peak oil

Abstract (Part of the original paper; useful, so I'll leave it here.)
This paper attempts to map out a definitive route to human “happiness” based on the notion of a human reconnection with nature through an appropriate heart-brain balance. The consequences of this for human society, especially agriculture, are explored. The content focuses specifically on Japan, but is thought to be adaptable to any society in the world.

Fully referenced PDF file of this article (Depending on your computer, you may also be able to see the Japanese 'kanji' used in the section on Shinto.)

Introduction

Current Japanese society cannot be said to be very “happy,” nor does it appear that “happiness” will be achieved in this society, or in other advanced industrial nations, simply by continuing along the lines of the present economic and social policies. The GDH (Greater Domestic Happiness) and Food Problem Research Group was set up by the Mottainai Society chairman, Professor Yoshinori Ishii to look into the future of Japanese society in the context of ‘Peak Oil’ and to address the possibilities for the achievement of “happiness” in Japan. The research group held its first meeting in Tokyo on 17 November 2009. Prior to the meeting, the secretary of the group, Mr Yasuo Tamura, circulated the following memo.

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1 Nov. 2009

Reason for the Establishment of the “GDH and Food Problem Research Group”

The oil peak has already come and gone and the natural gas and coal peaks are expected within the next 15 years. Nuclear power cannot do everything. It is high time to begin putting together a plan for a transition from an oil-dependent “high-energy society” to a “low-energy society.”

The basics of civilization – transportation, fuel, chemical raw materials, etc. – are about to undergo a fundamental change. Globalization will also recede. It will be necessary to plan for regional decentralization, local production for local consumption, environmental coexistence, and localization.

That means not making GDP the target for the state and society. That is because growthism and the society based on the competitive principle have not made people happy.

We wish to outline a concept for a society that values the concepts of mottainai (‘waste not, want not’) and sufficiency, that values the bonds between people, and that cares for life and the diversity of nature. For this, we think in terms not of GDP, but GDH – Gross Domestic Happiness – and will also undertake a transformation of the way in which we think about the food issue. That is the “GDH and Food Problem Research Group.” We hope that you (the prospective members of the research group) will approve of these ideas.

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The necessity to replace GDP/GNP, symbolizing growthism and a society based on the principle of competition, with a more human society oriented towards caring for life and nature was at the time, and still is, becoming clearer by the day. This group took as its starting point “Gross Domestic Happiness” (GDH or Gross National Happiness, GNH) as proposed by the King of Bhutan and implemented in that country.

At this stage, the central emphasis of the work of the group was less on defining what “happiness” might be than on examining Japan’s food issues. The feeling was that most of this work on the social realization of “happiness” had already been carried out by the King of Bhutan and his advisers in devising the Bhutan GDH and that once society took on the GDH approach and the food issue was resolved, then Japan’s society would realize happiness as a matter of course. However, while work and discussions on the issues of food, energy, employment, social change and Japan’s future progressed, it proved more and more difficult to get a firm grasp on the concept of “happiness.” As this was happening, I was beginning to read around the subject of human happiness a little more and increasingly came to feel that “happiness” relied on an appropriate human relationship with nature as much as it did on appropriate human social and economic relationships. If that were so, then however much we ‘adjusted’ human relationships in the attempt to bring about human happiness in society, unless the human-nature relationship was also ‘adjusted’ so that all people lived in harmony (more or less) with nature, then “happiness” would be an illusion, and therefore unattainable. The development of these ideas in the context of Japan’s food and energy issues is the content of the remainder of this paper.

Part 1: Japan’s Food and Energy Problem

Japan’s food issue is inseparable from the world food and energy situation. Japan imports roughly 60% of its food calories. The population of Japan, roughly 127,700,000 and falling very slowly, lives on a land area of 377,944 km2, of which around 65% is forested mountain land, and has roughly 4.5 million ha (45,000 km2) of farmland. That calculates to 0.035 hectares per person (ha/cap) or about 28.4 cap/ha. Good Japanese farming will support about 11 cap/ha, thus showing why it is that Japan can feed only about 40% of its people. This need to import food is likely to become critical as fossil energy resources become more expensive and less easily available in the second and third decades of the 21st century. The reason for this is that a great proportion of agriculture around the world today, especially that in industrialized countries and the countries that are exporting large amounts of food to Japan (the USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina, and to a certain extent Thailand) relies heavily on fossil resources to produce food. The international transportation of food is also heavily reliant on fossil energy resources.

The main uses of fossil resources in agriculture are in chemical fertilizers and other agrichemicals, fuel for machines and transportation (and the energy required to manufacture machines), and the generation of electricity for pumps, dryers and so on. Higher prices or reduced availability for fossil fuels means a reduced ability to fertilize cropland, protect crops from weeds or pests, to use machinery to cultivate the land or process crops, and to move materials from one place to another. The ability of current food exporting countries to export will also be diminished, it will become difficult to transport large amounts of food over long distances, and at the same time it will also become more difficult for Japan to maintain its current level of food production. A simple simulation devised by the author shows that with all current conditions except for energy use remaining the same as they were in 2009, but with fossil energy use in Japanese agriculture declining suddenly to zero, the current food self-sufficiency of Japan, 39-40%, would decline to 15-16%. Thus, in a generalized world fossil energy shortage Japan is likely to face simultaneous drastic reductions in both food imports and its ability to produce food. It was generally recognized in the research group that this situation is likely to occur before 2030, and could happen at anytime from around the middle of the second decade of the 21st century.

If a situation of a sudden cessation of all food and energy imports into Japan were to occur, this would bring about a human catastrophe on a massive scale. However, the food and energy import problems are unlikely to happen both simultaneously and suddenly, and since there is perhaps at least five years (as time of writing, October 2011) before any serious crisis occurs, there are a number of measures that the Japanese people and government can start to enforce now to avoid, as far as possible, this deep human catastrophe from becoming a reality. In brief, the following measures can be taken:

1. Reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and other chemicals and move slowly towards sustainable farming systems based on organic materials (organic farming, permaculture, natural farming, mixed farming, LISA [low input sustainable farming], and so on).

2. Increase farmland area up to 5.3 million ha and improve the cropping ratio up to 140%, while at the same time providing greater (financial, government support) incentives to farmers to produce food by making it possible for them to make a decent living from farming, obtain expert help in the transition to organic forms of agriculture, and increased security in the form of, for example, crop insurance.

3. Increase the number of people working in farming (especially young people) from the approximately 2.5 million now up to 10 million, again by making it worth people’s time to farm in financial terms.

4. Begin to provide farm draft animals to replace machinery for the time when fuel becomes unavailable. Introduce a target of breeding two to three million farm animals (horses, oxen, etc.) by 2040.

5. Ensure the sustainable management of all forests for the sustainable harvesting of wood for construction and energy, and the harvesting of other forest products, such as leaf humus for fertilization of farmland.

6. Produce biofuels (without competing with the production of food for humans) for running farm and transport machinery over the next 20 to 30 years.

7. Reduce the need for the transportation of food and enforce, as far as possible, local production for local consumption.

8. Reduce food processing and packaging to the minimum necessary.

9. Rethink food retailing and preparation (including restaurants) in order to use less energy.

These are all worthwhile policies that can be introduced locally and gradually. However, as of time of writing (October 2011), not only are no such policies being implemented, they are not even being considered. Since it takes at least several years for farming practices to change, agricultural policy needs to be thought out ahead of time, not when the crisis is beginning to happen.

Further, the events following the earthquake and tsunami disaster of 11 March 2011 have made the situation considerably worse. Substantial areas of Fukushima Prefecture have become uncultivable due to radiation pollution of the land. The fear of radiation pollution of food will also drive some consumers away from domestic food produce to imported foods. These two factors will tend to exert a downward pressure on Japan’s food self-sufficiency.

Japan is now also preparing to join the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade economic partnership that will likely include many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and others. The abolition of import tariffs on agricultural products will mean an influx of cheap food from exporting countries and a loss of domestic markets for Japan’s farmers. The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) has estimated that Japan’s food self-sufficiency will fall to 13% if Japan joins the TPP. This is tantamount to a destruction of Japan’s agriculture and rural economy at precisely the time when Japan should be devising policies to protect and bolster these against future worldwide food and energy shortages.

If the worst does come to the worst and Japan’s food (and energy) imports cease, how far can Japan go in providing food for its population? A useful study by Toshiki Mashimo estimates that if producers do their very best to expand production and consumers do their very best to adjust consumption to lower levels and to traditional foods, Japan might be able to raise its food self-sufficiency to 80% under current agricultural methods, or to 75% if organic farming was the main method of production. This will not be easily achieved, but if it is, and food and energy imports can be maintained at a certain level, this kind of effort would be a great relief to the Japanese people. At the same time, it suggests that the Japanese population needs to decline to 80% or 75% of its current level, or about 95 to 100 million people rather than the current 127.7 million. At the current slow decline of the Japanese population, this situation is not likely to be achieved until 2050 or later.

A food shortage, perhaps triggered by a fossil energy crisis, is not going to contribute to the “happiness” of Japanese people. I will explain below that “happiness” is not something that is going to be easily or quickly achieved in Japan (or in any industrial country). I hope it will become clear how this “happiness” is related to agriculture as the argument is developed.

Part 2: What is “Happiness” and how can it be achieved?

2.1 Introduction to “Happiness”

Since I believe that nearly all previous attempts at defining “happiness” have been wide of the mark, I do not intend to review past literature on the subject. The reader may enter the phrase “definition of happiness” into the search box in Google to find sufficient examples of this definition and other related information. I currently use the following definition:

A long-lasting sense of inner contentment and security.

I think this covers the main aspects of what is generally thought of as “happiness.” One problem with this definition is that it gives us no clue as to how “happiness” is to be achieved.

So how can this “happiness” be achieved? Let us try to list up a number of factors that might help lead to the achievement of “happiness” in a society.

1. At least sufficient material conditions for a “decent” level of daily existence (food, water, clothing, shelter, and so on).

2. An even distribution of the materials in 1., or at least a sufficiently “fair” distribution that does not cause a part of the population to feel that it is being treated unfairly.

3. 2. infers that human relations within the society will be “good,” i.e. that people are “fair” with each other and that no one is being mistreated. This would also imply the absence of wars and other forms of violence.

Human security is sometimes said to be composed of the two human freedoms of “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”. Human security might thus nicely sum up the factors 1. to 3.

However, for our “happy” society, we might also want to include fair access to “decent work,” good quality health and education, as well as a number of freedoms (freedom of movement, freedom of choice of occupation, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc.) that are now supposed to be guaranteed under UN covenants. A similar list of factors can be seen in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which also includes love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

Thus the factors that might aid in the creation of a “happy” society are well-known. The assumption then is that the “happy” society may be approached by implementing social policies that lead to the realization of these factors in society; a social engineering approach to “happiness.” Unfortunately, although the material conditions of the 20th century might have enabled this to happen, it is most definitely what did not happen in almost all societies. In fact, as we are noting recently, the more materially affluent societies become the more difficult it appears to be for those societies to be “happy” - to be inhabited by people who consider themselves to be “happy.”

So what is the problem? Firstly, I think that if we wish to discover what human “happiness” might be, although material (and psychological) conditions are necessary they are not sufficient, and that instead of looking for factors external to the human being we have to look at internal factors. That is, we have to look at what human beings are, what we have evolved to be, in order to find where our “real happiness” lies. Secondly, as I have already mentioned in the Introduction, I have become convinced that “happiness” depends on having an appropriate relationship with nature. Despite the over-simplicity of the idea, the more tenuous the human relationship with nature becomes, the less likely we are to achieve “happiness.” (I suppose it’s necessary to define “nature” here, but basically I mean non-urbanized areas where people can come into contact with wild or domesticated animals and plants, including most agricultural settings, coastal areas, wilderness areas, forests, and some desert areas.) I hope it will become clear later why these two factors (what we are and our relationship with ‘nature’) are, in fact, so deeply connected as to be virtually one and the same thing.

2.2 Carlos Castaneda - his contribution and his failure

A surprising number of people have never heard of Carlos Castaneda (abbreviated hereafter to “CC”), but if you were an English-speaking young adult in the 1970s it may have been hard not to have heard of him. CC’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, was first published in 1968, when CC was a student of anthropology at UCLA. The book describes how CC met and became an apprentice to a Yaqui indian shaman, don Juan Matus. ‘Teachings’ reads as a diary of the apprenticeship CC underwent with don Juan and was considered at the time to be a masterpiece of anthropological research. (CCs third book, Journey to Ixtlan, is almost identical to the Ph.D. dissertation that CC submitted to UCLA in 1973.)

Through don Juan, CC comes to see that there is “a separate reality” (the title of CC’s second book), a separate awareness or a separate consciousness from the one that we usually experience in our daily lives. This offers the possibility of, if not the realization of “happiness,” a totally different way of life based on the cognitive structure of the shamanistic world of don Juan. To the American youth of the early 70s, who were in the midst of experiencing or who had recent memories of the assassination of President Kennedy, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, Watergate, and the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, the notion of a way out into a different way of life and a different world was appealing indeed, and CC’s books sold extremely well.

So if this is not a path to “happiness” (a different way of life, but not necessarily to “happiness,” as can be seen from the books themselves), then why are we mentioning this here? The interesting thing about don Juan’s different perceptual mode is that the skill that must be mastered in order to gain the new perceptual ability is stopping the internal dialog. It is necessary to stop the internal chatter in your brain, the endless conversation that we have with ourselves nearly all our waking hours. Everything in don Juan’s shamanistic perceptual mode begins with emptying the brain of this internal conversation.

This should come as no surprise to South and East Asian Buddhists, who are all familiar with Zen Buddhism. The main practice of Zen is Zen meditation (zazen, sitting meditation), the purpose of which is to quieten the mind and stop the inner dialog. In the Flower Sermon, the Buddha is said to have uttered the following words to explain what he was doing while looking at a flower:

I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvellous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures.

I think this is exactly what don Juan was trying to teach CC. The separate reality that was reachable if one was successful in stopping the internal dialog was termed by don Juan the “nagual.” By contrast, our ordinary, everyday perceptual mode was termed the “tonal.” (The term “nagual” is originally from the Nahuatl word meaning a shaman, but in CC’s books is used in the sense of a tonal/nagual dichotomy.)

Don Juan explains that “A warrior is aware that the world will change as soon as he stops talking to himself,” but just exactly what is involved in this change? CC’s fourth book, Tales of Power, consists almost entirely of an explanation of the tonal/nagual contrast and the notion that, if one can attain the nagual, this will make it possible for a person to see things differently, as opposed to the ordinary ‘seeing’ of objects that we do in our normal mode of perception, the tonal. On pages 125-126 of Tales of Power, in a chapter entitled “The Island of the Tonal,” don Juan explains to CC, while out eating a meal, that the tonal is like the tops of the tables in the restaurant. Everything that we can talk and think about in our normal mode of perception is on the tables (representing the minds of different people). Even ‘God’ is on the table, as it is something we have a word for and can refer to. Don Juan likens God to the tablecloth that can wrap up everything else on the table inside itself. The nagual, then, is the space between the tables; the area where we do not use words to comprehend or communicate what we see there. (So if we have a word for ‘nagual,’ isn’t it part of the tonal? No, don Juan says, because the tonal/nagual are a true pair.)

The above describes for us a door into ‘a separate reality,’ but this seems to lead neither to nature nor to happiness. Moreover, in the mid-70s a number of people denounced CC’s work as a hoax and cast doubts as to whether don Juan actually existed as a real person. Primary among the detractors was Richard De Mille (son of the well-known film director Cecil B. De Mille), who showed that it was more likely that CC got his ideas by spending his days in the UCLA library than out in the desert of northern Mexico with a Yaqui shaman named don Juan. (His 1980 book, The don Juan Papers includes a 47-page glossary of quotations from don Juan and their sources, which include Wittenstein, C.S. Lewis and Yogi Ramacharaka, a pseudonym of William Walker Atkinson).

This would suggest that CC himself was never actually able to stop his inner dialog, find the nagual and see. However, he had spent at least ten years reading about and discussing transcendentalism and the occult. He knew enough about these subjects and had sufficient talent as a writer (in English despite the fact that he was a native Spanish speaker) to concoct a ‘story’ that was convincing enough to satisfy even UCLA professors. Today, his books, which are now thought to have sold over 10 million copies, are generally considered to be novels (though they are still marketed as ‘nonfiction’). Even if they are novels and CC himself had no direct experience of the nagual, his sources appear to have been largely valid. His enormous influence has, therefore, opened the eyes of a generation of English-speakers to the idea of reaching ‘a separate reality’ by shutting off the inner dialog. That has been CC’s lasting contribution.

We may now imagine millions of mostly young people attempting to stop their inner dialogs and reach a different mode of perception, with varying degrees of success. Some may have been successful, but the general feeling is that although CCs books were fascinating to read, they were an incomplete ‘manual’ for reaching the nagual. There are clearly still elements missing here, and I think these are the link with nature and one further factor that is the main subject of the remainder of this paper.

2.3 How do humans connect with nature?

How does stopping the internal dialog have a relation to the human being’s ability to form a relationship with “nature”? The answer is: by perceiving “nature” with the human heart.

Most people are aware that the heart is an organ that pumps blood around the body. Far fewer people, however, know that the heart also has other functions and abilities. These include:

1. High sensitivity to electric charges, electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields,

2. An ability to transmit electromagnetic radiation. The heart also has its own magnetic field,

3. Being a ‘brain’ in its own right, since 15% to 20% of its cells are neural cells.

Many of the electromagnetic signals living organisms receive contain large amounts of information. Living organisms are able to decode the information embedded in those signals and respond, since we are all transmitters as well as receivers and communication always goes both ways. Groups of cells in the heart, as in other organs, beat together at a single frequency. This synchronization of cells in proximity with each other is termed entrainment.

A heart is, in fact, a large self-organized grouping of cells.

This aggregating of cells, as with electrical detection arrays in fish, makes it possible for the organ to sense extremely weak electric fields. Furthermore, the role of magnetic fields in cells and living organisms should also not be overlooked.

Cells and living organisms not only perceive, decode, and respond to extremely weak electric signals, they perceive, decode, and respond to magnetic signals, which contain information, just as electric signals do. The organ of the human body that is very sensitive to magnetic fields is the hippocampus, an organ that works closely with the heart and “works closely with the amygdala … to modify body physiology in response to emotions.” The hippocampus is also involved in “the extraction of meaning from the vast sea of signals in which we live,” just as salmon, bees and birds “orient themselves within directional meaning.” The hippocampus can also form new neurons in response to demands to process nonlinear information from the environment, if you live in a rich and stimulating environment where you are continually receiving such electrical or magnetic signals.

We are made to be in the wild nonlinearity of the world, and this immersion is needed for the hippocampus and our central nervous system to be healthy.

Since all living organisms both receive, decode, and respond to electrical and magnetic signals, this means they are capable of communicating with each other. This is automatic; we have evolved with it, just with all the other bodily functions, and with the five senses. Furthermore,

… the human heart is vastly more than a muscular pump – it is one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators and receivers known. It is, in fact, a highly evolved organ of perception and communication.

Buhner says that “the magnetic field produced by the heart … extends around the body in a torus, a fractal, sort-of-spherical shape that continually flows through space,” and that “Measured with magnetic field meters, the electromagnetic field that the heart produces is some five thousand times more powerful than that created by the brain.” This might explain how, if some people are actually capable of seeing electromagnetic fields, people report seeing the ‘aura’ of the human body shaped like a luminous egg. This is how CC reports that don Juan sees humans, but it is suggested by Richard De Mille that CC obtained this idea from William Walker Atkinson while reading in the UCLA library.

Nevertheless, if we live in an environment that is filled with electrical and magnetic ‘pollution’ and in a culture that de-emphasizes the nonlinear sensitivity of the heart to the benefit of the linear and analytical brain, this ability to perceive and communicate may atrophy. Nature is, in fact, a “web of communications that is so complex and detailed that there is no way to understand it with the linear, analytical mind,” which is a very similar situation to the tonal/nagual contrast of Carlos Castaneda. If we have lost the ability to connect with nature through the heart, perhaps we should think about trying to reconnect ourselves.

2.4 Is it possible to ‘reconnect with nature’?

The quick answer to this question is ‘yes, of course,’ but it depends on your past history (the degree to which the linear/verbal/analytic mode of cognition has colonized your ‘mind’) and your age (the older you are, the more difficulty you will tend to experience when attempting to ‘reconnect’).

