Trying to see the larger picture

To follow the butterfly metaphor, I just have to repost a blog I follow from Eco Justice Ministries.  The end of the year is a great time to picture the bigger picture: 

The end of December is a perfect time to ponder humanity's place in the whole creation.

As we live our daily lives in this human-dominated world, our experience and routine awareness let us think that "this is the way it has always been."

Of course, we know about the scientific cosmology that tells of a vast sweep of time. We know that modern humans occupy just a tiny sliver of that long historical record. But we hold that knowledge in our heads, not our guts. The vast 4.6 billion year history of the Earth is way too big for us to grasp in a meaningful or personal way.

And so I have often been touched by narratives that condense the history of the Earth into a more manageable time frame. There are many variations -- some do it in a week, others in a single year. Some start the story with "the big bang" while others begin with the formation of the Earth as a recognizable planet.

New Year's Eve is a wonderful occasion to feel the long story of the Earth, and to appreciate our part in that narrative. On the last day of a calendar year, it is easy to connect with the "one year" image. And so, as we come to the end of December, I invite you to feel a condensed time frame for the Earth's story ...
January 1^st marks the origin of Earth. By the end of February, the first simple cells appear. All the way through the spring and early summer, simple plants enrich the atmosphere with oxygen.

Around mid-August, complex cells emerge, and coral appears in the ocean. Beginning in mid-November, the oceans fill with multicellular life-forms. In the last few days of November, freshwater fish appear, and the first vascular plants begin to grow on land.

About December 1^st, amphibians venture onto dry land. The great swamps that formed today's rich coal beds existed between December 5^th and 7^th. On December 12^th the largest of the Earth's mass extinctions wipes out 95% of all species.

Life bounces back, and dinosaurs evolve on December 13^th. Flowering plants come on the scene on December 20^th. In another great extinction, the dinosaurs disappear shortly before midnight on December 26^th, opening a space for modern mammals to emerge on the 27^th.

On the evening of December 31^st -- about when you might gather with friends for the evening's celebration -- the first hominids evolve in East Africa.

At 10 minutes to midnight on December 31^st -- about when all the New Year's party-goers are really starting to watch the clock -- Neanderthals spread throughout Europe.

At one minute to midnight, agriculture is invented. The Roman Empire fills 5 seconds, and collapses at 11:59:50 -- the moment when the New Year's ball starts to slide down the pole at Times Square, and the great 10-second countdown begins.

In the last 2 seconds before midnight, we enter the modern industrial era. In those last two seconds we find the explosive growth of the human population, the rise of complex technologies, and what we might call a globalized human culture.

The entire history of the United States fits into the last second of this narrative. The "petroleum era" of cheap and plentiful energy is crammed into the last half of a second, as we're holding a deep breath, ready to shout our start-of-a-new-year greetings. The fireworks start as our dash through Earth's history brings us to the current moment.

+     +     +     +     +

Sierra Club founder David Brower often told such a condensed history of the Earth. He ended the account by saying, "We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for [the two seconds since the Industrial Revolution began] can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark, raving mad."

If we keep flowing in our compressed race through global history, by the time we have finished shouting "Happy New Year!" we are already 200 years into the future. The available supplies of oil will have been exhausted, and the effects of global climate change will have taken dramatic hold. If our current way of life continues, a huge percentage of the Earth's species -- both plant and animal -- will have been driven into extinction. By the time you take your first deep breath in the next year, the Earth's climate and biology will have been forever altered by the human influences of the previous year's last moment.

In this compressed history, the Age of the Dinosaurs lasted almost two weeks. Unless we change our ways dramatically, the Age of the Humans may only last 15 or 20 minutes, and the span of human civilization will fill less than two minutes.

+     +     +     +     +

The biblical narrative begins with two beautiful and meaningful creation stories. In both of those accounts, people are part of the Earth's history from the very beginning of time. If we think that people pretty much like us have been key actors in the Earth's entire history, it is easy to think that our story is ultimately important.

This New Year's Eve, I challenge you to remember how brief our human span on Earth really is, and to reflect on the scope of our planetary impact. May that broadened perception help motivate us in our work toward a more sustainable way of life.


Shalom! Rev. Peter Sawtell
Executive Director, Eco-Justice Ministries

To read from their website:  Eco-Justice Ministries

The End of Money and the Future of Civilization Part II

I just started reading The End of Money and the Future of Civilization on my brand new kindle. In the first chapter, the author quotes Elizabet Sahtouris' butterfly metaphor. (I think there's a way to share passages I highlight on the kindle, but I don't know how to do it yet, so here is something more or less the same, from another source...)

