. The noise of the drilling alone could have dramatically negative effects on marine life - particularly the bowhead whale. As reported in The Guardian article:

Whale experts warn that the bowhead stocks are sensitive to noise and could be driven further off shore by the disruption of drilling. That in turn would have an impact on their chances of survival, which have already been harmed by early side-effects of global warming.

There are also fears that any drilling could lead to oil spills which would be impossible to clean up amid the Arctic's broken sea ice.

Drilling in Arctic waters is worse than a bad idea. It is a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, even without an accident, the operations could cause irrevocable damage to already endangered sea life.

Can't we just stop and figure out a way forward that doesn't cause further destruction of a world on the verge of eco-collapse?

As of 11/03/09, the rig fire has reportedly been extinguished

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I would say that the real crux of Time's Up is the challenge of how to keep the human race from continuing to commit suicide. The first 82 pages of the book are devoted to a painstaking explanation of the inextricable connection between humans and all other life forms. The fundamental reality of the connection is that "nothing is so dependent upon other forms of life as humans, the ultimate consumers." Likewise, "everything we do has the potential to disrupt something, knock if off balance as we negotiate the finest of lines; yet that line we are repeatedly stepping over."

Anyone who argues that humans have nothing to do with climate change needs to read these 82 pages because they unequivocally silence that illusion.

Central to Farnish's book is the premise that everything hinges on connection--the human species' connection with everything else. Unfortunately, it is something we must be taught--something that must be explained in words, but something that indigenous peoples know instinctively and need not spend years thinking about.

"It is nothing great and mysterious", says Farnish, "it is simply the necessary instinct that ensures we do not damage the ability of the natural environment to keep us alive. Failure to connect is the reason humanity is pulling the plug on its life-support machine."

Unlike the indigenous person, "the majority of people in the industrial West who identify most strongly with a hyper-consuming way of life, learning how to reconnect out of necessity is a struggle: most of us have never experienced anything but the disconnected lives we inhabit." However, Farnish reassures us, "we have always been connected, we just need to recognize how natural and comfortable it is to be this way."

Farnish reassuringly holds our hand while he helps us take baby steps toward understanding the essence of connection. He leads us into some very personal experiential, contemplative exercises that engage the right brain and allow us to feel connection rather than simply thinking about it.

Civilization, Farnish says, has put us in a "constant state of sensory deprivation; kept in that state in order that we can be willing participants of Industrial Civilization. If we connect with the real world permanently, then the spell will be broken: we will no longer be 'viewers', 'customers', 'consumers', 'voters', 'citizens'; we will just be us."

The author reminds us that:

"We are in the terminal stages of the greatest addiction humanity has ever seen. We live in a constant disconnected haze; drip-fed a cocktail of proto-choice, dreams, lies, fear, abuse, and hope. We are users of this culture, and it feels good--until we need another dose."

Unique to Farnish's analysis is a list of The Tools of Disconnection, that is, ten techniques for keeping us disconnected from each other and the earth, which of course, keeps us disconnected from ourselves:

• Reward us for being good consumers, store managers, marketing executives, investment bankers
• Make us feel good for doing trivial things--local politicians, writers, therapists
• Give us selected freedom--national politicians, judges, dictators
• Pretend we have a choice--vehicle salespeople, travel agents
• Sell us a dream--advertisers, educators, missionaries
• Exploit our trust--scientists, military officers, office managers
• Lie to us--economists, government ministers, public relations officers
• Scare us--journalists, broadcasters, customs officers
• Abuse us--soldiers, police officers, property developers
• Give us hope--religious and spiritual leaders, environmentalists

Whether or not you agree with the occupations Farnish has grouped with these tools of disconnection, the tools themselves make perfect sense. They have been and continue to be remarkably successful in achieving their intent: to keep us in the disconnection addiction.

So what about the "uncivilized solution" contained in the subtitle of Time's Up? First, the author insists, we must face a very difficult reality: Each of us is the system. "You are part of the system; you have to take responsibility for your part of the problem: how does that feel?" The good news, however, is that each of us is far more important than the people higher up in the web because we are "the engine, the energy source, the reason for its continuation." Without our cooperation, our faith, the system would have no energy and then it would cease to exist.

Farnish is adamant that Western civilization is in the process of collapsing, as is the ecosystem. However, each of us can help the process along and thereby minimize the damage by initiating collapse within an economy. This collapse, of course, is already happening because the public is losing confidence in the economy. "The need for confidence is a psychological feature of Industrial Civilization...." The system is extremely fragile because it is desperately dependent on faith in itself.

Two things we must do: Concentrate on the Tools of Disconnection--notice them, avoid them, and live our lives in a manner that abdicates them. Equally important, we must "ensure that useful information stays out there--in the minds of as many people as possible." Beware of the seductions of corporations, especially the oxymoron of the "green corporation."

Farnish states that "It is possible to create a situation where civilization is left to crumble gradually, reducing the impact on humanity, and the sooner this is done, the less the global environment will be harmed. He makes three stellar points that must not be missed:

1. Reconnect with the real world, so that we can understand our close relationship with it in everything we do. The more you connect, the more you will realize how unreal civilization is.
2. Live in such a way that we do not contribute to the expansion of the global economy, reducing our impact on the natural environment in the process. Be aware that authority figures within the system, such as political leaders and corporations, will attempt to provide you with 'green' advice: this advice is designed to ensure that civilization continues, and should be ignored.
3. Create the conditions so that others may also change through education and, even more importantly, undermining the tools that civilization uses to keep us part of the machine. Don't waste time protesting; this changes nothing--that is why it is legal.

A future outside civilization is a better life; one in which we can actually decide for ourselves how we are going to live.

Farnish provides a clearly organized list of "Key Skills For Going Beyond Civilization" in the short-term, in the long-term, and in the medium-term. He emphasizes that "We need people to discuss plans and ideas with, to help us get things off our chests, to laugh and enjoy things together, to just be there when we are feeling low."

I'm thrilled that Farnish perceives civilization through the lens of addiction and consistently coaches us to enrich and enlarge our deeper humanity. However, I fear that he has nearly written off the spiritual dimension of our being as hopelessly contaminated with religion, faith, and submission to authority. With this I must take issue because the very connectedness he counsels us to develop is in itself, in my opinion, the fundamental nutrient of the human soul and is nothing less than a spiritual practice. Navigating collapse and creating a species that is intimately connected with all others, is absolutely contingent on inner, as well as outer, transformation which has nothing to do with swallowing "faith as fact". It is rather about applying the connectedness principle internally as well as externally and experiencing in every cell of the body that there is something greater than the human ego. Unless we become deeply intimate with that "something", we are doomed to create nothing more than a pathetic sequel to the nightmare that Western civilization has become.

In the end, Time's Up leaves us with a momentous choice:

"We can look at the results of the experiment called civilization and feel helpless, or we can look at what we have in ourselves, and what remains undamaged on the Earth and think, 'We can do better.' The future is still ours if we have the determination to survive it and, whether you like it or not, the future will be determined by the decisions you make."

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The truth of the vast reserves comes in an article by John Dizard of the Financial Times. In his article "Shale gas numbers may not add up," Dizard writes: (emphasis mine)

From one end of the known world to the other, which is to say from Boston to Washington and some points in between, there is a consensus among the well informed that one part of a national energy plan is in place. Thanks to the discovery and mapping of huge reserves of gas in shale formations, we have an alternative to dirty old coal, and, possibly, imported oil for transport fuel. A 40 per cent increase in the country's gas reserves! You can thank advanced American technology for that.

Well, you can thank advanced American something, but along with the technology you can also thank the advanced American ability to extract money from investors. The key element of this national characteristic is the willingness to listen carefully to determine what people with money want to hear, and then tell them that. Again and again.

Money, that thing we are told "makes the world go round." If one wants to extract money, then one must convince folks that the "product" is worth buying. In the world of investing, that "product" is making money - not natural gas, or cars, or grapes. In the case of oil and gas, the risks are higher because the failure rate is higher. There are hypotheses that oil and gas should exist some place, but drilling may end up "a dry hole," or far less resource than was thought. Therefore, to get investors (or government/tax payer) money, one has to engage in overselling the potential. This has become more difficult as oil has stayed below $100 a barrel (though that is unlikely to continue).

There is another obstacle. Namely, that the extraction of natural gas (and oil) raises its own problems regardless of how available - or profitable - that might be. The extraction of natural gas (and oil) comes with its own destructive side with toxic chemicals and redirecting and contamination of water supplies.

There is some degree of irony that the term used for extraction is "fracking." Fracking is a mining process where water and chemicals are pressure forced into the ground (or well) to both force the natural gas or oil to the surface, as well as to ease its movement through the ground and pumping process. Fracking potentially pollutes water sources as the fracking mixture escapes into ground water, and by the waste sludge that is pumped up. This is also a water intensive process and therefore diverts fresh water supplies from natural, agricultural, and human use.

This means, that while vast supplies of natural gas may lie just below our feet, the process of obtaining those resources may cause unacceptable damage to human populations and the environment. Fracking may also cause another problem - earthquakes. Increased levels of quake activity in Cleburne, Texas in the wake of fracking activities raises the level of concern about the practice. Given that the process does break down underground rock and soil, it is not a stretch that it could cause earthquakes.

Drilling and extraction companies have largely refused to say what the ingredients of the fracking mixture are by claiming that it is proprietary, and the EPA does not require them to disclose this information because the mixtures are claimed to be "proprietary." However, some energy company executives have also asked for this information. As reported at ProPublica, at least some of the mixture has been determined by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. While, the mixture is broken down, the actual chemicals have not been released. In the NY samples, the composition included 90.6% water, .11% acid, .05% controller, .08% subtractant, etc. In other words, the purpose of the chemicals used, but not the chemicals themselves.

As noted in the ProPublica article:

At issue is whether hydraulic fracturing, and the chemicals it requires, might be responsible for water contamination incidents in drilling areas across the country. The process, which is currently exempt from federal oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act, forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and small amounts of chemicals, into the earth to break rock and release gas. Scientists, including some at the Environmental Protection Agency, have said they can't thoroughly investigate the contamination incidents because the names of the chemicals are protected trade secrets.

The expanded exploration and drilling is meeting increasing resistance from East Coast to West. In the news of late, public protest and activism in Pennsylvania has stopped the plans to drill for natural gas in the northern Pennsylvania watershed. Likewise, a "plan to drill of the Colorado plateau" is meeting strong public resistance.

The impacts of oil and gas exploration in Wyoming is increasingly becoming publicly known. A new documentary, "Split Estate" is bringing attention to the multiple problems being faced by Wyoming residents. There are water contamination issues resulting in health problems, use and contamination of scarce water supplies, and encroachment on property rights and living conditions. The property rights issue ties to the fact that many people own the surface of their property and not what lies beneath it. This is not a new problem and has been an issue in water poor states such as those in the Southwest for quite some time. However, the issue in Wyoming is that drilling operations are being set up within feet of people's homes as exploration rights are granted to oil and natural gas companies. Below is a clip from the documentary "Split Estate:"

Or see at YouTube

We are in an age of global warming which is threatening water supplies across the planet. Even those in water rich areas such as the Pacific Northwest look to shrinking supplies and loss of water reservoirs as winter snowpack and glaciers dwindle. Therefore, massive new drilling expeditions across the country pose a significant threat, and that may exceed concerns about oil and gas supplies. Fracking, and perhaps for resources that are more hyped than real? No frakking way!

Related Articles of Interest
Don't Frack with Our Water!. Polly Howells. In These Times. 10/04/2009.

Water Worries Threaten US Push for Natural Gas. Jon Hurdles. Reuters. 10/01/2009.

DemocracyNow! 9/03/2009 segment Fracking and the Environment: Natural Gas Drilling, Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Contamination:

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In the current moment it is nearly impossible to trust many of the voices in our world that issue from the field of economics. It is safe to say that none of the most esteemed in the field has the slightest idea how to address the global economic crisis. So when I picked up Duane Elgin's book The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?, I was a bit wary when I read about his MBA from Wharton Business School - that is, until I realized that he is also the author of Voluntary Simplicity: Toward A Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich. Even more reassuring is Elgin's work as a social research scientist at SRI International and his work with Joseph Campbell alongside his lifelong commitment to integrate science, economics, and the world's greatest wisdom traditions.

Elgin asserts that on the other side of our growing systems crisis, the world will be a decidedly different place depending on our actions now. We will either have an Earth ruined through conflict or an Earth restored through cooperation. Echoing the perspective of geologian and eco-scholar, Thomas Berry, Elgin states that:

The universe is deeply alive as an evolving and learning system and we humans are on a journey of discovery within it. We are learning to live within a living universe. If we lose sight of where we are (living in a living universe) we profoundly diminish our understanding of who we are...and where we are going....

The book is divided into the three categories above, with a final section on "Actions For The Journey Ahead." Realizing that many readers may not espouse the living universe perspective, Elgin goes to great lengths in the book to establish a rational foundation for his assertion, skillfully marrying the principles of modern science with ancient wisdom. Although I read the entire book, I found the first two sections onerous since I needed little persuasion regarding the scientific basis for arguing the case of a living universe. However, for those who do, Elgin's arguments are intellectually sound and powerfully compelling.

My interest in the book lies in the third section: Where are we going? Elgin wastes no time telling us that we are hanging from the edge of the cliff, but he does not leave us there because he reminds us that at this pregnant time in human history, we are each called to help birth a larger vision of the human journey. The author underscores what I have been asserting for many years and what I reiterated throughout my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, namely, that more than just a successful response to climate disruption and the dwindling supply of cheap oil, we need a compelling story about the human journey that enables us to look beyond looming conflicts over scarce resources. As citizens of the earth, every person has the right and responsibility to contribute to the collective visioning of our journey.

Essential Excerpts from The Living Universe

While it's tempting to get ahead of ourselves, we are at a dangerous time in the transition from separation to communion. We are between two major stages and moving rapidly into a time of planetary initiation. Entering as we are a world system crisis, we must choose whether we will pull together in creative cooperation or pull apart in profound conflict. According to Elgin, the coming decades will reveal the soul of our species and provide the opportunity for a rite of passage from one great trajectory of learning development to another.

A critical step in this supercharged setting is to imagine together the world of our vision. All current signs point to a future of catastrophe and ruin, and it is easy to envision many such scenarios but much harder to visualize a future of opportunity and renewal. The latter is still a vague and unformed possibility in our collective imagination. The bigger the challenges, Elgin implies, the larger the vision required to transform conflict into cooperation and thereby facilitate a more promising future. Not only must we hold an expansive vision, but that vision must be informed by a commitment to a larger story of humanity than civilization has provided.

Some may question the need for understanding the reality of a "living universe", but Elgin argues that it is necessary because understanding it allows us to discover our inextricable place in the fabric of life and expands our empathy as we come to see ourselves as beings of cosmic dimension and participation. Such compassion then becomes the basis for a higher unity that transcends our great diversity--racial, ethnic, sexual, generational, religious, political, economic, and more.

A world divided at the same time that it is facing enormous challenges, attended by the presence of weapons of mass destruction, is a recipe for catastrophe. Thus, unprecedented initiatives for global reflection, reconciliation, and the healing of past wounds are crucial as we endeavor to achieve a sustainable and meaningful future. Whatever our differences of gender, race, class, wealth, religion, or political orientation, we all participate in the deep ecology of consciousness which provides a common ground for meeting, understanding and reconciliation. In fact, if the human community is to live sustainably on the Earth, deep wounds of the human psyche and soul will need to be healed.

The first step in being healed is being heard. Despite a communications revolution which is still accelerating exponentially, humans are just beginning to experience an explosion of conversation. Concurrently, there must be a revolution in fairness, for without it, the world is destined to sink into endless conflict over scarce resources. Elgin reminds us that it was communication that enabled humans to evolve from early hunter-gatherers to the verge of planetary civilization, and it will be communication that enables us to become a bonded human family committed to the well-being of all.

But individual healing is only one aspect of the transformation, rebuilding our cities and neighborhoods into islands of relative self-sufficiency - reducing dependency on distant sources of food, energy, and other material needs - will become the basis for a global economic revolution. The hallmark of this revolution will be simplicity which is simultaneously a personal choice, a civilizational choice, and a species choice. According to Elgin, we will make that choice for a sustainable future with much greater enthusiasm when we recognize that it is a necessary part of a future path that calls forth our species potentials and leads us into ever-greater communion with the living universe.

The alienation of today's massive cities could be replaced with a social and physical architecture sensitive to the psychology of modern tribes and a flowering of diverse communities--most created through retrofitting. One current manifestation of this is the eco-village.

Despite the appeal of eco-villages as a design for sustainable living, there is not time to retrofit and rebuild our existing urban infrastructure before we hit an evolutionary wall. Climate disruption, energy shortages, and other critical trends will overtake us long before we have the opportunity to make a sweeping overhaul in the design and function of our cities and towns; therefore, it is important to turn from the experiments in eco-villages and co-housing and to adapt their designs and principles for successful living to existing urban settings. Without the time to retrofit into well-designed green villages, we must make the most of the existing urban infrastructure and creatively adapt ourselves within it. Global challenges will produce a wave of green innovations for local living--technical, ecological, economic, social, architectural, and more. Lessons learned in eco-villages and co-housing will be important sources of invention and inspiration for a new village movement as existing urban architecture is transformed into human-scale designs for sustainable living.

Grasping the deeper significance of "the living universe" allows us to see ourselves as citizens of the cosmos who are actively engaged in a heroic journey of awakening, and we will then tend to fulfill that self-image. Because the mass media are so powerful in presenting and reinforcing our self-image as a species, it is critical that we use this storytelling machine of mass culture to tell ourselves bigger stories about where we are, who we are, and where we are going. Humanity is growing up and growing into the reality that we are beings of both biological and cosmic dimension.

Thus it is vital that we begin conversations about sustainability at a scale that matches the actual scope of the challenges we face. This is a time for rapid learning and experimentation locally, all the while being mindful of how we connect globally. In order to build a positive future, we must first collectively imagine it. This comes about through conversation, and with local to global communication, we can mobilize ourselves purposefully, and each can contribute their unique talents to the creation of a life-affirming future.

What is the Life Stage of Humanity?

Elgin emphasizes that there are no right answers but that there is a high level of agreement that surprises everyone. With audiences he begins by asking people to discuss the life stage of our species as reflected in our collective behavior. "After five to ten minutes," he says, "I ask them to come up with a 'social average' and choose among these four stages for the species: toddler, teenager, adult, and elder. An overwhelming majority of the groups vote that humanity is in its adolescence. Interestingly, the reasons given are much the same around the world. Then I ask them to consider a second question: What was most important for you in making the journey from adolescence to adulthood?--the premise being that what was important for you at a personal level is probably going to be relevant to the human family at a global level. This conversation reveals that, as important as, for example, a new energy policy may be for humanity's future, even more important are efforts to awaken a new level of collective maturity that includes a more conscious relationship with the living universe.