Just as heart cells in proximity to one another ‘entrain’ (their oscillations synchronize), so when the electromagnetic fields of two hearts are in proximity with each other they will also entrain. Not only two human hearts, but this will occur when the electromagnetic field of the heart is in contact with that of any other organism. At that point, “there is an extremely rapid and complex interchange of information.” This incoming information perceived by the heart may be experienced as ‘emotion,’ and the meanings embedded in the information can be extracted from the emotional flow just as meanings are extracted from the sounds we hear. However, we are trained to ignore these sensory cues; most people are unable to consciously use the heart as an organ of perception and the information perceived by the heart is processed below conscious levels of cognition.

There is nothing strange about this. It is well-known that humans are affected by olfactory, visual and auditory signals that are not processed consciously and that different people are capable of different levels of olfactory, visual and auditory perception. What may be strange is that our society (the modern, industrialized lifestyle) actually trains people to ignore these sensory cues and, through education, attempts to colonize the mind with linear/verbal/analytic/reductionist styles of cognition. Overcoming this bias is not easy, but because it is the evolutionary birthright of every human to have and use these abilities, it can be done. It is especially easy to train children to use both their brains and their hearts in tandem. (I am not suggesting that people ‘turn off’ their brains and perceive solely with the heart!)

Let me offer two further pieces of ‘evidence’ that hint at the heart being an organ of human perception. The first is what we call “love” or “falling in love.” Human language is full of the connection between the emotions, especially “love,” and the heart. A “sweetheart,” a “broken heart,” “heartstrings,” “heartache,” and so on are simple examples. The almost ubiquitous use and recognition of the ‘heart mark’ are also symbolic of this. “Love” has also been described as a kind of “madness” by Shakespeare and others. However, if we were to see “falling in love” as the entrainment of two hearts that took a liking to one another (as well as the two people involved being aware of other sensory cues), we might not be quite so inclined to see “love” as a kind of madness. To the calculating, analytical brain, “love” surely is madness; it literally drives the brain mad not to be able to make sense of what the heart is doing perfectly “naturally”!

One further clue is from the Greek word aisthesis, which Buhner states is the “heart’s ability to perceive meaning from the world.” Definitions of this word are generally not clear about the function of the heart. A definition easily available on the Internet states that aisthesis is a “sensation, perception, as an opposite of intellection (noesis), understanding and pure thought; more loosely – any awareness.” Hillman, however, says that, “In Aristotelian psychology, the organ of aesthesis is the heart; passages from all the sense organs run to it; there the soul is ‘set on fire.’ Its thought is innately aesthetic and sensately linked with the world.” It seems to be clear that the Greeks had no problem about perceiving with the heart.

So, all we have to do is practice perceiving with the heart. Yes, but if you have never actually been aware of doing it before, just exactly how are you going to go about doing that? In his book, The Secret Teachings of Plants, Buhner gives ten “exercises for refining the heart as an organ of perception,” and I would recommend anyone interested to try doing these exercises. However, I think the basic thing that anyone can do is to find good natural areas, such as woods or forests or mountain areas that they like and spend time there. Not everyone can do this, especially if they are living in a large metropolis, so there is an immediate ‘lifestyle’ barrier to ‘reconnection.’ But assuming you are able to spend time in a natural environment, what then?

Buhner, being interested in plants, asks us, “… if you truly want to communicate with plants, just what is the status of the plant? Just how do you really feel about it?” Plants have been on the planet longer than we have, but do you see them as your equal, or even superior to you, as if they were our elders or teachers? Buhner suggests that if you do not, the plants will not ‘talk’ to you. Knowing the name of a flower or tree will not help you. These anthropocentric words are part of the linear world, not part of the nonlinear world of heart perception. The tonal/nagual dichotomy again, if you like. First you must try to stop the internal dialog, halt the flow of words and be prepared to abandon your accumulated linear mode knowledge – to know nothing. That may be as simple as just breathing a little more deeply than usual and then standing or sitting in a relaxed way, taking in your surroundings by ‘feeling’ them rather than thinking about (appraising, explaining) what you feel in terms of verbal thought.

Preconceptions must be abandoned. There is nothing in the linear/verbal/analytical/reductionist world that has prepared you for this mode of communication. There are no neat formulaic rules for this – you will be outside of human culture and must be prepared to allow anything to happen and be prepared to surrender yourself to it. Otherwise you will probably experience nothing and get nowhere with it. Only those who are not afraid to step outside of our current culture of linear cognition will be able to, gradually, step into the nonlinear perceptual mode of nature.

It is important to see, hear and smell what is there in front of you, in nature, and pay attention to that rather than what your brain is trying to tell you about it. This does not simply mean “shutting off the inner dialog.” Buhner tells us that we cannot stop the linear mind and leave nothing in its place. The answer is to do something else instead; sense what is actually there in your surroundings. If you find yourself being drawn to a plant, go up to it and spend some time with it. Touch it and taste it. Try to be aware of its scents. You may feel embarrassed about doing this. If you try to taste a small part of a leaf, you may hear voices in your mind (your parents, former teachers and so on) telling you not to do so. It may take you some time to get used to overriding these voices. Buhner quotes Henry David Thoreau, who said, “Nature is a prairie for outlaws,” and tells us that “the green is poisonous to civilization.” Civilization’s rules are not enforced in nature, and we should understand that a “reconnection” with nature will change us, and make us more “natural” and “wild.” But humankind really (from the point of view of October 2011) needs to change in this way now if we are to step back from the catastrophes an over-emphasis on linear/verbal/analytical/reductionist cognition has caused us to wreak upon ourselves. This is one way to return to what evolution has intended us to be – to reclaim our birthright.

Once you have a relationship with a certain plant, and while this may happen quite quickly, it may also take weeks or months, as your heart’s electromagnetic field begins to entrain with that of the plant, you may notice a certain ‘emotional tone’ arising within you. In the same way as you suddenly become aware of the picture embedded in an ‘optical illusion’ puzzle, you may then receive a sudden communicative burst from the plant, termed by Goethe “the pregnant point,” that can be routed from the heart to the brain and become accessible to linear/verbal/intellectual/analytical cognition. This is the first real communication with the plant. Buhner describes in great detail how this relationship with this and other plants can be developed in order to receive direct knowledge from plants about their medicinal properties for humans. However, I shall stop here, since the aim of this short paper is not to help you to become a shaman herbalist but simply to show how human “happiness” can be achieved through a ‘reconnection to nature.’

3. Further comments on aspects of “happiness” and ‘reconnecting with nature’

Having read this far, many may perhaps feel that what the arguments I have presented here are somehow not ‘real,’ belong in the realm of ‘religion,’ the ‘supernatural’ or the ‘occult.’ Here, I would like to present further evidence to show that the idea of the human connection with nature (in a wide sense, to include not just individual plants or animals, but also a wider ‘natural consciousness’ from the ‘interacting web of life’ or even the cosmos) through perception using the human heart is a ‘real’ phenomenon close to our daily lives. I will also end the paper with comments on what the consequences and benefits may be for a human society or civilization that aims for an appropriate heart-brain balance, and how this implies the achievement of human “happiness.” Finally, I will make a few comments on the consequences of this on agriculture and the production of food, and how, concretely, the society of the future is likely to be shaped by putting these ideas into practice.

3.1 Do we know anyone who is doing this? Who are they and what kind of people are they?

Everyone, including lifelong city-dwellers are perceiving with the heart. It is part of who we are. Regardless of how conscious we are of doing it, it is said that experience of the world is perceived by the heart first and then flows to the brain for further processing. It is very likely that we all know people who are adept at communicating with plants or animals through the heart, but these people are more likely to be conspicuous in the countryside than in the city, and even then the person involved may not be exactly aware of what they are feeling or doing. Some may even hide their ability, since there are parts of society who do not appreciate the abilities of people to perceive nature directly with their hearts.

There are also well-known people who have been known to have the capacity to receive direct knowledge from ‘nature.’ Buhner mentions Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Luther Burbank, George Washington Carver, Masanobu Fukuoka, Henry David Thoreau, Buckminster Fuller, Barbara McClintock, and although not mentioned by Buhner, I feel sure that Rudolf Steiner must also have had a great ability to perceive the world directly through the heart. Steiner’s works are not based on linear/analytic/intellectual ‘scientific’ logic. For example, in his lectures on agriculture, which now form the basis of the biodynamic farming movement, Steiner states:

Now let us take the manure, in whatever form is available, stuff it into a cow horn and bury it in the ground at a certain depth – I would say between ¾ and 1½ meters, provided the soil beneath is neither too clayey nor too sandy. We should select a good soil that’s not too sandy. You see, by burying the cow horn with the manure in it, we preserve in the horn the etheric and astral forces that the horn was accustomed to reflect when it was on the cow. Because the cow is now outwardly surrounded by the Earth, all the Earth’s etherizing and astralizing rays stream into its inner cavity. The manure inside the horn attracts these forces and is inwardly enlivened by them. If the horn is buried for the entire winter – the season when the Earth is most inwardly alive – all this life will be preserved in the manure, turning the contents of the horn into an extremely concentrated, enlivening and fertilizing force.

These ideas were not reached through scientific experimentation, as we know that “He [Steiner] encouraged his listeners to verify his suggestions empirically, as he had not yet done.” Biodynamic farming practitioners are still doing this, as I have personally witnessed on a biodynamic farm in Kyushu. How Steiner could have ‘known’ all this is a complete mystery until we understand that he could have received the ‘information’ through the heart’s direct perception and communication with nature.

I’m not saying that we will all be geniuses of the stature of Goethe and Steiner or farmers with the unique insights of Luther Burbank or Masanobu Fukuoka if only we will learn to perceive nature with our hearts, but we will never even begin to understand what they did or how they did it unless we try to re-balance the linear/verbal/analytic mode of thinking of the brain with the nonlinear/nonverbal/intuitive mode of perception of the heart.

Indigenous people, naturally, have never lost the automatic ability to perceive directly with the heart. Buhner states, “All ancient and indigenous people said that they learned the uses of plants as medicines from the plants themselves. They insisted that they did not rely on the analytical capacities of the brain for this nor use the technique of trial and error. Instead, they said it was from the heart of the world, from the plants themselves, that this knowledge came.”

Among widely diverse nonindustrial cultures the members whose speciality was plant medicines, vegitalistas, described their experiences remarkably similarly irrespective of culture, continent or time. The vast majority (essentially all instances where I have found first-hand accounts) told interviewers that they did not obtain their knowledge of plant medicines from the exercise of reason or through trial and error. They were uniformly consistent in saying that their personal and cultural knowledge of the medicinal actions of plants came from “nonordinary” experiences, specifically: dreams, visions, direct communications from the plant, or sacred beings.

Communication with plants via the human heart also means that plants know something about the humans they are in contact with. The Pgaz K’Nyau (Karen), an indigenous people of Eastern Burma and Northern Thailand, have this to say:

Pgaz K’Nyau people have a very clear reason for honesty and purity in life and in dealings with other people. If you want to think we’re naïve, that’s up to you, but we believe that nature has a spirit. We rely on her for maintenance of our lives, and we must respect her, stand in awe of her, and obey her and act towards her with honesty and purity. It is this relationship with the natural world that has trained the spirit of the Pgaz K’Nyau people to use natural resources with great care. It also means, for example, that a man or woman who is a liar, or a thief, or is in some other way an immoral person will not be able to produce enough food. He or she cannot be a good farmer because nature will deny him or her the benefit of her miraculous power to keep us alive with food.

The Pgaz K’Nyau also say that if you want to learn from those who know about medicinal plants, you have to be apprenticed to such a person and be trained by them. In general, it is no good just following the person around and then mechanically copying what they do (unless the apprentice is extremely perceptive) because the medicines produced may not work, or may not be as effective as when the ‘knowledgeable person’ gathered and prepared them. Buhner also notes that an experienced herbalist can put out a call to a plant before he or she goes to gather it. The plant will then “begin altering the chemicals they produce in anticipation of your gathering them as medicines.” It is crucial, however, that this call has “emotional reality.” You cannot fake it.

I think you can see that this leads us into some very tricky territory. Buhner says that people who engage in perceiving nature with the heart find that a certain moral development occurs within them. This is a morality that comes out of aisthesis. “True morality begins to emerge of itself.”

Because nature does not lie, the direct perception of Nature means that each of us that does lie, each part of us that lies, even in our deep unconscious, must reorder, must restructure, if we truly want to perceive deeply into Nature.

Thus perceiving nature with the heart is associated with a certain morality. Plants (and animals) can perceive who you are and will not deal with you if they do not “like” you. As a sidelight, I will mention the story of a well-known lie-detector examiner, Cleve Backster, in 1966. A polygraph lie-detector usually consists of a galvanometer coupled with a Wheatstone bridge, and this can measure the human body’s electrical potential as it fluctuates under the stimulus of thought and emotion. One morning, Backster decided to attach the electrodes of a lie detector to a Dracaena massangeana plant in his office and see what would happen if he gave it some water. Instead of indicating a reduction in resistance, as you would expect if the moisture of the leaf increased, the opposite reading was seen as the pen on the graph paper indicated a reaction “very similar to that of a human being experiencing an emotional stimulus of short duration.” Backster figured that since the most effective way to get a quick emotional reaction from a human is to threaten his or her well-being, he would try to burn the leaf, but the instant he conjured up the image of the flame in his mind, and before he could even move, there was a dramatic movement of the pen on the graph paper. The plant had ‘read’ Backster’s mind!

Backster spent the next several years experimenting with plants. An interesting phenomenon that Backster noted was that when threatened with danger plants will go into a trance-like state, rather like a person fainting when faced with overpoweringly life-threatening situation. When a Canadian physiologist visited Backster in his lab one day, Backster was unable to get any reaction from the first five plants he tried. Backster asked the physiologist, “Does any part of your work involve harming plants?” “Yes,” the physiologist replied. “I terminate the plants I work with. I put them in an oven and roast them to obtain their dry weight for my analysis.” A short while after the physiologist left the lab, all of Backster’s plants began to respond as normal. Backster, however, was never able to discover that the key to the connection between humans and plants was the functioning of the human heart, as we have seen here.

If there is a moral dimension to the perception of nature by the heart, what of the linear/verbal/analytic brain?

Unlike the heart, with its connected empathetic connections the brain has no inherent moral nature. The continual training of children in a system of perception that is amoral leads to behaviours in adults that have no moral basis.

Buhner also quotes Masanobu Fukuoka as saying:

Nature is both the creator of man and his greatest teacher. Sensitivity, reason, and understanding true to man all can be manifested only through sympathy with nature. Judgement and criteria for right and wrong, virtue and evil, excellence and mediocrity, beauty and ugliness, love and hate do not hold if man steps off the Great Way pointed out by nature.

In other words, Fukuoka believed that if we are not connected to nature through the heart we have no basis for making value judgements. It does very much look as if the unbalance between the use of the linear/verbal/analytic mode of cognition and the nonlinear/nonverbal/intuitive perception of the heart has brought the modern world to where it is today. Is there really any option for mankind but to reappraise the contents of our civilization, the way society is run, and how we educate our children? I will have more to say about this later.

3.2 Is this ‘religion’? Where is ‘God’?

I am not going to write a treatise on religion, but simply repeat here what a few people have said because it makes sense to me. From the above, we see that the heart is capable of connecting with ‘nature,’ especially individual plants and animals, but there also seems to be some large spiritual ‘entity’ behind the relations with plants and so on. Buhner talks a lot about the use of medicinal plants to help cure people, but he also says:

For it is the meaning, the spirit of the plant, that heals the disease. The plant chemical merely gives it a form in which to travel. And although this form does help our bodies, form to form, we are not (solely) our physical form, and our disease is not (usually) merely a physical form, like a virus… The disease itself is a meaning and cannot be healed merely by supplying a form.

Others say that the plant knowledge is not important and that it is the spiritual energy of the shaman that actuates the healing. This takes a lot of energy, which is stored up like a battery inside the body. Healing can be carried out when the battery is fully charged up, and as the healing is done the battery is used up so that at the end of the healing the shaman feels really exhausted. The ‘battery’ power then has to be recharged before further healing can be done. We have seen above that the heart is an electromagnetic transmitter/receiver and has a strong magnetic field. Energy is required for this to be done and maintained over time. It is also true that some people have more energy in their bodies and hearts than others. We also know that hearts can connect, or ‘entrain,’ with other living entities such as cells, plants, animals, and other hearts. It should come as no great surprise, then, that some people with an abundance of energy in their body and heart could ‘give’ (transmit) some of that energy to a person whose body/heart energy was weak due to illness and so on, and give them an energetic boost that could help them recover their health. However, there is little point in going deeply into this topic, since we only wish here to explore the necessity to achieve a healthy heart-brain balance achievable by the human-nature connection through the perceptive function of the heart.

Nevertheless, individual plants, though they may have their unique spirit, are a part of the interconnected, interacting web of life, the sum of which is a spiritual force that many have experienced as the ‘essence’ of Nature (with a capital ‘N’). The Pgaz K’Nyau perceive two kinds of spirits, k’laz (soul-spirits), which reside in humans and other living creatures such as plants and animals, and k’caj (owner-spirits), which are the spirits that ‘own’ the earth, the land, the water, the sky, and so on, and which are also ‘owners’ of particular areas of forests, for example. They also perceive an overarching natural spirit, a kind of ‘supreme being,’ Taj hti taj dau, who is the owner of nature itself. We could say that Taj hti taj dau is the Pgaz K’Nyau word for ‘God.’

We thus have the notion that Nature, from whom we have all been created, is roughly equivalent to what is called ‘God’ (in monotheistic religions). This large spiritual entity can be perceived directly and experienced, and appears to be the subject of ‘religions.’ Buhner says that the entity “has many names, but only one identity.”

and continues on to say:

This identity is the center from which all things come. And it has always been clear to those who read the text of the world, who are open to the touch of life upon them, that this Mystery is so much greater than Man that it can never be understood by the linear mind.

Since the focus of this paper is Japan, I would like to quote extensively from a friend on Japan’s indigenous spirituality, Shinto.

On Shinto and nature, Shinto was traditionally very deeply rooted in nature, and the folk Shinto groups still are, and engage with nature by taking treks through the mountains, sometimes engaging in great feats of endurance, but that is secondary to being aware of conditions and letting the gods dictate the course and timing. In Shrine Shinto, the officially organized and codified side, the connection has largely been reduced to symbolism, but some of the former connection remains. This is particularly evident in the misogi ritual, which involves cold-water bathing in the ocean, waterfalls, rivers, and so on. Many of the professional priests I talk to, however, have no sense of the spirit world, and consider Shinto to be nothing but a set of traditions. They do see the value in maintaining pre-industrial knowledge and techniques, and choose those in particular for important rituals. A number have told me they wish they could "see" gods the way I and others say we can. I try to point them to times and places where gods are likely to be evident, dawn in particular and any place away from the distractions of modern society. From there, I tell people to be aware of a sense of deep familiarity, like you were coming to a place you loved in your childhood. This sense can be cultivated, but often we shut it out as mere irrationality. If you let it in, though, the insights become more powerful and life becomes more meaningful.

Shinto is also explicit about the perceptive capability of the heart (kokoro). One of the most universally used prayers of purification among Shintoists, Rokkon Shohjoh (Six-Rooted Purity) says, “With your eyes, see all manner of impurity, but in your heart, do not see it.” This is followed by ears, nose, mouth (interestingly, “With your mouth, say all manner of impurity, but in your heart, do not say it”), body (feel) and mind: “In your mind, think all manner of impurities, but in your heart, do not think them.” (Kokoro ni moromoro no fujoh wo omoite, kokoro ni moromoro no fujoh wo omowazu). In Fujikyo and some other sects, the last “kokoro” is pronounced “nakago” to distinguish it. Some sects write it as “inner heart”.

So far within Shinto, the only time it has been suggested to me to try to turn off the internal voice was with people involved in Shugendo, which has strong Buddhist influences. We hiked a rough course up from Kompira to the Ryuo-sha, a Buddhist-Shintoist deity--the Dragon King), and along the way, they told me that if I emptied my mind, I would be able to see the gods and spirits. Every year I continue to hike that trail and practice what they told me. It is a useful technique.