"My favorite metaphor for the current world transition, first pointed out to me by Norie Huddle (Butterfly, 1990), is that of a butterfly in metamorphosis. It goes like this: A caterpillar crunches its way through its ecosystem, cutting a swath of destruction by eating as much as hundreds of times its weight in a day, until it is too bloated to continue and hangs itself up, its skin then hardening into a chrysalis. Inside this chrysalis, deep in the caterpillar’s body, tiny things biologists call ‘imaginal disks’ begin to form. Not recognizing the newcomers, the caterpillar’s immune system snuffs them as they arise. But they keep coming faster and faster, then linking up with each other. Eventually the caterpillar’s immune system fails from the stress and the disks become imaginal cells that build the butterfly by feeding on the soupy meltdown of the caterpillar’s body. It took a long time for biologists to understand the reason for the immune system attack on the incipient butterfly cells, but eventually they discovered that the butterfly has its own unique genome, carried by the caterpillar, inherited from long ago in evolution, yet not part of it as such (Margulis & Sagan, Acquiring Genomes 2002).

If we see ourselves as imaginal discs working to build the butterfly of a better world, we will understand that we are launching a new ‘genome’ of values and practices to replace that of the current unsustainable system. We will also see how important it is to link with each other in the effort, to recognize how many different kinds of imaginal cells it will take to build a butterfly with all its capabilities and colors.

As I understand it (after having read only a few pages...) the author finds a structural linkage between the current monetary system and the caterpillar's goals (consume!, grow!, more!, faster!) and the proposed alternatives (e.g. LETS) as an integral part of the metamorphosis to a new emerging paradigm.

A couple of other thoughts:

1. The caterpillar is not "bad". In fact it provides the "nutrient soup" for the emergent butterfly.
   
2. It doesn't go quietly. It's immune system tries to fight off the invader until it is overwhelmed. Competition, struggle and death are involved--and part of the natural order.
   

Singing to the Choir

I’ve been thinking about my neighbors this week.  I have some GREAT neighbors with lots of good skills and knowledge.  Most of them, however, haven’t been following the Peak Everything movement.  What will happen if they are caught unaware and even a short collapse happens?  Is it my job to help all of them?

This is written by my friend, Alan, who is the Director of Training at Prince William Sound Community College and Special Projects Manager for the Municipality of Skagway.

Seven steps to survival

By ALAN SORUM, For General Aviation News

April 7, 2010

The Seven Steps to Survival, developed by AMSEA, is an easy way to remember a sequence of steps that can help anyone who becomes stranded in a remote location survive.

THE SEVEN STEPS

   1. Recognition: Realize that your circumstances have changed and you must face new challenges. Recognize that your situation has been altered and it is time to think like a survivor.

   2. Inventory: Take time to consider your available resources and the issues that you may face. Take stock of your personal abilities, physical condition, supplies and tools on hand, and any immediate needs. Ask yourself “Is anyone is hurt? Is it safe to stay where I’m at? What resources do I have at hand?”

   3. Shelter: You need to stay out of the weather and conserve heat. How will you be protected from the elements? Remember clothing is your most immediate form of shelter.

   4. Signals: Identify ways to help others find you. How can you attract attention and be seen? Learn how to use your emergency locator transmitter (ELT) and ensure it’s been manually activated. Consider purchasing a GPS-equipped 406MHz model if you haven’t upgraded your old ELT yet — and be sure to register it.

   5. Water: Secure a safe source of drinking water. You should drink two to four quarts of clean water each day to prevent dehydration.

   6. Food: Eating isn’t an immediate survival need. Know what food is safe to eat and don’t eat without water also being available.

   7. Play: Studies of survival situations show that having a positive attitude is key to success. It’s important to play and stay busy while waiting for help. People survive often because they believe that they will survive.

(Original article:  http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/asorum)

I learned these steps more than 20 years ago while living in Southeast Alaska and haven’t forgotten them.  However, the one that I’ve remembered the most is number 7. 

I believe that is why the Transition Town movement has spread so quickly.  It follows these steps and particularly focuses on Step 7.  Transitioning to a different Eaarth (title of Bill McKibben’s book) requires these same steps. 