Curiously, Elgin's book came into my life just days after I wrote "Humanity's Rite of Passage: A World Tended By Adults". It validated my belief that regardless of the strides our species makes in energy policy, carbon reduction, or creating economies of scale, if we do not mature emotionally and spiritually into adult human beings, we will have succeeded only in replicating the current predicament of a world replete with dazzling technological innovation, commandeered by children

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At the same time, however, the majority of citizens, greatly enabled by mainstream media, remain clueless about what is happening around them, or even adversely in their personal lives. Marinated in denial and entitlement, they naively await a "return to normal" and persist in doing more of everything that hasn't worked, isn't working, and never will. So I must ask, how is that humankind, supposedly "the measure of all things" can behave with such recalcitrance and oblivousness to reality?

For the past two decades, alongside engaging in exhaustive research on empire and all that has brought us to civilization's collapse, I have been a student of myth and archetypal psychology, as well as indigenous traditions. The fact that for the most part, these topics are foreign to our culture as a result of Western civilization's inculcation, speaks volumes about our behavior toward ourselves, other humans, and the earth community. So-called "civilized" humanity has been exiled from its rootedness in nature and the organic process of human development so conscientiously observed and nurtured by indigenous peoples. Consequently, the culture of modernity is not only disconnected from the earth, but in a large sense "developmentally disabled". An integral aspect of the disability is modern humanity's disavowal of the initiatory process in the care and training of children.

As I have explained in my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, most indigenous cultures have elaborate initiation procedures for their young people during the age of puberty; however, in the modern world, one does not have to be a member of an indigenous community to experience initiation. In fact, Carl Jung asserted that initiation is an archetype or fundamental motif inherent in the human psyche. That is to say that something in us wants and expects engagement in the initiatory process, not only at the age of puberty, but throughout our human experience. The process is so fundamental, Jung believed, that even if we do not participate in a formal rite of passage ceremony as we transition from youth to adulthood, our human journey will provide us with initiatory events for the purpose of deepening our humanity and our connection with the cosmos and something greater than the human ego.

Examples of initiatory events which humans frequently encounter are loss of meaningful work, loss of livelihood, loss of home, loss of health, loss of relationship, loss of future security, loss of life, or loss of place. I have intentionally reiterated the word "loss" because loss is the hallmark of modernity. The irony is that civilization has promised us inestimable gain but fundamentally delivered infinite loss at every turn of our path toward embracing its demands.

In tribal cultures where formal rites of passage are practiced, it is understood that life on earth is fraught with loss-that in fact, loss is the hallmark of human experience but that the bone-marrow ordeal of the initiatory process grounds the young person moving toward adulthood, by way of loss, into his or her permanent place in the community. Thus, regardless of what losses one may endure, for the initiated man or woman, one's connection with community and with the sacred are constant. As a result, one is equipped to face and navigate loss with remarkable fortitude and grace, not alone, but supported by elders and peers in the process.

I do not wish to idealize tribal cultures or imply that they are without challenges or devoid of dysfunction. Indeed, the more they are encroached upon by civilization, the more dysfunctional they become. My intention is not to focus on indigenous peoples per se, but on the archetype of initiation that I believe inhabits the human psyche. If my premise is correct, then much of how we as a species have arrived at the current predicament of committing planetary suicide makes perfect sense.

Moreover, if the reality of initiation is deeply embedded in our humanity, it is likely that survival and navigation of the collapse of civilization will be enhanced by our perception and response to collapse as an initiatory process.

Furthermore, in our fundamental human origins, we are all indigenous people. Whether or not we claim our indigenous roots, "white roots" do not exist. We are either actively acknowledging our indigenous roots, or we are ignoring them, but in fact, all of humanity has been colonized by civilization, the collapse of which offers us the opportunity to reclaim our heritage and liberate ourselves from conquest.

This then leads to the question: How does an uninitiated species respond to the predicament it has created, and conversely, what is the initiated response to the collapse of civilization?

Capitalism: A Children's Story

The capitalism to which I refer is not that of the small business enterprise which began flourishing in the Middle Ages, but rather corporate capitalism, which is synonymous with the proliferation of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of an elite oligarchy. It is rooted in a world view antithetical to the common good in which certain individuals, by virtue of privilege and a sense of specialness and entitlement, exert influence on neighboring entities and institutions in order to deploy myriad varieties of economic and social control. It is the apotheosis of uninitiated, puerile engagement with the world.

Unfortunately, our awareness of corporate capitalism's treachery and even our contempt for it, does not exclude us from its seductive manipulation, for its roots penetrate our psyches deeply and insidiously. We have been conditioned by industrial civilization far more profoundly than we may ever be able to consciously discern, by a legacy that extends far back in time through innumerable generations. Thus, if we are to astutely prepare for the demise of civilization, we must critically ponder the myriad ways in which we have internalized its fundamental world view and attendant values. Detached as we may be from the day to day trappings of civilization, even as we rail against the evils of corporate capitalism, it behooves us to notice our physical and emotional responses to the topic of the collapse of the systems we proclaim to disavow. Understanding that no sane human being welcomes suffering, death, and untold misery, our emotional responses and ensuing attitudes to the unraveling of civilization may reveal our level of awareness regarding the initiatory process and our participation in it.

What Developmental Disability Looks Like

Around us and even within ourselves, we notice a host of responses to the current predicament. Some of those might be:

**Entitlement: This should not be happening to me. I have worked very hard in my life and deserve to be gainfully employed doing meaningful work. I grew up in a poor or struggling middle-class family, and my parents worked hard to make life better for me. I've paid my dues. I shouldn't have to rent or shop in thrift stores or tighten my belt. After all, this is America, and I deserve to enjoy the American Dream.

**Positive attitude: You can wallow in gloom and doom if you want, but I'm going to maintain a positive outlook. If I look at the negative things that are happening, I'll get stuck in negativity and won't be able to come up with creative solutions. Besides that, I'm afraid I'll get depressed and won't be able to dig myself out of an emotional dungeon.

**There are solutions to these problems: Somehow, someone is going to come up with solutions. Technology and human ingenuity will lead the way. If we just work hard enough, we can create a mass movement that will transform consciousness and the systems that created these problems.

**Sustainability will save the day: If enough people recycle, cut carbon emissions, buy green products, and use renewable energy, we can prevent the collapse of civilization.

**I deal with problems when they happen instead of obsessing about them ahead of time: I don't want to spend my energy worrying about these things now. I'll take action when I need to, and I'm sure that when I need to, I'll make the right decisions.

**I want to enjoy life; I don't want to spend all my time thinking about the future: It's important to live in the here and now, and right now, my family and I are OK. It's mentally unhealthy to be thinking and talking about the collapse of civilization.

**The love/fear polarization: I want to take action, but I don't want to do so out of fear. Fear is not a good motivator. I prefer to focus on love and compassion.

Unfortunately, these attitudes are not only denials of reality, placing their adherents in abject danger, they are self-betrayals. Within each one we hear the echo of the fundamental tenet of civilization: It's all about me and mine. No mention here of future generations; no cognizance of an earth community and the urgent need for working together to care for one another, the planet, or our descendants. Ironically, the self-absorption inherent in these responses is a ghastly form of self-destruction that colludes with civilization in committing planetary suicide. Let us remember that the word "collusion" simply means "the sharing of an illusion"-as in, "recovery is right around the corner; everything is getting better; just hang in there."

What Does Developmental Durability Look Like?

Conversely, what some responses to collapse from the initiated perspective?

**Non-special engagement with humanity: Yes, I've worked hard in my life. From that experience I have gathered many skills which will be useful to me as the earth community undergoes enormous shifts. Because I am not separate from that community and because we are all deeply connected, I am being called, along with all other beings who inhabit the planet, to not only experience these momentous changes, but to contribute my talents and skills to enhancing our common well being in this process.

**A willingness to confront what is, not how I'd like it to be: I do not enjoy looking at unpleasant realities, but if I don't look, then I cannot see, and if I cannot see, I am not serving myself or anyone else. I will look, and I will feel the feelings that surface as I do so. I will remember that within the word "emotion" is the word "motion" which means that feelings are fluid and shift and change like the flow of water. Feeling sad today does not guarantee that I will feel sad tomorrow or that I will become frozen in any one emotion. I will ask my community to look with me, and we will support one another as we do so.

**There may be no solutions to the issues created by humanity's greed, self-absorption, and cruelty. We may be encountering a predicament that cannot be solved but only responded to. How can I and my loved ones and community best respond to these daunting challenges? How can we work together to minimize loss of life and care for each other? If there are no "solutions", then what does this mean? What is the message in this unprecedented reality?

**The crisis the planet now faces is far more immense than responding with mere sustainability. Sustainability means that something lasts, and living sustainably is a natural and inevitable response to living in connection with the earth community. Living in this way at this late hour is unlikely to prevent the collapse of civilization. I will not feed the puerile paradigm of civilization for the sake of supporting green products because it's "the right thing to do" or because it makes me feel good. I want to live sustainably not because it will "save" the earth but because my connection with the earth community compels me to do so.

**I am willing to deal with both the present and the future. It is foolish to only live in the present moment. Time is a tapestry of past, present, and future, and I need to prepare for the future as well as enjoy the present moment. Because I am an adult, I need to be mindful of the well being of myself, my loved ones, and my community, as well as generations that will succeed me, and therefore, I cannot afford to live exclusively in the present.

**Ironically, the more I consider the likely consequences of the future, the more I appreciate the here and now. Each moment, each meal, the reality of having food, shelter, health, friends, and my faculties I savor more intensely because I am aware of the likelihood that in the future, these gifts will be much harder to acquire than they are now. In fact, humans have the capacity to read the indicators of how the future might be based on compelling evidence; not to do so or having done so, then choosing not to prepare would be mentally, physically, and emotionally unhealthy.

**I will not polarize the emotions of love and fear. Fear in humans serves an evolutionary function-to warn of impending danger so that one may take action to prevent harm. From the initiatory perspective, love and fear are complementary, not conflicting, emotions. Through fear, humans often tap into layers of courage that were previously unknown and unused. The word "courage" has its roots in the French word la coeur which means heart. To have courage is to have heart and to be motivated by love and compassion.

In a recent interview with author, Barbara Ehrenreich, she asserts that "positive thinking is permeating our society, from medicine to business, and is even contributing to our financial crisis." Although she does not frame her objections to positive thinking in terms of an uninitiated perspective, her description of positive thinking and its impact on modern civilization accurately describes a world view devoid of initiation. While I do not wish to champion cynicism or clinical depression, the positive thinking craze, which in this country grew out of the Victorian transcendentalist movement, is a hallmark of privilege and has been utilized by the entitled ruling elite to pacify and manipulate the remainder of society.

In indigenous traditions, positive thinking is held differently than in modernity because from the initiated perspective life is a holistic mix of positive, negative, and everything in between. In fact, in its purest application of the indigenous perspective, experiences are what they are, and humans are not wise enough to determine at the outset whether an experience is "good" or "bad." Only from hindsight can we begin to evaluate them. The qualities of joy and celebration are fostered in indigenous traditions, particularly as antidotes to human suffering, but not as positive thinking per se. Rather, one looks squarely at the challenges confronting oneself and the tribe, but a cornucopia of emotions are allowed in the process.

I'm reminded of repeated scenes in the movie "Dances With Wolves" in which medicine man, Kicking Bird, asks his white ally, John Dunbar, how many more white people will be arriving on Lakota land and when. The medicine man's question is typical of what Native Americans in those days who were aware of the burgeoning presence of the white man were asking. While some nineteenth-century Indian people may have turned to alcohol to help them forget the conquest, many did not and wanted to know the specifics of the very bad news of European invasion. Had Dunbar given Kicking Bird anything but the honest answer of, "there will be as many as the stars" or encouraged him to "think positively", the Lakota holy man would have at least lost trust in Dunbar, or worse, decided that he was completely crazy.

The initiatory process of indigenous peoples has developed organically throughout their history as a result of their intimate connection with nature. Anyone closely observing nature comprehends its capriciousness, volatility, uncertainty, and inherent inequities. One species painstakingly nurtures its young only to have a significant number of its offspring annihilated by another species. From the human perspective, nature is extraordinarily cruel. Initiation evolved in part as an attempt by humans to make sense of nature's uncertainties and serves to teach the initiate that life is a series of challenges which evoke all manner of emotions and opportunities for finding meaning in multifarious, bewildering adversity. Thus the initiated person views all harsh conditions as part of the initiatory process-even the conquest and ultimate extinction of his or her tribe.

But initiation in indigenous cultures have served an even more momentous purpose than any of those mentioned above. It was a necessary and pivotal preparation for elderhood, which had little to do with age and everything to do with wisdom. Male and female elders were the overseeing parents of the tribe-guardians of the community's purpose and destiny. All initiatory roads led to becoming an elder whose fundamental function was to mentor new initiates and keep the process of birth, initiation, elderhood, and death intact, for the benefit of present generations and those yet unborn.

American Date Rape

To be uninitiated, psycho-spiritually, is to remain an emotional adolescent in the modern world. Civilization perpetuates the anti-initiation process which fixates human beings on the world of puerile pursuits and guarantees that civilization's mission and values will never be closely examined. Consumerism and fostering the identity of the citizen as consumer, attended by the mandate of positive thinking, delivers the end-product of the eternally adolescent adult who is literally, putty in the hands of the corporate capitalist rapist.

Ehrenreich notes in her interview, as does Michael Moore in "Capitalism: A Love Story", that the interminable, tantalizing carrot held out to the middle and working classes by corporate capitalism has been the hope that "you too can be rich someday" alongside the Horatio Alger "anything is possible in America" delusion. The fantasy has been brilliantly wielded to evoke envy and unfounded admiration for the titans of affluence, holding at bay bone-marrow resentment against the ruling elite for fear that exposing their insidious machinations might permanently preclude the lowly worker from joining their exclusive club. In other words, maybe if I don't criticize the filthy rich, I'll have a better chance of being one of them some day. Or in the words of Barbara Ehrenreich:

I'm saying this is an ideology that takes away all the indignation there might be about extreme economic polarization.

If you think you're going to be rich someday, why would you be resentful of million-dollar bonuses or $10 million CEO salaries, you know? You're going to be there, so it would be against your own self-interest to stand up for your class interests.

Hence, the perpetually adolescent citizen in awe of the wealthy, with internally blathering litanies of positive thinking a la Oprah, Suze Orman, or The Secret reverberating in the mind, is fundamentally incapable of discerning the lethal essence of corporate capitalism or penetrating its odious marketing skullduggery. Thus when the rapist slipped the ruffies of "riches in real estate" or "turn your home into an ATM machine" into the middle class American lexicon, the result was collusion: the sharing of a catastrophic illusion that resulted in colossal financial plunder, leaving the adolescent victims battered, burglarized, and bewildered to awaken and discover that they had participated in the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the human race-at their own expense.

At this point, two things should be self-evident: It is time for the human species to grow up, and it is time for us to frame our experiences of humanity's converging crises through the lens of planetary initiation.

Tribal initiations always involve some type of ordeal in which there is no guarantee that the initiate will physically survive. It is, in fact, an intentional brush with death. In some instances, the initiate has a choice about when to engage in the ritual and always has the choice not to participate at all. However, most choose to participate as a result of a lifetime of preparation for it by the community. And while a young man or woman may have fear or dread of the experience, he or she is well aware by the age of initiation of the personal and community consequences of opting out of the ritual.

In no way am I suggesting that individuals not raised in tribal cultures should participate in literal initiation rituals, but I am proposing that perceiving the collapse of civilization as an initiatory experience is a meaningful, salutary, appropriate, and empowering response to it.

While on the one hand I agree that everyone is at a different level of awareness regarding the demise of Western civilization, I also believe that this should not excuse us from incrementally educating our minds and cultivating emotional resilience in order to navigate future crises. Not all children at the age of five may be ready for kindergarten, but a ten year-old who has never begun a grammar school education is a walking tragedy.

Although many of us speak freely of living in a post-peak or post-industrial or post-petroleum world, we have no clear picture of what that world will look like. What we do know, however, is that navigating the transition to that world and surviving in it is not for the faint of heart. To accomplish either or both will require something beyond a five years' supply of food. In fact, it will demand that we perceive the crisis as an evolutionary threshold-a crossroads in the odyssey of our species that I believe is most accurately understood as an initiation.

Only collapse as initiation can illumine, at the deepest levels of our being, the choices we make as we attempt to transform a devastated civilization. The transition is utterly dependent on inner transformation. Otherwise, we are unlikely to create anything but a mirror image of industrial civilization.

So what might a world forged by initiated adults look like?

Surely it will be a world in which every aspect of human functioning will be carefully designed and lived in intimate connection with the non-human world. (A specific design system, permaculture, is ideal, and it behooves anyone contemplating life after civilization to become familiar with its principles.) It will be a society in which relationships have been transformed and honed by collective suffering and mutual support. The most anxiety-producing events will not be about being stuck in traffic gridlock, being forced to change one's weekly hair styling appointment, or discovering that one's internet server is down. Rather, world views and values will be dictated by having or not having food, water, shelter, personal safety, clothing, physical health, and supportive friends and neighbors.

The world to which I am alluding is a world in which every moment, every encounter, every experience is an initiatory exercise challenging its inhabitants to practice gratitude, compassion, kindness, alertness, discernment, and be present in the body and emotions. These realities will be doorways, not merely to a new society, but most importantly, to a new strain of humanity-a planet protected and nurtured by initiated elders.

No one needs to wait for the dire repercussions of collapse in order to begin the initiatory journey. One need only open the eyes and heart to a deeper level of perception so that "a thousand explanations" will not be necessary.

Collapse

n this interview she talks about the collapse of industrial civilization - what it may look like, reasons for its occurrence, the effects of collapse and, how to relocalize and create sustainable communities in the throes of collapse. Through the lenses of psychology, spiritualism, and history Carolyn explicates that collapse is a dynamic affair, not sudden, but a drawn out process of erosion that will test our subjective relations and our consciousness, while shaking off old paradigms, and what we can do to maintain a sense of peace, pragmatism, and community.

Frank Joseph Smecker: You maintain that the collapse of industrial civilization is occurring now ; can you define collapse? And explain why industrial civilization is eroding at its very foundations?

