It’s Your Move

My main concern in the Road to Resilience is how we approach and prepare for what many see as a major civilizational paradigm shift.  What is forcing the shift is the arrival of natural limits to the further development of the existing political, economic, and social institutions we rely on today.  At the base of it is a profligate use of resources and poor housekeeping.  It is the way we go about procuring, distributing, and using those resources that is putting not only us but many other species in danger of extinction.  Whether we have a paradigm shift is not really open for discussion.  The form and nature of that paradigm shift is.  
 
To the extent that we look at the planet as a store whose shelves are steadily emptying, we will have the political and social unrest we see everywhere on the planet today. Fear and suspicion make for poor planning and decision-making with respect to the long-term success of our species.   

I read a book about water in which I was made to realize that almost every molecule of water that has ever been on this planet is still here. (I say “almost” because some miniscule amount has probably managed to escape the gravitational field.)  We have used it poorly and it is no longer easily accessible as it once was, but that trend can be turned around and we know how to do it.  The energy that we need to grow food, stay warm, and run the natural systems we depend on, i.e., the hydrologic cycle, the climate, etc., has always been basically the same solar input that first shined on the planet 4 ½ billion years ago.  We know how to harness that also.   There is growing evidence we can feed our grossly overpopulated planet and recapture excess carbon in the atmosphere at the same time using labor-intensive organic farming methods.  

What we can’t do is support our present civilization, in which over 90% of us do nothing directly to maintain our life system on this planet.  The specialized industries we depend on today require highly concentrated resources to produce the huge quantities of food, energy, and materials that we need.  The naturally occurring distribution of the sun’s energy is an even dispersion over the entire planet.  Using the energy of the sun means collecting it everywhere in small quantities.  Producing renewable energy via large plants is not likely to prove economically viable.  

To a lesser extent, the same is true for water.  Small-scale water conservation will do more to save marginal land than all the dams and pipelines that we could build.   Just harvesting dew can eventually transform a desert given proper land management and a lot of patience.  Water is heavy and we use a lot of it.  It makes no sense to depend on moving it long distances if we can nurture and develop local sources.  

The difficulty with changing the paradigm at the national and global level is that the concentrated wealth and power at those levels is directly tied to the concentrated production of our goods and services.  To start localizing the production of those goods and services is tantamount to co-opting that power and wealth.  Don’t expect to see a whole lot of cooperation from the powers that be.  They mouth the benefits of renewable energy, while they are furiously trying to figure how they can produce it in highly capitalized central facilities that they can control.  You can already see this reasoning manifest in some states that are penalizing people for installing solar panels on their homes.  It is a ploy that is utterly devoid of common sense, and I expect that it will quickly fall by the wayside.

I read somewhere that the less sense that a law makes, the more force is required to enforce it.  To continue business as usual, I can only see further movement toward a fascist totalitarian government.  Maintaining such a government is enormously costly and, in the past, it seems such governments lasted only as long as wealth was easily obtained.  That won’t be the case in the world of tomorrow.  That doesn’t mean that they won’t give it a try.  Fear and desperation are the allies of despotism.

So, it looks to me like the wave of the future is local.  What you do right here at home can literally create the new paradigm.  Even high technology, thanks to the open source internet and computers, is availing itself to small scale production.  Maybe E F Schumacher, who wrote Small Is Beautiful over 40 years ago, will get the last laugh after all.
Comment?  terry@vashonloop.com