At a recent Transition Meeting, someone said it’s important to reach beyond the choir.  It’s true that we are working through the survival steps already and we have already recognized that we are in a crisis situation, while most folks in Anchorage, and perhaps the world, haven’t realized the first step.  But it’s true, our circumstances have changed, although most continue to live life as if all is well.  The question is: is it our job to awaken them to the realization that our situation has altered and there are new challenges ahead?  Will that cause more panic than we can deal with?  OR, is our job to prepare for all of us?   If the latter is true, we don’t want to be the blind leading the blind. What resources/skills do we need to lead the blind, once realization occurs?  We have a lot to learn!

I’ve come to the conclusion that Transition Town is about preparing for all of us.  Even our neighbors who don’t have an extra can of soup in their pantry.  We need to be able to teach others how to find food, water and warm shelter.  And most importantly we need to remember to play---that it’s a big adventure and we have the ability to bring those not prepared with us. 

So in this holiday season, turn off the TV and invite your neighbors over to sing Christmas carols.  Have a left-overs party.  Build a snow cave and see how warm you can make it.  And if you are really organized, have a neighborhood pantry-stocking and cold storage building party.  We’re all in this together.

A tale of two spoons | Energy Bulletin

A tale of two spoons | Energy Bulletin

The End of Money and the Future of Civilization

Following up on Iaato's question "Where do we start with an Alaskan-local currency?", I did a bit of googling for answers, and posted the following to another forum I'm involved with:

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From LETSLink UK

LETS - Local Exchange Trading Systems or Schemes - are local community-based mutual aid networks in which people exchange all kinds of goods and services with one another, without the need for money.

How do they work? Should my community try to implement something like this? What are the pitfalls?

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I also found these criticisms of LETSystems at wikipedia (my highlights added). They seem like a good guide for things to watch out for, pitfalls to try to avoid?:

LETSystems often have all of the problems confronting any voluntary, not-for-profit, non governmental, community based organisation. LETS organisers often complain of being overworked, and may suffer burnout. Many schemes have ceased operation as a result. Many of these problems can be overcome through effective community organization and development. and effective use of software.

LETSystems, whilst generally appealing to people supporting a general communitarian or environmental ideology, have in many places managed to successfully translate themselves as social welfare initiatives. There are far fewer systems that have managed to communicate and translate themselves into a local business initiative catering to locally owned small to medium businesses. This is generally considered to be an unfortunate weakness of LETSystems to date by the initiators, as they feel that LETS potentially has the capacity to allow small business to compete on a level playing field with larger national and transnational business corporations.

A number of people have problems adjusting to the different ways of operating using a LETSystem. A conventional national currency is generally hard to earn but easy to spend. To date LETSystems are comparatively easy to earn but harder to spend. The success of a LETSystem is therefore determined by the ease with which a person can spend their LETS credits, and improve their quality of life by participation.

I got a number of responses to my request, but only one from someone who is actively involved. He recommended Thomas Greco's The End of Money and the Future of Civilization as a must read. Here are a couple reviews (click link above for more)...

“Thomas Greco dedicates his new book to the causes of social justice, economic equity, personal liberty, world peace, and ecological restoration. He begins by showing that none of these can be achieved until we give birth to a just and sustainable paradigm for exchanging energies. Clearly written, the roots of our current financial predicament are revealed, and the need for something better is lucidly explained. The serious reader will appreciate the author’s long experience with alternative currencies: this book is a concise and efficient way to get up to speed on the history of alternatives to conventional ‘money’ as well as enter the new world of technologically liberated exchange that has the potential to bring about the end of money as we have known it.”--Paul Grignon, creator of the movie Money as Debt

"Greco ... outlines the increasingly familiar story of how things got so bad, and he tells it as well as anyone has ever done.... More than that, Greco writes about how to change what has gone wrong. His credentials as an engineer, college professor, author, and consultant are impeccable. His book is among the most important written in this decade. It is truly a book that can alter the world and, if taken seriously, give large numbers of people a practical way to survive the gathering catastrophe."--Richard C. Cook, author of Challenger Revealed and We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform

“Greco precisely identifies the conflation of interests and confusion of thinking that have given rise to today’s monetary muddles and proceeds to elucidate a viable strategy by which we all, as individuals and in association with one another, can unravel the tangle and build the basis for mutually profitable exchange.”--Arthur Edwards, Director, Centre for Associative Economics

I just ordered the book from Amazon. Anyone else interested in starting a serious discussion?

Aquaponics Experimenter's Kit

re "...things we are doing to prepare for life in Anchorage after peak oil/natural gas, after cost of living here rises, and while our climate is changing" ... here is something I've been working on -- a design for a DIY "Aquaponics Experimenters Kit".