Carolyn Baker: First of all, I'm talking about a process that is slow - not like falling off of a cliff but more like rolling down a bumpy hill. Most of us know what collapse is beginning to look like. It begins to look like massive departures from organized religions alongside Catholic diocese child-sex scandals. It begins to look like rising unemployment and a growing gap between classes. Wouldn't you agree that an educational system that can only produce standardized children by forcing them to take standardized tests five hours a day, four days a week, is functioning in a state of abject disintegration? Or what about the health care system that is so broken and unequal? Collapse is primarily the demise of the chief institutions such as education, health care, political, financial -

FJS: Collapse can also be recognized on account of its effects upon the ecological balance of the planet such as a burgeoning endangered species list, climate change and melting glaciers - the desiccation of arctic permafrost, the acceleration of droughts and desertification... the list is damn long...

CB: Absolutely - everyday the endangerment or imminent extinction of a species, if not several, is announced. We are reminded of the melting polar ice caps, the plummeting of giant ice shelves into the sea; fires raging in places they seldom had in the past. Yes, the list is sadly long. Aside from the effects and appearance, collapse is mainly the demise of a paradigm of growth, expansion - of domination and control, of separateness. This paradigm is vanishing and it will have to be replaced. My work not only points this out, but is also a tool to educate about inclusion, local community-geared organization, and small-scale production versus pyramidal hierarchy - which clearly doesn't work. It's apparent that the large institutions don't work: federal and state governments are rapidly going bankrupt. Solutions will have to come from relocalized communities. In terms of energy, it's pretty clear now that we've passed 'peak' regarding oil production. This is crucial because we've relied so long on cheap and abundant fossil fuels. No longer is production easy and cheap; we are now moving away from affordable hydrocarbon energy. And the truth is, the whole hierarchy-from-the-top-down approach is no longer working. The big secret (which is really no secret at all) is that the institutions themselves are collapsing and, you can't have a recovery without access to energy and you can't access energy without money - it's a catch twenty-two! We're printing more money to access more energy, which is becoming harder and more expensive to access and produce and, in turn, we are going further into debt thence more bankruptcy. We have come to the end of large bureaucratic government institutions.

FJS: You assert that there is nothing government can do to stop collapse - that there is no large-scale political change that will mitigate collapse, not even major reformation like replacing capitalism with socialism will stop the dominant culture from destroying the planet and marching toward collapse. How so?

CB: Let's face it, a presidential candidate cannot even receive substantial votes, let alone be elected, unless he is solidly in the pocket of the corporate interests of the US - the same corporate interests that rely on unsustainable growth and exploitation of the natural world. Besides, no one candidate is remotely capable of executing a fundamental paradigm shift within the span of four to eight years. As for our 'democratic' process, during the initial stages of the economic meltdown many players in Congress looked the other way - there may be no more than six people in congress I can say I absolutely trust; it truly is the fox guarding the chicken house! Anyway, as I stated earlier, collapse is occurring as a result of specific paradigms that have been held for centuries that are resulting in the destruction of the human and non-human realms. Merely replacing capitalism with socialism will not work. Changing systems is ineffectual not only because an opposite system is still a system but also, most importantly, only the political and economic structures are altered, while the fundamental paradigm - one of control and domination, remains intact. Father Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream Of The Earth , "both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to the vision of industrial progress which more than any other single cause has brought about the disintegration that is taking place throughout the entire planet."

FJS: Apparently, the collapse of industrial civilization is the inevitable outcome of a contrived system inherently intent on growing exponentially in a finite world with set - i.e. invariable - limits. Do you believe that the purpose of "limitless growth" is designated for the notion of progress, a philosophical idea that was latent in the "Christian notion of self-perfection for divine ends," an end in which the future is static and "Heavenly?"

CB: Since the Enlightenment, it has all been about reaching a static age of perfection - which goes against all indigenous wisdom. The first thing that was done to the indigenous by Westerners after colonization was the taking away of indigenous rituals because they were seen as impediments to 'progress.'

FJS: So the whole proselytizing thing can also be seen as a swapping of religions, so to speak - supplanting an indigenous worldview with a 'civilized' worldview that worships production and progress?

CB: To call it a 'swap' is an understatement. To shift indigenous religions with Christianity is a rape - a violation that has led us to where we are now. And if we don't stop to recognize this and don't understand why we are where we are, there is no chance of a new paradigm. I wrote a book a while back called U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You . It's basically a history of the US from 1865 to now, and can be a useful read to know how we got from even there to here, and it is available at my website or at Amazon.

FJS: In your recent book, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path Of Industrial Civilization's Collapse , you have written that "the more we honor and celebrate our inherent animal nature, the more likely we are to effortlessly honor our limits." Would you agree that civilization's transgressions of natural limits is linked to the suppression of our inherent, intuitive animal instincts?

CB: Absolutely. Derrick Jensen wrote in Endgame, Volume I, that: "The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of any economic system." And that, "Any economic system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and really stupid." We're the only species, that I'm aware of, that doesn't honor limits. One of the deeper layers explaining our disconnect from nature is our "fear and loathing of the body," of our instinctual wildness and, our vulnerability to death. This all causes us to distance ourselves from the reality that we are indeed animals. And also, native peoples, as a result of their intimate connection with nature, are glaring reminders of our animal-ness. To be 'civilized' is synonymous with being domesticated, restrained, and repressed, and if we are to participate in instinctual behavior, let's use sex as an example, we are encouraged to do it in a controlled, sanitized, or even surreptitious fashion. I think it's pretty important we all begin to realize that it isn't wild animals that are soiling their nests and desecrating their habitat, but rather humans. I'm sitting here right now looking out at beautiful rolling green hills. I often see deer grazing along the hillside, and you know what? They don't ever come to my house because they have limits! Animals live within the limits of their environment because their lives depend on doing so. In the new paradigm, other animals and creatures will be the elders; they will be the wise ones who will help us remember our animal origins and animal destiny. Animals already teach us surrender, acceptance, and limits. There's a great quote by Eckhart Tolle in which he states: "No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the earth that sustains it...Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats.

FJS: Why do you suppose so many people reject the truth, or at the very least, the notion of, collapse and refuse to ask these necessary questions?

CB: Collapse is terrifying; we're not going to bounce back. Besides, many people are still entrenched in the 'Myth of America' - that anyone, or the US as a whole, can be triumphant. Plus, people who are hurting from bankruptcy, foreclosure, unemployment - it's hard for these folks to accept that this is permanent: it's not going away.

FJS: Decades ago, psychiatrist R.D. Laing developed three rules by which he believed a pathological family (one suffering from abuse, alcoholism, etc.) can keep its pathology hidden from even its own family members. Adherence to these three rules allows perpetrators, victims, and observers to maintain the fantasy that they are all one big, happy family. The rules are: Rule A: Don't [talk about the problems and abject conditions]; Rule A1: Rule A does not exist; Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A1, and/or A2. These rules aren't exclusive to nuclear families but also apply to larger cultures, especially cultures that are violently abusive to its own people and the land, lest the people recognized the flaws of such abject behavior. Would you agree that these rules are adhered to within the dominant culture, heightening collective denial and silence in the wake of collapse?

CB: Exactly - without question. The American culture can be compared to one large dysfunctional family, and it can also be compared to an addiction model. By maintaining denial we enter a very dangerous realm. As Carl Jung emphasized, whatever we deny or pretend to ignore does not go away, but only becomes larger in its power and influence, not only within the psyche, but throughout our external world too. And anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. In 2007, the Pentagon announced that it is conducting simulation exercises in specific US cities in preparation for possible chaotic scenarios resulting from climate change, a nuclear attack, pandemics, or natural disasters. Clearly, law enforcement and the military are anticipating the possibility of dealing with an unruly citizenry. The possibilities of martial law, suspension of the Constitution, and immediate imprisonment for dissenters or generally unruly individuals are daunting - it's no wonder we don't want to think about the reality of collapse and the full extent of its consequences. But again, whatever we deny or ignore only becomes a larger threat. If we don't attend to the reality of collapse that is happening now, we risk not only encountering it without a lack of pragmatic preparation, but we're very likely to deprive the deeper, eternal layers of ourselves, obviating any effective community building.

FJS: Would you agree that hope, righteousness, and 'keeping a positive outlook' also keeps the truth at bay while galvanizing complacency?

CB: Ah yes, hopium .

(There's a brief pause as we both chuckle)

CB: The longer we dwell on false hopes - which I would define a false hope as an external hope: that something out there will fix this, that technology will save us, or that a newly elected president will bring change - the longer we persist in this the harder the collapse will be. Hope must come from within, from inside you, and really, I don't like to use the word 'hope', I don't like it - I prefer 'inspiration.' And let's be honest, calling someone 'doomerish' or 'keeping a positive attitude' that doesn't honestly address today's daunting conditions doesn't change the fact that we are witnessing the unprecedented extinction of 200 species per day; it won't reverse peak-oil or stop famine or resource wars. I believe that new solutions come from holding the dark reality alongside one's vision - what many indigenous called 'holding the tension of opposites.' I say down with hope, up with holding the tension of opposites! As for righteousness, I wrote in Sacred Demise that a righteous attitude often leads to detachment from reality: it bypasses any emotional response one may have to the desperate situation we and all other life are in on this planet - it makes the state of the planet someone else's problem, not ' my ' problem. It implies that one is above emotions and doesn't want to soil his/her 'sanitized' psyche with them. And as for the addiction to a 'positive attitude,' well, upholding the latter in the face of the end of the world as we have known it is beyond irrational - it's a humancentric obsession, as if the only thing that matters as the world burns is to feel good about oneself. And to add to your previous mentioning of R.D. Laing's three rules for a pathological family - anyone who keeps a positive attitude in this culture - the culture of civilization that is killing the planet - killing all of the people and species we all love - that person is not only irrational and deeply afflicted with denial, but is exactly like a member of an abusive family system in which physical and sexual assault are occurring in the home on a daily basis, but that family member insists on 'thinking good thoughts' and resents anyone and everyone who says what is so about the abusive system.

FJS: You also wrote in Sacred Demise that collapse can be seen as a metaphor for growth. For starters, what is the connection, if any, between the dominant culture's fear of death and the ubiquitous fear to confront the reality of collapse? And moreso, can you discuss how growth cannot be attained without requisite loss?

CB: The bottom line of confronting collapse is facing our own mortality. If we refuse to do this, collapse will be horrifying. We need to be more of a culture of adults then of children. We need to accept that there is an end - there is an end to this 'party' we've been having for the last two hundred years or so, as there's an end to each and every one of our individual lives. An integral part of restoring life is the willingness to be present with death. Acknowledging this will help us weather the collapse. The indigenous have known for thousands of years that life is comprised of loss - their traditions, rituals, and ceremonies help deal with loss: they devote a great deal of time and energy into preparation for life's losses and, their traditions teach that loss is an enormous and necessary part of the human experience. Part of becoming a mature, initiated adult is to learn and grow from loss. We just can't grow without it, and, despite the pain, it is food for growth. A huge point in Sacred Demise is my view on the collapse process as comparable to the indigenous view of the cycle of life. First the child is born into life, then later on there is the puberty-initiation process - which is far greater than just a rite of passage - it is a brush with death, a connection with loss, and an emergence into adulthood. What we're experiencing globally with collapse is a global initiation into new growth and true adulthood, elderhood - not age per se - it has more to do with wisdom than age.

FJS: In your introduction to Sacred Demise you write that the collapse of industrial civilization is a "necessary evolutionary trauma in the odyssey of planet earth." Can you explain what you mean by this?

CB: Collapse is undeniably going to be painful. But it will also be an enormous precedent for the transformation of the human consciousness. Again, with loss comes growth - or at the very least, the conditions for growth. We can embrace collapse and accomplish small tribal living and local problem solving - this is really a tremendous opportunity to organize locally. It's very important to hold the visions and potentialities of transitioning in the wake of collapse. One initiative I have become a part of is Transition Town ; this is not a magic, silver bullet but it is a viable option and vision, and much better to hold onto than only the dark realities. Remember the tension of opposites.

FJS: Can you talk a little about Transition Town ?

CB: Absolutely. Basically, Transition Town is a worldwide network organizing around energy breakdown, but is also a community response to climate change, economic meltdown, and even the possibility of the complete evaporation of the dollar; some Transition Towns are working on creating local currencies. The Transition Town group in Montpelier , Vermont (Transition Town Montpelier) is currently holding a nine-day Village-Building Convergence to educate the local communities regarding the exigencies of collapse such as emergency response and feeding communities. This is a prime example of embracing collapse in order to strengthen community relations and redefine social arrangements so as to be sustainable and non-hierarchical.

FJS: You write that one can find beauty in collapse; what role does beauty play in the throes of collapse?

CB: We must find beauty in everything we do. Part of the reason we're in the paradigm we're in now is that many people lost a sense of, and connection to, beauty in life, in nature on earth. As for collapse, there can be tremendous beauty in preparation for collapse and community organizing. In a section in his book, A World Made By Hand , James Howard Kunstler writes about homemade musical instruments, for example. Combined with dance, voice and music can solidify the community in sacred ritual, merriment, and conviviality as they have for thousands of years among our ancestors. This to me is beautiful. Poetry, too, is so important. Music, art, story telling, and ritual - all of this we must express and enjoy. We have the opportunity to relearn the language of soul. The language of industrial civilization is so linear - the soul wants us to learn a new language. Beauty is that magnificent and mysterious bridge to nature, to ourselves, and to the sacred. If our work is to further open our hearts, allow our egos to die, and fully surrender to the greater self, then beauty is the consummate facilitator of that process.

FJS: There is a poem written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes that you share with your readers in Sacred Demise -

CB: Yes, it's titled Father Earth .

FJS: Yeah, that's the one - it's a very beautiful poem.

There's a two million year-old man no one knows.

They cut into his rivers.

They peeled wide pieces of his hide from his legs.

They left scorch marks on his buttocks.

He did not cry out.

No matter what they did, he did not cry out.

He held firm.

Now he raises his stabbed hands and whispers that we can heal him yet.

We begin the bandages. The rolls of gauze. The gut, the needle, the grafts.

We slowly, carefully, turn his body face up.

And under him, his lifelong lover, the old woman is perfect and unmarked.

He has laid upon his two million year-old woman all this time

Protecting her with his old back, his old scarred back.

And the soil beneath her is fertile and black with her tears.

Collapse

RR: I grew up in Los Angeles very close to LAX.  I am an only child of middle class parents raised in other places, so I had very little family around me as a kid.  Summers on Cape Cod with my mom's sister were my escape.  My father, who grew up on a farm in a very small town, really influenced my love of nature and orientation towards living in balance.

I loved school all the way through.  I majored in chemistry in college and graduate school, although my passion was psychology.  I spent the first fifteen years of my adult life working for small startups in the biotechnology industry in Silicon Valley first as a scientist and then learning everything I could about the operational administrative side of running a small biotech company.  I managed just about every administrative part at one time or another and I especially enjoyed construction management and information technology.  My science background enabled me to translate scientists' needs into words the non-scientist could understand, so I enjoyed bridging the two worlds.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about the current transition for which you are preparing? Please elaborate on that.

RR: Initially, I thought I had the perfect career.  I believed in the pharmaceutical industry and the good I thought it was doing.  Then, four years into my career at my first job, the biotech startup I worked at was swallowed by a huge pharmaceutical company.  I began interacting with this large company and quickly realized how naïve I had been.  That was the first clue that I needed to make a change because my career lacked meaning for me as I was supporting an industry focused on making money.  Six years later I was totally burned out, so I quit work and traveled for 15 months.  Extended travel had been an unfulfilled dream of mine.  I left the country with the idea that I might live somewhere else completely.  While I was traveling, someone told me about a documentary they had seen on CNN about the possibility of the world running out of oil.  I remember feeling frightened.  It was 2000 and I was three months into my journey, and I decided I had better keep on traveling because it seemed likely that the ability to travel would become impossible in the future.  Eventually, I went back to work because I still had a large mortgage, but I was still really unhappy.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?

RR: A few years later I met a man who was really educated about Peak Oil.  He insisted that I read Richard Heinberg's "Power Down," Jim Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" and Matt Savinar's "The Oil Age Is Over."  I was so terrified by Matt's book that I could only read it at lunch time or I couldn't sleep.  I knew intuitively that all three authors were correct about the big picture of what they predicted, and I became very motivated to make big life changes.  Talk about taking the red pill.  I realized that as a middle manager in the biotech industry I had absolutely no practical skills and I really wanted to help people directly.  I also knew that Silicon Valley would be an undesirable place to live during energy descent, so I decided to move.  First, I moved to a small, rural community in Northern California.  Although I learned a lot about homesteading and living off the grid (20 minutes from town, two and half miles up a dirt road), it was simply too remote for me.  After a year I moved to a larger, progressive, semi-rural community that is less remote.  I have been there for two years now and I love it.  Many people in town are aware of what is happening, so I can talk about peak oil without getting a blank look in return.

As part of the transition I decided to become a clinical herbalist and a Somatic Experiencing practitioner (Peter Levine's work).  I am finally doing something that I love.  All of the changes I have made fall under Pat Meadows' "The Theory of Anyway" as explored by Sharon Astyk: http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/search?q=do+the+right+thing.  The changes I made are all changes that deeply feed me and are changes I would make even if collapse were not imminent.

While I have been studying Peak Oil closely for over four years now, recently Chris Martenson's "Crash Course" helped me understand our financial system more deeply and see how it relates to energy usage.  The "Crash Course" also gives me a tool to help educate friends and family in a way that is more palatable than even Richard Heinberg's writings.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

RR: On a deep level I always knew I was doing the right thing.  It is simply logical that a natural resource like petroleum is finite and that spewing toxins into the environment would eventually cause us problems.  I had to titrate the changes and make them a little bit at a time.  Otherwise, I would get really overwhelmed and doubt myself because I was going against everything I had been taught.  I also had to continue immersing myself in information related to Peak Oil because life is still very comfortable and our mainstream lifestyle is still very seductive.  Every once in awhile I still momentarily get caught in it with my few friends that are materialists.  Sometimes I just pause and look around at life as we know it and notice that it all feels really surreal in the face of energy descent.  How long will my cell phone continue to work?  How long will I be able to get information from the internet?  How long will I be able to visit my parents in L.A.?

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?

RR: My parents don't understand at all.  They think I am nuts, and they won't even talk with me about it.  They can't understand why I left what to them was a really great career in order to transition to a lifestyle that makes no sense to them.  I have gone from owning a 2000 square foot house with a mortgage to living in a trailer on someone else's land that is mortgage free.  I am off the grid, and I have a beautiful, large garden.  I am no longer bombarded by the neighbors' wireless networks or traffic noise, and I can see lots of stars at night.  I feel much more in touch with nature's rhythms. 

