Beyond the Chemical Valley of The Dolls

I don't feel bad that we are beginning to live with a world without oil. It was inevitable.

In fact, I don't feel bad at all.

I don't watch nature shows anymore. I don't read most articles about our collapsing environment either. Its just too painful and I can't take it anymore. I don't want to live in a world without wild polar bears. So I support Nature Conservancy and the Essex Country Field Naturalists'. Every year I add more native plants to my small backyard.

But I know I need to do more.

I think we've picked most of the low-hanging fruit when it comes to reducing our environmental footprint of our family. Our house is an older, tree-filled neighbourhood with a lawn small enough to cut with a push-mower. We compost. We recycle. Last year we replaced our furnace with an energy efficient module and did an energy audit on how house to identify leaks. We live close enough to work that we could bike the commute if necessary (but since we take our toddler to daycare, we do drive). I'm replacing the burn-out bulbs with energy efficient ones and am saving up to do the same once a large appliance goes. I travel by plane only once a year - and that's within the continent. I work for a university library and my partner owns a store in the local farmers market. There's still more to be done, but my goal is to live modestly - not austerely.

Now to move the work from the private sphere into the public. For me, I think its time to bring the level of engagement and scope up a degree of magnitude. But collective action in environmental matters is surprisingly very hard to do. And yet the potential energy that is wants to be of use is massive. I know that there are so many others who are like me and who want a way to do more in this world. There has to be something more than making a good example out of yourself.

There are 1443 active individuals committed to a World Without Oil. Suppose everyone of them was willing to give up $1000 to the cause. Suddenly there is 1.4 million dollars to start up something wonderful. But what would it be - where would it go and who would benefit first? Who gets what when and how is my favourite definition of Politics. There's a surprisingly little politics in the World Without Oil.  I've only been able to find one instance in which someone suggests that we contact our political representative to act on our behalf. You already have a political representative at your city, state, and national level. You should talk to them - they work for you.

Two of humanity's greatest sins - slavery and apartheid - were enshrined in law through politics and abolished in law through politics. There will be politics in a world without oil.

Wow! I just met the one tonne challenge!

Err... I would have if the present government hadn't axed that program!

Whatever happened to Nico?

Well a number of global hot spots have fired up in week nine of a world without oil. It was to be expected, I guess.

In order to keep my mind off of the grim present, I started searching for some clues to our future and I found these old Fueling the Future podcasts. They were done some years ago - before BP ruined its reputation in Alaska. Ah - here's the tie-in book - so the series was done around 2003.

I listened to Part One and it reminded me about the Shell Scenarios. I had first heard about Shell's Scenario planning when one of my heros starting working with one of the folks responsible for bringing long-term planning into the business world.

Shell's latest set of scenarios begins:

Stressing that our business environment will not be a utopia but a world which is influenced by complex trade-offs embedded in policies, strategies and expectations, we are faced with a stark question: How will the Trilemma~or “triple-dilemma” ~ between efficiency, social justice and security be resolved in a globalised world?

From that, they outline three possible future scenarios:

 Low Trust Globalization: a world of heightened globalization and more coercive states and regulators (Carrots and Sticks); Open Door: a world of heightened globalization and more cohesive civil societies (Incentives and Bridges); and Flags: a world in which values are affirmed in a more dogmatic, zero-sum game manner and in which states try to rally divided societies around the flag (Nations and Causes) [gbn]

Can you guess which path it appears that we are on?

Well, I learned from the World Without Oil site that a sister of a blogger has spotted US troops in a 'little known area' of Alberta Canada. There's nothing on the CBC of US forces chasing a supposed terrorist threat of the Oil Sands project and of Canadian troops being moved west. I'm a little skeptical, so I am going to withhold judgment until I hear further evidence.

Its not that I don't believe that the United States would invade another country for its oil under the guise of national security. I'm skeptical because our existing trade agreements make it impossible for Canada to limit its oil production to the United States.

I believe that our government is fully aware of any US military activity in Canadian borders. The US government may have informed us that they are coming over as opposed to asking, but our government knows our neighbour to the North of us well enough to know when to roll over. Our differences aside, our countries will always be close - literally, historically, and emotionally. So maybe the superpower who cried wolf is right this time - maybe there *is* a terrorist threat in Alberta.

I've been thinking of mpathytest's call for experiments in living with less oil.

What makes the exercise tricky is that most of us have already made the major decisions that affect our immediate oil consumption: how far we live from work and how our home is heated.

But there are other ways we can reduce our indirect oil consumption. For example

It takes 17 percent of the fossil fuel consumed in the United States to produce the food we eat. The result is three-quarters of a ton of carbon dioxide emissions per person, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. And that doesn't account for the fuel it takes to get the products to market... Whether you're a carnivore or herbivore also has CO₂ consequences. We don't blame you for enjoying the occasional filet mignon. But the average meat eater causes a ton and a half more carbon dioxide emissions for food production than the average vegetarian.