Shinto also recognizes one God, which they see variously as the unification of all that is divine or as the original God from whom all else is derived. Shinto can be considered a loose confederation of nature-based, polytheistic folk religions, held together in an imposed hierarchy, which they have gone along with. For any particular deity, there may be a number of names and descriptions. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, has been erroneously described as Shinto’s principal deity. She is well favored, of course, and worshipped at Shinto’s highest shrine, Ise Jingu, along with Toyouke, the god of agriculture. She is also called Tenshokohdaijin, the on-yomi (Chinese reading of the Chinese characters), with the kun-yomi (Japanese reading) being Amaterasu-Sumeohkami (and I see that in Fujikyo, she is listed as number 14 among the 16 principal deities, just before Jinmu-Jingu and Meiji-Jingu, so therefore principal of Japan’s specific hierarchy as a nation, but past a big list with Myo-o-jin from Buddhism, “Main-Heart God”, “One-Heart God”, Water, Fire and Wind Heart Gods, and so on included).

In Fujikyo, I have heard several names for the Great Divine Spirit: Ohmioya no Kami (Great Illustrious Parent One), and Taisosan-jin (Great Ancestral One, where “Tai” is written as “Ten,” so the meaning of the ‘God-father,’ not as ‘creator’ but as ‘guardian,’ of the heavens is included). Rev. Haruko Shimizu has explained that she considers Fuyoh Miroku-jin (which I will translate loosely as “Embodiment of Mt. Fuji and the Sun,” emphasizing the connection with nature that they seek in such an awe-inspiring locality) to be the Great Spirit, whose name comes up repeatedly in the prayers of that sect, and since he is listed second to Taisosan-jin, they are saying that God Himself has His own ancestors.

I think we can see in Shinto all the elements of the human-nature connection that have been mentioned thus far. The Chinese character for 'heart', when spoken as “kokoro” in Japanese is commonly understood to mean the human “heart” or “mind.” Despite the issue of whether people knew about their physical hearts hundreds of years ago, I do not think there is a great problem in equating kokoro with the human heart. We also see a recognition of an overarching spirit of nature, a “Great Ancestral One” or a “Great Spirit” very similar to the Pgaz K’Nyau Taj hti taj dau.

From the above it is possible to see that ‘God’ as the all-enveloping ‘tablecloth’ of the tonal is merely a shadow representation of ‘God’ in the nagual. It should be clear what religions are supposed to be doing but, in general, are not. The notion of an appropriate heart-brain balance, therefore, is not ‘religion,’ either in the sense of modern, organized religions, or in the sense that it relies fundamentally on subjective belief.

3.3 A sort of conclusion: Where does this path lead?

We have looked at what human happiness might be, and I have concluded that the path to happiness lies through a reconnection to nature through the use of the heart as an organ of perception. What might be the consequences of attempting to put this idea of “happiness” into practice, much as some now insist that the path to “happiness” is to be found through greater wealth and socialized security – through economic growth and social engineering?

Firstly, to go back to where this paper started out, what would this mean in terms of food and energy? Since we would be much more aware of the ‘feelings’ of plants and animals, many of the practices of modern farming would become impossible. We would have to recognize that an intensive use of machinery and chemicals (modern energy-intensive agriculture) in a way that is very ‘impolite’ to plants and other living organisms should be corrected in favour of overtly nonviolent forms of agriculture, such as permaculture and organic farming on small family farms. Greatly reduced use of machinery would mean, 1) more people working on the land, and 2) greater use of farm animals. It is likely that a re-balance of heart-brain cognition on a society-wide basis would trigger the movement of people from big cities to more rural settings. Greater use of animals on farms (the current problem being where to get the animals) would help agriculture as a whole to move back to mixed cropping and livestock-raising farms, rather than the forced separation of cropping and livestock that we have now, and presumably this would also go part of the way to solving the fertilizer problem that will occur when fewer chemicals are used.

So far, there is little news, since I have previously proposed these changes, in the context of diminishing supplies of fossil energy resources, for Japanese agriculture in a presentation in February 2010. In this presentation, I pointed out that since transportation would become problematical then ‘local production for local consumption’ would be a basic principle of this style of agriculture, and thus society as a whole would be likely to shift towards self-sustaining ‘bioregions.’ In this sense, the notion of moving to a society with a better heart-brain balance would appear to be appropriate for a world in which fossil energy use was greatly reduced.

As hinted at above, it should also be pointed out that plants are extremely adept at the use and manufacture of chemical substances, and we would therefore do ourselves a big favour by reducing the chemical pollution of the environment by synthetic chemicals. At the same time, since the heart’s connection with nature depends on electromagnetic radiation and fields, it would also be beneficial to reduce electromagnetic pollution of the environment as much as possible. This is also very much in line with the coming decline in the ability to use fossil energy resources. The future society should be far less polluted than the one we are experiencing now, making a healthy heart-brain balance that much easier to achieve.

Energy production in the bioregions would be local, decentralized forms of energy such as the use of wood, solar or wind power, and the use of animal traction for agriculture. There would be no large-scale industry as we know it now. This would also mean a greatly reduced role for money. This would also be a good match for a society with an improved heart-brain balance. The greater ability of almost all people to use their hearts for perception would make lying, cheating and thievery far less common because people would be much more aware of the intentions of those around them.

The Pgaz K’Nyau have a deep suspicion of any use of money beyond the use of small amounts for petty purchases. Anything more than that creates disparities in wealth between people (which can put the survival of a village in jeopardy) and will ruin lives that are lived simply to amass large amounts of money and property. In the Pgaz K’Nyau view of life and death, the land of the dead (pluz kauj) is a mirror image of the land of the living (le hko). In le hko, rice is delicious and people are important. In pluz kauj, rice is also delicious, but the people there have a love for money and wealth. When the Pgaz K’Nyau travel down from their villages in the mountains to the towns and cities in the valleys, where the people love money and are mostly ‘stuck’ in a linear/verbal/analytic ‘brain’ mode of cognition, they say they are going to pluz kauj, the land of the dead. The inference is that if you do not have a good heart-brain balance and are not capable of perceiving nature with your heart, then you are effectively ‘dead.’

Thus, to sum up briefly, “happiness” is a human condition that can only be reached through a “correct” connection with nature. This connection occurs by using the heart as an organ of perception, as it was meant to be. As a result, we can achieve a more appropriate heart-brain balance. This balance inevitably leads to changes in the moral behaviour of individuals and therefore to changes in society. The combination of these ideas and practices with the kind of, hopefully “happier,” lifestyle we can anticipate when fossil energy resources become scarce helps us to envisage the kind of society that might come into existence in the latter part of the 21st century.

In the midst of the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami disaster, the subsequent nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station and the financial crisis that currently grips Europe and the United States, I feel strongly that human weakness and stupidity (and a certain amount of deceit) has created huge disasters within societies where for several decades we have heard little else but promises that economic growth was unquestionably leading all mankind toward a secure and comfortable lifestyle. I think it is now time to wake up to what is truly wrong with society and begin to educate everyone, especially children, on how to regain their birthright (the ability to use the heart as an organ of perception) and an appropriate heart-brain balance, and move toward the society of the 22nd century, where true human happiness may be achievable. While it may seem that this is only one possible future, I believe eventually this is the future toward which all human societies will eventually converge, whether in the 22nd or 23rd centuries, or later.

Population analyst, Brian McGavin, writes about the silent crisis in our midst, of overpopulation. "Today there is a ‘Silent Crisis’ in our midst. The crisis, still largely unrecognised, is potentially greater than all the other problems that transfix our policy makers. For many decades now there has been a willful blindness in recognising that relentless human population growth is one of the pre-eminent problems we face. Rather than providing solutions and leadership, "More and more developed countries offering new ‘baby bonuses’ make it even less likely that we will achieve the lower figures being quoted in the media."

The Silent Crisis

Today there is a ‘Silent Crisis’ in our midst. The crisis, still largely unrecognised, is potentially greater than all the other problems that transfix our policy makers.

For many decades now there has been a willful blindness in recognising that relentless human population growth is one of the pre-eminent problems we face. A problem that is driving the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use and its depletion, climate warming, bio-diversity loss, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs - and as a consequence of these changes - the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us.

Nothing to celebrate

In 1950 world population was barely over two billion. As we pass seven billion at the end of October, it is nothing to celebrate.

In most countries today existing populations are not living environmentally sustainably, yet even if the UN’s assumptions of birth-rate decline in developing countries happens, global population will rise to 9.3 billion by 2050. Less reported is that if current birth rates persist, the United Nations Population Division warned in March 2009 that our population will exceed 11 billion in just 40 years.

More and more developed countries offering new ‘baby bonuses’ make it even less likely that we will achieve the lower figures being quoted in the media.

We have to start thinking about a ‘genuinely sustainable’ rather than ‘endless growth’ economy – an economy that is already faltering around us. Politicians focus on reviving economic growth and stimulating spending, but in an era of rapidly depleting resources, the ‘business as usual’ economy will need to be radically rethought to keep our complex society functioning, with a transition to a dynamic, self-supporting economy that satisfies our needs.

Growth Lobby

The growth lobby is pushing two great myths: That our ageing populationwill be a disaster unless we have higher birth rates and, despite rising unemployment, there is a terrible shortage of labour that only high immigration can supply. Both claims have been repeatedly shown to be either false or grossly exaggerated. They have huge long-term costs on our infrastructure and environment. Young people get old too and have higher dependency costs. Politicians don’t emphasise this.

In Africa, the UN now admits that it won’t meet its Millennium Development Goals but fails to explain the underlying causes for pessimism. Many countries in Africa already have massive unemployment and not enough food. How will they provide all the schools, jobs, hospitals and food to sustain populations that are set to more than double and in some cases triple in size in the next 40 years?

Governments will be struggling with millions of unemployed and hungry people attracted to violence and extremism. Look at the problems already in our news in countries like Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan – all countries on constant food aid, with exploding populations and increasingly scarce resources – yet population growth is never mentioned!

In Australia, mainly arid and with a water crisis, the population is set to double every 33 years, fuelled mainly by high immigration. America, Canada and the UK’s already high environmental impact is also increasing due to demographic pressures.

Saving the planet and greenwash

Most environmental organisations tell us that ‘if only we each reduced our environmental demand, population growth would not be a problem’. But our economic system, predicated on growth, is driving us in the opposite direction. Even if all the efficiency and renewable alternatives could be implemented the savings would be quickly wasted if populations continue to grow.

You can try reducing consumption all you want, but when you keep adding 100 million and another 100 million, you simply drive every human to a lower and lower standard of living. You cannot escape that reality.

Most experts now agree we will pass ‘peak oil’ production in 2012 and production of all liquid fossil fuels will drop within 20 years to half what it is today. Yet, forecasts project energy demand will grow by 60 per cent between 2002 and 2030. (Sources: (US) Energy Information Administration and chief executive, BP oil).

A huge problem is most alternative energy sources are poor energy performers because they need a high-energy input to provide a given energy return. Wind and solar power are intermittent, while Hydrogen is only as clean as the fuel source used to produce it and provides only a quarter the energy as the same volume of gasoline. Ethanol, from corn or sugarcane, contains 33 per cent less energy than the same amount of oil and competes with food production. Already, 18 per cent of U.S. corn now goes to producing ethanol, but provides only one per cent of the liquid fuel used in the U.S.

Charles Hall, professor of Environmental Science at the State University of New York, warns that apart from bicycles, there are virtually no functioning forms of transportation that are not powered by oil. Most products are made with petroleum and most jobs would cease to exist without it. Renewables (other than hydropower or wood) currently provide less than one per cent of the energy used in the world, but the annual increase in the use of most fossil fuels is far greater than the total electricity production from wind turbines and photovoltaics.

Governments now plan to spend billions by substantially increasing nuclear generation. Apart from potentially critical contamination risks, even doubling the number of reactors across the world could see commercially extractable uranium ore run out in just 20 years.

According to some energy analysts, the energy commitment required in mining, waste storage and disposal will shortly make the nuclear industry a net user of energy, just when the energy famine begins to hit hard. Unless there is an unlikely breakthrough with fusion power and we drastically cut demand, we are on course to exhaust the energy we need in the lifetime of many people alive today.

Professor John Beddington, UK Chief Scientist, warned in March 2009 that: “Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water. They are dramatic problems, and they are all intimately connected”

Water

The Stockholm International Water Institute calculated in 2008 that 1.4 billion people live in regions where existing water cannot meet the agricultural, industrial, municipal, and environmental needs of all and only 2.5 per cent of the world’s water is fresh. Today, one person in five across the world has no access to safe drinking water, and one in three lacks safe sanitation.

Around 19% of US energy demand goes into food production. Fossil fuels to meet this demand are declining and many regions are already reaching the limits of their water resources, according to the UN’s World Water Development Report in 2009.
And then there is the impact of climate change. The accelerating icecap melt will make at least a metre rise in sea level probable by 2100 - threatening the world's major cities and fertile crop-growing deltas. Freshwater glaciers that feed major rivers used for irrigation are shrinking.

If governments won’t talk population, then they are not serious about cutting emissions, managing the water supply, managing food supplies, and a secure quality of life for our people. We can secure a way to genuine sustainability and a fairer use of resources, but we have to recognise the problem and act quickly.

It is not a question of ‘either or’ and who needs to act. We are in this together. Rich nations are consuming too much and populations continue to rise. Legitimate aspirations to raise living standards in high population countries like China and India are consuming ever-more resources. In many developing countries with acute water and food shortages, populations are projected to double or triple in size within 40 years – driving social unrest and migration on a massive scale.

There are several key challenges we have to talk about and face. In particular, ensuring development aid from donor countries delivers fully accessible and properly funded reproductive health care for all, along with equal access to education for girls and women. In many countries there are still barriers to this. We also have to start incentivising welfare systems to encourage fewer births rather than more.

Moral values?

Some people believe they have a right to have as many children as they want, whether they can look after them or not and fail to understand or just ignore the consequences of human population growth. Many commentators wilfully promote an ever-larger population in the name of freedom of choice. There will be precious little choice left if we go on multiplying with no thought for the future.

Others claim their religion as an excuse for actions that impact on others: Have large families "in the name of God"; Over-consuming resources? "God will provide” - so we don't need to think about the ecological consequences; and when the day of reckoning and collapse arrives - "It is God's will" - a religious opt-out from moral responsibility.

We have superior intellect to understand the consequences of our actions and the ecological and social devastation that will run like a scourge of misery for billions if population keeps increasing. Do we plan for a secure and better life or do we carry on blindly toward a minefield of lethal limits?

Rights come with responsibilities. Governments ‘incentivise’ many aspects of our lives for a common good, but the more crowded we become the more governments will police our behaviour and restrict our activities. We still have a choice. The world badly needs a grown-up, rational discussion of the population issue - without blame, abuse and hysteria.

It would be a tragedy if population growth became a catastrophe - a catastrophe we were too polite to talk about. Our children will not thank us for being driven to an abyss.

Originally submitted as, "The Silent Crisis,"
by Brian McGavin, writer and analyst, dated September 2011.

Are humans individuals with personalities or are we simply portions of a greater whole, with little claim to individuality? Some thoughts on cellular arrangement and the end-game thermodynamics of progress ideology. The tension between a glimpsed view of living wholeness and the steady extrusion of deadness that is crushing around and upon us. I wonder how many other people see this?

Life support systems

The appearance of being discrete individuals fully captures most people's perception and belief. In reality however, our form is a fleetingly arranged and fluid part within a basically cellular, holistic global life-form. The shape and content of this overall form shifts and changes over time as and when factors vary within it and around it. Matter and energy flow through and around it like tides and rivers. Life continues as it must in accord with the prevailing conditions. We come and go within this cadence, and are always entirely and imminently recyclable within its constantly alloying form, as individuals, as clans, as a species. Doubtlessly though we do have the very considerable power to engineer the early disposal of ourselves and much of the living infrastructure around us. We could perhaps trigger the reductive disappearance of entire biological classes and perhaps even phylum. What extent of planetary upheaval would be required to take life back to a bacterial drawing board? Would a combination of extreme climate change and thermo-nuclear resource wars tip such regressive imbalance?

Dualism and civilisation

Our sense of separation from the dynamically creative whole is due in very large part to our mono-theistic training, inculcated widely and intensely over relatively recent times, to assist our tolerance of and compliant function within the development of large, hierarchically deep socio-economic systems. This social format is most commonly referred to as 'civilisation', a somewhat benign euphemism considering its essential function of metastasis upon surrounding societies, their resource bases, and within life itself as a whole unit.

Progressive Self-Destruction

Characteristically this form identifies with an existential purpose of 'progress' along a notional linear direction. This view is very militantly at philosophical odds with the comparatively 'aimless' existence of 'uncivilised' society and its accord with, and deference to, repetitive natural cycles. This linear path heads to a destination that is not clearly defined, and is certainly not objectively measured, anywhere within the 'civilised' project. The destination is given various names such as heaven or utopia. It is also embodied in various allegorical forms such 'the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow', which is almost self-deprecating in its inherent impossibility. Materially the pathway equates to a relentless and ever expanding extraction and depletion of natural planetary resources. Properly recognising this core function within the linear pathway of progress, the destination's objective definition can really only be eventual expiration of 'progress' and collapse of the socio-economic project, amidst crushing resource depletion.

Fossil-fuel-powered religion and secular delusion

Modern times, and the intoxicating experiences afforded by abundant fossil energy, have seen the traditional theistic mechanism translated into some variously powerful secular forms. Humanism and capitalism are two of these. Capitalism and its omni-present, omniscient, omnipotent Market-god now reign supreme within the modern global zeitgeist. In its superiority it is quite ecumenical toward the lesser theistic forms. Intense delusions of personal freedom are a central seduction toward common self-imprisonment within and supplication to the Market order. Capitalists can readily include humanism or any of the traditional religions to add flavor to their state of imagined separation from all other living things. The sense of separation is the vital function that is uniformly maintained. It is what enables us to perceive the accrual of individual benefits from the progressive destruction of our own living form.

The Expanding Dead Zone

Accordant with all of this, I am struck in particular by the way we surround ourselves with dead things. We turn life into death and then form the detritus into myriad shapes and mechanisms that we use to facilitate and adorn our lives within our delusion of separation. This constructed dead zone then further obstructs our view of life, it better reflects our illusion about ourselves, and thus it better enables us to wreak even further and more rapid decimation upon our global life-form in a deranged perception and pursuit of our expanding 'needs'.

Zombie Economy

We animate our dead things with a rich fossil energy stream, distilled from many trillions of days of ancient sunshine and now drawn down to nearly half its extent in just over one hundred years. This animated array performs a zombie caricature of real life and real life systems. It instills us with a loin-stirring sense of an invincible power to prevail over any challenge or circumstance. But these machines and constructions are just dead things. They're doomed to stillness and utterly fatal deficit once their immense hunger for the expensively manufactured energy stream overwhelms its limited supply reserves. Our marvelous dead things then become our graves and our tombstones.

Zombie Dreaming

I acknowledge that I'm surrounded with dead things of my own choice and accumulation. I'm complicit in the fabrication that deludes others and which anchors my own delusion. Accumulated doubts and insights have rent many small tears in my inherited cultural fabric. I can peer through this perforated curtain and grasp part glimpses of the total living form that pulses beyond its stifled confines. I can sense the wholeness of this vast organism and can begin to wonder at its profound function. I can feel deep joy and strength flow from this immense beauty however I simultaneously feel viscerally injured by the senselessly violent and rapacious destruction being wrought upon it.

My perception flickers between this glimpsed view of living wholeness and the steady extrusion of deadness that is crushing around and upon me. The shifting, variously composite view between the two states poses a variously decorated, essentially lonely and potentially crazed schizophrenia. I wonder how many other people see this?

Cynthia McKinney is an unusual black US former congresswoman who has risked her life to report on the situation in Libya from Libya on what she calls the "Truth Tour". The article below contains her most recent report, which contains parts of alternative journalists' articles and criticises mainstream journalism. The video where she speaks, included here, is an addition. It is quite rivetting stuff.

From Cynthia McKinney: "Still in the Truth Tour"

Thanks to all who have come out and participated in the Truth Tour. I have almost come to its end. Last night in Detroit, several of the women were moved to tears as I explained the situation in Libya right now as I know it to be. Every venue has had every seat occupied or was filled to capacity with standing room only.

Detroit's young singer and band, Sister Ziyah and Black Rain were phenomenal and their music set the tone for the event: first song, Kickstart the Revolution; second song, Good Morning, America; third song, Today, I'm a Better Me.