If something significant happens in the world related to Peak Oil and the financial collapse, then I use it to raise my concerns with my parents.  Otherwise, we don't talk about it.  I have had to make peace with the fact that they will never leave Los Angeles. They both survived significant world events as young people and I really pray they don't have to suffer through the collapse.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

RR: I have been through several cycles of utter despair, hopelessness and anger since I began immersing myself in this information.  Those cycles continue.  It is essential that I face them, ride them like a wave and learn from them.  I always seem to emerge more committed to living a simpler lifestyle.  Also, sometimes I will take an information break for a week or so.  I find that break helps me keep things in perspective.

As part of staring in the face of collapse, I have had to face my own death because in spite of all of the physical preparations I have made, I am as unlikely to survive this transition as the next person.  Rather than giving up, my life now is about how I can best serve in the moment and this has been a huge transition from making life decisions based on logic.  I believe that death is a going home as Charles Eisenstein says.

In this moment I am reflecting on a line from Charles Eisenstein's recent piece called "In The Miracle."  He says "If you find a strong underlying fear, respect it as your protector, a guardian that keeps you from leaving your world before it is time."  I have always struggled with fear more than any other emotion and Eisenstein's statement helps me put my fear in perspective as a guardian so that I honor it and still move forward.

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?

RR: This is where I feel most vulnerable.  I am single and have very little immediate family with whom I am close or can count on when things get really awful.  I am slowly building community where I live now, and it simply takes time.  I just have not lived here long enough.  I get support from a small, close circle of friends who also see what is happening.  What is the most difficult for me is that most of my friends who understand what is happening cognitively have not been willing to make big life changes in response.  I know they have to titrate their experience of what is happening in order to take care of themselves, and it is very frustrating because in my opinion we are quickly running out of time to make significant changes.  I crave like-minded community with whom I can live in a more balanced way.

CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you've made?  As you know I've just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse because it became so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, healthcare, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for collapse.

RR: I believe emotional preparation is the most important kind of preparation we can undertake.  At the end of the day the only resource we can actually count on when something happens is ourselves.  I have been enormously diligent in facing my own demons in addition to making physical preparations.  Spirituality as it relates to nature is a large part of my life.  I find great solace in nurturing the plants in my garden and spending deep time in nature.  I do believe in a higher power and I do trust the greater wisdom of what is happening even though I wish it did not include the suffering of many, many people.  I find myself turning to indigenous spirituality as a way of connecting with nature and our place in nature.  I have been deeply influenced by both Martin Prechtel's books, and I appreciate Sacred Demise as a workbook for facing our own edges.

CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?

RR: My passion is helping others clear their emotional hurdles.  I have an eclectic combination of skillsets I can draw from, and I love that.  I love being able to provide alternatives to our mainstream healthcare system.  I also enjoy using little pieces of my toolbox when I talk to the clerk in the grocery store.  I really want to be a light in all of this, recognizing that just listening to someone can make a huge difference in their life.

CB: I have just one last question for you. I'm wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?

RR: My life purpose is to invite movement wherever I go using whatever combination of my skills are necessary.  If I can help people face collapse with greater ease and an ability to find joy in the moment, then I am doing what I came here to do.

CB: Please add anything else at this point that you'd like to say that i may not have thought to ask you about.

I want to emphasize that I have zero hope that our culture will survive this transition.  We will be forced to simplify how we inhabit this planet.   I am glad about that because I believe abundant energy has allowed the human species to have too great of an impact on the earth and on other species that live here too. 

I wrote a poem a few weeks ago that feels very relevant to our times.  Here it is:

Remember.

There is no such thing as death.

Just a departure from this body.

I am Energy in motion

Life energy

Passionate, essential energy

It's time for courage.

CB: I really, really want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview, and I wish you well in every aspect of your life. You are a powerful role model for our readers and for the world, and may you live and work and be well; may you flourish and continue fulfilling your purpose as so many of the barriers to our doing so unravel, and in many ways, offer us a level of freedom we could not have known as solid citizens of empire.

Collapse

Gaia, the Earth, is our mother and we are engaging in matricide against her. Nonhuman animals are our brethren, and we are engaging in fratricide against them. Intentionally or not, we are on course to emulate Orestes and Cain. As a deeply committed vegan and a practitioner of my own eclectic spirituality-in which I consider nonhuman animals and the Earth to be sacred-this disturbs me in a profound way. Yet I find solace in the fact that Mother Earth was here long before our species became an infestation and that unless we radically change our mode of existence, She will eradicate us like the virulent pests that we are.

Whether we want to admit it or not, nearly all of our psyches have been twisted, perverted and, in some instances, pulverized to the extent that we live and believe some of the most outlandish lies that an objective and sane mind could imagine, were such an observer somehow able to completely extricate themselves from the tapestry of self-deceptions we call "reality." Our inculcation is so deep, the damage to our battered psyches so immense, and the appeal of industrial civilization's alluring artificial and pernicious comforts so strong that many people barricade their minds from the truth with a variety of potent psychological defenses, including projection, ad hominem attacks, scorn and ridicule, anti-intellectualism, appeals to tradition, distortion, rationalization and a host of others.

While it poses a monumental challenge, if we're going to stave off self-destruction and the annihilation of billions more nonhuman animals along the way, we must exorcise the psychic demons that keep our souls shackled to the pathological and metastatic ways in which our species behaves and organizes. Painful and seemingly impossible as it may be, there are a number of deeply ingrained cultural memes and components that we need to significantly alter or obliterate to avert impending disaster.

Patriarchy, which infects and informs the monotheistic religions on which many of our morals, customs, and beliefs are based, serves as a source of many ills. One can smell the stink of adult male privilege wafting from our corridors of power, our universities, our corporations, our churches, our legal system--it's nearly ubiquitous. Women and children are still second class citizens, even in the so-called Westernized "liberal democracies."

The social impact on women and children is troubling enough, but male and masculine predominance has far more profound and deleterious effects on nonhuman animals and the planet. Myths that man as hunter, man as carnivore, and man as uber-predator predominated throughout most of human history and that engaging in such activities enabled us to become social and intelligent still permeate the dominant culture like a foul stench. It is much more likely and demonstrable that our ancestors were gatherers and foragers (a task in which women and men participated at least equally)-eating a diet that was largely herbivorous (with occasional insects and scraps of "meat") and living as potential prey to large carnivores (a position in the food web which forced us to live much more cooperatively and to think critically to protect ourselves, hence sharpening our capacity to communicate and to problem-solve).[2] Our downfall was utilizing the means we developed to defend ourselves as tools of domination and predation.

Social and peer pressure drive many men to suppress and scorn their "feminine" tendencies, or anima. "Weaknesses" like compassion, mercy, love, empathy, kindness and nurturing are discarded in favor of an obsessive devotion, a fetishism really, to "manly" ideals and preoccupations like war, conquest, winning, achieving, dominating, over-powering, and taming. I know this from personal experience. My father, coaches, teachers, and other paternal figures in my life instilled a "warrior mentality" in me and crushed my natural inclinations to empathize and act on my compassion. It took me two decades of fighting, soul searching, parenting, and painful trial and error to find a healthy middle ground. As evidenced by the endless wars we wage, our species has a long way to go towards finding such a balance.

Anthropocentrism and its malevolent spawn, speciesism, are also demons that dwell deep within the collective human psyche. In People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck wrote a compelling argument that narcissistic people, who lack the capacity to empathize and are pathologically self-centered, are evil. What could be more narcissistic than a species of beings that believes that the planet on which they reside and the fellow creatures with whom they share that planet exist for them to use and abuse as they see fit?

As a dedicated animal liberationist, I've studied, read, watched, listened to, and observed the vile manner in which our species exploits, tortures and murders other sentient beings with callous indifference, and in some cases, obscene pleasure. (In the interests of full disclosure, I participated in, and benefited from, nonhuman animal exploitation for years before my conversion to veganism). Yet rarely a day passes without me recoiling in horror at some other form of cruelty we inflict on "lesser" species. And those who rush to defend the abject immorality and myopic idiocy of anthropocentrism and speciesism often crow that humans have subdued nature and are superior beings "at the top of the food chain." It seems more than a bit odd that such "superior" creatures would be so paranoid and insecure that they'd devote incredibly vast amounts of their time, energy and resources to creating, building, and stockpiling weapons. Or that they'd overpopulate and "foul their own nests" to the point of an ecological collapse.

Dr. Seuss was more of a prophet than a clever author of children's books, as evidenced by The Lorax. There's a little Once-ler in all of us, but a lot more in some than others. How many Thneeds do we need? At what point do we come to our senses and collectively abandon consumerism? Must all the Truffula trees be felled, the Bar-ba-loots become extinct, and all water become contaminated with Gloppity Glop and Schloppity Schlop before we come to our senses and reject corporate consumerism as the Earth murdering, self-destructive way of being that it is?

Heavily reinforced by the omniscient, omnipotent god we are indoctrinated to believe exists, [the same god who created Adam (men) in his own image, Eve (women) as an afterthought with one of Adam's ribs, and the rest of creation for our use], bolstered by Calvinist notions that the wealthy have prospered because they are righteous, "justified" by a Cartesianism that holds that nonhuman animals don't have the consciousness to experience pain as humans do, and replicated by the mass addiction to the infotainment of corporate mass media, the dominant culture infects nearly all of us like a virus and has hundreds of millions genuflecting to transparently hyper-ambitious, morally retarded troglodytes like George W. Bush, Sara Palin, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and James Inhofe AND rewarding them with power, influence and affluence.

Each of us needs to consciously work to restore a balance in ourselves and reintegrate into the natural order to the extent that it's possible. Our species has become so addicted to fueling our egos, so obsessed with domination, so compelled to be in control, and so hell-bent on conquest that in an ironic twist, we've become our own predators and victims of our own blind ambition to play God. Despite our Herculean efforts to extricate ourselves from nature and place ourselves upon a pedestal on high, we remain deeply interconnected with the Earth and with the other species of sentient beings we are abusing and destroying wantonly. As we devour them to satiate our appetite for power and wealth, we devour ourselves, making for a bizarre act of self-cannibalization.

Contrary to the pernicious myths of the dominant culture, Homo sapiens will not become an endangered species if we "regress" to organizing in reasonably egalitarian social structures with democratic, decentralized and limited governing bodies; limited industrialization, agriculture, and technology; a high degree of individual autonomy balanced by socioeconomic interactions based on cooperation rather than competition; a renewed reverence for Mother Earth-living as grateful residents rather than savage plunderers; a respect for the rights of nonhuman animals to be free of human-imposed confinement, torture, and slaughter; and a relegation of violence to its proper place-as a means of self-defense or extensional self defense.

If each of us replaces the question, "Is it good for the children?" with "Is it good for the Earth and nonhuman animals?" as we make each significant decision in our lives, we will have gone a long way towards saving billions of nonhuman animal lives and our own species, but that is only one side of the equation.

Given what Adorno coined as the "absurd persistence of domination," personal evolution and the education of others will not be enough to overcome the powerful inertia of 10,000 years of systemic anthropocentrism; monarchy and plutocracy; wholesale violence against people, other animals and the planet; and the masses' strong propensity to fall for propaganda and readily accessible palliatives.

Consider Orwell's observation in "The Road to Wigan Pier:"

"Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life."

Make no mistake about it. Those with vested interests in the status quo-the systemic oppression and exploitation of humans, nonhuman animals, and the Earth alike- are fiercely determined, ruthless, heavily armed, technologically endowed, and highly skilled at manipulating the people. Our culture of domination will not "go gently into that good night." Flower power, granola, and vegan potlucks will not even give the juggernaut of industrial capitalism pause. In conjunction with our personal evolution and the education of others, anti-capitalists and liberationists of all stripes must come together to form a culture of resistance, employing as many tactics as we can imagine with as much intensity and power as we can muster. They "leave all options on the table," so why wouldn't we?

As my best friend in the world would say, "We better get our minds right..."

And once enough of us do, resistance will no longer seem futile.

References:

[1] "The Sixth Extinction" by Niles Eldredge
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html

[2] "Man the Hunter to Homo X: Rethinking Human Nature" by Steve Best
http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/%e2%80%9cman-the-hunter%e2%80%9d-to-homo-x-rethinking-human-nature-2/

Jason Miller, Senior Editor and Founder of TPC, is a tenacious forty something vegan straight edge activist who lives in Kansas and who has a boundless passion for animal liberation and anti-capitalism. Addicted to reading and learning, he is mostly an autodidact, but he studied liberal arts and philosophy at the University of Missouri Kansas City. In early 2005, he founded the radical blog Thomas Paine's Corner. An accomplished and prolific essayist on social and political issues, his writings have appeared on hundreds of alternative media websites over the last few years. He is also a press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and the founder of Bite Club of KC, a grassroots animal rights activist group. You can reach him at [email protected]

Thomas Paine's Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type "TPC subscription" in the subject line and send your email to [email protected]

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at animalliberationpressoffice.org/

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Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

Collapse

In March of 2009, Obama's head of the EPA Ken Salazar decided to remove the grey wolf from the endangered species list (again). The last time this was done under Bush (April 2008), there was a slaughter of wolves in Yellowstone. A coalition of conservation groups filed an injunction to stop the slaughter.

While the groups fight on, the U.S. District Judge in Idaho did not continue the stay on the hunt. The "season" opened yesterday in Idaho, and will open on September 15th in Montana. Idaho sold 10,000 tags to kill 220 wolves, and Montana will allow 75 kills. In both cases, this is roughly one-fifth of the estimated population.

Why in the world are we hunting predators in the twenty-first century? We already have reduced most predator species (including wolves) to a population level which will likely drive them to extinction. In doing so, we have upset a balance so that other species (from rabbits and mice to elk) have population problems which must be controlled by "man."

The decision to remove the wolves from the endangered species list is wrong - scientifically and morally in my opinion. That the EPA continues to fight this in court is maddening. I am outraged. I am heart sick. It was no big surprise when Bush's EPA decided to remove the wolf. After all, he consistently put people in these positions who hated the agencies they were responsible for. However, I erroneously thought the Obama would take a more reasonable approach to the environment - and to the issues of the wolves in particular. Yet another disappointment.

Please Take Action

Despite the open season, conservation groups continue the fight for the wolves - and other species. The Western Watersheds Project remains one of the best resources on the legal battle being fought. You can support the organization at this link. You can also take action through The Defenders of Wildlife writing, donating, and spreading the word. Their lives are in our hands.

Collapse

Compared to life today our lives were simple. We were allowed to roam about the area as far as our legs or our bikes could take us. There were two neighborhood drug stores in walking distance, as was the school. After Brown vs Board of Education brought integration of the public schools, though I had no problem with that personally, racial conflict became rampant in the school and walking to and from or holding school social events was no longer safe. There was chronic fighting, some shootings and knifings, so my parents moved our family to the suburbs. That was a very, very traumatic experience, as there was literally no where to walk to and no place to play outdoors. My brother and I rode the bus to school each morning in the dark and home in the afternoon right after school was out. In a year or so my parents got me a car so I could get to high school and visit friends.

For the past 25 years my husband Paul and I have been co-writing, consulting and training on how to create balanced lives by living and working from home. That was quite novel at the time we started doing it ourselves in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from college and working for the regional Office of Economic Opportunity under Sargent Shriver, I got my Masters in Social Work and opened a private psychotherapy practice in my home. Soon after, Paul brought his public affairs consulting services home too.

Eventually we moved to Los Angeles, then Santa Monica, where I also had a practice and where we managed an outpatient treatment center, did in-house communication training, then began writing full time. Ten years ago my husband Paul and I moved to a small mountain community in the Los Padres National Forest, a nearby faraway place about an hour and forty minutes north of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. Currently I am a PhD Ecopsychologist and the Co-Director of Let's Live Local, a non-profit Transition Initiative. I'm also a US Transition Trainer and my husband is a US Transition Consultant. Our website is Pathways to Transition. I offer online continuing education courses for professionals seeking to understand the emotional aspects of collapse through the Pine Mountain Institute and have a local private practice doing trauma, grief, and loss counseling.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.

SE: In 2004 Paul and I attended a day-long conference on Peak Oil in Santa Barbara where they aired The End of Suburbia and Richard Heinberg was the keynote speaker. That day was like a bucket of cold water in the face, a whack on the side of the head, and a big wake up turning point for us both. On the way home we both agreed this experience meant our lives would never be the same. It sparked years of still-on-going changes in our home, our work, our view of the world.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you? 

In addition to avidly reading books by authors like Heinberg, Orlov, and Kunstler, we began showing End of Suburbia and other documentaries like Everything's Cool and What a Way to Go in our home to get our friends and neighbors on board with what would be happening in our lives. This led to the formation of Let's Live Local (LLL) in 2005 and we became one of the early Post-Carbon Outposts. We are now a non-profit and the 11th official Transition Initiative. We have many projects going and have started many local services that didn't exist before. There is a summary that needs some updating at http://www.letslivelocal.org/. Our newest is a beef co-op we just started with a local rancher who came to us after reading about LLL in the local paper and deciding he doesn't want to ship his small herd of 18 cows to the big slaughter houses any more. He wants to sell his cows locally and rely on a small house that slaughters in a way he believes is more humane, where only one animal is slaughtered at a time, without stress on the cows. We're excited about this even though we don't eat beef ourselves. I think we have to take whatever steps forward people are willing to take and just keep walking.  

In our personal lives we had to do something about our large, energy inefficient home. At first we wanted to downsize to a smaller, energy-efficient home. We thought of finding a more sustainable community to move to, visited a wide variety of locales, and put our home on the market three different times. But it did sell. Meanwhile we began making both our home and our lives more energy efficient. Everything cost far more and took far longer than we would ever have expected. But here's a list of the kind of things what we've done over the past four years. We still have so far to go. 

Auto:

Bought a Prius, which has cut our gas usage in more than half and we may get an electric scooter to do local errands 

Electricity: 

Installed Energy Smart Power Planners on appliances that use significant amounts of electricity such as the refrigerator, freezer, and other appliances.

Switched to the fluorescent bulbs

Have motion detectors both inside and outside to reduce the number of lights we need to turn on

Unplugged most appliances that use energy when off. 

Food:

Buying frequently used grains like spelt and steel-cut oats in bulk.

Compost kitchen waste and use the compost to fertilize the variety of fruit trees and berry bushes we have planted.

Share -shopping with friends to cut down on our all making separate trips in town.

In process of building a cold frame with our neighbors to grow produce next Spring.

Heat:

Sealed air leaks, using caulking, weather stripping, expanding foam, and insulating foam gaskets behind outlets and switch plates on exterior walls.

To keep heat from escaping from through our windows, we have had an e-coating film applied to our windows.

When our propane bills got over $400 a month, we installed a pellet stove to heat our 1st floor. We had a pocket door installed at the top of our 1st floor stairs so heat from the stove will not go upstairs (unless we have guests) and we no longer heat two rooms on the 1st floor and two rooms on the lower level. One of first floor rooms is now our "cold room" where we store fruit, vegetables, wine in the summer, and most of our pellets. 

