The first organizer of the Vancouver Peak Oil Citizens Group, Max - a highly like-able young permaculturist and eco-activist - renounced the post allegedly, because he foresaw our powering-down and transitional efforts going to s***. I remember hearing this information from my predecessor, Steve. I was told that he was off, ‘walking the land,’ trying to find out ‘where it is at.’ As I began to Contemplate Max’s life-path, I also began to question more of my own plans for the future. Put it this way, if I am to use the folks at LATOC as a yardstick, I am woefully unprepared, ripe for the die-off. A secure home with crate-loads of ammo is the de rigeur minimum - or so the message boards would have us believe.
I have about a month’s worth of food and some basic emergency supplies. The usual suspects: the fresh, bottled water, the excess propane, the Katadyn water filters and purification tablets. Oh, and next years’ seeds are in cold storage.
And when I plan it comes down to this: I plan to plant more beans next year. I will double the potato plot to make room for some early and mid-season varieties. Other than that I plan to to take a last trip to the Old Country - preferably before my Grandmother dies and before the civilian air-fleet is permanently grounded.
I find it so hard to make contingency plans for my existence when I am so bloody caught up in living that self-same existence. And, despite being the son of a farmer, I am also a former quasi-urbane metro-sexual. I am the product of the eighties and the British Education combined - probably not what you would call true survivor material. To this end, I hope it is not all Mad Max hair-do’s and pointy sticks anytime too soon!
Ultimately, wheresoever I am now, is exactly where I am connecting with my landbase. Presently that is Burnaby. Often I project into ‘A Long Emergency’ scenario. Often, during walking meditation along the perimeter of my immediate landbase, a voice will percolate upwardly through my being:
“The H.Y. Louie Distribution Warehouse is the best place for food reconnaissance raids (as it is hidden.) The war zone will be on the other side of Lougheed, about the Costco loading bay. Yes, that is where the gun-fire will be…”
Knowing your immediate landbase ensures your best ability to survive.
While a significant number of my fellow activists are eye-balling Nelson as a agrarian utopia, I pose the question: Can the Kootenay landbase accommodate a post-postmodern diaspora of this kind? I fear it may not be able. Moreover, how will the indigenous population feel about any prospective exodus?
If it all goes to hell-in-a handbasket, I will evanesce into the woods like the best of you. Until that time I am going to more intimately connect with my locale. I am going to find the mythical spot where the best blackberries grow on the borders of Lake City; where the most reliable natural water-source is in late August.
I will prove to you that chantrelles grow here. Once I find them.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Beware the "Resource Transitionists"
I was reading an article about, guess what, peak oil, and I read the following paragraph:
"The current [energy] debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased."
Debased. Mmm.
This irked me a little. OK, a lot. That was until I remembered Derrick Jensen's words about most writers being propagandists (myself included.)
In its defence, the entire P.O. "notion" was based on the correct assumption of M. King Hubbert - namely that the U.S. would peak its production about 1970. (His later predictions about the timing of the world Peak were, indeed, more premature than Ken Deffeyes' - but unlike the latter, it did not embrace the OPEC oil shocks of the '70's.)
Still, it is important that we stand by what we believe and always have believed. Peak light sweet crude has happened. Oil is now nudging $100 a barrel. (Just a few months ago, I remember doom-saying that this would be a reality by Christmas-time and people just gave me blank stares!)
In the final analysis, Peak Oil is beset by the pitfalls and the mists, of futurism. Our track record, however is largely impressive. Recent energy reports bear witness to this - yea, even the aforementioned article.
Indeed, the paradoxical affirmation/denial of the aforementioned article may presage an entirely new phenomenon.
I am being led to believe that, in the next few years, we are going to be nudged aside by an opportune bunch of technocrati who will call themselves "resource transitionalists" (or something similar). They will say that "they always had the view that oil was a non-renewable resource and that they had always been planning for crunch scenarios, etc."
Bull.
We must not let them steal our thunder. NOT ONE IOTA! I say this as they are doubtless going to be part of that hydra-headed beast that will seek only to further degrade our land-base. We, as Peak Oil activists, are more than Cassandras. Much more. We stand for environmental integrity and re localization efforts. We stand against the needless violence and exploitation of the planet, the poor and the non-civilized. We are the sane in an insane world.
Watch: the "resource transitionalists" will use our research, quote our luminaries and deride us at the same time. They will use us as a bulwark by which they will spring onto the world's stage. Doubtless, among their ranks you will find former A-list actors turned politicos, spineless, Smirnoff-soaked (then to be) ex-premiers....
Indeed, if you see any of these creatures, feel free to "out" them here.
"The current [energy] debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased."
Debased. Mmm.
This irked me a little. OK, a lot. That was until I remembered Derrick Jensen's words about most writers being propagandists (myself included.)
In its defence, the entire P.O. "notion" was based on the correct assumption of M. King Hubbert - namely that the U.S. would peak its production about 1970. (His later predictions about the timing of the world Peak were, indeed, more premature than Ken Deffeyes' - but unlike the latter, it did not embrace the OPEC oil shocks of the '70's.)
Still, it is important that we stand by what we believe and always have believed. Peak light sweet crude has happened. Oil is now nudging $100 a barrel. (Just a few months ago, I remember doom-saying that this would be a reality by Christmas-time and people just gave me blank stares!)