Detroit attendees were rapt in the August 26 Tripoli streetfight video that I showed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rif7U5hRsNM#t=2s

This Truth Tour has been unique because the true peace people in this country have revealed themselves by their willingness to step forward and be counted against this war in the very midst of the worst deceit and demonization ever. NATO war crimes are being excused, discounted, or covered up by those who posed as supporters of justice and peace. It is never OK to bomb people. And it is never OK to ask the peace-loving people of this country to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare and education and housing--and I could go on and on--so that war profiteers can fatten their ill-gotten coffers.

I agree with Stephen Lendman and others who have written that the war propaganda against Libya reached heights higher than that for the war against the Iraqi people. The deceit continues to this day from the most respected "news" outlets. Now, we know them as what they really are, too.

Here are a few items that I had to wake up early to get to you before I board the plane for my next destination: it seems that the "Mighty Wurlitzer" could use a tune up because it has even ratcheted up a notch in its noise factor with this war. Watch the BBC descent from journalism to the absolute lowest depths with this:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/news-media-corruption/jubilation-as-tripoli-fallsin-india-.html

For more information on the current deceptions and machinations regarding the US/NATO war against the people of Libya, listen to this conversation between Dedon Kamathi (who was a part of the DIGNITY Delegation of alternative journalists who traveled with me to wartime Libya) and Don Debar (who traveled with me to Libya in 2009 as a part of the DIGNITY Delegation to learn more about The Green Book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrBgESw7bgs&feature=player_embedded

The Libyan Soldier

Here's what Glen Ford wrote that moved me to tears:
"The Libyan Soldier: The True Heroes of NATO’s War," Wed, 08/24/2011 - 13:02 — Glen Ford

"NATO has proven it has the capacity to kill thousands of Libyan soldiers from the skies, but it cannot “convey honor and legitimacy” to the rebels under its killer wings. “They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air.” The incinerated bodies of her soldiers have secured Libya’s place in history.

“The Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic, in the late 1930s.”

The story is not over – not by a long shot – but the saga of the Libyan resistance to the superpower might of the United States and its degenerate European neocolonial allies will surely occupy a very special place in history. For five months, beginning March 19, the armed forces of a small country of six million people dared to defy the most advanced weapons systems on the planet, on terrain with virtually no cover, against an enemy capable of killing whatever could be seen from the sky or electronically sensed. Night and day, the eyes of the Euro-American war machine looked down from space on the Libyan soldiers’ positions, with the aim of incinerating them. And yet, the Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic under siege by German, Italian and homegrown fascists, in the late 1930s.

The Germans and Italians and Generalissimo Franco won that war, just as the Americans, British, French and Italians may ultimately overcome the Libyan army. But they cannot convey honor or national legitimacy to their flunkies from Benghazi, who have won nothing but a badge of servitude to foreign overseers. The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production. They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled to battle under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air. They advanced along roads already littered with the charcoal-blackened bodies of far better men, who died challenging Empire.

“The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production.”

One thing is sure: the Americans and Europeans have never respected their servants. The so-called rebels of Libya will be no different. Washington, Paris and London know perfectly well that is was their 18,000 aircraft sorties, their cruise missiles, their attack helicopters, their surveillance satellites and drones, their command and control systems, their weapons, and their money, that managed to kill or wound possibly half the Libyan army. Not the rabble from Benghazi.

The rebels should not take too seriously being fawned over by the ridiculous hordes of corporate media tourists that have come to Tripoli to record the five-month war's finale. They are highly paid cheerleaders. And, although it may appear that they are cheering for the rebels, don't be fooled – at the end of the day, the western corporate media only cheer for their own kind. They are celebrating what they believe is a victory over the Libyan demon they have helped to construct in their countrymen's minds. Next year, rebel, that demon might be you.

Or next year, it might be many Libyans, including those who were no friends of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. The Americans treat their native minions like children in need of supervision – and there is a certain logic to this, since whoever would entrust his nation's sovereignty and resources to the Americans is, surely, either exceedingly stupid, or hopelessly corrupt. But Libya's honor and her place in history has already been secured by a small African army that held out nearly half a year against the NATO barbarians.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].

Never Forgive, Never Forget

And here is what Stephen Lendman wrote:

"Never Forgive, Never Forget," by Stephen Lendman

After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes. Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.

NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.

As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.

When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.

NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.

Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.

Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.

None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.

It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.

#PackJournalism" id="PackJournalism">Leading America's Pack Journalistic Lying

The New York Times is America's lead propaganda instrument, its reports getting enough global coverage to make a difference.

From the start, it cheerled war with Libya. It played the same role in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all previous US wars, deceiving its readers by dishonest journalism, commentaries, and editorials.

August 26 was no different. Two articles among others stand out. David Kirkpatrick wrote one headlined, "As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness," saying:

Pro-NATO Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis helped incite last winter's uprising "with a fiery Friday sermon at the Mourad Agha mosque. His words sent thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets. (His) mosque and neighborhood became a center of revolt and resistance...."
After six months of shamelessly supporting death and destruction against his own people, he now encourages "forgiv(ing) each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other."

As in all his Libya war articles, Kirkpatrick left unexplained months of crimes of war and against humanity, committed by NATO and paramilitary killers.

Instead, he highlighted alleged evidence of ongoing Gaddafi loyalist crimes.

In times of war, both sides commit them, but whatever government forces did pale compared to NATO's savagery and its hired assassins. Kirkpatrick and other Times writers failed to notice.

Anthony Shadid and Kareem Hahim were no better headlining, "Grim Evidence of Fighting's Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya," saying:

"As the fighting died down in Tripoli on Friday, the scope and savagery of the violence during the nearly weeklong battle for control of the capital began to come into sharper focus."

Evidence he cites is a shameful Amnesty International report (based on freed Al Qaeda and other paramilitary prisoners), saying:

AI "uncovered evidence that forces loyal to (Gaddafi) have killed numerous detainees held at two military camps in Tripoli on 23 and 24 August."

Perhaps so if other insurgents freed them, attacked Gaddafi forces in the process, and they fought back.

Instead, AI said:

"Loyalist forces in Libya must immediately stop such killings of captives, and both sides must commit to ensuring no harm comes to prisoners in their custody."

Like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, AI tries to have it both ways, ruining everything it gets right by reports like this - equating horrendous NATO crimes with lesser ones committed by Gaddafi forces, perhaps many less than imagined. The fog of war makes it hard to know precisely.

Instead, Shadid and Hahim's article was shamelessly one sided. While citing clear evidence of rebel-committed atrocities, their article claimed:

- Tripoli violence is now subsiding when, in fact, it rages;
- rebels say Gaddafi loyalists killed their own, an absurdity on its face;
- it's hard "to ascertain the fate of....dead men" in hospitals, as well as chaos committed inside; AP and Reuters reported it resulted from rebel-committed terror;
- Gaddafi's "cloak of secrecy (and) mercurial rule" are being revealed, leaving unexplained why Washington and its NATO partners wage all wars;
- slogans are being displayed, saying "Libya is free" and "Misurata is steadfast," though still Gaddafi controlled, it's believed, what Shadid and Hahim ignored, as well as not debunking claims of Libya's freedom; and
- documents in Gaddafi's compound "seemed to show that (his) adopted daughter Hana, who was supposedly killed at age 4 in (1986), was alive (and) working as a doctor." The key words "seemed to show" both Times writers implied were proof, adding that Tripoli Central Hospital workers claimed "a spacious and well-appointed office" there was hers.

Throughout the conflict, Times articles, op-eds and editorials backed it. Their unstated message is war is good, the more the better when America wages them.

Sadly, that's the state of managed Western news and opinion. It's a shocking indictment of its support for wealth and power, no matter how lawless and harmful to billions exploited ruthlessly, shameless, and repeatedly.

Final Comments

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports continued fighting in Tripoli, inflicting many casualties. Moreover, many injured can't be treated because of ongoing violence, inadequate staff, and enough supplies and capacity at local hospitals.

In addition, "numerous arrests" were made, "including foreign nationals." Their welfare is very much at risk, especially those singled out for revenge.

Fierce fighting also continues around Misrata and elsewhere. The end of conflict is nowhere in sight. Brega "look(s) like a ghost town."

In different areas, people are endangered by unexploded ordinance, as well as shortages of food, clean water, drugs, other medical supplies, and spotty or no electricity.

Washington-led NATO turned Libya into a hellish inferno - step one before occupying and exploiting its resources and people. Months ago its wealth was stolen. Ahead will be its future if Libyans don't struggle and win their freedom.

On August 26 on Russia Today (RT.com), journalist Pepe Escobar said Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former Al-Qaeda insurgent/now CIA asset commands rebel forces in Tripoli. He explained that he was trained in Afghanistan by a "very hardcore Islamist Libyan group." Earlier he was captured in Malaysia, detained and tortured in Bangkok, then transferred back to Libya and imprisoned. In 2009, he made a deal for freedom, in return for serving Western interests, Escobar says: "I can say almost for sure with 95% certainty that this is the guy" heading insurgents in Tripoli. It shows how Washington both demonizes and uses Al Qaeda advantageously, including bin Laden. He was a longtime CIA asset until his death in December 2001 - not from Obama's staged raid. Notably, Al Qaeda was a 1980s CIA creation during the Soviet-Afghan war. Moreover, Washington both supports international terrorism covertly and battles it by imperial wars and persecuting Muslims for their faith. It's part of the fog to scare people enough to believe waging wars remove threats that, in fact, don't exist. So they have to be invented to enlist public support, unaware of the harm caused abroad and at home.

Only war profiteers benefit, not taxpayers they steal from or victims they attack. At the same time, corrosive militarism, financial wars, and other destructive policies destroyed America's soul. Its future as a free country is next.

So focused on bread and circus distractions, most people don't notice. How else can Washington get away with murder!

Finally, the fate of independent journalists trapped in Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel remains unclear. They're still in harm's way because a chartered ship for their safe passage out either hasn't arrived or it's too unsafe to reach it.

In conclusion, Law Professor Francis Boyle's morning email said the following:

"After Six Months of fighting by the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world, Ghadafy has now become the Greatest African Warrior since Hannibal against the Romans - predecessors to the Americans."

"Generations from now, people will sing songs, write poems, and compose odes to Ghadafy all over Africa, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and the Third World long after Obama is dead and disparaged and discredited."

Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)!"

Keep Libya's freedom flame alive no matter how imperial monsters try to destroy it! We're all Libyans now! Their struggle is ours!
It's high time we matched their courageous spirit against the world's most pernicious/destructive force. Bowed perhaps, they're not broken! Isn't that enough to raise our consciousness to support them!

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/

For more information on the deceptions, please see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD6dEfuNhL0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LtysFyO3lc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5hz2UCR0RQ&feature=related

--
http://dignity.ning.com/
http://www.enduswars.org
http://www.livestream.com/dignity
http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun
http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney
http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney
http://www.youtube.com/runcynthiarun

Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.

In light of the riots in Britain, we are publishing an article based on some correspondence from the "Trotskyist", "socialist" and "revolutionary" UK group, Workers' Liberty[1], first published in 1995 at http://www.workersliberty.org/node/4900 on 30 September, 2005. The correspondence calls into question, especially now, different attitudes on the likely consequences of high immigration and population growth in Australia and Britain among other countries mentioned. Describing himself as still a socialist internationalist at heart, James Sinnamon writes that, however, "today the ideal of unconditional internationalism is an unachievable pipe dream, and, in fact, dangerous [because] that ideal has been subverted to suit the needs of globalised capitalism."

The correspondence below began as a private exchange in 2005 between James Sinnamon and Martin Thomas, and so its appearance on the Workers' Liberty site came as something of a surprise to James at the time, as he was not asked permission or told it would be used to construct an article. The correspondence actually originated after James spent an evening with Martin Thomas at Thomas's invitation. During that evening they put their respective views about politics which, as the article below, shows, differed quite markedly. This experience caused James to compose and send an e-mail to Martin Thomas to explain more precisely and in greater detail, his differences with Martin Thomas and, among other things, why he felt that continuing high immigration served the needs of capital and was against the democratic and human rights of the receiving countries and international socialism. The published correspondence includes a letter from candobetter site contributor James Sinnamon, who agrees that he had indeed posted that letter to Martin Thomas in 2005. It was published on the Workers' Liberty site during a past stay in Australia by Martin Thomas. Thomas was a qualified teacher and able to teach both in Australia and the UK. During one of those stays in Australia in 2005, Martin Thomas contacted James in order to re-establish his previous contact when from 1984 and 1985 when James had been an active supporter of the Australian group affiliated to Workers' Liberty, then known as "Socialist Fight."

Sinnamon expressed his opinion that open door immigration policies would give rise to dangerously high immigration and population growth. He warned that, whilst benefiting rich globalists, for everyone else, rapid population growth carried high risks of poverty, linked to fuel shortages and the socially unsustainable inflation of housing prices and basic natural resources, like water and land. He argued that this outcome would be environmentally dangerous to survival. Martin Thomas expressed the view that unlimited immigration was an overall good and that if receiving countries did not embrace it, they would be invaded forcibly, under threat of nuclear war, by sending countries like India and China.

A number of other writers responded to the views of James and Martin, and we also include their correspondence below. It all makes interesting reading.

The correspondence below talks about the rights of sovereign nations to defend themselves generally against the ravages of global capitalism, which also deploys high immigration (in open-door policies) as a weapon against democracy. Whilst thus utterly failing to support the right of peoples to self-government and self-determination, phony socialist organisations continue actively to waste the energy of their many young, enthusiastic and trusting supporters by diverting their attention to phony progressive causes.

The correspondence published below throws some light on the attitudes associated with undemocratically high levels of immigration and population growth and the problems it creates for self-government and self-determination, resource depletion and inflation.

For more about the publication, Workers' Liberty, see footnote [2]

A letter from James Sinnamon and a reply from Workers' Liberty Australia.

Hi comrades,

Further to last night's conversation. Towards the end I frankly expressed my thoughts on what have been taboo subjects within socialist circles, that is, population levels and immigration.

These issues are an aspect of a question which, as I have said, has been avoided by almost the whole socialist movement, that is the finiteness of this planet, and how we can hope to create a stable basis for a sustainable society within the constraints of the physical limits of our planet, given the unprecedented population levels of well over 6 billion.

If we can't achieve this, our future may be too awful to contemplate.

As I said in less than two hundred years, less than a blink of an eye in human history, we have dug up and burnt off energy stored in carbon, which took tens or hundreds of millions of years for the earth to accumulate thorough biological and geological process (I wrote this in a letter which was printed in March this year in The Canberra Times and The Australian)

This, to me, is an astonishing and frightening fact.

We have increased global populations because we have squandered what should have been treated as a priceless resource for this and future generations.

In our discussion, it didn't strike me that you fully appreciated this fact and all the implications of all of this.

In Australia, we are close to exceeding the carrying capacity of this country if we have not already. As just one example, planners don't know how either NSW or South East Queensland can establish sufficient supplies of water to satisfy the needs of the current population, let alone the additional 1,000,000 (that will be allowed to move here by 2025 in order to satisfy the needs of the property speculation 'industry').

Many informed people believe that the current population levels are already well in excess of this country's carrying capacity, especially if you take into account that our economy largely depends on non renewable petroleum. Coal may be a possible alternative, but an expensive and dirty one, which is also finite. In any case it may increase CO2 levels in our atmosphere to unacceptable levels. Even if Peter Beattie's recent claim that we have 300 years worth of coal left in Australia is true, that is still a blink of an eyelid in terms of overall human history.

No socialist current has ever given a clear answer as to what it thinks the population levels of this country should be and hence what the levels of immigration should be. Your response last night is that firstly you still supported open door immigration and that you didn't believe that that many people would want to come here anyway, so it is not really an issue.

With one billion on the planet in dire poverty living in shanty towns on the outskirts of cities (see New Left Review Article, "Planet of Slums") I would suggest that the potential for Australia's current population to be easily overwhelmed many times over if an open door policy were to be adopted is beyond doubt.

Which one of these one billion people, do you believe would not come to a county like Australia if given an opportunity?

And let's not forget 100,000 largely wealthy business migrants who are already coming here every year. The surest way to gain resident status these days is to have money to buy a house and thereby to add to the already obscene levels of housing hyper-inflation.

Of course I am not being judgmental about these people. They are only doing what I would do, if I were in their shoes#fn_1" id="text_1">[3], and I dare say if they were in my shoes they would in all probability adopt the same attitude that I have adopted.

Already the increased levels of population have clearly had detrimental effects for the existing population : housing costs gone through the roof (property speculators are open about this, if your read their literature), the quality of life largely destroyed in cities like Sydney, water supply crises as I mentioned earlier. These are just not even broached in any socialist literature that I have read.

In my heart I am still a socialist internationalist, but today the ideal of unconditional internationalism is an unachievable pipe dream, and, in fact, dangerous. As a friend put it so well a few months ago, that ideal has been subverted to suite the needs of globalised capitalism.

For the past generation, the whole of the left has had no answer to the developments that have not only harmed the interests of ordinary Australians, but have threatened our sustainability: off-shoring of jobs to countries like China and India, privatisation, deregulation, lifting of limitations on foreign investment, allowing foreigners to buy and speculate in Australian property, with disastrous consequences for ordinary home buyers. To have raised objections to these developments would incur accusations of nationalism and sometimes, even racism.

We need a serious answer to this and that answer must be a pragmatic compromise between socialist internationalism and the recognition of our own collective interests as a national community.

I hope that you all will all come to understand the sense of what I am saying, and quickly ditch the cornucopian baggage carried by the socialist movement up to now. If you do so, then I think there is a hope that you will be able to contribute positively to the future political development of this country, and even the rest of the world, if not, I believe that you will continue to be regarded as irrelevant by all but a small minority of our population.

If you cannot do so right away, please at least start to acknowledge these questions in your newspaper and try to refute what I have said.

Reply from Martin Thomas

Dear James,

You raise two issues: the threat to human life on the planet Earth from the exhaustion of fossil fuels, and the threat to conditions in Australia from increased openness to the world, including immigration. You draw two conclusions: global reshaping of human society to reduce the use of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels; and immigration controls (tighter than the present ones, if I have understood you right) for Australia.

I think your two lines of thought contradict each other. On an ultra-optimistic scenario such as some neo-liberals project, it would make some macabre sense to support tight immigration controls. They could serve as a way to avoid disruption and "jumping the gun" - to keep order in a queue from which everyone will eventually reach a Californian middle-class lifestyle.

If rural China, Bangladesh, and Nigeria will all in the due course of industrial development reach that Californian level, then their people, or at least enough of them, may be willing to wait.

But if humanity faces ecological catastrophe, then it makes no sense to argue that the people of the regions which will "go under" first will lie down to die quietly while the people of global "gated communities"
continue to live in plenty.

China and India, after all, have nuclear weapons. If in a few decades' time, they face mass starvation, while Australians continue to live comfortably behind a big wall inscribed "Yellow and brown-skinned people, keep out!", then why would any conceivable Chinese or Indian government not use those nuclear weapons to break down that wall?

Presumably your support for barriers to protect relatively advantaged countries applies generally, not just to Australia. It would apply, for example, in countries with land borders. It would apply in South Africa, for example, where hostility to Nigerian and Mozambican immigrants as a supposed threat to conditions is already widespread among black as well as white South Africans.

But if the prospect is not just for Nigeria and Mozambique lagging behind South Africa, but of human society collapsing - and for sure it would collapse in Mozambique and Nigeria a long while before it collapsed in relatively well-off South Africa - then how would any restrictions imposed by any South African government hold the desperate human tide?

Global catastrophe would not happen through peoples quietly dying off one by one, each dutifully taking its turn. If, in the run-up, the richer countries had been trying to seal themselves off as "gated communities", the first step towards extinction would be world war in which the peoples of the poorer countries sought, quite literally, space to live in.

The greater the risk of global ecological catastrophe, the greater the need for human solidarity and cooperation in dealing with that risk - and the more disastrous a policy of "looking after number one" will be.

I agree that there are grave ecological dangers. More urgent than the threat of fossil fuels being completely exhausted is the threat of disruption through global warming arising from their use; but both threats are real. It is not possible, even if it were desirable, for the whole world population to live in big air-conditioned houses, eat highly processed and packaged food, use clothes dryers and dishwashers, go round in four-wheel drives, take frequent trips by air, etc. - any more than in the 19th century socialists could think that in the future everyone could live in houses with teams of domestic servants.