When our propane bill climbed over $800 a month, we installed a second pellet stove that heats our office on our lower level as well as our first floor, particularly since we cut an opening in our master bedroom floor and now have a radiator grill that allows the pellet heat from below to directly heat our master bedroom.  The combination of the two pellet stoves now gives us an alternative heating system, allowing us to eliminate use of our propane-driven, radiant heat furnace except on the very coldest of winter nights.

Some would say that little things like this don't make enough difference to matter. But the savings alone do matter to us and, though possibly it's too late for such things to prevent a collapse, they can slow it and give us all more time to make the still larger changes we need to make. A recent article in the LA Times, "Los Angeles Residents Reducing Power and water Use," shows just what a difference such little things can make. 

You, Richard Heinberg, Dmitri Orlov, Kathy McMahon, Sharon Astyk, the Peak Moment TV's Yuba City Girls, Janaia and Robyn, Linda Buzzell, Rob Hopkins, Allison and Dave Ewoldt, and always Nature, and Connect founder, Dr. Michael Cohen, have all influenced me on this journey.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

SE: I have often felt like I'm living in two worlds. One where everyone seems to think everything is just fine and I have to operate in that world because it is still much of the daily world I live and work in. Then there's the other world that's always sitting on my shoulder, a world in which I know everything is already different and will be getting a lot more different, totally different, sometime in the future. It is such an odd feeling. I always get this feeling when I read the newspaper. In one section of the page there may be a major story about severe climate change and in the next an article on alfresco kitchens and multi-room patios which are now in vogue for outdoor entertaining. So to me it seems that it's a whole lot of other people who have lost their senses. 

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that? 

SE: Gratefully my husband and I are on the same page. We are supportive of each other and working together to make changes our own lives and in the community. Each of our families is small and all are far away. Our son lives in Northern California and has as growing awareness of what we're facing. My mother is 91 so I really don't want to concern her with collapse. But she is a historian and fully aware of the economic side of what's happening. She talks to me about it often as paralleling the path of ancient Rome. She hopes she will die before things get too difficult. I understand this because I know she lived through the Depression as a child and then through WWII as a young parent. The stock market collapse has already made life harder for her as she living on a shrinking fixed income.

I have attempted to talk to other family members via e-mail and on occasion when I visit in person. But they are not interested in or aware of collapse issues. Once when I broached the subject, one of my in-laws asked me, "Is this a California thing?" They have made it clear they do not want me to send any more articles or web links on such topics. So I don't.

I fear a couple of my close friends think I've gone off the deep end. Even some who were interested and involved at the early stages when we began showing the documentaries. About half of my friends who were involved early dropped out once we began discussing what this all might mean for us here in our community and what we could do. Two seem to be on the verge of coming back, though. I have other friends who think I'm too negative and snap at me when I bring up any collapse-related topics. They believe talking about such negative things will contribute to bringing them into the world.

Fortunately, though, I have a wonderful circle of friends both online and here in Let's Live Local who are very aware and supportive of each other.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

SE: Oh, my. Now here is a question! Every emotion in the book. I get angry that our leaders can be so blind and allow themselves to be controlled by those who can only continue to benefit if we stay on the suicidal path we're on. I get sad about things that I know are not important in the larger scheme of life, but that I will miss in a nostalgic way. The myths we've all lived in. The myths I grew up with. The kind of frivolous, carefree, and naive fun we once had. The myths I even helped to perpetuate in my work in years past. Every so often I am gripped with a gut wrenching fear of having to leave our home and mountain community, not having a place to live, and probably most of all, not being able to get the medications that keep me well. This usually passes now though because I think of my age. I realize that in the larger scheme of things, I and the things I think I need, are not all that important and that's OK, because this is the consequence of our collective history. I work to focus on gratitude for I am very grateful this very day and every day for the many blessings in my life of friends and meaningful work, a wonderful love and  partnership with my husband, and a beautiful home in the most beautiful of forests.

At other times when I see us making progress here in our community like with our pellet and organic produce co-ops, I feel elated and excited and motivated. At other times I feel discouraged because people have to put so many other things in their lives ahead of making the desparately needed changes we need to make in our lives and in our community. Some of the things that come first seem frivolous to me and I wonder, don't they get it? But usually their priorities are understandable.  Some people are really struggling to keep afloat. Nearly everyone is working long hours, often into the night to keep the roofs over their heads. Many retirees who once had time for community involvement lost money in the stock market and have had to go back to work full or part time. Others are losing their homes. People get ill, have accidents, have to devote time to older parents and children ... and worst of all, some have to move away because they can't find work or afford to keep their homes. When lots of such things converge at once I feel very alone, like it is all on me to somehow keep all our efforts going, but fortunately before long someone will call or e-mail me about an extra effort they are doing or an idea they want to work on, or a breakthrough they've had and I feel grateful again. I'm amazed really, that our work here has a life of its own. It just happened today. Someone wrote to say they have donated the cost of the park rental for our October 24th 350 event! 

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?

I already mentioned the extensive support structure I have here in our community and in my online communities - ecopsychology boards, the other ecopsychologists who I work with as faculty in our online Ph.D. program, other eco-nomic practitioners, and colleagues like yourself.

Having always lived in cities where I never had a sense of community (except perhaps in high school) until I moved here, I was astonished to discover what it means to live in a real community - both the good and the bad, the ease and challenge of it. At the same time, to some degree I think our community, perhaps like others, is more split now than at other times. I find there are those who still have a lot of money and have no clue about what's going on. They keep raising assessments for more golf carts and hosting fancy social events. Then there are those who are awake and busy changing how they live, sometimes hindered by local rules and regulations. There are those who are severely challenged because of the economy and don't have time for anything else but to keep their heads above water. Those who are new-agers. Those who are fundamentalist Christians. All with their own views of life that are more front and center now because of the sense of impending crises that looms over us all. 

I believe that in this period of time the challenges of the collapse are accentuating our differences and further separating us. Things we once could cover over lightly and be one community with greater ease have grown into wide fissures that make bridging differences harder. I first began to notice this after the 2000 election. Suddenly people who had socialized easily together before, no longer could or would. And it's become still more pronounced since. I often say to those who get frustrated at times trying get beyond all these differences that we have to focus on tolerance and have very long arms to reach around and embrace everyone.

On the other hand, the transition programs we've started here are bringing people together across all these divides, sharing in activities where none of these concerns are relevant or discussed, i.e. the many wood pellet co-op subscribers and the organic produce co-op subscribers come from all groups and all views, but we don't really know how our views are alike or different because we just want to enjoy these new aspects of our community. 

CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you've made?  As you know, because you wrote the foreword for it, I've just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse because it became so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, healthcare, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for collapse.

SE: As you know, I love your book. I have a very deep nature-based faith. It definitely has shaped my willingness to see and accept what is actually happening and has given me tools to use in my personal and professional life. Nature spirituality and philosophy is truly a godsend because it enables me to make sense of a nonsensical world. I understand that everything that's happening is a natural result of our unnatural way of life. Gratefully it also enables me to have a concept of what a different kind of life we could create if we followed the principles of nature. They guide me in doing what I can in my life and in helping our local community to create such a way of life. I have daily nature practices I draw on.

CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?

SE: What gets me up in the morning and gives meaning to my life is both the exciting projects we keep working on and the forward progress we're making on the one hand and on the other hand the unending beauty of the forest, and life with my husband, our dog and my friends.

CB: I have just one last question for you. I'm wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?

SE: I just had an extended conversation about life purpose on an ecopsych board I belong to. It's a wonderful topic to reflect upon at this time. I believe I am here to continue finding my purpose day to day. I do not believe I have "a" purpose that was set sometime in the past or sealed in stone somewhere. I believe, as Viktor Frankl pointed out to me rather sharply when I couldn't quite grasp it, we have to "find"(to use his words) our purpose as it unfolds moment by moment, seek it out in the ever-evolving, intelligent self-generating web of life of which we are part (not his words).  

CB: PLEASE ADD ANYTHING ELSE AT THIS POINT THAT YOU'D LIKE TO SAY THAT I MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT TO ASK YOU ABOUT.

SE: Just to thank you, Carolyn, for inviting me to reflect on these questions. I have enjoyed articulating and sharing them and find value of doing so.

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The signs seem to indicate that the current economic downturn will continue, and perhaps even intensify over the next couple of years. Part of this has to do with more real estate issues, part with continued job losses, and part with the global economic scenario. For real people, things do not look all that good.

The real estate debacle is not behind us. The chart below from Credit Suisse shows mortgage reset activity remaining high through 2011. Elizabeth Warren, appearing on the August 12, 2009 MSNBC "Morning Joe," warned that another shoe would be dropping as commercial real estate entered a reset period that runs through 2012.

The chart below is an edited version found in an article by Doug Hornig, which is originally from page 47 of the Credit Suisse 2007 report Mortgage Liquidity du Jour: Underestimated No More

The U.S. (and other nations) continue to experience rising unemployment. The upbeat report by the Obama administration stating that the unemployment rate had dropped while the number of new claims increased was based largely on dropping 637,000 people from the labour count. In other words, a statistical change occurred in the number of people actively looking for work. It does not mean they became employed.

All those job losses translated into a 34 % increase in consumer bankruptcies - in July alone. Unemployment (and under-employment) is also fueling ongoing foreclosures. Foreclosures and tight credit drives down housing (and real estate values) putting more people (and businesses) upside down on their loans.

Not surprisingly, the global nature of the economic collapse is reflected in a major hit on global trade. It is down 36% from its peak in July 2008 or about $1.5 trillion.

And so we cycle around and around, sinking a bit lower on each spin. All of the indicators I see do not signal a recovery. However, there are other indicators which could be interpreted with a new meaning: that "recovery" may not mean the same thing any more. If "recovery" means returning to where we were before the current crisis, then the odds seem slim indeed. If "recovery" means returning to the growth path we were on, then the odds seem long beyond calculation. The reasons for this have to do with the physical constraints of the planet. Simply, there would appear to be a limit on the resources and capacity of the planet for continued development, growth, and exploitation.

Below are a series of graphs. The first one is a sample of an exponential growth curve. These curves are characterised by their "J" type formation. The sharpness of the "J" depends upon the rate of growth that the curve is measuring.

Sample of an Exponential Growth Curve

(From: Regents Prep Algebra Lesson

Here is the fossil fuels curve. This represents the dominant form of energy use around the world (and particularly in "developed" nations) at this point in time. Since it is frequently argued that the other human growth curves (population, development, per capita income, etc) are linked to energy availability, then the energy curve is distinctly important in any recovery.

(From: Geothermal Education Office slide 117)

However, fossil fuels are not the only resources that we use. This graph from The New Scientist is instructive (link gives scalable image of graph below).

Of interest is that if global consumption continues at the current rate, the materials indicated have a life expectancy of 58 years (on average). However, if the global rate increase to half of the U.S. current consumption, the expectancy drops to 20 years. Currently the uranium supply is expected to last another 30-40 years, but every nation that has the capability (including the U.S.) wants to dramatically increase the number of nuclear power plants to make up for the loss of fossil fuels (and decrease CO2 emissions). Such an increase would likely halve that 30-40 year estimate.

Certainly one major consideration is the global growth in population. That alone would naturally increase consumption of resources. However, if you add increasing consumption AND population growth, then the impacts increase significantly.

(From: SUSPS)

And of course we have the issue that consistently gets talked about, but not acted on - global warming. Below is a graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. While CO2 is hardly the only contributor to global warming, it is an indicator we ignore at our own peril.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

(From: Planet for Life)

Back to "J" curves.

I would make the proposition that an exponential growth pattern is not sustainable in a closed environment. When we look at fossil fuels, resources, population, CO2 (among a myriad of things we could measure), all are on an exponential curve. This means that any "recovery" will occur in a physical environment of increased demand and (soon) decreased availability. In other words, we cannot return to the previous path and continue on our merry way.

Some of you may be science fiction fans, and have read (or watched) the stories of people mining the junk yards for resources. We could well find ourselves in that situation. In fact, in poorer areas of the world, they are already "mining" our "junk." For example, in China (and elsewhere) electronics - particularly computers - are smelted down for precious metals or stripped for reusable parts. This may become a global (pre)occupation. Reducing consumption - or radically changing what and how we consume - is central to any recovery. So to is firmly addressing the issue of population. The U.S. consistently withdraws global family planning funds because of "religious" considerations. We have to get past this, and put reproductive control in the hands of women. That birth planning and control needs to be in women's hands. Such power increases the voice and status of half the population. It also reduces the number of unintended (or forced) pregnancies.

We need to look real hard at Reduce - Reuse - Recycle, and follow it. There are huge implications of the "three Rs."

Reduce, means consume less. Not good news in a society where consumption is 70% of the economy. However, reducing consumption would be aided by improving the quality and longevity of what is produced (get rid of planned obsolescence). On the other hand, there are those things which really do have a short use expectancy - packaging for example. These things should have an accelerated degradation so they do not persist in the environment, or can be remanufactured to other purposes.

Reduce also has possibilities for the energy scenario. It is estimated that we could globally reduce energy use by 60% by increasing energy efficiency across the board (transportation, electronics, buildings). Such efficiencies can lengthen the time frame to depletion, though not eliminate it.

Reuse means the repurposing of things. The simplest example is using plastic food containers for other storage purposes. However, it would be helpful if they could be used for the same food storage. In other words, instead of everything coming neatly packaged, people could refill their containers from bulk sources. Some stores already have this option for some consumables. Reuse may also be taking items and passing them on, or recycling them for a different purpose (clothing fabric into rugs for example).

Recycling presupposes a use for the recycled material. Right now, there is some recycling that occurs (unevenly across the country and across the world). However, the uses of recycled materials is not what it could be. Right now, the primary use for recycled plastic is outdoor furniture. We only need so many picnic tables in the world. Right now there is a global argument on the use of plastic bags. However, plastic bags are not the only plastic issue. Plastic seems to be the packaging of choice - even for food. It shouldn't be, and it doesn't need to be. It is something that the world can no longer afford to use the way that it does.

We need to look at the future (and the present) very differently. In that examination, we need to reframe the "economy." This may be the hardest for the U.S. to do. We have structured an economic system (and to some extent enforced it globally) where money stands between the individual and virtually everything needed to live (housing, food, power, education, water, medical care ...). This means that folks must get money legally, illegally, or through inheritance, to survive. When that legal path is based on high consumption, then we are chasing our tails through a tunnel of mirages. Profit means getting excess value - from the planet, from the workers, and from consumers. We are at the end of excess, therefore we need to reimagine a different way of living.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with needing to either change our path - or be forced to change our path. The planet provides certain baseline realities that add dimension to the current economic crisis - and strategies to "get out of it." Simply regaining the status quo is not a solution (or at least not one that will last long). In fact, a return to our previous path will only accelerate the next collapse - for which we will have even less capacity to respond. It is critical that we not be lulled to sleep by soothing rhetoric, and demand real answers - and real leadership - from decision makers.

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There are individuals who have been aware of these issues for decades; however, nothing has been done to address them due to the sociopathic nature of greed and lust for power at the highest levels of politics, governance, and commerce. Moreover, the vast majority of the populace has been only too happy to remain in blissful ignorance in order to avoid taking any responsibility and in order to be able to continue to deny that our culture is rotten from within. Apparently, most of us would prefer to watch some fake "reality" television program. We evidently prefer a fabricated reproduction of the real to that which is truly real - rather than face, head on, the truth of life as it actually exists.

The only solution to this trinity of situations anywhere in the world is the creation of sustainable community. There are many kinds of communities in the world, few of which are sustainable, Cuba being an exception.

Sustainable community is critical to the continuation of human life on earth, and many are beginning to rhapsodize about creating local communities. The reality is that the vast majority of individuals in Western culture have absolutely no clue about fashioning such.

This series of articles will attempt to identify, confront, and address the deep challenges of creating and living in sustainable community. It will, of necessity, be a good example of a complex living system. A simple definition of a complex system from Wikipedia states that "a complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts. This characteristic of every system is called emergence and is true of any system, not just complex ones."

This means that, with respect to the emergence of these articles, fluidity, change and chaos are and will be factors as we go along.

The Big Trinity

Climate change is finally making its way into public consciousness and discourse. Increasingly, we will find that our daily lives are irrevocably changed due to changes in climate. Simply put, the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 parts per million. We've already surpassed that number and even if the whole world stopped putting more carbon into the atmosphere this very moment, the carbon levels would continue to climb for a long time.

Clearly, the US, China, Great Britain and India are not about to stop gorging on and spewing non-renewable poison. Coal is the dirtiest of all fuels and coal plants continue to befoul and destroy the planet and the atmosphere, particularly in China and the US. By the way, there is no such thing as "Clean Coal." "Clean Coal" is an oxymoron, and one has to be a moron to believe it.

The US, in particular, rather than creating an all-out mandate for renewable resources, is perfectly willing to engage in endless war. This, in itself, requires enormous infusions of oil. This means that we will be fighting to gain the few remaining drops, and that humanity (not to mention all other forms of life on earth) is in big, deep trouble.

The fossil fuel situation (Peak Oil and Gas) is not understood by the vast majority of the citizenry. That will shortly change, bringing with it tremendous shocks to the public. Everything that we depend upon for life, such as food, water, heating and cooling, transportation, health and medical care, and access to other affordable staples that we have long taken for granted, will become less and less available to the average person.

Economic meltdown is already here - in spades - and the economies of the "first world nations" will never go back to being what they were. Unemployment, the housing crisis, the looming commercial real estate crisis, homelessness, lack of healthcare, increasing costs for food, and lies, greed, and sociopathic malfeasance in the realms of finance, politics, and commerce make daily headlines in primarily alternative news sources. The mainstream media continues its assault on intelligence and reason. Unfortunately, there is not yet a critical mass of individuals that understands spin from truth.

Capitalism is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital (from Late Latin meaning "top of the column" goods), by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

We are now learning that the "free market" has been anything but free and that few citizens have access to "capital" goods.

Why, one might ask, does the foregoing matter? It matters because most individuals in Western culture equate Communism (a political system) with Socialism (an economic system) and have knee jerk reactions to any system other than Capitalism. This is due to a lack of real knowledge and understanding. There have been many people in the past who have warned of the coming demise of capitalism, including the great theologian, Paul Tillich, author of The Courage To Be.

In the years to come, we will all be required to possess a large measure of "the courage to be." The question is: what social form will our "courage to be" take? The human being is nothing if not creative and imaginative, and these new forms of social interaction will be created as necessity demands. More than likely, these new forms will more closely resemble what we think of now as socialism than capitalism and communism. Our new societies and communities, in order to be sustainable, will require it.