It is made from used 55 gallon plastic drums and $100 or so worth of PVC piping & fittings. Both the name and the concept were inspired by / adapted from Allpower lab's GEK (Gasifier Experimenters Kit). The basic idea behind both is to develop a relatively low cost, but sophisticated kit for experimenters to explore, learn, help develop, and contribute to the body of knowledge. Oh yeah -- and have a ready supply of fresh organic salad greens year round. Oh yeah -- and see if such small scale local food production systems can be made thermodynamically efficient enough that they could be powered by renewable energy sources, (like the GEK).

My design is based on, and draws from the work of many others, linked to below. (We all stand on the shoulders of giants.) It can be summarized as a "flood & drain" (per Speraneo), CHOP ("Constant Height One Pump" per Hallam) "barrel-ponics" (per Travis Hughey) system using a loop siphon (per Affnan, et al), (simplifying and hopefully improving on more complicated flapper valves, bell siphons, timers, float switches and/or electronic controls, etc. used by others) to generate the flood & drain cycle without moving parts. It is a lot less expensive than comparably sized commercial units, and (I like to think) it simplifies and improves on the earlier systems it is based on. For those not familiar with aquaponics, it is ...

"...the marriage of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (the soilless growing of plants) that grows fish and plants together in one integrated system. The fish waste provides an organic food source for the growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in. The third participants are the microbes (nitrifying bacteria) and composting red worms that thrive in the growing media. They do the job of converting the ammonia from the fish waste first into nitrites, then into nitrates and the solids into vermicompost that are food for the plants.

In combining both systems aquaponics capitalizes on the benefits and eliminates the drawbacks of each. It should not be confused with either.

Read more...

Slow Money: Nurture Capital

Bringing Money Back to Earth

Slow Money: “Nurture Capital” for Communities & the Environment

"Woody Tasch is a financier with an idea, and it’s a humdinger. Since the government isn’t too interested and industry is too self-interested, he argues, we need to assemble a new type of investment structure and put money directly into sustainable farming. He calls it Slow Money, inspired,as he explains below, by the Slow Food movement and by realizing that the dizzying speed of money flows in the 21st century has ripped finance away from its moorings in reality. Tasch proposes the opposite: invest in food systems down the road, slow the money down, and watch it do things in the real world.

More compelling still, Tasch has the experience to back it up. He is chairman emeritus of Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations and family offices. Since 1992, Investors’ Circle has moved $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. Before that, Tasch was the treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation."
...

"what would the world be like if we invested 50 percent of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?”

"We’re not investing in farm land, we’re not saving organic farms or small farms, and we’re not building local processing, we’re not supporting restaurants that source locally, we’re not building infrastructure for farmers markets, and we’re not helping CSAs expand. It’s quite a list of things that people who know about the state of agriculture very quickly understand are components of a healthy local food system from a business standpoint. We’re talking about entrepreneurship. We want to support the entrepreneurs, including farmers. We want to give these entrepreneurs the capital they need to grow their small food enterprise. If the money is not doing that, which it isn’t right now, how are we ever going to get there?

...the whole issue of the efficient market hypothesis is now under question on Wall Street. I usually hold up a recent issue of The Economist that has on its cover a picture of a textbook that was falling over and melting into the desk, and the title of the textbook is Modern Economic Theory.

This is potent, we’re not talking about a progressive publication like Mother Jones — this is The Economist. The story was about the fact that leading people on Wall Street are beginning to admit that the efficient market hypothesis no longer describes reality. It can’t be relied upon. It’s not working. Then I ask the audience, “How many people think this sounds efficient? We have $500 billion of private foundation assets in this country, and I’d like you in the audience to guess what percentage of those assets is granted to sustainable agriculture groups every year.” It’s a bit of trick question because it’s a percentage of the assets, not a percentage of the grants, but both numbers are very low. Anyway, people guess and then I say, “OK, don’t tell me your number, divide it by ten, and now tell me your number.” Usually I hear 0.1 percent, and it’s still off by a power of ten — the actual figure is a hundredth of a percent. A hundredth of a percent of the assets of U.S. foundations is given as grants to sustainable agriculture groups, meaning about $50 million total U.S. grant budgets to sustainable agriculture. Then I zoom back and again ask how many people think that’s efficient. What is the market actually efficient at? It’s not efficient at solving the problems that our survival depends on at this point — it’s very efficient at propagating capital, but where the capital goes, how it’s distributed, what it’s used for are grossly and frighteningly inefficient. That’s how we weave the bigger money questions together with the food question.