In the final analysis, Peak Oil is beset by the pitfalls and the mists, of futurism. Our track record, however is largely impressive. Recent energy reports bear witness to this - yea, even the aforementioned article.
Indeed, the paradoxical affirmation/denial of the aforementioned article may presage an entirely new phenomenon.
I am being led to believe that, in the next few years, we are going to be nudged aside by an opportune bunch of technocrati who will call themselves "resource transitionalists" (or something similar). They will say that "they always had the view that oil was a non-renewable resource and that they had always been planning for crunch scenarios, etc."
Bull.
We must not let them steal our thunder. NOT ONE IOTA! I say this as they are doubtless going to be part of that hydra-headed beast that will seek only to further degrade our land-base. We, as Peak Oil activists, are more than Cassandras. Much more. We stand for environmental integrity and re localization efforts. We stand against the needless violence and exploitation of the planet, the poor and the non-civilized. We are the sane in an insane world.
Watch: the "resource transitionalists" will use our research, quote our luminaries and deride us at the same time. They will use us as a bulwark by which they will spring onto the world's stage. Doubtless, among their ranks you will find former A-list actors turned politicos, spineless, Smirnoff-soaked (then to be) ex-premiers....
Indeed, if you see any of these creatures, feel free to "out" them here.
Tomatoes as a metaphor.
As a kid, I hated tomatoes. It was a dislike compounded by the fact that the tomato, in its ketchup-guise, seemed overly blood-like (and that the English would apply the unctuous condiment, gorily, to their food at every opportunity.) Often it would take a day and a half of Heimlich-style coaxing to get it out of the bottle; and when you did, it would invariably squirt sideways out of your 'chip butty'* and come to land on your prized new jeans. Too much work by half.
But still, like them or loathe them, tomatoes were red. You Know, red: a good British colour, like the Routemaster bus or the Giles Gilbert telephone box. Yes, a dependable colour: it was an unspoken credo: a tomato should be ripe, ruddy and round.
I am almost ashamed to say that two years ago I knew next to nothing of heirloom tomatoes (let alone the term seed-saving or the name of Vandana Shive.) Sure, a friend of mine was locking horns with Monsanto over in London and I would occasionally festoon our telephone conversations with the odd 'good for you, mate!', but I did not fully comprehend the absolute horror of terminator seed technology.
Boy, have I have come a long way in a short space of time. I still am rather astonished รก propos my former denial/ignorance. Indeed, I now wonder if tomatoes are really a metaphor for us as a people. Maybe secretly, those among us who think that tomatoes should be only one hue also secretly feel the same about politics, party allegiances, even people's skin colour.
Heirloom tomatoes speak openly of the diversity of culture, of the panoply of race. Like people, heirloom tomatoes have oral histories linking them to their ancestry. For example, the intense, sweet purple-green flesh of the Black Krims were brought to us from the "Island of Krim" in the Ukraine; in that self-same flesh is contained the hardship of the pioneer life and the many inclement prairie winters they faced.
Likewise, the Blaby Special cultivar comes to us, like a fresh-faced GI Bride, from Shoult's Tomato Farm in Leicestershire England.
Many colours. Many stories. It is, truly, a seed diaspora - redolent of the folk who, over time, nurtured and cultivated them.
And big Agriculture wants to silence those voices. It wants to expunge them and wipe them out forever. To them, tomatoes are hybrid and red: oftentimes, tasteless, ruddy and round. We must not let them obliterate this genetic diversity. To do so would be, literally, a crime against nature.
But still, like them or loathe them, tomatoes were red. You Know, red: a good British colour, like the Routemaster bus or the Giles Gilbert telephone box. Yes, a dependable colour: it was an unspoken credo: a tomato should be ripe, ruddy and round.
I am almost ashamed to say that two years ago I knew next to nothing of heirloom tomatoes (let alone the term seed-saving or the name of Vandana Shive.) Sure, a friend of mine was locking horns with Monsanto over in London and I would occasionally festoon our telephone conversations with the odd 'good for you, mate!', but I did not fully comprehend the absolute horror of terminator seed technology.
Boy, have I have come a long way in a short space of time. I still am rather astonished รก propos my former denial/ignorance. Indeed, I now wonder if tomatoes are really a metaphor for us as a people. Maybe secretly, those among us who think that tomatoes should be only one hue also secretly feel the same about politics, party allegiances, even people's skin colour.
Heirloom tomatoes speak openly of the diversity of culture, of the panoply of race. Like people, heirloom tomatoes have oral histories linking them to their ancestry. For example, the intense, sweet purple-green flesh of the Black Krims were brought to us from the "Island of Krim" in the Ukraine; in that self-same flesh is contained the hardship of the pioneer life and the many inclement prairie winters they faced.
Likewise, the Blaby Special cultivar comes to us, like a fresh-faced GI Bride, from Shoult's Tomato Farm in Leicestershire England.
Many colours. Many stories. It is, truly, a seed diaspora - redolent of the folk who, over time, nurtured and cultivated them.
And big Agriculture wants to silence those voices. It wants to expunge them and wipe them out forever. To them, tomatoes are hybrid and red: oftentimes, tasteless, ruddy and round. We must not let them obliterate this genetic diversity. To do so would be, literally, a crime against nature.
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