The reasons that many people dream of living in some sort of sustainable community are many: they may be sick and tired of politics as usual, power structures, irresponsible, greedy lifestyles, have serious ecological concerns, be worn out with making money just to spend money - for all sorts of reasons based upon their own individual values and beliefs. So many people are starving for an alternative.

The difficulty is that creating a truly sustainable, compassionate, joyful community is anything but easy and requires that we engage not just our heads, but our hearts and souls as well. Absent heart and soul, any community is destined to fail. Western culture, including many of those that dwell therein, is not known for valuing either.

The first impediment to the creation of community, much less sustainable community is that we have no clue as to how to go about doing so. Western Civilization, in its thousands of years' drive for power, control, and wealth, has decimated every indigenous culture on the planet. Western belief systems carry the mantra that "might makes right." Just because we have the power to do something does in no way mean that we should - a fact that we will soon come to realize and confront in our daily lives.

The very people who might have had something to teach us are long dead. Even though there are written remnants of indigenous wisdom that are helpful to us today, reading about indigenous cultural communities is hardly the same as being able to experience them first hand.

What this means is that we are on our own - castaways of our own making - and are completely unprepared to face the tsunami of change that is upon us, due to our unwillingness and inability to face the truth. We in Western culture cannot expect or even hope to avoid the ramifications of our actions and inactions. We have hidden from our own internal personal and cultural darkness and shadows for millennia. The Piper has arrived in town for payment.

In the second installment of this series of articles, we will begin an in-depth discovery and discussion of the primary challenges of the creation of community. Stay tuned.

Martha Ireland is a social entrepreneur, author, poet, educator, public speaker, organizational and social theorist, human performance and business consultant, futurist, and social architect. Visit her website at Sustainable Strategic Solutions. She may be reached at [email protected]

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CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years.

Freeacre: I was born in Portland, Oregon, but after my parents divorced, I was raised in Michigan. I would have graduated from high school in 1967 and probably become a journalist, as I was granted a full scholarship to Michigan State University's School of Journalism. But, instead, I eloped with a draft resister and left for Canada. So, I guess you could say that I have always taken politics personally. I was divorced by the time I was 21. Back in the States, I worked for Robert Kennedy until he was killed and later became a political activist against the Vietnam War. After that, I earned an associates degree and got into mental health and was a trainer of empathy and values clarification at a crisis intervention center. Then, I became a counselor for emotionally disturbed adolescents in Michigan, Oregon, and California over the next 16 years. In 1978, I returned to Oregon, married a man with three children, and had one of our own. We lived in Portland until the recession in 1984 brought us to Jamaica for two years (with Project HOPE), then Napa, California for six, and eventually, we moved to South Lake Tahoe. I began to sell advertising space in the local newspaper, which led to being an outdoors columnist and also a special sections editor. I worked at the Tribune nine years. My husband died of cancer after 25 years of marriage, and I put a new life together with an old friend from Michigan. Murph and I have been together since 2002. For the last five years, we have been retired and living in a forty year-old single wide mobile home on a paid for acre of land in Central Oregon, attempting to create a "lifeboat" for ourselves and family. I guess you could say that we are militantly working class and committed to the concepts of freedom and localizing food production. Murph can tell you about his history.

MURPH'S STORY
I was brought up in a pretty conventional Midwestern family in Michigan. My father was a frustrated city boy who wanted to be a farmer and got an agriculture degree from Purdue but was never able to actually do the farming trip. Both parents were college grads. So through out my childhood I usually had all kinds of animals around, and I learned a lot about husbandry from my dad and worked summer jobs on a variety of farms. When I graduated from high school in 1959, I immediately entered college.

Both of my parents held education, not job training, high on the list of priorities for their kid's futures. I sort of adopted a curiosity about nearly everything and my college background showed that; 320 hours in a huge variety of areas. I didn't actually graduate until I went back to school in the 90's, and then qualified for three degrees.

I was never able to do a sufficient amount of compromising to utilize my education to make money, and so I migrated from one kind of job to another, preferring, generally, to work with my hands. I spent 4 years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, taught for about 3 years, and finally ended up training as a tool and die machinist in the 80's and 90's until I retired from "Working on Maggie's Farm". (A reference to one of Bob Dylan's songs)

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.

Freeacre here. I'm trying to remember my first inkling of the collapse. I think it was around 1998 that I was asked to attend a conference on Sustainability as a press person on the college campus in Tahoe City. I had never heard of the term "sustainability" before. But, a bunch of really fascinating scientists and specialists were there, and they blew me away with concepts of resource depletion, etc. I am pretty sure that Richard Heinberg was there, but I am not certain, as my notes have been lost. Anyway, I was hooked. A year or so later, I got connected to the internet for the first time. I must have looked up "sustainability" and come across Mike Ruppert's "From the Wilderness" website around 2003. I took that very personally as well. That is also when I first became aware of you, Carolyn, on Ruppert's site.

HOW MURPH BEGAN THINKING ABOUT COLLAPSE

I really didn't get much involved in politics until the 70's when I had my own business as a guitar maker, a family, and started to get really nervous concerning the economic and political shenanigans going on at the time. My parents were also very concerned, and we felt that there was a high probability of economic and social collapse back then. My parents bought a quite remote 100 acre plot of ground in the middle of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, to which I moved to in 1980. That collapse didn't happen even though the nation came close, and my family and I stuck it out in Arkansas for 10 years, at which point I moved back to Michigan after a divorce in 1990.

That is when I really got interested in politics. Needing a job, I finally moved to Iowa in the middle of a corn field and worked for an outfit as a machinist in training. Got a computer and started reading a lot more on the subject of politics and economics, tried a bit of investing in the stock market until I figured out that was a racket with few winners. Then Freeacre and myself got together, and I moved to California. The intensity of political and economic investigation started to increase 100 fold. Ruppert's book, "Crossing The Rubicon" and web site looked pretty authentic to me, and we began making plans to divorce ourselves from the greater society.

CB: And then what happened? What lead to the next things, what books, documentaries, and people influenced you?

Freeacre again. When I think about it, I realize that Mike Ruppert's brilliant messages about Peak Oil and the impending economic collapse fell on fertile ground. My plans for life had already been destroyed several times. I was not under any illusions that "things will be okay" or "it can't happen to me." My step-son had gotten a particularly virulent form of cancer when he was thirteen. He underwent 22 months of chemotherapy and a lifetime dose of radiation which left him scarred for life and left us bankrupt. We stupidly filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which left us with forty percent of the medical bill of $200,000. We lost our house and our car. It took us five additional years working three jobs between us while raising our baby and 3 teenagers, one with cancer, to pay off the debt. Years later, after leaving a lucrative job with Project HOPE, we were more or less homeless for a year, You see, after leaving Project HOPE as a trainer for biomedical engineering and looking for suitable employment, my husband lost the caps on his front teeth. Have you ever attempted to get a job with no front teeth? How about trying to get a dentist to do the work when you don't have a job? Forget it. Welcome to my working class world. We were poverty stricken for years. I was a counselor in a very good residential treatment center with years of experience. But the state of California put a $7.25 cent an hour cap on wages for psychiatric child care workers. It took us forever to claw our way out of debt and buy a home in Tahoe. A week after signing the papers on the house, Ralph was diagnosed with fourth stage lung cancer. Nine months later, my husband was dead. I was 50, and my world had already collapsed at least three times. By the time Murph and I got together three years later, and we began to read "From the Wilderness," we realized how vulnerable we were and began to make what Howard Kunstler calls, "alternative arrangements."

I don't think I was reading much else about peak oil and financial collapse. Instead, I was reading metaphysical books, Daniel Quinn, and searching for the feminine face of God. We re-financed the home, paid off our credit cards and the automobile. Then, we took the rest of the money and fixed up the dwelling. We knew that we only had two years before the mortgage re-set. So, we had to get it sold by then. Happily, for us, real estate prices were sky-rocketing. We sold it and had enough money to purchase the cheapest listing in the poorest county in central Oregon with cash. We put in a new well and septic and fenced the property. Then we began composting and building up the soil. We've been doing that for almost five years now. Except for several months where I was the ad director for our tiny community newspaper, I have lived off my savings because I developed a debilitating case of fibro-myalgia in Tahoe and was, of course, turned down for disability payments. We made the savings last until the Social Security kicked in. Today, I am in pain most of the time.

But, I am not alone. Have you ever wondered where all the people go that fall by the wayside in this ruthless climb to the top that we are supposedly all on? Little, backwater small towns would be my answer. About a quarter of the people walking around in the grocery store here look like they could have been the Unibomber. We are fat. We are crippled up. We wheeze when we take a deep breath. We may be left with one breast from a mastectomy or have a stent in the heart. We don't look at all like the folks in the magazines and on T.V.

But, to me, it feels like Murph and I have found our perfect place. I love it here, and I love the people here more and more every day. They are amazing and from all walks of life. Retired from all sorts of lines of work from rocket scientists to loggers - these people may walk in slow motion, but they are the friendliest and most knowledgeable and skilled people as a whole that I have ever known.

When we first arrived here we began to collect a whole library of books and documentaries with which to attempt to educate the locals. We have them all - Kunstler, Heinberg, Baker, Astyk, Jensen, Greer, and Ruppert, along with all the documentaries on Peak Oil and "What a Way to Go". But, we got very few takers. I'll tell you what has worked better for us later.

CB: As you were finding yourself on the journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of our senses?"

Ha! Only almost every day - especially when for so long the dire economic forecasts of collapse seemed to not happen and all is denied in the mainstream media, and the television programming reinforces a reality that doesn't match up at all to ours. We read LATOC, peak resource, alternative news and financial sites every day. We are baking all our own bread, cooking everything from scratch, raising a garden in the high desert and gathering eggs and have disconnected the satellite TV, while our friends are buying RV's and going on trips to see friends and relatives as if everything is just hunky-dory. We often turn to each other and ask, "Are we fucking nuts, or what?"

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?

For years, pretty much everyone thought we were depressing and didn't want to hear what we had to say. After awhile, they'd just say, "Well, you are probably right, but we don't want to hear it. It's too depressing." After sharing that I am not planning to live much beyond 2012. For instance, I was accused of trying to make my sister-in-law an "emotional hostage." I guess I didn't realize how painful that concept is for her and others. So, I've shut up about that now. I have more compassion for those in denial than I used to. I realize that there are some things that are too horrifying for them to deal with. I think it starts very early. Like, "No, Daddy doesn't really love you," or "No, this isn't the greatest, most free place to live." We live in a matrix of lies, and the truth, let's face it, it is very painful. Now that our emphasis is on living this very healthy lifestyle and we are enjoying ourselves and our little "free acre" so much, friends and family are beginning to take much more of an interest and trying some of the things that we have been doing. I think fun and pleasure are more potent agents for change than fear or guilt. That would be my contribution to the movement, I guess. Once people see that you've filled your chest freezer with produce from the garden, they taste your excellent free range eggs, eat some of your yummy fresh bread and rabbit jerky, and learn that you are living on just your Social Security, they want to know your secrets. You don't have to convince them of peak oil or the doom-o-sphere.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face," what kinds of feeling emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

For several years, we were appalled and very angry at the information we were learning about resource depletion, the destruction of the environment, the corruption of the corporations, the complicity of the government, the profiteering, the loss of liberties, the wars, the torture, etc, etc. We began to participate in blogging on a site that bemoaned all these things with wonderful, tension-relieving rants. This evolved into our own site, http://www.troutclancampfire.blogspot.com/.

We still get angry, depressed, appalled, and fearful. But, it seems just the right people have shown up at the cyber campfire and in our physical lives to form a supportive community that is very helpful.

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?

We are very active members of a local Community Action Group that was formed to thwart the county's efforts to bring in millions of federal dollars in grants and collect substantial fees for individual and unaffordable nitrogen reducing septic systems. The county seems to want to encourage resort development and displace the poorer people who live here, so we fight them tooth and nail. We have also joined the local Grange, which supports community agriculture. In connecting with all these people, we find a lot of common ground despite huge differences in politics and religions. One learns to speak many languages, depending on differing frames of reference. For instance, one can look at the malfeasance of the powers that be and conclude that Satan is in charge, or Reptilians, or that sociopathic scum rises to the top. Whatever... no matter what you call it, they still suck and must be defeated.

We started out just bringing muffins or extra eggs to neighbors. This has mushroomed into so much back and forth bartering, gifting and trading that it is just mind-boggling! It seems the closer we get to collapse, the more food, supplies, tools, and tips are shared. The more we give away, the more shows up, despite the fact that we are pagan anarchists and most of our neighbors are Christian fundamentalists. Who woulda thunk it?

CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you've made? As you know, I've just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse because it become so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, health care, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for the collapse.

It's ironic, but I was a licensed Practitioner in the Church of Religious Science for twelve years. But, I could not reconcile the church's teaching on abundance with my visions of collapse. I became critical of the expensive workshops and the seemingly unconscious enthusiasm for consumer goods that seemed to have no connection to resources or what poor wage slave was producing all this stuff. So, when we moved, I did not join another church.

But, now, more and more, I find my spirituality strengthened. Without my even realizing it, my dreams have come true. I have a wonderful relationship, a paid for piece of land. We grow our own food and have great friends. Even the fibro can be interpreted as a sort of gift that has opened my heart to the suffering of others. I have come to know the powerful process of the drumming circle and the cyber tribe. I feel a part of something greater than myself. Most of the metaphysical training that I had has been validated for me.

CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?

Freedom. We feel free. I know that on the macro level, our freedom is being diminished by the day. Many of our Constitutional rights are being compromised or denied altogether. As a people, our financial freedoms are disappearing as well. You name it, we are losing it. But, because we came here five years ago and declared ourselves "free", we have made it so for us. For five years we have gotten up when we wanted to, decided what we wanted to do that day, and pretty much done it. They can't take that away from us. We have imperatives like feeding the animals and watering the garden and going to meetings. But, those are all obligations that we have taken of our own choice. We find the experience of freedom to be thrilling.

CB: I have just one last question for you. I'm wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?

Well, this must sound totally grandiose, coming from a couple of old fuckers living in a forty year old trailer in the high desert of nowheresville, but I have a feeling that we are two souls who came here to help out with the transition that is happening. Call it "The Age of Aquarius." Call it whatever the Mayans called it. Maybe we are those that the Cherokees foretold would come back as Whites with Indian souls. I don't know. But, both of us seem to have been dissatisfied from day one with the culture that we found ourselves in. Murph is more of a warrior. I am more of a healer. But, between the two of us, we are a pretty good team. In terms of the Collapse, when it gets scary and overwhelming, I like to think that, "We were born for this!"

CB: Please add anything else at this point that you'd like to say that I may not have thought of to ask you about.

Well, Carolyn, your book is still coming in the mail, so I have not read it. But, I think that Sacred Demise is a good title. I have been thinking a lot about my demise and coming to terms with it. My goal is to get my mind around the concept of "enough." In our type of sick capitalism, there is no such thing as "enough." Never. Not for a minute. We need more just to break even.

This seems to have spread out into everything else as well. Not enough money or stuff or time. We seem to have lost a sense of enough or plenty. And, until we do cultivate a sense of plenty, I believe that we will always be impoverished and we will continue to deplete the resources of the planet and kill life on earth.

I want to have a sacred demise. I want to be able to live and die with confidence, with strength, gratitude and grace. And, I don't think I can do that without cultivating a sense of "enough."

Aho. That means, "I have spoken." The talking stick is passed.

You may contact Freeacre and Murph at: [email protected] e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

READ PART TWO OF THIS SERIES

READ PART ONE

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It seems that the mainstream media can only focus on one thing at a time, and then are easily distracted from what they are focusing on. Right now, they are focusing on healthcare reform. This is truly an important issue, but all the reporting takes us little closer to understanding the issue. However, it conveniently forced a number of other issues out of the circle - the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global economic crisis, and global warming (to name a few). I am starting with global warming because the news has been dire and under-reported.

Things are changing with global warming - and changing rapidly. How fast warming is happening has been revised once again. It is 2009 and we are told "World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns." The culprits pointed to in the article are increasing solar activity and intensifying El Niño. So it is bad news that warming will speed up again, but solar radiation (or how it impacts the earth) and El Niño themselves are impacted by other sources. A case in point is cloud cover and ozone reduction.

In a classic example one technological advance causing more problems we have dealing with the hole in the ozone. As you may recall, this is a battle that we are supposedly winning. The ozone layer is a primary protector of the planet from solar radiation. The widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - chlorine based materials that were used in refrigeration of all kinds, and as propellants in spray bottles. After finally accepting the link between CFCs and destruction of the ozone layer, there was a major switch to replace CFCs with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). This happened in the 1990s and has been successful in allowing the ozone layer to start rebuilding itself. Yay, technology caused a problem and then solved it - or did it?

Now we find that those ozone-saving HFCs are actually increasing the global warming problem. According to research reported in the Washington Post (7/20/09):

But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide.

While HFCs are still a small part of the global warming gas emissions, they are a growing one. If we do not stop this source soon, then the HFCs may undermine any gains from reducing CO2 emissions.

Given the severity of the consequences of global warming, and the fact that it is accelerating, what massive effort is being made to address the issue?

Well, "ExxonMobil (is) continuing to fund climate sceptic groups." ExxonMobil has continued to fund global warming denier think tanks and lobbying efforts despite publicly claiming that they have stopped such funding.

The G8 met in early July to hammer out a global warming strategy. The compromises to addressing the issue are not moving far enough fast enough, and certainly fall well short of the ever increasing pace of global warming. In fact, the baseline of emissions actually moved 15 years - from 1990 levels to 2005 levels. The also agreed to a 2C cap on global warming. This is one of the stupidest agreements that one could make. We clearly have no handle on even slowing down the rate of either emissions - nor controlling the positive feedback loops that are accelerating warming. What are we going to do when we hit that 2C increase? Shrug? Further, the goal for reducing emissions has been moved from 2020 to 2050. Believe me, this is a problem that we cannot "kick down the road."

Obama certainly takes global warming much more seriously that Bush did; however, is he taking it seriously enough? New evidence is now surfacing on the advance of global warming that was hidden by the Bush administration. That information has been released by Obama. Further while the Bush administration budgeted $1 for global warming for ever $88 budgeted for defense, Obama has narrowed that gap. His budget ratio is 1:9 (excluding additional funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). However, much of that is within the one time economic recovery appropriation. Beyond the recovery money, the Obama budget for global warming is $10.6 billion. (Lobe, IPS, 7/28/09).

Global warming poses a threat that may decimate human population and life on the planet. In fact, if the oceans die (and there is a growing possibility of this), then global warming may be an extinction level event. Global warming is referred to as a "threat multiplier" in security-speak - meaning that it will dramatically aggravate other security issues. Yet, the United States, and virtually every other nation, continue to drag their feet on addressing the issue.