That quote is from Slate's updated Green Challenge. (start the quiz here). I tried taking it in its last iteration, but to be honest, I gave up because it required that get out of the chair in front of the computer and find old heating bills and the like.  I found that the Pembina Institute's One Less Tonne Challenge has an easier mix of action and information.

Some of the actions one takes in reducing energy consumption  - like adding insulation to windows or buying low-energy bulbs benefits the self through lower energy bills in the long run. But other actions, like committing one's self to using green energy alternatives costs an individual more money. So how to can you get individuals to take on greater costs to reduce the future costs of our future society?

Would you be more likely to take on a small cost to benefit society if you knew that 25 other people would do the same thing? This is why Pledgebank exists.

I pledge to try out Pledgebank.

I'm getting a little worried about the grim, apocalyptic mood that has infected not only the mainstream press but the blogosphere and even World Without Oil in the wake of the oil spike. If we aren't careful, our grim future imagining is going to result in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Its happened before. From Dan Baum, "Deluged" (When Katrina hit, where were the police?) The New Yorker, January 9, 2006

National Guard units from as far away as Puerto Rico showed up in force the weekend after the storm. For the most part, they brought no tools other than M-16s—no chain saws or bulldozers, no grappling hooks, generators, or field hospitals. They were not equipped to clear debris, repair power lines, or deliver mass medical care. Like the city’s armed residents, they had prepared for an uprising, and stood on street corners nervously fingering their weapons. Kevin Shaughnessy, a courtly, gray-haired sergeant first class of the California National Guard, stopped me on St. Charles Avenue to demand I.D., and, after letting me pass, called me back. “Say, you don’t have a map of New Orleans you can spare, do you?” he asked. He also accepted a box of canned food and three gallons of water. “We can sure use it,” he said. ...

That weekend felt like a lawman’s Mardi Gras. The dry slice of New Orleans filled not only with federal and state troops but with well-meaning deputy sheriffs and policemen from as far away as Oregon and Michigan—cops whose activities were uncoördinated, who knew nothing of the city, and who were pumped on rumors of violence. They tumbled out of their cars in boxy bulletproof vests, pointing their M-4 carbines every which way, as though expecting incoming rounds. Adding to the Dodge City atmosphere were such private soldiers as those of Blackwater, U.S.A., who lurked on the broad steps of several mansions, draped in automatic weapons. As I sat on the porch of a house on tranquil St. Charles Avenue on the Saturday night after the storm, a red laser dot from a gunsight moved slowly across my chest.

The phrase on the lips of the guest enforcers was “martial law.” An Oklahoma Guardsman stopped me Sunday afternoon and ordered me to get out of town. When I told him that the N.O.P.D. was allowing reporters to stay, he said, “It’s not up to the police. We’re in charge now. The city’s under martial law. We’re not backing them up anymore—they’re backing us up.” Later, a California Guardsman whose emblems identified him as Sergeant Kelley pointed an M-4 at me and said, “See this? This is martial law. We’re in charge.” The Constitution makes no provision for anything called “martial law,” though Article I allows for the possibility of calling out militia—even of suspending habeas corpus—in times of unrest. The sole large-scale unrest afflicting New Orleans that weekend was thirst and a hankering to bathe.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

We need to present a vision for a brighter future. A future in which we have faced our adversities and become better and stronger for it. Something positive to which we can work together. Something to raise our spirits and our vision of ourselves. Something like the best aspects of the Space Race in the 1960s. We need a new Apollo.

"The kitchen garden, once a standard fixture of most American households, is gaining renewed attention as one component of the movement towards local, fresh and seasonal foods. Many people who take up kitchen gardening are concerned about the sustainability of a system in which most foods in a typical meal have traveled over 1,000 miles to get to their tables. Some kitchen gardeners are drawn by the variety of heirloom and hybrid plants available to growers, while others are attracted by freshness, flavor and nutritional value.

A kitchen garden does not necessarily require much land or equipment. Many plants will grow happily in containers, and varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers are available in smaller sizes for growing on patios, decks, balconies, and even on windowsills. With its combination of flowers, herbs and vegetables providing varieties of color, scent and form, a kitchen garden can be as pleasing as a formal flower bed.

The focus of this guide is on the practicalities and history of kitchen gardening. Not intended to be a comprehensive bibliography, this Tracer Bullet is designed -- as the name of the series implies -- to put the reader “on target."

"Canada and the U.S. also have the largest commercial trading
relationship in the world. A truck-load of products crosses the
border every two seconds. Ambassador Frank McKenna,
speaking at the CSG Annual Meeting in Delaware, said Canada
is biggest export market for every state in New England.
Economic integration is crucial to the U.S.-Canada relationship
and our economic competitiveness abroad. In the auto trade,
Ambassador McKenna noted that an auto part travels across
the border six times before the car is put on the lot for sale." (pdf)



After 9/11, the trucks turned the highway into a parking lot. For miles and miles the trucks sat. Months later, the portable toilets that been placed by the side of highway at given intervals remained. Eventually they were taken away.

I haven't been on the highway to see if they have returned. Gas prices notwithstanding, border traffic is again at a standstill.