Slow Money is definitely about local food systems and about organics and soil fertility, that’s our core. It is about food but it’s also the recognition that real structural alternatives on a macro-economic level are desperately needed, and they are not going to come from Wall Street.

Read More...

The Urge to Bolt

The problems that Cindee has listed are inextricably linked to our economy. The reason the economy has begun to contract is because of Peak Oil. Each year the global production of fossil fuels will be less from here on out, leading to permanent economic contraction. Understanding the real threats and the long-term nature of the problem is the first step. After that, what do we do about it?

I’m concerned because I have had several friends recently who decided to pick up and move to places Outside, based on nothing more than fear of what could come. And fight or flight is a very human response to a short-term crisis. The problem is, this is not going to be a short-term crisis. This is the first downturn in the growth of our American economy for the first time in 200 years. This current economic contraction will continue over the longer term of decades, and economic problems will be how Peak Oil presents during this period.

Alaska’s main problems are it’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels for heat, food, and transportation. But we also produce oil, coal, and gas, and we have many options for renewable energy production. We have a functional rail system and most of our communities are on the railbelt or are accessible by barge. There are less people in proportion to the amount of land and natural resources than any other state, and we are buffered from potential mass migrations when things start to fall apart by the isolation of the state. And many of the people in the state are well prepared for lifestyles that are less reliant on fossil fuels through their outdoor pursuits.

If you’re feeling the urge to bolt right now, you need to figure out what your needs and goals are, and whether moving Outside would just be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. And do not discount the sense of community and close ties that many Alaskans have. The most important component of coping with a crisis is having a community of friends and neighbors who can work together to deal with problems. Do not look for state or national leadership for significant help—there are too many of us, and our reliance on fossil fuels at this point is too great. The most effective help will come from small local community groups. Transition groups or common security clubs could help in the formation of these groups.

Probably the biggest reason to move would be if you need to be nearer to family outside. Air travel will get much more expensive in the future. We get 2/3 of our fossil fuels from other countries, and the collapse of global currencies including the dollar will impact trade of oil and other goods.

If you do decide to stay here, be sure you have a back-up source of heat for your house that is not based on natural gas. And position yourself so that you could take mass transit or bike or walk to work. And Alaskans should always have well-stocked pantries—the threat of a bad earthquake should be reason enough for all of us to be concerned about these issues, even without the looming long emergency of Peak Oil.

Here’s a helpful link about whether to adapt in place or not from Energy Bulletin by Astyk.

If you need a peak oil shrink, the doctor is in.

And if you are just figuring all of this out now, and are in the panic stage, be calm, take a deep breath, and settle down. This will not all happen tomorrow. Humans have a very short-term orientation to life. The changes that we are talking about here will occur over decades. But we should have started 40 years ago, so we are way behind as a civilization. It is time to get to work, now.

For those of you who decide to stay in Alaska, there is a long list of things that need to be done, including more renewable energy, retrofitting homes to be energy efficient with multiple heat sources, food storage, local foods, and improving mass transit. What have you done this month towards these goals?

Too Much Information

Never before in the history of mankind have we had so much information.  Suddenly our generation is aware of climate change, carbon levels in the atmosphere, how much oil is left in the ground and how humans are contributing to the problems.  Now that we know these things, the question is:  how do we deal with them? 

If we know that we are at peak oil and that oil dependent things are just going to get more and more expensive. . . .  If we know that the climate is changing and we know that water is going to be a huge issue for the planet. . . . . . If we know that driving our cars to and from work is causing more and more carbon in the atmosphere (not to mention heating our homes in this extreme weather). . . . .     What can we do??? 

One option is to believe it's all going to be fine because somehow we will have some techno fix to solve the problems and continue living life as if nothing were wrong.  Another option is to leave Alaska and move to a place where you don't have to heat so much or drive so far.  A third option is to plan for the descent; to plan to live in Alaska like we did pre-pipeline days. 

This is a blog for folks who want to contribute to positive ideas about staying in Anchorage and living a good life:  growing more of our own food, learning how to store food, and sharing tools and expertise with our neighbors. 

Feel free to post and or make comments here.  It's good to know there are others out there thinking similarly and not drowning in despair.  Was it Einstein who said, "If you can dream it, you can do it?"  Let's do it!