I know we have critical issues we face as a nation and a world, but this one will not wait for us to "get around to it."

Collapse

In his famous work "The Waking." Michigan poet, Theodore Roethke, offered sage advice for navigating unprecedented transitions and cultivating resilience. Wisely, the Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins establishes three domains for people who are awake to these transitions as they endeavor to journey through them into a post-industrial world. Those domains are simply head, hand, and heart, and they refer to-learning: the facts regarding the challenges of Peak Oil and climate change, the mastery of skills necessary for survival in a post-petroleum world, and nurturance the nurturing of that which gives meaning and purpose to our lives in the Long Emergency . A preponderance of the literature addressing transition issues provides information for the head and hand, yet there is a dearth of illumination for the heart-support and validation for our trembling souls as we consciously maneuver our lives and communities into a world humans have never before known.

While millions of our species have experienced the collapse of their civilizations, none before this generation has transitioned from an industrial to a post-industrial lifestyle. None has experienced resource depletion, energy decline, climate change, overpopulation, or broken economic systems in the same manner as that with which we are currently faced. Whether it occurs rapidly or slowly, the collapse of a civilization is always traumatic. Wherever we might be in the process, it is tempting to become pre-occupied with logistical preparation only, i.e., relocating to a sustainable area of the world, learning skills, acquiring tools, storing food, and much more. Yet if one does not address the interior world as well as the exterior, the journey may be immensely daunting, even overwhelming.

What Is Resilience?

For this reason, we must ponder the issue of internal resilience deeply and consciously cultivate it as diligently as we attend to matters of head and hand. Two possible definitions of resilience are:

**the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

**ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

In fact, resilience cannot remain simply a theory; it becomes very personal, very quickly.

Resiliency researcher, Albert Siebert, author of The Resiliency Advantage and The Survivor Personality, comments on has this to say about internal psychological resilience:

Resilience is the process of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. Resilient people overcome adversity, bounce back from setbacks, and can thrive under extreme, on-going pressure without acting in dysfunctional or harmful ways. The most resilient people recover from traumatic experiences stronger, better, and wiser.[1]

Seibert posits five levels of internal resiliency:

*Maintaining one's emotional stability, health, and well being

*Focusing outward and developing good problem-solving skills. (research indicates that problem-focused coping leads to resiliency better than emotion-focused coping).

*Focusing inward and developing strong inner "selfs" such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and a positive self-concept.

*Developing resiliency skills

*Developing the talent for serendipity, -the ability to convert misfortune into good fortune.[2]

I highly recommend Siebert's article on "How To Develop Resiliency Strengths" which offers additional tools for cultivating this crucial psychological skill.[3]

Cognitive Dissonance And Resilience

It is important, I believe, in developing resilience, to understand that like any other skill, it is built up over time and through myriad experiences that test us on a variety of levels. As individuals begin to awaken to the realities of collapse, they almost immediately confront their own cognitive dissonance regarding the cultural milieu in which they live and the facts of industrial civilization's demise.

In the 1950s, social psychologist, Leon Festinger's research on cognitive dissonance revealed that "inconsistency among beliefs or behaviors will cause an uncomfortable psychological tension. This will lead people to change their beliefs to fit their actual behavior, rather than the other way around, as popular wisdom may suggest."[4] Such a response to cognitive dissonance is invariably linked with the defense mechanism of denial. For example, if I do not want to change my behavior in relation to the environment or fossil fuel consumption, I am likely to discount hard evidence regarding climate change and Peak Oil. If I rationally ponder such evidence, however, I may choose to change my behavior, or I may embark on a nihilistic path of "Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow, we're all going to die."

Festinger's research concluded that to release the tension created by cognitive dissonance, we tend to do one of three things:

*Change our behavior.

*Justify our behavior by changing the conflicting cognition.

*Justify our behavior by adding new cognitions.[5]

I hasten to add that the process of confronting and dealing with our cognitive dissonance does not occur exclusively in the mind. Cognitive dissonance and our response to it is almost always emotionally charged and has everything to do with the emotional issues we bring to the dilemma. This is exceedingly important because these very issues may undermine our capacity for resilience.

Choosing to confront the reality of collapse and change our behavior catapults us immediately into a profound sense of loss, and the natural human response to loss is grief. During the 1960s, Swiss psychiatrist, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who pioneered modern research on death and dying, wrote extensively about the stages of grief encountered by humans as a result of loss. Kubler-Ross emphasizes that the stages do not necessarily unfold in a linear fashion but that we may experience two or more simultaneously or within hours or moments of each other.

The first stage, denial, is when we refuse to accept that loss is occurring. In the case of the collapse of civilization, we've all heard the litanies of denial and probably have a few of our own: Natural phenomena are causing climate change, not humans; there's plenty of oil-all we have to do is drill for it in the United States; the economy is in really bad shape now, but it always bounces back eventually; technology will find a way to fix this-the list is endless.

From denial we then move to anger, although frequently, the anger is veiled or misdirected. We may feel angry at our jobs or spouses or children, not fully aware that it is civilization itself with which we feel enraged for its multitudinous violations of our humanity. Or we may feel anger toward the messenger-the doomer/dystopic/downer who announces and articulates collapse in all its fullness. If we are fortunate, we begin to recognize that our anger is at civilization, with very good reason, and we focus our anger there, and stop blaming extraneous people and things.

As the reality of collapse bears down upon us, we may then begin bargaining with collapse or life or a higher power. With one foot still in the domain of denial, we think to ourselves, "If I drive a hybrid car, maybe I can continue living the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed; if I turn out all the lights in rooms I'm not using, maybe I can postpone the consequences of Peak Oil." We may resort to an endless cache of bargaining chips in order to avoid feeling the full emotional impact of collapse which resides in the next stage.

We can stay stuck in any one of the stages of loss, but genuine healing and empowerment are only possible when we fully open to grief-the one emotion that our denial, anger, and bargaining have been defending against. The most compelling and human response to the rape, pillage, and plunder of our planet is deep grief, and the beginning of healing occurs when we consciously open to it.

When we allow ourselves to grieve the innumerable losses which civilization has wrought, our bodies and psyches are freed to move through the grief to a place of acceptance and re-investment. As with the other stages, the last is a process, not an event-a process very different from "worry" because what we accept is not only the inevitability of collapse, but our powerlessness to stop it, as well as our limitations in avoiding its daunting repercussions. We accept that there are no guarantees, and as with any terminal illness, we have the opportunity to look fully into the face of our own mortality and beyond. Only then can we wisely re-invest in living our lives, regardless of outcome, which profoundly facilitates responding to collapse with grounded, prudent preparation.

To allow oneself to experience the various stages of grief is the first step in building resilience because it is a step in the direction of emotional maturity. Richard Heinberg has spoken and written on many occasions about the infantalization that pervades the culture of civilization which prevents us from coming to terms with negative events and emotions. As a result, the majority of humans behave like two year-olds who cannot accept limits in relation to economics, energy, or the environment.

In the documentary "The Great Squeeze"[6], James Howard Kunstler notes that Americans have lost a tragic sense of life. He explains that this does not mean a sense that everything is horrible, but rather, that we seem to have no sense of a beginning, a middle, and an end to our life experiences-as if we are entitled to endless quantities of money, energy, land, or whatever resources or things we desire.

From Infantalization to Initiation

We have the choice of waiting until that to which we feel we are entitled is ripped away from us gradually or suddenly, or adopting the attitudes of indigenous people who throughout human history have been intimately connected with the earth and therefore keenly aware of humanity's limits. In traditional cultures children are consciously launched into adulthood with carefully structured ceremonies of initiation which mark the end of childhood and the beginning of maturity. Throughout his or her adult life, the indigenous person deepens their connection with the land, with the tribe, and with traditions of ritual and celebration which give meaning and purpose to their human existence.

It is also understood in indigenous traditions that if an individual does not experience a conscious initiation structured and supported by the tribal community, he or she will nevertheless be initiated-by life, and in ways that may be much harsher and more alienating. I believe that the current collapse of industrial civilization is precisely such an initiation for all of our species.

What's Age Got To Do With It?

As the indigenous person ripens into old age, she or he prepares for elderhood which has little to do with age but everything to do with wisdom. In the culture of civilization one encounters elderly persons who are anything but elders due to their lack of wisdom and at the same time, very young persons who because of their depth of wisdom might aptly be called "elders." We could say that elderhood is about sagacity, not longevity.

A hallmark of indigenous wisdom lingering from our ancient hunter-gatherer roots is the quality of resilience. Our ancestors understood that it was necessary for their survival to be able to change course and adapt accordingly. Therefore, it may be that resilience is in our DNA and can be tuned into as well as cultivated.

In addition to the suggestions offered by Siebert above, I would like to add my own. First, I adamantly believe that just as we must prepare ourselves physically for collapse by eating healthy foods and getting in shape, we must also cultivate emotional depth and discernment. In my opinion, this does not mean "resolving all of our issues". At this writing, we are witnessing the collapse of a healthcare system in the United States that is now being held together by a few frayed threads. In a post-industrial world there will be no formal healthcare, nor will there be psychotherapy as we know it today. Anything we can do now to attend to our physical and emotional wellbeing-any tools we can bring with us into collapse to enhance that wellbeing are absolutely crucial.

Some of the tools we might consider are first of all, personal journaling as a means of becoming still and present each day to our experience. It is an efficient and illuminating tool for attending to the inner world.

Many individuals have also discovered the rewards of joining a Non-Violent Communication[7] group as a means of deepening their sense of community as well as their personal emotional well being. For those involved with Transition Towns, Non-Violent Communication groups are natural, and perhaps inevitable, corridors of connection among citizens of a particular place.

Similarly, Heart Circles[8] as developed by founder, Tej Steiner, offer deeply rewarding venues for connecting with oneself, one's community, and the earth. Heart Circles are not therapy process groups and should not be conducted as such, but rather offer opportunities within families, businesses, and local communities to support awakening, resilience, and social change.

Very important for our emotional wellbeing is our capacity to hold alongside current dark realities, a vision of how we would like to structure our lives and communities in a post-carbon world, even if our vision never comes to fruition. Peter Senge[9], scientist and organizational development wizard, teaches the urgency of holding our vision alongside an accurate picture of current reality for the purpose of generating the creative tension necessary for arriving at new and perhaps previously unimagined options. Just as it is perilous to hold only an optimistic vision of the future without considering the dire implications of collapse, it does not serve us or our fellow humans to focus on calamity to the exclusion of possibility. Both are essential nutrients in harvesting the innovation and resourcefulness required to meet the exigencies of the Long Emergency and transform the paradigm that brought us to the present predicament.

As we cultivate head awareness through information, and cultivate hand awareness through re-skilling, the challenges of collapse require that we also cultivate the heart awareness that nurtures resilience for the daunting transitions ahead. "Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me", says Roethke, and by fine-tuning our resilience, we may "learn by going where go."

[1]resiliencycenter.com/articles/5levels.shtml

[2]Ibid.

[3]resiliencycenter.com/articles/survresiliency.shtml

[4]wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Festinger

[5]changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm

[6]thegreatsqueeze.com/index.html

[7]cnvc.org/

[8]heartcircle.com/

[9]infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm

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CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years. I know that question is really a three-part question, so take plenty of time to answer those parts.

JOHN: Nancy Mae grew up in a small town in Southern Kansas. Her family raised horses; she did barrel racing. In a town where everyone listened to Country & Western, she was heavily into Blues. After working for years as a radiology tech in a large Wichita hospital, she went to Dental School. It didn't take her too long to wake up to the fact that amalgam fillings were the worst kind of poison. She loved her patients and learned all she needed to in order to take perfect care of them.

I (John) was born in Chicago and raised in L.A. After a Chiropractor saved my life, I figured out that might be a good thing to do. Within six months of starting my practice, I became dedicated to doing discovery-based clinical research (which is still a compulsion at this time). Years later, I met this wild and wonderful hot-headed, red-headed DDS. I was hooked. In Kansas City, we built an amazing Sand-Box . . . a fun place to play and work. We hung the best art on the walls and had a state of the art high-end audio system - after all, we needed great music so we could boogie on the dance floor (until exhaustion would set in). Together, we took our healing art and our love to the highest levels imaginable. It was a party.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.

JOHN: Nancy and I share an interest in the study of time and space. We study history to learn about the past. We study ourselves deeply in order to learn about the 'Now'. We study prophecy and astrology to learn about the future. Because light bends, time becomes space. If timing is everything, then one should really be in the right place in order for the proper reality to manifest.

A great many years ago, while studying many lines of prophecy all at once, I got a glimpse of the future. That picture set itself in place like a tattoo on the inside of my frontal bone. I had a sense of the ordering of things. From that point forward, for me, life has been a lot like running a gauntlet......working hard to stay ahead of the '8-ball', as it were. There were many events that signaled the passage of time - the clock ticking down the minutes until 'midnight'. That sense of urgency caused us to travel extensively.

One day, two lines of force came together at the same time. So, we sat down and had a family meeting, Nancy Mae and me. I made the point that we were working our selves to death - and - that the sand was running out of the hour glass . . . that the powers that be (TPTB) had their train very much on the tracks, and the end was in sight (somewhat at a distance). I suggested that if we wanted to stay alive and survive all our wonderful patients that it was time to turn the key in the lock and walk off into the sunset (holding hands, of course). At first she argued: "But we just got to the top of the mountain - now is no time to quit." I replied: There is never a good time to quit.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?

JOHN: After a week or two of discussion, we agree that it was probably the right time to do something. Previously, we discussed how sad it was that so few folks in the USA had come awake to the coming onset, the promised difficulty. Not being martyrs, we decided that meant we could not stay and fight. Reality required our going into exile, finding a foreign land we could call home. We'd traveled a lot. But, we had not found THE place. I'd always had a nagging feeling to check out Chile. We talked about it. On the spur of the moment, I got onto a plane and flew to Chile to check it out. In four days, I had found a city, an apartment, a proper (English speaking) law firm, and a relocation agent to assist us in our move.

Upon arriving back in Kansas City, I discovered that Nancy Mae was stunned with my suggesting "the time was now, and Chile was the place."

We listed the clinic and the house with Realtors, and ordered a dumpster and a container to be parked in front of our house. With her mouth, Nancy Mae said yes, let's do this. However, with her body she was saying something else. She treated patients up until the day before we got onto the plane to depart the USA.

In retrospect, considering all the books read, movies seen, lectures attended, it was the study of history that most gave its influence. That old saying comes to mind about those failing to study history being doomed to repeat it. And . . . if history does not repeat, then it at least rhymes.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

JOHN: Yes, over the first six months, Nancy was really not sure if we had done the right thing - and of course we were really missing friends and family. Yet, as these first two years have passed, we've found that almost everything about our lives is better here than it was in the USA. We've purchased a small organic farm - along with some adjacent property - and are building a new house. Our social life is richer here. We are loving Chile.

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?

JOHN: Our family members have had some mixed feelings about our big move. Our son left the USA before we did. Our two daughters have not been so fast to come awake to the present danger - they may be Egyptians, swimming in the river of De-Nile. Yet, as they are seeing the USA headed for the dumpster, they are talking about joining us here.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

JOHN: Surely, it was the awareness of the coming collapse that got us off our butts and moved to Chile. Going into exile is a gut wrenching experience. Going somewhere where you do not know anyone and do not speak the language is a scary thing at best. I think it safe to say that we probably experienced just about the full gamut of available emotions. Yet, we have an abiding awareness that Almighty Nature - or Universe, if you prefer - has everything under control, and it is just our small selves that have some crazy need to worry about things that we know deeply inside will be more than all right in the end.

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?

JOHN: This is the wildest part of it all - - where we bought our farm, there is a 'coming together' of some of very fun and interesting people from all over this 3rd rock from the Sun......totally unexpected. A community is forming here and we had nothing to do with it, other than to come. The future is so bright we may need to buy new sunglasses.

CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you've made? As you know I've just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse because it became so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, healthcare, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for collapse.

JOHN: We love your book - thanks tons for writing it. The world needed this book at this time.

We are very blessed to have a rich inner life. The universal law of 3-in-1 is manifest in our relationship. We have our love and our partnership with each other and with the Very Divine. We have both always felt guided and taken care of, to say the least.

CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?

JOHN: Life is a banquet, a veritable feast. We are living our Chilean Adventure. It continues. It is rich; it is full; it is amazing. We are so very grateful to the Chilean people for allowing us to be guests in their country. As soon as things slow down, we must ask ourselves the question: What can we do for Chile?

CB: I have just one last question for you. I'm wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?

JOHN: Wow . . . that is such a big question. The answer lives on so many different levels. Maybe we can speak to a few of those levels.

Two thousand years ago the instruction was given: "Love ye one another." Nancy and I are still working on that one. We mostly love everyone . . . but some folks come into to our lives to help us realize that our love has yet to become perfect. I guess God is not done with us, yet. We are still a work in progress.

Way back when, Nancy and I got cheated out of a major part of a life together. Now we get to have that time together.

We think that all things must grow. We are still working on our personal growth and development.

We have found that the final frontier is the human psychophysiology. So we spend a lot of time working on our healing. We were stunned to find some very high quality healers nearby to assist us in this most important process.

Our farm has become a vortex. We are called to attend to the growth and maintenance of this awesome force. Nancy has taken the lead here. This land, as with all land, is sacred.

Our children, grand children, and great grand child require our attention, from time to time. We think that is important.

My research into the digital switch in the human nervous system is not yet done, nor is the protocol-set I work with clinically . . . this continues.

Carolyn, thanks for this opportunity to reflect back on these past two years.

The Andres may be contacted in Chile at: [email protected] e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Skype: DrJDAndre
TrulyMail: DrJDAndre

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Welcome to empire Charlie. You remind me of Lili Tomlin when someone asked her when she left her birthplace city of Detroit, and her response was, "When I realized where I was." Good for you Charlie, you're not totally psychically numb. Now the next question is, where will you go from here?

Charlie could not be more dead-on about society. Its fabric is completely unraveling, and that epic saga is just getting warmed up. I reacted like you, Charlie, when I discovered things like Peak Oil and the hard evidence of human species-created climate change. What you're witnessing is the mind-numbing ineptness of your government, or anyone else's, to deal with the unraveling, for governments, with their perverse corporate liaisons, after all, are the lifeblood of the empire that is disintegrating. Hence, they are the last entities capable of offering sane responses to the unraveling.

But I would caution you not to spiral down into terminal cynicism, like most of your mainstream media associates. The word cynicism, after all, is related to an ancient Greek term synonymous with the word "dog", and some say it referred specifically to a dog chewing a bone endlessly, even after the marrow was gone.