It is even arguable (I'm not sure about this) that ecological sustainability requires converting more of the population to a vegetarian diet.

But we know that capitalist consumerism is not an unavoidable part of human nature. There have been societies where out-consuming your neighbour is considered foul, not a cause for pride. Many studies have shown that people get happier with increasing material wealth up to a definable point - but that beyond that point, already passed by the Californian middle class, they do not.

In a society of solidarity, people could live in "abundance", on a rule of "to each according to their needs", with comfort and some luxuries - while accepting that some sorts of consumption must be restrained for ecological reasons. But only in a society of solidarity! In a capitalist society, both capital's drive for profit and the consumerist drives instilled in the mass of the population by the workings of commodity fetishism make impossible the development of any such collective responsibility for the sustainability of our society.

You agree in general, I think. You write that some form of socialism is the only sustainable future. But if the ecological problems are global, then, more than ever, this socialism must be global - based on a recognition of a common humanity, and a common human interest in sustaining the Earth's environment - not a socialism of "gated communities".

And, in any case, how can we possibly hope that working classes preoccupied with keeping up the barriers around their relatively favoured patches of the Earth's surface, or wondering how they can possibly jump those barriers to escape their earlier-doomed patches, will ever achieve any form of socialism? If the working classes of the world are turned towards that way of thinking, then there will be no socialism.

I think I have a less catastrophist view of future energy supplies than you do, if only because I have no objection to the development of nuclear power with safeguards of democratic and working-class control. Its risks are far less than those of continued escalating use of fossil fuels, or of leaving a large part of humanity without electricity.

Nuclear fission draws on finite resources, but with a much longer span of availability than fossil fuels. Nuclear fusion - if it can be developed workably, and a prototype nuclear fusion power station is already under construction - can draw on practically infinite resources.

Of course I am also in favour of the development of renewable energy sources - hydroelectric, wind power, tidal power, solar power, etc. At present none of these sources has the portability and the capacity to produce energy round the clock which fossil fuels and nuclear power do.

But I agree that there are real ecological threats. Only, I conclude that to tackle them we need a global working-class solidarity, and moves to raise higher barriers between countries run directly counter to that.

But, you say, open borders are unworkable, even if they might be desirable. Open the borders of Australia and tens or hundreds of millions of paupers would flood here the next day, creating social disaster.

In the first place, such immigration as has been allowed to come to Australia has clearly benefited the people of this country. An argument could be made against that immigration, that it consists of robbing many poorer countries of some of their most educated and energetic people, but for Australia the immigration has plainly been beneficial.

Working as a high school teacher, I can see this every day: the higher proportion of immigrant kids in a school, the better the education, the lower the level of social despondency.

Even where immigration is less selective than in Australia - in Britain, for example - the benefits, both in bringing new productive person-power and in cultural enrichment, are clear.

If there is a level at which immigration becomes unworkably disruptive, we are certainly nowhere near it now.

Would "open borders" bring us there? Well, the USA had open borders up until 1921. A transatlantic boat trip, or a journey across the Rio Grande, was more expensive and difficult than analogous journeys today, but not prohibitive even for very poor people in Europe and Central and South America. Millions of people migrated to the USA, many of them fleeing starvation or extreme poverty in countries like Ireland and Italy. The result was the richest and most dynamic country in the world.

Argentina and Brazil, which also received mass transatlantic migration, also developed - as capitalist economies, to be sure, with all the cruelties and inequalities that implies, but they developed.
They did not collapse.

Today there are "open borders" within the European Union, a population of 460 million. There are still some restrictions on the movement of people from the poorest EU countries in Eastern Europe, but some richer countries, the UK for example, do not apply those restrictions, and in those that do apply them, like Germany, the restrictions are easily evaded.

National income per head in Luxemburg is six times what it is in Latvia, or five and a half times what it is in Poland. Will opening the borders of Luxemburg to all those Latvians and Poles lead to catastrophe? On all the evidence, no. In the UK, we have a lot more Poles in London since Poland joined the EU, but no catastrophe at all.

The USA does not have open borders, but geography makes it practically impossible for it to police its southern border. The US government estimates that the USA has at least seven million illegal immigrants living it. That they are illegal creates a heap of problems. As workers, they have no usable legal rights. But on the evidence, the fact of having seven million more people, doing jobs otherwise hard to fill, benefits their fellow-citizens rather than harming them. If the border were made legally open, rather than just practically hard to police, things would be better.

Israel has had an "open border" for Jews since 1948, and as a consequence its society - a mere 650,000 Jews in 1948 - has received large and unpredictable inflows of Jews from the Arab world in the 1950s and after 1967, and from Russia and Eastern Europe after 1989. On a tiny patch of land with few energy resources and scanty water supplies, its population has been increased to 6.5 million. Israel has had to build desalination plants to extract fresh water from the sea (a technology used more extensively by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states), but it continues to develop.

It would develop much better, to be sure, if it would cease its oppression of the Palestinians, withdraw from the Occupied Territories, and recognise the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own. But its policy of unlimited immigration has not wrecked it.

Germany has "open borders" for anyone who can claim German origins.
In 1945 west Germany had to deal with some 13 million Germans forcibly expelled from Eastern Europe. After 1990 it received a new flood of immigrants from the East. Again, no catastrophe.

According to Nigel Harris, author of a recent book arguing against immigration controls, "Thinking the Unthinkable": "There were up to two hundred econometric studies done in the United States in different localities at different times in order to try to detect whether there was a decline in wages or an increase in unemployment of native workers as a result of a significant inflow of immigrants and in general they could find no trace whatsoever. And that is because the immigrants are moving into the jobs that the native workers won't do..."

In Britain, according to Kenan Malik, "a Home Office study published last year concluded that 'the perception that immigrants take away jobs from the existing population, or that immigrants depress wages of existing workers, do not find confirmation in the analysis of the data'."

Teresa Hayter, in her pamphlet "The Case Against Immigration Controls", pursues the argument:

"There are many who say that the abolition of immigration controls is a desirable goal, one they themselves would like to see achieved, but that it is politically impossible in a world in which there are severe international inequalities. But the argument that, without controls, there would be 'floods' of migrants who would overwhelm the rich countries some of them go to is little more than scaremongering.

"The fact that there are huge international inequalities in material wealth does not mean that, as neo-classical economists might predict, there would be mass movements of people throughout the world until material conditions and wages equalised. It is true that if there were no controls there would probably be more migration, since the dangers and cost of migrating would be less; how much more is impossible to estimate...

"[But] most people require powerful reasons to migrate; in normal circumstances they are reluctant to leave their countries, families and cultures. When free movement was allowed in the European Union, some feared there would be mass migration from the poorer to the richer areas; the migration did not happen, to the chagrin of the proponents of flexible labour markets. The great desire of many who do migrate is to return to their own countries, when they have saved enough money, or if conditions there improve. Immigration controls mean that they are less likely to do so, because they cannot contemplate the struggle of crossing borders again if they find they need to".

History backs up Harris's and Hayter's arguments. And the urgency of global solidarity also means that it is urgent to fight against immigration restrictions.

Best wishes,

Martin

Comments

Land, labour & population

Submitted by Anonymous on 11 December, 2005 - 16:03.

Martin's argument seems to be that the third world will invade the first world unless there are open borders. He also implies that high rates of immigration in the US and in Germany are overall beneficial and manageable. His opinion is also that Australia's schooling system benefits from a stream of immigrants to that country, which he implies would be depressing without that stream.

He gives no evidence for this opinion. It is merely his opinion apparently that no stable polity can be a happy place and that all communities must be in constant turmoil to be cheerful.

He relies on worker solidarity to engineer a future low consumption economy. He does not mention how workers have been consistently seduced to consume and endebt themselves in the process, thus contributing to the upkeep of their opressors and the upkeep of our tragic gobbling up of fossil fuels and cooking of the planet.

My conclusion is that the benefits from the current situation outweigh the negatives for Martin, and that he has decided that what is true for him must be true for others.

James discloses a quite different point of view, which he came round to after living for a while a Martin perspective.

My view is that human population has only been able to outgrow its dependency on trees and dung for fuel since coal and oil. This overgrowth and outgrowth that we call the Industrial Revolution started in England around 1750 and was the first time that human populations began to grow unsustainably on a very large scale. So far those countries which were able to gain power over fossil fuel resources have been able to feed their vast populations, but most indicators of quality of life and standard of living, industrial rights etc, and rate of endebtedness, have been falling.

The poor have been the losers in the West as in the third world. I do not see any prospect of the third world rising to meet the first world. All I see is an international clique of rich people organising the poor to serve them. In Australia this movement is very pronounced.

I think that the socialist movement, to restore credibility, must support the rights of the poor in Australia, by refusing to support immigration until such time as industrial law protects all workers equally - imported and locally born.

This is not the current outlook.

Martin seems to be suggesting that we should let things get worse and worse and then that the workers will rise up. In the mean-time the capitalists are reconquering the land, purchasing water and power. The workers have less and less access to land, which is the only thing that can ever make them independent of capital.

I don't see business as usual, i.e. economic growth, an employer/employee society with no protection for workers, and high immigration as sustainable or fair. I don't think the revolution will bring about justice either. I think it is too late.

I would like to see the natural world protected as much as possible and permaculture to be taught along with self-sufficiency. The capitalist/labour paradigm seems to be nearly dead in the water. We have the corporate/slave paradigm waiting in the wings.

Let the peasants have their land back.

Sam

Excellent Discussion

Submitted by Arthur Bough on 11 December, 2005 - 17:46.

I thought this was an excellent discussion to which I would like to make just a few points. The first point is in relation to earlier emigrations say to the US. I remember asking Sir keith Joseph when he made a visit to my old University how he reconciled his belief in the free market, including the free movement of labour with his support for Immigration Controls. He had no good response to make. However, in response to this point when I have debated with US Libertarians they do have a response which is we have no objection to open borders as a means of free movement of labour, if it is combined with the abolition of welfare payments so that the influx of labour reduces wages to absorb the increased supply of labour, and so that this influx does not just consume more benefits leading to increased taxes etc.

The US, Brazil etc. at the time of the large emigrations not only had a lot of land that could be settled, but also had no welfare payments.

The argument is not really comparable with the situation today where welfare payments, minimum wage agreements etc. are in place.

Consequently, where immigrant workers do come in to do jobs that indigenous workers will not do there is a base put underneath the level to which the wages can fall. To a certain extent this reduces the attraction of bringing in foreign labour for anything other than the most unpopular jobs, or leads to the kind of abuses of illegal immmigration and slavery whereby those employed never appear on the official statistics, and can therefore be employed at whatever wages the gangmasters see fit. The other area where immigration arises, for example with Poles coming to Britain, is where the worker has a specific skill, for example as plumbers, which either is in short supply and normal wages would be significantly higher than the minimum wage, or where the worker can become self employed in which case minimum wage regulations do not apply.

I can envisage conditions in which a socialist society might wish to have immigration controls, just as it would want to have a monopoly of foreign trade. But the aim of such a society would be to work with workers in other countries to raise their standard of living and to try to plan co-operatively the movement of labour along with the planning of other aspects of economic activity. But that is no reason for promoting immigration controls under capitalism. For one thing, it sends out the message that economic problems (or environemntal problems) are caused by immigration rather than capitalism.

As far as global environmental problems are concerned as martin argues the best means of solving this problem (if we are not already too late) is by international workers co-operation and solidarity to develop means by which the living standards of everyone on the planet can be raised to a decent standard by means which do not threaten its very existence. I'm not sure I agree with Martin about nuclear power because every economic study shows that its cost is greater than its benefit, but I do believe that a socialist society would be far less wasteful than capitalism and so energy and resource use would be lower in relation to the quantity of use values produced. Moreover, the use of technology to produce bio mass or other renewable energy close to its point of use (30% of electricity is lost in transmission), the use of individual power generators such as windmills on every home, heat exchangers etc. could vastly reduce energy production requirements, along with the use f fuel cells, clean coal technology etc. mean that energy requirements should be capable of being met. The individual electric cars which run on a track being introduced at Heathrow Airport also seem to me an excellent means of combining the requiremnt for meeting the individual need for flexibility with the public need to reduce resource usage, energy production, and congestion.

I think we have the basis for resolving all the problems of humanity in the 21st century, but capitalism will only employ them if it is profitable to do so. Only a socialist society based on co-operation can begin to introduce the changes necessary, and the basis of that has to be international working class action, not allowing the ruling class to divide us by artifical boundaries.

Arthur Bough

Interesting Thoughts on Protein

Submitted by Arthur Bough on 14 December, 2005 - 10:01.

In reference to Martin's points about vegetarian diets, and the possibility of needing to convert people to them for sustainability I read the following today in the Daily Reckoning e-letter, by Dan Denning.

"- "Ninety-five percent of the nitrogenous fertilizers used in America are made out of natural gas," observes
Jim Kunstler in his book, The Long Emergency, "and so it has become indispensable to US agriculture."

- What happens to global agricultural production,
therefore, when natural gas soars to an all-time high, like it did yet again last week? Let's query the experts...

- "A world of 6.4 billion people, on the way to 9
billion or more, needs more protein than the planet's croplands can generate from biologically provided nitrogen. Our species has become as physically dependent on industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as it is on soil, sunshine, and water," writes Stan Cox, a scientist
at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.

- "Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the
University of Manitoba...has demonstrated the global food system's startling degree of dependence in nitrogen
fertilization. Using simple math[s] - the kind you can do in your head if there's no calculator handy — Smil showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, would not exist without the application of
synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century."

- "That means that without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer," he concludes, "about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed."

- Simply stated, therefore, no cheap natural gas, no cheap fertiliser, less food. Or to put it another way,

- For some background, let's talk about protein. "Proteins are made up of smaller units called amino acids," the Vegetarian Society explains. "There are about 20 different amino acids, eight of which must be present in the diet. These are the essential amino acids. Unlike animal proteins, plant proteins may not
contain all the essential amino acids in the necessary proportions."

- "Protein quality is usually defined according to the amino acid pattern of egg protein, which is regarded as the ideal," the vegetarians continue. "As such, it is not surprising that animal proteins, such as meat, milk and cheese tend to be of a higher protein quality than plant proteins. This is why plant proteins are sometimes referred to as low quality proteins. Many plant proteins are low in one of the essential amino acids. For instance, grains tend to be short of lysine whilst pulses are short of methionine."

- It's clear human beings need protein. We can get it from plants or we can get in from animals. Most of us get it from both. And China, lately, has been getting an awful lot of protein from soybeans, many of which are grown in North and South America. You might say, as Jim Kunstler implies, that China's rise would not have been possible without the oil boom of the 20th century. No natural gas, no soybeans. No soybeans, no extra protein boost for factory workers working longer hours.

- China's soybean imports for the first 9 months of 2004/2005 (October-June) have jumped more than 8%. Obviously, this is good news for soybean producers and exporters, the biggest of whom are in the United States and Latin America. Chinese demand, by itself, provides very solid support for a soybean bull market, even before one considers the supply-limiting impact of rising natural gas prices.

- Following a similar line of thinking, Steve Belmont, Senior Market Strategist for the Rutsen Meier Belmont
Group in Chicago, also suggests a bullish position in the soy market, specifically soy meal. "Asian affluence, bullish seasonal patterns and low prices mean it's time to take a look at the long side of soybean meal," Belmont suggests.

- "Livestock and poultry operations the world over depend heavily on soybean meal as a key source of feed, especially since the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy [Mad Cow Disease] has sharply curtailed the feeding of rendered parts [ground up offal]. Not surprisingly, Chinese consumption of soybean meal has been rising rapidly."

- Soybean production is dependent upon copious amounts of nitrogen fertiliser. Nitrogen fertiliser is made from natural gas - which as we write this, is trading at roughly 3 times the price fifteen months ago.

- "Cheap nitrogen fertilizer fuels the big yields that
have made soybeans and by extension, soybean meal, cheap. Remove the nitrogen fertilizer or make it prohibitively expensive for farmers and soy meal supply could be negatively-affected."

- "Soy meal's portion of protein feed demand has increased markedly since the early 1990s, rising from less than half of global demand in the 1993/1994 growing season to well over two-thirds today. We expect solid demand from the growing nations of Asia and the potential for lower soybean yields due to expensive nitrogen fertilizer to provide soybean meal with long-term support."

- "But that's not the only reason to like soy meal...Similar to soybeans and corn, soybean meal has a seasonal tendency to make important lows in the winter and rally during spring and early summer. Soybean meal is unloved and oversold. Therefore, we believe it may be a good time to pick up some call options."

- The world needs protein as much as it needs oil...and with oil over $60 per barrel, protein is about to become much more expensive."

Further details of Daily Reckoning articles at

Daily Reckoning

Arthur Bough

Not sure what this means

Submitted by seanysean on 14 December, 2005 - 20:06.

My diet is vegetarian + fish. I choose this diet because I believe its unfeasable for the world's population to consume large quantities of beaf, pork, lamb, etc. and people are going hungry in the third world so the west can gorge itself on meat. I also don't trust the meat industry to put food safety before profit. Lastly, I couldn't bring myself to slaughter an animal so I'm not comfortable with the idea of eating one.

I'm not sure what is the point of the above post. Is it saying people should be vegetarians? Or is it saying being vegetarian will get more expensive? Furthermore, soya is not the be all and end all of vegetarianism. Guess what! There were vegetarians long before people started eating soya protein.

Explanation

Submitted by Arthur Bough on 15 December, 2005 - 14:44.

What it is saying in short is that all food is going to get much, much more expensive as a result of diminishing supplies of oil and natural gas, and consequently of nitrogenous fertiliser. As the article argues a considerable amount of agriculture is now dependent upon such fertiliser in order to produce the quantities required. Without that fertiliser, or with the cost of that fertiliser increasing dramatically the cost of agricultural products will rise considerably.

Firstly, plant sources of food will increase in price. Secondly, because animal production is dependent on the production of plant feedstocks the cost of animal protein will rise considerably. Finally, because China has increased its consumption considerably and relies on Soybean production as animal feedstock the cost for the type of animal protein most frequently consumed in China, poultry, will rise considerably. Given China's position as workshop of the world, increasing food costs for China will also have considerable knock on effects for the rest of the world economy.

Arthur Bough

Thanks for the explanation, but....

Submitted by seanysean on 16 December, 2005 - 17:18.

...does this mean people should consider converting to vegetarian/low meat diets? Or has it got nothing to do with that?

I am asking because you say at the start of it you say "In reference to Martin's points about vegetarian diets, and the possibility of needing to convert people to them for sustainability..."

Yes

Submitted by Arthur Bough on 16 December, 2005 - 23:33.

Yes, it does mean that. Although as the article says meat protein tends to be of a different type to plant protein, the nutrition obtained from a certain quantity of plant food is greater than that obtained from animals which have had to be fed on plant food in the firt place. To make that clearer a loss of nutrition occurs as a result of feeding plnts to animals and then eating those animals compared to consumin the plants or their equivalents that were fed to the animals.

If everyone had a vegetarian diet, therefore, more nutrrition could be obtained for the same amount of cost, and resource inputs. However, what the article is also pointing out is that whether such a switch occurs or not the cost of food is likely to rise substantially, both in terms of meat, and of plant food for the simple reason that one of the primary input costs - nitrogenous fertiliser - is going to become much more scarce, and its cost is going to rise.

My personal view is that the world could produce a vast quanity of food in excess of what it produces now, if the world's resources were used rationally, even without massive use of fertiliser, or GM plants.
Vast swathes of potential agricultural land are not used in underdeveloped countries, because of the structure of world trade, and the impossibility of small farmers and peasants in these reas epanding production. That is not even taking into consideration the fact that a number of studies has shown that the biggest increases in agricultural output result from simple capital invetsment such as better drainage etc.

But it is not in capitalism's interest to do that. World Trade remains dominated by the interests of the most powerful capitalist nations, and agribusiness is now a powerful force within those countries. High prices go with relatively stable longer term business plans that these businesses need in order to plan investment. They also form the basis of high profits for these businesses. It is not in their interests to introduce competition into this process from potentially lower cost producers in underdeveloped countries, who can utilise extensive rather than intensive farming methods.