So what's a person with their hair on fire who's finally come to terms with the collapse of Western civilization to do? First, since you're in the UK, you may want to check out the blog of a fellow Brit named Rob Hopkins, who founded the Transition Town network in Totnes. In fact, you may want to interview him and have a long conversation about his take on all of this. I wouldn't tell you that the Transition model is a magic bullet which will prevent the unraveling because the unraveling now has life of its own. What I will tell you is that it's likely to inspire you to reframe collapse not as a disaster, but as an opportunity on myriad levels. This is not to say that it does not entail pain and suffering for the human and all other species; rather, I'm suggesting that it is both the pain and the opportunities within them that offer us nothing less than an evolutionary threshold. We have in front of us the possibility of reweaving from the threads of the unraveling, a new fabric that we can believe in.

An American president recently ran his campaign using the slogan "change we can believe in." Presently, however, I don't see a lot of Americans or the world holding its breath. As you've pointed out: There hasn't been much change, and there certainly is little in the political arena to inspire our belief because as you've noted, "even language itself seems unreliable."

Your article underscores the vacuousness of governments and the political process. Even before the French Revolution, people seeking change in the Western world have petitioned their governments for it. The unraveling, however, has rendered that approach essentially meaningless. What it has necessitated is a change in personal and community behavior and the creation of vibrant, local economies of scale in which people no longer wait for empire to give what it cannot give, but pick up the threads of an unraveled civilization and weave it themselves according to what their unique place and population require.

Some folks, myself among them, would offer the possibility that the unraveling serves a deeper, metaphysical purpose having to do with a shift in human consciousness. To that end, I have written Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse which suggests an emotional and spiritual roadmap for navigating the unprecedented changes ahead.

Thank you for your incisive, courageous piece which verbalizes what so many are only thinking or perhaps haven't yet consciously registered. I don't believe that as you suggest, we can weave new structures quickly, and I certainly hope that what we weave are not "institutions", but I do believe that many of us are weaving a new paradigm for our species which may allow us to discover the true depths of our humanity.

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CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years. I know that question is really a three-part question, so take plenty of time to answer those parts.

SB: My name is Susan and I am a feminist, mother, educator and soul-mate and wife to a wonderful man, Jerry! I was brought up with Midwestern values in a hard working and caring family. I would term our economic status as lower middle class with a lovely grandmother who took care of our family when needed. "When needed" is defined as when my dad was either laid off from the water heater factory or there was a monumental factory strike.

Childhood was extremely pleasant! I learned to garden, sew, make bread and can from my wonderful Grandma! I spent much beloved time with my Grandma through my early adolescence. These times with my Grandma were carefree and always great fun.

I became a first generational college graduate due to the fact my Uncle George was a member of the La Porte, Indiana School Board and preached the value of education. It was tough for my family to send me to Purdue University, but with college loans and a mother who worked a menial job for eight years to get both myself and my brother through college, I graduated.

In college, I was a full-fledged hippie and have to this day believed in non-violence and the integrity and value of the human spirit. Another belief is that smaller is almost always better. We believe it is better to have people collectively work together instead of someone dictating what one should believe and should buy and should think. I can honestly say that I live my life with Jerry just that way!

Belief that we, as humans, are lifelong learners, created the motivation to earn a Master's degree and a Doctorate. Today, I feel very differently about earning degrees because the value of mastering skill sets like water harvesting, gardening, canning, off-the-grid building construction, candle-making, soap-making seem like far greater accomplishments than a higher education diploma or two. These skill sets have fallen away in our current society. I believe the value of these skills and abilities will be exceptionally sought after as we experience the end of civilization as we know it today.

The professional work I have been doing has involved the areas of education, program development, advocacy, leadership and fundraising. Jerry and I have worked extensively in the non-profit sector with a mission-based focus of serving people with disabilities. Most recently, I have managed a college teacher certification program. Currently, I manage a program funded through the US Department of Education called Educational Opportunities Center. The intent of the program is to assist persons in completing their GED, or enroll in a trade and technical school or assist people in entering higher education. Many of the environments we serve include prisons, drug courts, workforce centers, foster care, trade and technical centers, homeless youth shelters, and community probation.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.

SB: Two events occurred almost simultaneously for Jerry and me. We read Richard Heinberg's book, Power Down, and we experienced Hurricane Rita while living in Houston, Texas.

Power Down really scared us because we had never thought or spoken of a life without oil and electricity. We immediately denied the book, but something made us read more and become intelligent on the topic. As the truth began to sink in, we began to grieve things we still had in everyday life like air conditioning and water and the ability to move from one place to another in a car or plane. We got depressed and still get depressed from time to time, but today there is more moment-forward in our thinking and through our actions.

(As a sidebar to answering this question, my father took many opportunities, usually over suppertime meals, to start conversations that had a common theme: one day civilization would be out of useable oil. Although my father never attended college he was self-educated and well read on the topic of oil depletion. That very theme rang very true for me, as Jerry and I did our own research and began contemplating our reality.)

The second experience that really propelled us was Hurricane Rita. Jerry and I were thoroughly unprepared for Hurricane Rita. Looking back on the lack of preparation, we were idiots without supplies!

Our story began by naively leaving north out of Houston at 5:00 AM the day the hurricane was to come inland in one of the largest mass movements of people in history (3 million people using three different highway systems in 24 hours). There was with no thought of using contra flow traffic to maximize the lanes exiting the city. With a disabled father-in-law, a cat, a dog and a second car with a daughter and her cat we traveled 14 hours and accomplished only 55 miles! Almost out of gas for both vehicles, we decided to turn around. Miraculously, we found gas for both cars and made our 40 minute trip back to Houston.

We returned to our home in Houston that night and almost immediately lost power after the storm began around 11:00 PM. Following the storm that lasted many hours, the intense heat and humidity with no cross ventilation, was barely manageable. In the early days, we never lost heart because every neighbor was saying the power will be right back on. Wrong. It was over two weeks later that power did return. When the water pressure failed, we both knew we were in trouble.

Jerry and I both had a personal incident caused by the intense heat and humidity that was unrelenting. Both incidents occurred at different times. Each of us got overwhelmed and fearful and hopeless. In each case, the other person was able to comfort and talk through their fears and hopelessness that we were both strongly experiencing.

Have I mentioned caring for a man with advanced dementia during this period? We tried to keep up the semblance of calm and routine. When we still had water pressure, showers kept DA (our name for this gentle man who we cared for 7.5 years) cool but the early darkness, worry, and not knowing came to be our pervasive thought patterns. Not healthy.

Thankfully, we came up with an idea to use a rental car (filled with gas) and venture north to stay with a daughter and her family six hours away. We stayed with Stacey for a week until we heard the power was back on in our neighborhood.

Both Power Down and living through the hurricane and its aftermath resounded that we must get prepared! We had just embarked on the journey of our lives!

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?

Jerry and I found the Titanic Lifeboat Academy in Astoria, Oregon. Caren Black and Christopher Paddon have been incredibly helpful and "real" with Jerry and me. I remember bursting into tears after our first telephone conversation with Caren and Christopher. We had found people that felt the same way we did! We were not alone. They assumed nothing and never judged Jerry and me. Their message was simple: "Sell your home, get out of debt, relocate to a more accepting environment and develop an action plan".

We have used their guidance and coaching to keep us moving forward. We have followed their advice and believe today, we have taken mostly the right steps. We have also talked with them about the sensitive topics of choosing to have guns and which guns and for what reasons.

We were able to sell our huge house in one weekend. We have dramatically downsized two times and both times the process has been freeing because it was our choice. We have voluntarily lived in much smaller rental homes for the last three years choosing to save the money instead. We do not feel we are uncomfortable and, in fact, do not even use one of the bedrooms in our current rental home.

Getting out of debt took a while longer, but we accomplished the task of being debt-free. Have I mentioned that we looked for the perfect property in seven states that took 2.5 years? Early in 2008 we found the perfect property in Northeast Oklahoma. We have 27 acres of mostly hard wooded land that has lake access to the second-largest lake in Oklahoma. The property has a creek and two Indian springs. At this point, our property is mostly paid off!

Jerry and I also went from two cars to one luxury vehicle to one car that gets 40 miles to the gallon. When we made the voluntary change from the luxury car to the small car, I had people at the community college I worked at ask if, "We were all right".

I would be remiss not to mention the importance of preparing spiritually for the end of civilization as we know it. Most of the resources noted above deal with strategies for preparedness and things to acquire, NOT the looking inside to see if we are prepared. Carolyn Baker's finest gift (so far) has been her book, Sacred Demise. Simply, read this book!

The book takes you from where you are, as you are reading, and opens up the possibilities and promise for a new civilization transformed from empire, climate change, loss of life, and the defeat of globalization. The book does not sugar-coat. You do not need to believe in a certain religion; only believe in a higher power like the power of nature. Strategies are thoughtfully presented and the reader is never lost. This must read resource is a gift that gently guides the reader how to get in touch with their feminine side so that the reader can prepare their spiritual side. This book gives a perspective that is extremely timely and a breath of fresh air.

Truth to Power has been our beacon. Other people we have read include Matthew Simmons, Richard Heinberg, Sharon Astyk , Julian Darley, James Howard Kunstler, Caren Black and Christopher Paddon from the Titanic Lifeboat Academy, Michael Byron, Steve Solomon, Derrick Jensen, Joel Skousen, Eckhart Tolle, Louise Hay, David Hawkins, Gary Craig, Naomi Klein, Masanobu Fukuoka and Dave Jacke.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

SB: Jerry and I have come to think of our "knowing" of the end of civilization as a true gift. I do not know exactly why we know but "knowing" gives us another gift, time. There will never be enough time. The precious time we do have is for preparation including helping people to come to terms with their fears, denial, losses and living changes.

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?

SB: Our family members are still in denial. From time to time someone will ask us what we think will happen. Jerry and I will never give up and we will be ready to answer their questions and quiet their many fears when empire cannot support the lies (OR people will finally get it when people are lined up for food at the grocery store).

We have lovingly given our family key books to read and DVDs to watch to move them from denial. Unfortunately, the blinders are on, and the empire program is still running.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

SB: As explained in Sacred Demise, the stages of death, dying and loss written so eloquently by Steven Levine and Elizabeth Kubler Ross fit our emotional ups, downs, and plateaus perfectly. Just because you have grieved, does not mean you will not feel this emotion again. Jerry and I often are saddened by the special aspects of life we will one day say goodbye to like taking a warm shower, seeing a special exhibit at a museum, hearing a symphony orchestra or enjoying the bliss of a sushi meal.

Frank discussion has immensely helped Jerry and me when the raw emotions come flooding back. Time and checking your perspective and good conversation are great healers. About two years ago one of my faculty members, Karen, woke up after watching "What A WayTo Go". Karen was experiencing panic and fear. Jerry and I had her over to dinner and talked with her and shared our thoughts and feelings. We did mostly active listening, validating Karen's fears and started a conversation that continues today but over the internet, since we have moved from Texas to Oklahoma.

One other thing I have done along my personal journey is to post pertinent articles outside my office at the university. The articles range from climate change to pandemics to sustainability to gardening, to overpopulation, to transition communities, to peak everything, and food shortage. People often comment. I take their first comment or question to start asking them what their thoughts are on whatever topic they bring up. The interest is always sincere and often mixed with some anxious humor. I then ask if they would like to receive newsworthy and pertinent articles. Currently, I have 40 people (referred to as Friends and Family) that I send out articles to via the internet. And, I'd have to confess many of the articles come right from Carolyn's site, Truth to Power.

In this small group of Friends and Family, I can honestly begin to see a few waking up based simply on their responses and questions. I am a hopeful individual, maybe even a Pollyanna of sorts because I will never give up on the hopefulness of mankind. I do not believe a magic red pill will save civilization. I believe that mankind will accept and transition into a very different civilization like the very difficult yet rewarding one described by James Howard Kunstler in his novel, A World Made By Hand.

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?
SB: It has just occurred to me that the forty people just referred to as Friends and Family is an example of a community of sorts!

Community is the one area where we have the most unsettled plans and, consequently, fears about what our community will look like and who will become its settlers. This is a work in progress!

I can tell you that Jerry and I have each other, two dogs and one cat. We moved from Houston, Texas to Northeast Oklahoma in mid-December 2008. The temperature was in the 80's and very humid as we said our goodbyes to Houston. Ten hours later we experienced a blustery chill factor of 9 degrees in Northeast Oklahoma. Our animals thought we were totally crazy!

Let me describe a little more our situation and plan to transition. Jerry and I both have full-time jobs. We are living in a community 65 miles from our homestead property. Although this is not an ideal situation for developing community, we have taken many steps to introduce and familiarize ourselves with neighbors and the nearby town. We have found the people of Oklahoma sincerely friendly and helpful.

Our goal is to have our yurt sitting on our deck by late summer 2009. One of the scenarios we have accepted is that our yurt could provide the housing we need if things crater by early fall 2009. The transition to the yurt would be difficult but, we believe, realistically possible.

Currently, we are building a thirty-by-thirty-foot deck that will support our first building, a yurt. The yurt is twenty-eight feet in diameter and is being built in Virginia by the Buffalo Mountain Yurt Company. The people building our yurt will be delivering the yurt once the deck is finished and assisting Jerry and me in the "yurt raising." This will be accomplished by late summer 2009.

The yurt will provide temporary housing while we build our first Earth Ship! Several years ago, Jerry and I attended a week long workshop on Earth ship building in Taos, New Mexico. We stayed in an Earth Ship and were fascinated by the design allowing for the structure to be fully off-the-grid in any climate. The temperature outside in Taos was 120 degrees and the inside of our Earth Ship was a constant 72 degrees! The founder, Michael Reynolds, has spent his lifetime fine tuning the design of these unique living structures. (I strongly recommend seeing the site.)

To read the remainder of this article, you must be a Truth to Power subscriber.

Susan Bedwell may be contacted at [email protected]

[In the next few months, Truth to Power will be featuring interviews with individuals who are consciously transitioning to a post-carbon lifestyle. In spite of the volumes being written about preparation for collapse, we rarely have the opportunity to hear real people discuss at length the process they have gone through and continue to navigate in their unique journeys through the Long Emergency. Some articles in the series will be published free in their entirety, and some will be partially published, requiring a subscription to Truth to Power in order to read the full article.

Everyone's story of preparation is different; there is no one-size-fits-all model. This series of interviews with real people preparing for collapse will honor the uniqueness of those individuals and the methods of preparation that serve them in their particular situations.--CB]

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A Wall St. Journal article, July 1 entitled, "A bank run teaches the ‘plain people' about the risks of modernity", by Douglas Belkin, reports the challenges the Amish have confronted in the past decade, specifically those having to do with economic collapse. In 1993, Northern Indiana Amish established the Tri-County Land Trust, not unlike lending arrangements set up in many other Amish communities. Not insured by FDIC and based on its own bylaws, the trust now has about $40 million in assets. Until November, 2008, the land trust offered low-interest loans and provided other financial support for Amish homeowners and proprietors of small businesses. However, it suspended lending and has not yet resumed. Add to this the fact that, this past spring, the Land Trust literally had a bank run because the Amish began to experience the same consequences of economic collapse as the rest of the nation did. According to the Wall St. journal story, "...the Amish in northern Indiana edged into the conventional economy, lured by high wages of the recreational vehicle and modular home industries. And they wound up experiencing the same economic whiplash millions of other Americans did."

As almost everyone knows, it is exceedingly challenging to sustain privately-owned family farms. The Amish did it for centuries until the latter part of the twentieth century when they began taking jobs off the farm where they made good money, but many also became seduced by consumerism. They gradually spent more money, allowed themselves some of the conveniences previously shunned in order to live more simply, and found themselves caught up in spending more money and buying things they didn't need-things like bigger weddings, vacation homes in other states, model train and truck hobbies, and even hiring taxis to go on extended shopping trips.

You may wonder if I'm really talking about the Amish. Indeed I am.

This story hits close to home for me because my grandmother was Amish as a young child until her parents left the sect to become Mennonites. I have a number of Amish relatives and had the opportunity to visit a few last summer. In fact, I wrote an article subsequently entitled "North America's Amish Community: Least Likely To Be Devastated By Collapse." What I did not see at the time, certainly not among the families I visited, was the extent to which some members of the community had become seduced by the capitalist economic system.

The Tri-County Land Trust is minutes from where I grew up in Northern Indiana and very close to my home town of Elkhart which earlier this year had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Unfortunately, that city had based its entire economy on the RV, modular home industry where it employed hundreds of Amish workers, most of whom have since been laid off. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the Amish who lost jobs and the unemployed of the non-Amish community is that among the Amish, there is much more mutual support and a sense of caring for each other in tough economic times.

The good news in the Northern Indiana Amish community this summer is that a new back-to-basics movement appears to be flourishing. The Amish are increasing and expanding their gardens and eating less in restaurants than previously. Similarly, many Amish men have started new home businesses selling products locally and from home.

Why is any of this important? Simply because of how easy it is to become deluded by and entrapped in the values of empire. Whereas in many cases, it has been essential for Amish men or women to work outside the home in order to survive, in many cases it wasn't-at least not if those families are committed to the values that underpin every aspect of their culture. Thus, if a culture with values of radical simplicity can be seduced by the economics of civilization, how much easier it may be for those of us who purport to deplore those economics to find ourselves repeatedly ensnared by them.

I could not help connect Belkin's Wall St. Journal article with Nicholas Kristof's latest New York Times article "When Our Brains Short-Circuit" which sheds even more light on this issue by noticing the extent to which the human brain "misjudges certain kinds of risks." It appears that evolution has wired us to be alert to immediate survival risks such as snakes and nasty looking people with clubs, "but we aren't well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought."

I believe that this may be a fundamental reason why we are so pathetically slow as a species to respond to the terrible consequences of Peak Oil and climate change-and, why we are so easily enticed into civilization's consensus trance.

Kristof suggests that even as we acknowledge our "neurological shortcomings", we can compensate by strengthening our rational analysis, that is to say, critical thinking or "the head" in the Transition Town model of head, heart, and hands. In addition, I would argue that a shift in human consciousness (heart) is likely to be one of the most profound results of civilization's collapse, and may, in fact, engender a quantum leap in the evolution of the human brain. Likewise, the challenges of reskilling or learning new/old skills (hands), rather than moving us backward in the evolutionary process, are likely to enhance the development of both reason and consciousness.

Indeed the Amish have a treasure trove of values and skills to teach us, as well as the reality of our common humanity and how an economy based on cheap fossil fuel, rampant technology, debt, speed, consumerism, and so-called "progress" damages and deceives us into betraying our essential nature. Or as one Amish man comments on the need to return to basics: "We were all going way too fast. This has made everybody stop and realize we're just pilgrims here..."

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