Ironically, it is probably not in the interests of consumers in the Wrest either. There is an economic theorem called the cobweb theorem.
It shows that for products such as agricultural products where supply can only respond to price with considerable lags i.e. if the price of potatoes is high now, it will encourage farmers to plant potatoes but those potatoes will only become supply next year, then instead of the price mechanism acting to bring about equilibrium it actually acts to create greater and greater disequilibrium. Prices rise farmers plant that product in great quantities at the expense of other products. Next year the result is a glut of this particular product and shortage of other products. Prices of that product collapse because of the glut, and rise for other products now in hsort supply. The collpase in the price and increase in price of other goods causes farmers to abandon growing the product and switch to others. The following year there is no supply and prices rocket, and so on creating greater and greater disequilibrium.

It is the reason most countries intervened in agriculture, and the reason for the CAP.

Arthur Bough

Footnotes

NOTES

[1] The included article was originally published on 30 September 2005 on the web-site of the UK group Workers' Liberty

[2] More about the publication, Workers' Liberty: Although the organisation which produces that publication describes itself as a socialist organisation, and says it is against the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which is an expanding military alliance of capitalist governments, it has nonetheless supported NATO's current war against Libya. This amounts to Workers' Liberty supporting the furthering of the interests of capitalism in British and US private profit military industrial complexes. (See "Left-wing" groups and "social movements" support US war against Libya?! of 9 July.) This support for an illegal war against the sovereign nation of Libya, whilst surprising for an organisation that purportedly champions the rights of poor nations against capitalist domination, is only the latest in a line of confusing alliances with global capitalist causes for Workers' Liberty . These include failure to question the false flag terrorist attack of 9/11 in New York which continues to be used to justify the NATO occupation of Afghanistan and indirectly, by sleight-of-hand, the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Workers' Liberty has also fallen in with the mainstream line which dismisses the achievements of US President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which include his prevention of global nuclear war on at least three occasions. Workers' Liberty also has consistently failed to seriously discuss important evidence of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy in 1963.

Their overt stance in support for the war against Libya formally distinguishes Workers' Liberty from most other 'socialist' organisations. Informally, however, the silence of other 'socialist' groups on the rights of Libyans, must have an equally devastating effect on the people of Libya. Such a stance utterly fails to support the right of sovereign nations to defend themselves against the war.

#fn_1" id="fn_1">3 [#text_1">back] Having given some more thought to this some years later, I don't necessarily agree that I would necessarily only do what intending immigrants would do if I were in their shoes. Whilst, obviously, I now, in many ways, prefer the more materially affluent (if wasteful and ecologically damaging) lifestyle of the country I live in to the lifestyle of most third world countries in which many intending immigrants live, I would also want to do what I could to help solve the world's ecological, social and economic problems. That would almost certainly be far better served if I were to remain in the third world country in which I lived and do my best to solve the political and ecological problmes of my country and bring about population stability than if I were to migrate to an industrialised nation.

Increasing private-public partnerships, contracting out, privatisation, creation of authorities 'outside government' etc over the past 20 years in Victoria "has led to a steady erosion of accountability to Parliament and the public, as these services and the public monies that fund them fall outside existing accountability frameworks and the mandate of this office." (Auditor General, Victoria) The forward plan also notes concerns about population growth and food security.

On Tuesday 24 May 2011 Victoria's Auditor-General, Des Pearson, tabled his Annual Plan for 2011-12 today in the Victorian Parliament.

The Annual Plan contains details of areas of audit interest for 2011-12, and a forward program of proposed audits for 2012-13 to 2014-15. Among these, are plans for ammendments to the Audit Act 1994[1]. Below we cite from that document, although some of the headings are from the editors of candobetter.net.

Amendments to the Audit Act 1994 are needed

Over the past 20 years, Victoria has seen an increase in the ‘arms-length’ delivery of public services through the private and community sectors. There has been increased private sector involvement in the delivery of public services through arrangements such as outsourcing and public private partnerships. There has also been a trend to create new legal entities ‘outside government’, such as companies, associations and statutory bodies, allowing these entities to access broader revenue sources and more flexible governance regimes.

Steady erosion of accountability

"This has led to a steady erosion of accountability to Parliament and the public, as these services and the public monies that fund them fall outside existing accountability frameworks and the mandate of this office.

Responding to these changes in the way government delivers services, the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) held an inquiry last year into the Act.[2]

VAGO made several representations to the inquiry, including a formal submission.

The all-party report of this Parliamentary Inquiry made wide-ranging recommendations, seeking to prevent the erosion of public sector accountability, strengthen the independence of VAGO and update the Act to reflect contemporary trends.

PAEC unanimously recommended measures to:

• ‘close the gap’ on entities currently outside Parliament’s audit mandate
• allow access to public sector information held by private sector contractors
• introduce annual audits of performance statements and management controls
• enable joint audits with other Australian auditors-general
• improve the effectiveness of external performance audits of VAGO
• ensure agency comment included in our reports to Parliament is accurate, balanced and substantiated.

Urgent Need to repair the Audit Mandate

As indicated in our Annual Plan 2010–11, the Act is in urgent need of reform.

Auditor General needs access to public information held by private sector contractors

In April 2011, the government tabled its response to PAEC’s recommendations. The government response included support in principle for some of the key recommendations; in particular access to public sector information held by private sector contractors and ‘closing the gap’. A number of other recommendations were also supported.

Given the importance of the need to repair the audit mandate, a number of technical and legal issues will need to be discussed further with government as it considers how any amendments should proceed. VAGO looks forward to a strong role in the further development of amendments to the Act.

Population growth and diminishing oil supplies

Our scanning during development of the 2011–12 Annual Plan reconfirmed climate change and the environment; the ageing of our population; risks to sustainable development from diminishing oil supplies; population growth; and the continuing need
for transparency and accountability, as major challenges for government in coming years. In addition, the Council of Australian Governments Reform Agenda continues to affect the scheduling and focus of our program of performance audits, particularly in the health sector. [3]

[Candobetter.net Editor:] From reading this report, notably the attachments from page 58, it seems that in 2009 the Auditor-General looked into Victoria's food security and concluded that there were no significant risks. Since then, however, the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) has suggested that the matter be revisited, i.e. that food security may now be an issue.

"The Committee supports the Auditor-General's commitment to environmental scanning of issues and understands this underpins the Office's multi-year audit program. The Committee considers therefore, it would be beneficial if the Auditor-General's Office updated its research with relevant information on food security from 2010 and 2011 prior to scopint this audit to consider more recent research on issues surrounding food security." (PAEC)

The Victorian Auditor General responds on page 60 by noting the PAEC's comments and undertakes to consider food security in the audit research and scoping. Here the Auditor General also agrees, "As advised in the conduct of its annual planning function, VAGO will continue to, consider issues such as population growth and its impact on current and future service delivery and public sector activity."

NOTES

Source of material in this article: http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/annual_plan.aspx

[1] "1.3 Amendments to the Audit Act 1994,"http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/annual_plan.aspx, p.3.

[2] "The former government sought to consolidate accountability arrangements for public bodies under one Act. The Public Finance and Accountability Bill 2009 was introduced into Parliament in December 2009, however, the Bill lapsed without being passed through the Upper House when Parliament was prorogued in October 2010. Any further progress on these reforms will be dependent upon the new government’s priorities." http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/annual_plan.aspx ,p1.

[3] http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/reports_and_publications/annual_plan.aspx, p.4.

Here is some documentation for the 18 May 2011 PAEC discussion on Energy and Resources by the way: Hansard proof report - not for quoting - http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/paec/2011-12_Budget_Estimates/Presentations/Energy_and_Resources_presentation.pdf/Energy_and_Resources_presentation.pdf

France is about to debate a law to totally ban fracking for gas. Australia has allowed the practice with problems quickly developing. Mexico has no defenses. The United States is deeply affected. "Fracking" was developed by Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services corporation in the world. The term comes from the extraction method of hydraulic fracturing of shale beds to access "unconventional gas" i.e. gas that comes out of wells other than classic oil-wells. Under President Bush, the fracking industry was exempted from environmental laws, including clean water protection. As many of us have come to understand, when you take away environmental protection, you take away almost all human rights to object to big business, even if citizens lives are obviously threatened. We also mention the Australian film made by Four Corners investigating the impacts of the industry in Australia.
France is about to debate a law to totally ban fracking for gas. Australia has allowed the practice with problems quickly developing. Mexico has no defenses. The United States is deeply affected. "Fracking" was developed by Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services corporation in the world. The term comes from the extraction method of hydraulic fracturing of shale beds to access "unconventional gas" i.e. gas that comes out of wells other than classic oil-wells. Under President Bush, the fracking industry was exempted from environmental laws, including clean water protection. As many of us have come to understand, when you take away environmental protection, you take away almost all human rights to object to big business, even if citizens lives and livelihoods, notably through their clean water supply, are obviously threatened. We also mention the Australian film made by Four Corners investigating the impacts of the industry in Australia.

Winter is cold in America

Years ago I spent a couple of months travelling between Colorado and White Sulphur Springs, Montana, in the US with a friend in the petroleum business, who looking into purchasing mineral rights on behalf of some organisations. It was the middle of winter and a blizzard accompanied us the whole way. Our vehicle, an old Lincoln Continental, developed defective wiring so the heaters and de-misters didn't work and the windows wouldn't wind down. As we left Cheyanne, Wyoming, we were wearing ski outfits and using an icescraper on the inside of the windows, wondering just how long we could survive this. When we got to the town of White Sulphur Springs, the main street looked like a bob-sleigh course. The town lacked the money to clear the ice and the only warm place, as I recollect, was under the motel, in a glaucous grotto whence issued the sulphurous springs which apparently gave the town its name.

From this picture I found on the internet, I see that it hasn't changed all that much, except that they are now fracking for gas in Montana.

Why should I mention this?

Well, perhaps to give you an idea of how cold it gets in North America in winter, and just what film-activists like Josh Fox are up against from the general public as well as those who live in warm climates and own shares in gas exploration. Further down we mention the Australian investigation of this industry on Four Corners: See "The Gas Rush," 21 February 2011.

Gaslands, the movie

Candobetter.net is a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy. These topics go together naturally, but few single productions bring them together as effectively as Gaslands, a movie made and lived by Josh Fox (no relation to Fox-news, of course!)

Watch this movie and, if you still believe in benign government and that capitalism is the same thing as democracy, please write up your case to amaze us here.

Fracking democracy

It is really hard to do a review of Gaslands, because even if it were a terrible production, the material raises it to magnificent and frightening heights. The maker of this movie, Josh Fox, was offered a paltry $100,000 for the woods and fields he has lived in all his life, in exchange for mineral exploration rights.

He loved his landscape, which he had grown up with, and he had heard some rumours that fracking sometimes went wrong and cracked water table rock layers, releasing into the water, as well as natural gas and other petroleum by-products, some heavy-duty chemicals used to make water more slippery.

Here is an mp3 about Fracking Fracking: Implications for Human and Environmental Health, Nov 9, 2010 More information here.

Gaslands, the industry

Energy in Depth, "Debunking Gasland," is an industry group site containing a response to the movie, Gaslands.

Click here to see a movie which the industry has made in response to the film. The pro-fracking campaign is just as fear-driven as the anti-gas fracking campaign.

Unfortunately the industry insists, oilily, that if we want our lifestyles to continue, we have to find more and more fuel to allow our economies to continue to grow. "The world's dependency on oil and gas is a given. Without these fuels, life as we know it, would grind to a stop. " They show a snowbound house with cheery lighted windows, a masked medical team at a patient's bed, a plane taking off, and traffic-laden highways. There is no acknowledgement of the benefits of simplicity, the wholesomeness of nature, the disbenefits of consumerism and growth, or the impact on democracy of capitalism gone mad. This film, however, has a nice animated model of how to drill a well and what fracking entails. The model idealises and simplifies the situation, but it educates on the engineering.

The page associated with this movie is called "Debunking Gasland" and comes from a chapter entitled, "The Energy you need, the Facts you demand." Under, "Who we are," you can read that,

America’s natural gas and oil producers – the majority of which are small, independent businesses with less than 12 employees- are committed to strengthening America through the safe, responsible and environmentally-friendly development of domestic energy resources. Together, we’re working to keep energy affordable here at home, creating new jobs and minimizing our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Thanks to new innovations and the hard work of the hundreds of thousands of Americans in the petroleum industry, we’re doing just that. Spread throughout small towns and communities across the country, our companies keep local economies moving by providing goods and generating tax revenues through lease payments and production royalties"

Why the unconventional gas-rush?

Petroleum depletion trends have galvanised governments and industry to find new reservoir sources of fuel in order to maintain our crazy growth economies. This has placed pressure on environmental standards and laws. Under President Bush environmental protection was apparently shunted aside in order to allow brutal technologies to be used to get coal from sites previously abandoned as too difficult or unrewarding or damaging to the environment, and oil from arctic wilderness. These are desperate and predictable measures. Tarsands - once ignored due to their extremely low return on energy invested and the very high pollution involved - are also now being massively exploited in Canada. As we know deep-sea drilling for oil, with all its risks, resulted in - among other tragedies - the Deepwater Horizon oil-well blow-out of 2010 in the gulf of Mexico.

Fracking and concerns about water supplies and safety

Fracking gets natural gas from shale formations at very deep underground levels. People are very worried that, whilst shattering these shale formations, underground water tables will also be shattered, ground around the wells will be polluted, and wide open landscapes will take on the appearance of outdoor factories. The industry insists that the shale formations are much lower than the water tables humans access, but there have been several cases where water tables have been proven to have been contaminated. The fracking industry uses huge amounts of fluid - usually water, which is then largely lost to the water cycle. The water is also 'slicked' using various chemicals, many of which are poisonous. (The industry explanation cited above says that many of these chemicals are used in household products, which is true, but these are not generally poured down drinking wells in large quantities.) The slicked water is forced at huge pressures down vertical pipes and then via pipes which penetrate laterally. The aim is to crack and break up the shale formations enough to release gas in large quantities from its multi-chambered underground stores. In Gaslands it has been suggested that, if completely developed, the huge Marcellus shale formation in the United states, under the current very poorly regulated, chaotically individual and uncoordinated system of drilling, could permit as many as 400,000 new wells. This might endanger the supply of water to New York, which would be catastrophic.

It is of concern that similar projects are proceeding in Australia and ABC Australia's 4Corners recently did a very good documentary on this problem. See "The Gas Rush," 21 February 2011. (Video still available on line.) Shown in this documentary was a case of serious contamination of the underground artesian basin, which is Australia's most massive and ancient naturally stored water-source and the main source of water to many inland farmers in the Eastern states.

Fracking is going to be a problem for any country with shale-oil as long as big transnationals make rules for the rest of us. One such country is Mexico, and here is an interesting article, "Fracking in the Four Corners."

France close to banning Fracking on its territories

Proposed law

Clause 1:
In applying the precautionary principle elaborated in Clause 5 of the Environmental Charter, exploration and exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbon liquids or gases, using vertical and horizontal drills, followed by hydraulic fracturing of rock, is forbidden on National [French] territory.

Article 1er

En application du principe de précaution prévu à l’article 5 de la Charte de l’environnement, l’exploration et l’exploitation des mines d’hydrocarbures liquides ou gazeux non conventionnels, par des forages verticaux comme par des forages horizontaux suivis de fracturation hydraulique de la roche, sont interdites sur le territoire national.

Clause 2:

Exclusive exploration licences to mine unconventional hydrocarbon liquids or gases are now revoked.

Article 2

Les permis exclusifs de recherches de mines d’hydrocarbures liquides ou gazeux non conventionnels sont abrogés.

One of the French ministers involved in drafting this law originally permitted early exploration for fracking. He says that he failed to adequately research the practice and its consequences at the time and is now keen to rectify his mistake.

Why fracking 'Democracy'?

When I first looked into this matter, I thought that it would take me some time to understand the technology involved and the truth of the complaints against it. But what was not hard to see was that the industry could not proceed as it does if there were any democratic regulation in the interests of citizens. The rate and amount of fracking going on in the United States, and the trends in Australia, go on against major and constant protest in countries which lack adequate processes to allow citizens to decide what happens to their country. Whilst these weaknesses in the Anglophone democratic systems have been apparent for some time, the activities of the fracking industry are so obvious and so flagrant, that they actually dramatise our need for entirely new systems of government, with real local powers.

What is to be done? What should be done? What can be done?

Who are we and why do we write? And for whom? Should we be addressing environmentalists, or a broader readership that is not captive of their myths? If so, how can we reach them?

Hope Sells

A friend of mine, "Barry", is a Jehovah's Witness. He is a sincere and decent man with the best of motives and intentions, filling his day with small acts of kindness and good works. But like me, his motivations and efforts are most probably for naught. We obviously share a burden. The burden of being Cassandras who have a vision of doom that few wish to embrace. Yet despite his tribulations, he and his brethen seem to be attracting more support than I am. Upon further discussion, he confided that he and his fellow missionaries get an overwhelmingly hostile reception---- yet his denomination is the fastest growing sect of any religion. Why? "Because after we tell people that this system of things will soon end, we tell them that there is hope for them and the people they love." That is the clincher. People don't want to be sentenced to a diet of bad news. Even those who take it in look for escape hatches. They grasp at straws. The Sierra Club and other religious organizations thrive only because they fire with both barrels of the shotgun. One convinces people that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, while the other offers them false solutions. It is a proven combination. "This is going to kill you, but this can save you". The Green Merchants of False Hope tell us that we have a terminal illness but that their elixir of green living, land-use planning and tech fixes are a miracle cure. It is a message that reaps donations and membership dues, and encourages New Society Publishers to publish a bushel of their books. Hope sells.

Self-Delusion

Bottom line: People want religion. They want comfort food, not the castor oil of unvarnished truth. So the question is, how much of a liar are you willing to become to gain a hearing? You have already swallowed your own lie---that is the first step to becoming a successful salesman. If the audience doesn't believe that you believe in your product, they will not buy your vacuum cleaner. So you have convinced yourself that you have a solution, and that it will eventually be adopted and implemented.

Now you must put on a happy face, and win over a literary agent with your charm. You buy him or her dinner, ask them about their kids and their hobbies and then present your message of doom wrapped up with Disney ending. Something Chris Clugston, in his book, "Scarcity", didn't do and refuses to do. Any more than a lab technician would doctor the results of my blood test to buoy my spirits and allow me to forget about my mortality. Some people have integrity, while the rest of us make compromises. We do that either because we are delusional or egotistical. We think meaningful change is possible and that we have a significant role to play in it.

Are We Truth-Tellers Or Salesman, Objective Analysts or Motivators For Change?

The question to consider is, why would we want to write a book? Do we want to effect change or do we want to want to tell the truth? Are we politicians or objective analysts? If we find that there are no practical solutions that have a reasonable expectation of success, do we want to broadcast that conclusion? Is there any point in writing an autopsy report on our civilization? Do we write so that we can eventually say "I told you so"? Is writing about the coming collapse just a release, an outlet for frustration? If we write to motivate change that would mitigate or prevent the catastrophe even though we believe the probability of change to be remote, does that not make us merely spin-doctors and propagandists? Are we comfortable with that?

What Do Our Half-Solutions Accomplish?

I am thinking out loud here because these are the recurring questions that have bedevilled me with increasing frequency for the past two years. I am apparently not content just to be a spectator to an unfolding disaster---I want to do "something". But isn't that part of the problem-- that too many sincere people---environmentalists----in an attempt to do "something" by pushing half-solutions, are actually making the problem worse? What did Norman Borlaug actually accomplish---other than allowing our species to add another 2 or 3 billion to its numbers? Was that not his fear? What does 'smaller' living by the rich accomplish? What does smart growth accomplish? What does the introduction of more efficient technologies accomplish? What would population stabilization accomplish? What would egalitarian redistribution of wealth accomplish if there are not enough non-renewable resources to sustain all the passengers on our overloaded global lifeboat for the whole voyage? What would absolutely air-tight borders and gated communities accomplish? What would a steady-state industrial economy accomplish? What would a one-child-per-family regime in only one or ten countries accomplish? Is slowing growth enough? Will Mother Nature grant us a reprieve or a consolation prize for simply not growing any more?

Rick Belfour bowed out of an Internet debate provoked by Dirk Becker with the lament that it was demoralizing to witness such rancour among people who essentially are on the same side--or words to that effect. The point is, however, we are not on the same side. The prescriptions that environmentalists offer are, in truth, growth-enablers. They promote growth by making more room for it. Their message is, "Move over and squeeze tighter to make room for more and more incoming people, either from the maternity ward or the airport (it makes no difference)." That is what land use planning, frugal living, and technology improvements do. They create space for continuing growth. It is not coincidental that the title of the book that formed the plot for Charlton Heston's movie, "Solyent Green", was "Make Room! Make Room!" That would be an apt slogan for the environmental movement. Their goal is to essentially manage the environment to accommodate population growth. Mine is the reverse. To shrink the population to accommodate the environment. Yet they have assumed the mantle of "environmentalists". A more appropriate description would be "growth-managers".

The source of our difference is a matter of speculation, but I have a hypothesis. Their worldview---and mine---has been typically fashioned by different educational experiences and the biases inherent in each discipline. And we continue to live in different silos. I did not take a course in biology, yet somehow I ran the gauntlet of a liberal arts education with a conceptual grasp of "limits" still intact---- but that was in an era when universities were an oasis of intellectual tolerance. Statistically, I should be parroting the same line as the "environmental justice" movement, as if nature cared about human notions of justice. But here's the point:

The Fight For Sustainability Is A Golf Game, Not A Juggling Act

Environmentalists and Malthusians are at ideological loggerheads. Ours is not a sectarian division, but a fundamentally unbridgeable chasm. There can be no alliance between us. There can be no fellowship between lightness with darkness. Or in less Biblical terms, between clarity and confusion. If that sounds arrogant and presumptuous, let me add that confusion is not a character flaw. It is just a point on the learning curve---- and hopefully we are all on a learning curve with an ambition to learn more. I was once confused--- and I am still confused--- but much less so than I was, I believe. My curve was not a continuum. I had that famous "paradigm-shift", and it was a "quantum leap", not an incremental progression. I leapt from one decompression chamber to another one, closer to the surface. Rather abruptly, I came to the realization that saving the environment was not a juggling act between causes and factors that demand equal attention, but more like a golf game. In golf, you don't begin by trying to figure out how best to sink the ball in 18 holes, by dispersing your attention to all of them simultaneously. You focus on the first hole. Without sinking the ball in the first hole, all other holes are irrelevant. In terms of environmental degradation, achieving a sustainable population level is that first hole. It is a pre-requisite of ultimate success, not a variable that must be balanced off with other variables. Thinking about the rest of them is a counter-productive distraction. Without rapid population decline, all other good destinations --- human rights, lasting peace and equity, sensible planning and durable zoning limits, or gains from technological improvements---are unreachable. The problem must be treated as one of priority and sequence, not balance.

In deference to political correctness and the sensibilities of corporate donors, the environmental movement took the "P" (population) out of the foundational formula, the "IPAT" equation, making nonsense of their project. Initially, I took the conventional view that the P must be re-inserted to restore the IPAT filter. But that reflected another kind of misunderstanding. "A" (per capita consumption) and "T" (technology) are not equal partners with "P" because a shrinking human population is a pre-condition for meaningful improvements elsewhere. Now I am putting it back in and putting the "A" and the "T" on the shelf, at the back of the queue for future consideration---where they belong. Let's focus on the first hole.

No Longer An Environmentalist

I was once an environmentalist who attacked symptoms, rather than address root problems, and for all my zeal, I did not make a difference,----unless, in my own small way, it was to make our problems marginally worse. Now I am an ex-environmentalist, still struggling to forgive those who have not followed my path, too often forgetting that I was once on theirs. If I know what they do not know, it is still a small fraction of the whole truth---which is unknowable. In the end, we may all prove to be inconsequential. In fact, that is a certainty. One day the human experiment will end---like that of every other species. But it would be nice if it didn't happen so soon.

Tim Murray
March 14, 2011

Climate Change Obsession A Justification for An Open Borders Agenda

Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May has frequently said that immigration has had a "trivial" impact on Canada's environment. The real damage is being done by the Alberta Tar Sands, she claims, and the only immigrants that we should worry about are immigrants like Royal Dutch Shell. This is the tack taken by the Green-Left and Eco-"socialist" groups like the ones that are connected to blogs like "Climate and Capitalism" and the "Green Left Weekly" : Focus almost exclusively on climate change, because it is in, May's words, "the most urgent problem of our time". A global issue that requires a global solution and global cooperation, something that could be hampered by all this 'divisive' talk about tightening the borders to stop a population tsunami from destroying our environment. We mustn't send our unfriendly signals to those nations we need to work with, mustn't we? We can't lock our front door and close the gate or our neighbours might not love us.

So while the Green-Left has declared war on the free and unfettered trade of capital and goods, it supports the corporate agenda of promoting the free and unfettered movement of cheap labour across borders. The workers, after all, have no country, do they? Thus the open-borders, corporate-friendly stance of the Green Globalists is marketed as a gesture of "international solidarity". Solidarity with migrants but not solidarity with the indigenous labour force whose jobs are displaced or wages suppressed by their incoming foreign comrades. The native-born proletariat can surely take a hit in the cause for "Climate Justice", can't they? Climate change is public enemy number one.

Whose carbon footprint is larger---immigration or the tar sands?

For the sake of argument, let's say it is. Let's say that overpopulation, the collapse of biodiversity services, Peak Oil, Peak Soil, and the prospect of running out of the minerals and fuel vital to our industrial civilization is small potatoes compared to the environmental damage wrought by hydrocarbons. OK. If that is the field of battle that the Green-Left wants to play on, then let's join them. The question then is, what impact has hyper-immigration of the kind that Canada and the United States have been subjected to in the past two decades had on GHG emissions? American analysts Leon Kolankiewicz and Steve Camarota already established some time ago that each immigrant to the United States, on average, quadruples his GHG emissions upon arrival. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mOpEnQvD1Y While that figure would approximate the impact that immigrants to Canada have had, another question arises. In the Canadian context, how does the carbon footprint of immigrants compare to the carbon footprint of the Albert tar sands project?

Economist John Meyer has done the math. His calculations rest on the fact that post-1990 immigration has been responsible for an additional 7 million people in Canada, and that per-capita emissions have risen very little in that period. He asserts that if a “zero-net” immigration policy (immigrants accepted equaling emigrants) had been in effect in the past two decades, the country’s population would have stabilized at 27 million. “The 7 million (inclusive of children born to immigrants) is just the difference between the 27 million ceiling that was achievable 20 years ago and the 34 million we have now.”

Nevertheless, to be conservative, Meyer works with a figure of 5 million:

"In 2006 tar sands emissions were 27 million tonnes (mt) and emissions attributed to the 5 million extra people (about 2+ Toronto's) were 120mt. Canada's Kyoto target is 556mt. By 2012, we will probably hit 714mt - over by 28% - the worst performance of any Kyoto signatory save Saudi Arabia. We will be #57 out of 58. The top countries will have cut their emissions by close to 40%. They have stable populations. Canada has the fastest growing population in the western world courtesy of mass immigration. Saudi Arabia's population is growing even faster, naturally."

"Oil sands emissions are growing faster than immigration-based emissions. By 2012, oil sands emissions will be 75mt. Immigration's will be 154mt. Although oil sands emissions grow rapidly, they will never quite catch those from immigration-based population growth because oil production will level off and immigration policy calls for an exponential grow-forever rate of 1%."

"So in 2050, oil sands emissions will be 350mt and immigration's will be 414mt. That is as close as it gets. Tars sands flatten after that but immigration-based emissions keep on climbing to 879mt in 2100. (If post-1990 immigration levels continue), Canada's population will then be 66 million.”

Immigrants did not invent our lifestyle, but they aspire to it

Meyer acknowledges that his analysis does not differentiate between the emissions of rich Canadians and those of immigrants, most of whom are relatively poor, and take a decade to climb up to the average Canadian income level. Meyer speculates that the GHG emissions of immigrants is perhaps 20% lower than the Canadian per capita average. But this is hardly an argument in favour of mass immigration, because even at 80% of the Canadian level, immigrants still generate GHG emissions, and at a rate many times higher than they did in their former countries. While immigrants did not invent our higher ecological footprint (lifestyle), they nevertheless aspire to it, as our parents or great grandparents once did in coming here. Improving one’s lot, after all, is the major and fully understandable motive for those who choose to settle here. The point is not to blame immigrants but to cite immigration as the major driver of population growth, which, contrary to green perceptions, has a demonstrably negative impact on our environment. Arguably, much can be done to mitigate that damage by more efficient technologies, more conservation measures and better planning, but it must be expected that citizens of a country with an average year round temperature of little over 5 degrees centigrade will of necessity make higher energy demands than those who live in warmer climates. Energy efficiency and conservation cannot offset population growth indefinitely.

Mass immigration has despoiled at least as much land as the Tar Sands

Mass immigration rivals the tar sands development in environmental damage in another important respect as well. Aside from thwarting the attainment of Kyoto targets, Meyer also makes the point that the land area despoiled by the tar sands development is matched or exceeded by the land area despoiled to accommodate the immigrant-driven population growth of the last twenty years---and will vastly outstrip it in the decades to come. Furthermore, Meyer notes, “... this urban sprawl has taken place on Canada’s best agricultural land---not in remote boreal forest.” He continues, "We are trained to see shopping malls and subdivisions as signs of progress but seen through an environmental filter, they are even uglier than strip mines and tailing ponds because they are huge resource consumers for their entire lives. Mass immigration creates more energy overhead and reduces the environmental base both in total and in per capita terms when we should be cutting overhead, conserving resources and expanding green energy production.”

To curb carbon emissions, we must break the taboo against talking about immigration

What is most worrisome to Meyer is that the taboo against an open and public discussion of immigration and population policy has rendered our response to a range of challenges ineffective.

“As a result of the immigration no-go zone, Canada's policy formation process has, for decades, been unable to deal effectively with a host of issues from child poverty to productivity to land use to income polarization. And now immigration is short-circuiting emissions planning.”

Meyer adds that the tar sands may be the poster pariah, but if real solutions are to be found to curb our appalling carbon emissions, "the cloak of invisibility will have to be pulled from immigration”. Immigration should be the focus of corrective action duly proportionate to its crucial impact.

Tim Murray,
October 12/2010

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Have you seen the latest TV commercials promoting the new Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011? The theme is summarized with the slogan, "The Things We Make, Make Us". The 'manifesto' video ad, 1:01 minutes long, makes an unanabashed appeal to American pride and patriotism. Poignant scenes are punctuated by proud declarations.

"This once was a country that made things, beautiful things, and so it is again." "It was a country of colts (with the image of colts galloping across the screen) that made Colt revolvers, and Jeeps (pictures of a stream of Army Jeeps presumably poised for the Normandy invasion, then liberating the streets of European towns in the Second World War).... These things make us who we are."

The American industrial heartland will surely rise again, given the inspirational lead that Chrysler beckons us to follow. The fact that the non-renewable resources critical to this heroic enterprise will not be affordably available to sustain it is just one of life's tiny, inconvenient details that are best swept under the carpet. Pessimism, not the reality of limited resources, is our real enemy you know. What did Obama say? He repeated FDR. "The only fear we have is fear itself." God, is that all. And here I thought I had to worry about Peak Everything and the prospect of a thermo-nuclear exchange that might follow the desperate scramble for scarce resources. Or the strong possibility of biological and chemical war, but then, here I go being pessimistic again. Maybe I should look on the bright side of life, the life that these SUV ads promise me.

The reality of urban gridlock vs. the fantasy of wilderness escape

It is interesting that the product Chrysler is pitching an SUV whose production involved the expenditure of a least 400 barrels of oil per vehicle--or its equivalent--and tons of metals and minerals first mined, then transported, then smelted, then shipped to a factory to rendevous with rubber harvested thousands of miles away and fashioned into a vehicle by hundreds of employees who demand a range of products and services as recompense for their beautiful craftsmnship. Employees who fought two hours of traffic driving their Jeep to work, only to repeat the ordeal after their shift. But hey, they are Americans, like the can-do Americans we once knew, who get the job done! And once it is done, this same vehicle then is marketed as an off-road machine that is seen dashing through lush forests, across unpolluted rivers and over the vast and seemingly pristine Moab desert of Utah."Go where regrets can't follow" is the motto that subtitles the scene. Cameras don't show the getting there, however. You know, the Jeep Grand Cherokee stuck in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic on a Friday afternoon as its driver tries to make it to his weekend gettaway, cursing and honking in a vehicle built for speed but trapped in a nation of gridlock. But alas, the promised land of galloping colts, lush forests and pristine deserts, the America of our fantasies, the one advertisers play on, surely awaits us. It is quite the juxtaposition. The nasty, noisy and smoky process of primary and secondary industrial activity that heralds the resurgence of proud American manufacturing, co-existing with an apparently vast and uncluttered American hinterland.

There are more than 254 million registered passenger vehicles in America and more than 100 million are SUVs and trucks, with over 8 million of that category sold in 2008 alone. Few of them apparently know or care to know that it takes 98 tons of dead plants and animals buried for eons at seabed, lake and river bottoms to produce one gallon of gas for a nation that consumes one quarter of the world's crude oil. America isn't a country of colts but a country of dolts. How sad it is to see so many fat-ass Crocodile Dundee wanabees and redneck "chicks with dicks" lay down $40,000 US to feed a self-image manufactured by Madison Avenue when their SUV spends most of its life outside a shopping mall or in the drive-in queue of MacDonalds? How many ever see the wilderness? And of those who do, how, one wonders, do they all manage to find it---where are these huge pristine expanses in a nation bursting with 308 going on 508 million people? The answer can be found in the last line of the commercial that has dominated the airways recently:

"The Jeep Grand Cherokee---built for a world without limits"

That just about says it all. American car manufacturers and their ad agencies--- and those who fall for their pitch---really don't have a goddam clue. The phrase "Peak Oil" is notably absent from all of videos and from all the reviews. Instead, we read about "fuel economy". We are supposed to be impressed that the new Jeep Grand Cherokee can allegedly travel 500 miles on a full 24.6 gallon tank. "That's 16 miles in the city and 22 miles on the highway!". Wow. That means that when gas is $20/gallon as analysts like Christopher Steiner predict it will be, it will cost you about a dollar per mile---that is if hyperinflation doesn't overtake us. Auto journalists, like the consuming public who read their columns, are like deer transfixed by the headlights. They see all the bells and whistles and all of the specs but are blinded by the same infatuation with these toys that Americans of three generations ago had for the Model T Ford. The internal combustion engine is as inefficient as it ever was. But maybe that's a good thing, otherwise there would be more drivers driving more cars. You have to feel sorry for American capitalism, it just can't defeat those efficiency paradoxes. Especially when it encourages runaway populaton growth to grow the pool of cheap labour and delusional, manipulated consumers.

I must agree. The Jeep Grand Cherokee for 2011 really is built for a world without limits. Unfortunately, that world is not the one we live in.

Tim Murray
October 15/2010

Anti-growth activists are caught in a vice. In large urban areas bursting at the seams with overtaxed infrastructure, the potent force of the growth lobby and the pervasive influence of the media that supports it makes opposition to the growth juggernaut hazardous to mind, body and spirit. Yet life in a rural locality presents an even more daunting challenge. The costs of growth are not so manifest to those who do not understand its exponential nature. The benefits of fresh air, tranquility and wildlife are taken for granted, and the allure of big city amenities is irresistible. Locals are beguiled by the promise that new development will solve unemployment, increase the supply of affordable housing and keep young people close to hearth and home. To stand up against growth in a small town is to invite ostracism and ridicule from uncomprehending minds that cannot understand why anyone would oppose "progress". The following letter was submitted to the newspaper of one such town, but it could have been the template for letters to almost any small town newspaper in North America or Australia or elsewhere---newspapers which live on the advertising revenue from the businesses that profit from growth.

Civic boosterism predictable and mistaken

From rural Nova Scotia to rural BC, the clichés of civic boosterism are as predictable as they are wrong. Sables-Spanish Rivers appears to be no different. Forum participants in the upcoming township elections seem to be reading from the same script that growth-addicts in my own community are.

“We need to bring in business to bring down taxes.” “Economic development is a priority...its not just about bringing new business...it’s about smart growth, maintaining the tax base.” “ New development will create needed jobs”. “We need to attract new families”. “We need to bring our kids back”. “There is nothing here for the kids”. “Once a school is gone a community begins to collapse”.

Reality

It is the same tired record heard across the land for time immemorial. But what are the facts?

Bigger towns, bigger taxes and lower average incomes

As a rule, the larger the town or city, the higher the taxes. Why? Because the tax revenues that are generated by growth do not offset the infrastructure costs of extended services that must be provided—water, sewage, road maintenance, police and fire protection, waste disposal and so forth. Creating new jobs may indeed attract newcomers, but is so doing it does not lower the unemployment rate. More people require more jobs. Moreover, business growth is correlated with lower per capita incomes, and lower paying jobs-- not limited housing stock or serviceable land--- makes housing unaffordable. And undeveloped property pays more property taxes than it costs in services---not many cows or trees demand medical or educational services.

Self-importance blinds local boosters both to real values and real limits

Some people seem to equate quality of life with more amenities, and having left the urban rat race wish to reproduce it in the bucolic paradise that attracted them, while accusing those who oppose them of being selfish. But the real question is not whether continued growth is necessary or desirable, but whether it is possible. It is astounding that civic debates are conducted without the slightest comprehension or awareness of Peak Oil and its implications. With triple-digit oil and ten dollar a litre gasoline on the near horizon, we will have more to worry about than keeping ice rinks and schools open. Feeding the mouths that are already here may prove to be an insuperable challenge. Forget fuelling the local Zamboni, fuelling tractors will be our focus. Growth ,“smart” or dumb, will not be an option.

Tim Murray

Quathiaski Cove, BC
October 14/2019

Michael Lardelli, on Governance Committee of SPGN

Michael Lardelli, who is a senior lecturer in Genetics at the University of Adelaide, helped form the new Australian party, Stop Population Growth Now, and is on its governance committee.

Lardelli explains his motives for supporting this new party this way:

"My background is in activism over resource limitations, particularly oil. I have been interested in that since 2004. However, anyone who studies resource limits and becomes interested in broader sustainability issues eventually realises that the core issue in all these areas is population size. Increasing population size eradicates any savings made by individuals who may be trying to reduce their environmental impact, e.g. CO2 emissions."

Food security for Australia in doubt

"The thing that particularly worries me is food, since there is a lower limit on how much food one person needs and so a person can only reduce their food consumption so far.

The green revolution was, and is, only possible through the use of large inputs of oil so a declining trend in oil production - which began in 2008 - threatens our food security.

I recently looked at Australia's food production statistics and it is clear that if we double our population size we will not be able to feed ourselves in a drought year."

Australia already a net importer of vital foodstuffs

"We are already net importers of fruit and veg! Put that together with the declines in food production that will be forced upon us by declining oil production, phosphate production and even climate change and any increase in Australia's population begins to look like national suicide."

A father's duty to his children

"I have two young children and my duty as a parent is to maximize their chances of survival - that is why I was happy to help form SPGN (Stop Population Growth Now) when I was asked".

What is the Stop Population Growth Party on about?

Stop Population Growth Now, describes itself as "a body of Australians seeking to reduce Australia’s population growth to zero as a matter of urgency."

They say, "Government policy is adding almost another million to Australia’s population every three years. This is damaging the quality of life of all Australians and greatly reducing the prospects for our children.

This highest ever growth rate is a direct result of government policy.

Recent polls show that a majority of Australians do not support this government caused, rapid population growth. Most Australians believe that our population growth should be stopped while we work out how Australia can cope with changing climate, diminishing supplies of water and most non-renewable resources, city congestion, loss of arable land to city expansion and loss of Australia’s unique flora and fauna."

Their next statement, that Australians have no-one to vote for in the Federal Election later this year, needs updating, because the Stable Population Party of Australia is now well-established.

But, as SPGN says on its website, "Labor and the Coalition favour rapid population growth. The Greens are ambivalent on the issue."

Stop Population Growth Now, like the Stable Population Party of Australia, has announced its intention to run Senate candidates in every state, with this "single objective – to bring population growth down as rapidly as possible, by giving you the voter the right to vote on this most important issue."

Is two too many Population Parties for Australia?

Is it a good thing to have more than one party specifically canvassing votes against more population growth in Australia? Won't this dilute peoples' efforts?

I don't think so. I think it will raise the profile of the issue at the polling booths. If both parties are successful in getting candidates appointed, the variety should contribute to more sophisticated evolution of the related policies after the election.

It will also give a 'heads-up' to the Greens and other parties on this issue which affects every other policy in Australia.
Indeed, we could have more small population-focused-parties. Each could approach the population and environment field from a different angle, which may be what they intend to do. Business in New South Wales, for instance, and Oil Depletion in South Australia. Really, there are so many angles which can be commented on.

Other Australian political parties with small population policies

Note, however that the New Australia Party also exists - and is the only one in favour of a small population attempting to raise its profile at the moment in Victoria. Unlike both single-issue population parties, it provides the public with the ability to interact on-line to form and modify its policies. It deserves more support than it is getting.

We should also not forget that the Australia First Party has a small population policy as well, and, despite its embattled history, an appeal to the some of the most disenfranchised working class and rural sector, with quite effective dissemination via long-distance truckdrivers. I will shortly be writing about this party's policies related to population.

And the Animal Justice Party is no single issue party either. Its policies run deep and will soon be on-line, including the population policy. The Animal Justice Party's performance might just surprise the public, which has been accustomed by the mainstream press to the idea that 'most people' don't care much about how we treat farm animals and wildlife. In fact, from feedback I have received, it appears that nothing could be further than the truth.

The alert reader may see, as I do, the potential for a number of large groups in Australia which have been sidelined up until now although they actually carry the costs of population growth without the profits, to express themselves through these new parties.

It will be very interesting to see if all these new parties manage to get their quota of 500 people and, with these people and alternative media help, are able to keep their issues in the minds of the greater public and seriously contest the elections. A few years ago, with the stranglehold that the growth lobby has on our media and government, and hence the national and state elections, the potential for any alternative party not secretly backed by business or the other big parties, to get up, would have been much less.

An Environmental Sociologist's opinion

A great deal of political analysis and newsy comment could still be made on what drives these parties, what might split them, and about the people in them, but let's keep things simple for the moment.

My personal investment is to help them all to succeed because I agree with Michael Lardelli that Australia cannot continue to support its current population as fossil fuels decline, let alone grow its population. It is therefore imperative to aim to stop population growth as soon as possible, but also to reduce our intake of fuels and vital resources. In my opinion this can only be done by involving the greater public in the industrial issue of drastically reducing work and output, whilst sharing available paid work. If population growth slows, prices for land and every other thing will drop, making it eminently possible for any Australian to survive - perhaps better than they do now - on smaller incomes and less paid work. For more on this see Sheila Newman, (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008 in the articles, "101 Views of Hubbert's Peak" and "France and Australia After Oil".

We look at Dr Katharine Betts's latest graph of ABS statistics on the ratio of working to dependent in Australia, noting that it is both untrue and discriminatory to imply that the 'Aged' are by far the biggest group of 'dependents.' In relation to the graph, we also look at the role of land-use planning and the social division of work in industrial society in creating financial dependencies where none previously existed. We note that established financial and institutional investment in the post-war industrial-contractual model makes it inflexible and resistant to changes in economic feedback, but that change it must as fossil fuels deplete. Left to their own devices, Australians would probably return to the human default social organisation around kin and place, which is flexible and low cost. This will only become possible, however, with cheaper land and an economic system which permits increasing relocalisation and more flexible use of land than the current plans for packed appartments and dense dormitory-suburbs anticipate.

Click on above image to see larger full-size graph.

Sources: Disability, Ageing and Carers: Summary of Findings, Australia 2003, Catalogue no. 4430.0, ABS, Canberra, 2004; Labour Force, Australia, Detailed - Electronic Delivery, Catalogue no. 6291.0.55.001; General Social Survey 2006, Confidentialised Unit Record File supplied by the ABS.

Notes: The ABS defines a profound disability as one where the person always needs help with one or more of the activities involved in communication, mobility and self care, and a severe disability as one where the person sometimes needs such help.

The data on labour force participation are for December 2009, but detailed age break downs were only available for June 2009. All of the data have been standardised to the age/sex structure of the population in June 2009.

Graph and "Notes" (above) by Assoc. Prof. Dr Katharine Betts, (Swinburne University, Victoria) author of Immigration Ideology, MUP, 1988 and The Great Divide, Duffy and Snellgrove, 1999. She is also the co-editor, with Bob Birrell, of the Monash demographic quarterly, People and Place.

Introduction: We look here at Dr Katharine Betts's latest graph of ABS statistics on the ratio of working to dependent in Australia, noting that it is both untrue and discriminatory to imply that the 'Aged' are by far the biggest group of 'dependents.' In relation to the graph, we also look at the role of land-use planning and the social division of work in industrial society in creating financial dependencies where none previously existed. We note that established financial and institutional investment in the post-war industrial-contractual model makes it inflexible and resistant to changes in economic feedback. Left to their own devices, Australians would probably return to the human default social organisation around kin and place, which is flexible and low cost. This will only become possible, however, with cheaper land and an economic system which permits increasing relocalisation and more flexible use of land than the current plans for packed appartments and dense dormitory-suburbs anticipate.

Discussion

This is a complicated graph. Rather than start out looking for the greatest number of dependents, it is probably easier to look for the greatest number of full time then of part time workers. What is outside those full-time and part time workers gives you your main 'dependents'. Many of those are defined as dependent simply because they are not working in a paid job or deriving an income from a source in their own name. They may however be receiving support from a partner, such as a husband, while they are rearing children. In addition, many of the students aged 15 and over have paid jobs, some of them full-time.

However the real dependents are those who are literally unable to work.

Dependency is defined economically, by material income and paid work or the ability to participate in getting an income, and it carries a stigma, since it is assumed that 'dependent persons' cost the taxpayer. Although we know that many women do an enormous amount of unpaid work in the home as mothers, partners and grandmothers and as volunteers, if we only count people in paid work as making an economically useful contribution, this unpaid work is overlooked. (The ABS does know about this problem; they don't mean to denigrate domestic work). If dependent means not in paid work, women are the largest 'dependent' category at all ages (even in infancy, because more survive).

How the growth lobby misrepresents the ratio of dependency

Because the growth lobby likes the idea of women having lots of children, there is a tendency to misrepresent dependency as only occurring among the elderly.

We can see, in fact, that the numbers of officially totally dependent people (the red category) remain quite small in all cohorts. These are people who, because of some disability, need help from others in order to cope with tasks of daily living, such as washing and dressing. We can also see that the largest totally dependent category- pink and pale turquoise with border - are not actually classified as such at all. They are classified as infants or students. [Due to possible confusion of similar colours, let us precise here that light blue, as opposed to turquoise with border, represents students who are employed part-time.]

It looks like the government’s and the growth lobby's constant use of 'Aged' as virtually synonymous with 'dependents' is a blatant case of age discrimination, since it implies that elderly people are by far the biggest group of the totally dependent.

There is another group in yellow which isn’t in paid employment. From the age of 60 the yellow category starts to get quite large. That doesn’t mean that it is ‘dependent’. The people in the yellow category are living by some means – probably through superannuation, pension or investments.

Much larger, however, are the pale turquoise and pink categories. These categories extend over the first 15 to 20 years of a person's life. [1]

The non-dependent categories

The green categories – i.e. the ‘employed’ – both part-time and full-time – are considered to be supporting the yellow, the red, the pink and the pale turquoise with border categories. From a purely financial perspective, it doesn't matter if they are generating taxes to support babies, students, homemakers, disabled people or elderly infirm people.

Some people worry that if the number of new babies dwindles, there won't be enough people moving up from the bottom of the pyramid to carry the dependencies that increase at the top. They forget that if a population has a smaller base than middle, that means that by the time the people in the middle stop working and the smaller population base enters the workforce, the competition for land will have reduced, so the cost of living will be much less. This will reduce the cost of funding retirees.

Positive economic impact of decrease in number of young dependents

Also to be considered is the fact that, as the proportions of pink and pale turquoise infants and full-time students decrease, so will the burden on taxpayers. Schools, child-care and health and welfare services for the young are supported by taxpayers, just as are old age pensions. But children also involve heavy private costs for their parents. And often this means that parents have to forgo earned income, as they stay out of the labour force in order to provide care. Of course children bring many intangible benefits to their parents, but from the point of view of time and money, there would be more resources for other needs if we had rather fewer of them.

With regard to the yellow categories, just because they are not in paid employment, it does not mean that they are not doing something useful. Wives or husbands support their working partner by looking after house and garden, growing food, doing accounts, looking after children, and participating in the community. Many grandparents may also look after children so that parents can work, or they provide knowledge, experience and an example to the community. Elderly people are the eyes and ears in a street where everyone else goes to work all day. There are also so many things which need attention in our society and housewives/husbands and elderly people and the unemployed are among the ones free to participate in groups monitoring the environment and political developments at all levels.

Dependency and Variations in the Social division of work and land-use planning systems

Australia's industrial social organisation and its land-use planning system have also come to mean that the extended family, with which the responsibilities of earning a living, raising a family and participating in the politics of one's community were formerly shared, has become disorganised and dysfunctional. This is not, as is often suggested, simply because Australians are 'selfish'. The early and strong continuing urbanisation of Australian society, with drift to big cities in search of work, harsh expectations of relocation along with one's employer, and migration from one country to another or one end of Australia to the other end, splinters clans from their original location, isolates nuclear families and splits up parents and children. This makes most of us ever-more-dependent on the industrial models of salaried employment, bank loans and insurance, new housing, and, notably, contractual nurturing, caring, and nursing arrangements. The industrial state has adapted to try to mitigate this fragmentation and fracture of human social systems, in formal 'social services', which it finances through much higher taxes than in pre-WW2 years. If these professionalised and contractualised services are privately contracted, they need somehow to make a profit, which also raises the costs of dependency, as we see in child-care centers and private nursing homes.

Established financial and institutional investment in this industrial contractual model makes it resistant to change, but change it must, in the face of declining margins of profit associated with declining availability of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. It is not surprising that the state is concerned about its ability to provide for 'dependent' Australians, but it should be able to recognise how the system it relies on has created more dependency and more expensive dependency. Left to their own devices, Australians would probably return to the default social organisation around kin and place, which is flexible and low cost. This will only become possible, however, with cheaper land and an economic system which permits increasing relocalisation and more flexible use of land than the current plans for packed appartments and dense dormitory-suburbs anticipate.

Notes

[1] This span of years of dependency of youth could well expand in the future if the industrial employment model doesn't last as which have tended to last for something like 20 years.

Note that finishing study, around the age of 15 or 20, does not necessarily mean an end to 'dependence'. Dependence, in the form of 'unemployment' could well expand in the future if the industrial employment model doesn't last as depletion of fossil fuel progresses. Partial dependence could expand through categories if median wages are unable to afford unsubsidised accomodation or food, power and water if land-prices continue and push up the cost of everything else.

By Brian Spittle
Brian Spittle is also the author of a book about the history of Birchip and life in Australia, A Place for a Village, which you can read on line. Brian was brought up on Birchip and Kinnabulla farms in Victoria, Australia. He was in the Royal Australian Navy from 1939-1949. He farmed with brothers at Tooleybuc NSW between 1949-1956, then took up a war service farm in Telangatuk East Vic 1957-1966. He then went "disastrously" to WA in Denbarker 1966-1970 and was an "ignobly junior" public servant between 1972-1986. "Thence retirement which is what I was really bred for."

Three Questions

Three of the bigger questions in my life have been

Is there a god ?

Will the oil run out ?

Are humans smarter than lemmings ?

God

With an Ulster Presbyterian background on my mother's side we attended the Birchip church my grandfather and his brothers had built. Despite her upbringing our mother smelled a rat, and as the eldest son we two had earnest discussions as to whether the whole thing was just a waste of time. What if there were no god ? Did prayer actually work?

We decided to play it by ear. The minister seemed so confident. No good asking Dad . He knew that no sane person could believe that stuff.

During the war Hitler was clearly evil, the whole world, it seemed so obvious, would have been so much better off if it were coloured pink and safely within the empire. The king seemed sure that if we put our hand into the hand of God it would be 'better than a known way'. We seemed outnumbered and it was unpatriotic to doubt. In the navy we sang 'For those in peril on the sea' with understandable enthusiasm.

After the war I found a wider world and god faded like the smile on the cheshire cat.

Oil

At the age of 10 in 1935 I asked my father 'How long will the petrol last ?'

He assured me that it came from the bowels of the earth, that the earth was huge, and the petrol and the crude oil from which it came would last indefinitely. We were filling cars from pump-up bowsers then, or buying it in 4 gallon tins, so the draw on the bowels of the earth was modest, but in the early thirties we were obliged to put the car up on blocks and go back to horses as 15 pence a gallon was beyond our budget

I was not completely convinced that the supply was limitless but was content to play it his way as he appeared to know everything.

After the war for the next forty or fifty years I was busy chewing up cars, utes and tractors and polluting where the fancy took me and it was only towards the end of the 20th century that it became known to the literate and alert that Marion King Hubbert had predicted the decline of the supply of crude oil in 1956, according to a formula known as the Hubbert curve and the warnings of common sense were justified.

As very little that first world countries consume is not fueled by oil its imminent decline at an affordable price receives too little notice by politicians and even by many environmentalists. Living style, the size of our backyards and and the limits to our showering times will seem small matters when the supermarket shelves are bare.

Population - Are humans smarter than lemmings?

As for population...after the war Mr Calwell invited ship loads of suitably European migrants to swell our numbers from our shameful 7,000,000. He seemed pretty confident and prices were right so we we went along with that. The post war boom carried us all with it, so despite a childhood kept in relative poverty by droughts, grasshoppers, lousy prices and dust storms that shifted much of our farm into the Tasman, nostalgia swept me up into the farming life I had escaped ten years before.

In 1951 a friend lent me a book by William Vogt called 'Road to Survival'. The book was shocking, frank, irrefutable and sobering. I then bought Vogt's next book 'People'; which was more of the same and is still on my shelves. Erhlich, Carson, Flannery, Clive Ponting, Mark O'Connor, Sheila Newman and many others confirmed over the next half century that the obvious was gobsmackingly in your face fact. No books or learned research are really necessary to grasp this simple truth. Any sane amateur, standing at a city corner watching endless streams of cars. or sitting waiting in an airport watching streams of confidently and casually dressed people smoothly using the magic carpet with never a disturbing doubt as to its rightness normality and permanence can fail to get the message, providing they know some history, a smidgin of philosophy and a touch of commonsense. There are too many people already.... and there will be more. Unless, of course, we rise superior to the lemmings and deny the dictates of our genes.

Wordsworth

Wordsworth seemed to breathe a warning......[1]

' The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!'

(The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.')

Notes

[1] Candobetter Editor's note: Wordsworth was writing at a time of the greatest population growth every known, which began in England, with the earth being torn up for coal and people being pushed around by the early corporations, and spewing forth into the colonies, pushing those people around and tearing up their forests and villages, dispossessing and scattering clans and tribes, in what came to be called 'progress' by economists and the third world and colonies by others.

Originally published as "Community must ask who bears the cost of progress" by Dr Mark Copland of the in the Tooowoomba Chronicle of 5 Jan 10 (URL of article unkown).

This story first appeared, along with the koala photograph, in the Toowoomba Chronicle on 5 January 2010.
Story written by Dr Mark Copland

Acland - a town on death row

Late last year I took a short drive and visited the town of Acland. It was a haunting visit. Like a town on death row -- or a community on life support -- except they've already started ripping the drips and sensors from the veins before the patient is even dead. The Acland story is like the Australian movie "The Castle" -- except this one doesn't have a happy ending. It left me full of uncomfortable questions -- with far too few answers.

As people we are good at opening things. We bring in the politicians, the brass bands, the plaques and all enjoy a very civilized morning tea as we bask in the warm glow of progress. One of the many questions sitting with me as I left Acland was, "How do you close a town?" How do you honour the memories, the lives lived, the countless hours of voluntary community building given by loving citizens? It's a bit embarrassing and so we mumble something about progress once again and then just move on.

Environmental Impact Statement farce

In this process, mining companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expert consultants who create very large documents telling us why the mine must go ahead. There is barely even the illusion of independence. The average citizen with no resources is given a few weeks to respond. The question is not will the mine go ahead -- but how can the mine go ahead?

I met one of the last men standing in Acland. Glen Beutel. Glen isn't ready to move on. And I don't blame him. Us Aussies love the glorious defeat -- Gallipoli, Ned Kelly etc. And Glen is in this tradition. By staying - he is shining a light on the farce that passes as the Environmental Impact Statement process. In this process, mining companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on expert consultants who create very large documents telling us why the mine must go ahead. There is barely even the illusion of independence. The average citizen with no resources is given a few weeks to respond. The question is not will the mine go ahead -- but how can the mine go ahead? The key word for the proponent is mitigation - how to respond to government regulations and possible community complaints. And the company gets its money's worth. If you read one of these things you would almost believe that the local environment will be enhanced with an open cut coal mine, which if all goes to plan will eventually engulf the town that once was Acland.

Koalas in Acland

I met somebody else on the road to Acland. The guy in the picture above. Last Summer our hearts went out to image of the koala burnt in the Victorian bushfires. In 1995 furry friends like this one helped to bring down the Goss government as proposed roads in South East Queensland were believed to be destroying koala habitat. And while there are even fresh water tortoises that call Acland home -- there won't be a Mary Valley Turtle to bring a halt to things a la Traveston Dam. I wonder if finding this bloke and his friends a new home is part of the planned expansion of the Acland mine. No doubt the plan will be buried somewhere in the Environmental Impact Statement.

Acland like Pandora in Avatar - Who pays for 'progress'?

A few nights ago I sat with my 3D glasses on watching the blockbuster movie Avatar. The plot is thin -- but familiar -- a colonizing power wishes to remove some Indigenous people to rip a precious mineral out of the ground. It's Hollywood where the good guys win and the baddie gets his just desserts. All the while I was watching it I had Glen Beutel and my Koala friend sitting somewhere on my shoulder. One of the serious questions that Avatar leaves the viewer with -- "Is it always necessary and right to take things out of the ground, and use them -- just because they are there?" I am sure when the Acland mine was first proposed there was never any mention of closing down a town. For me the sadness is not just the passing of the town -- but the way that it has been done. As a region we must ask the question, "What price progress -- and who will bear the cost?"

See also: Also from the Toowoomba Chronicle: "Our region could be one big hole" of 16 Nov 09 by Madeleine Logan, "Removal trucks spell last rites for Acland" of 10 Oct 09 by Madeleine Logan, "Coal mine nightmare" of 12 Nov 09 by Madeleine Logan, "Facebook keeps residents on line" of 9 Nov 09 by Madeleine Logan, "Friends take heart from senators' visit" of 30 Sep 09 by Roseanne Schefe, "Jones labels Acland's decline as 'sickening'" of 30 Jan 09 by Madeleine Logan about Sydney radio personality Alan Jones' feelings about the threatened destruction of his home town, "$200m mine deal sparks water war" of 16 Nov 07 by Sue Searle, "Acland producing the cleanest coal" of 22 Mar 07 by Greg Berghofer, "Couple join exodus as Acland 'closes down'" of 2 Mar 06 by Sarah Vogler; Web site of the New Hope coal company: www.newhopecoal.com.au (including environmental impact statements, newsletters and assorted other pro-coal-mining propaganda); Friends of Felton web sites: www.fof.org.au, www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com.

What you can do

Sign e-petition calling for resignation of Queensland Government. For futher information, please read "Why Queenslanders must demand new state elections" of 8 Jan 10.

(Scroll down for information from writers in Australia, Canada, USA to date. More input welcome)

Solar Power - photovoltaics - in France

In France, as in Australia, many people have installed solar panels in order to benefit from selling electricity they generate but do not use back to the grid. In France they sell it back to Electricité de France (EDF). The number of professionals who supply electricity back to the grid in France is increasing.[1]

In the photograph of a rural landscape we can see the equivalent of 300 football fields has been dedicated to photovoltaic surfaces.
Workers add 4,500 daily.

The photovoltaic-center is huge, on a non-human scale.

When it is finished it will be the biggest site in Europe. It is 300 hectares (ha) in area and is expected to produce 76 megawats (MW) once completed, which would supply the consumption of something around 40,000 citizens.

(Ed. We are not told by France2 whether this is average French per capita, or average French private household. Obviously, by taking such factors as industry and food transport into account, consumption per capita would far exceed consumption per capita per household. Also, in Australia electricity and fuel consumption per capita or per capita per household are greater than in France. Per capita, this is because Australian food and other goods travel further than in France and, per capita per household, it is because we have very poor building insulation and design (deterioriating as we speak and many new suburbs replace vegetated areas with eaveless, tarmack-surrounded, uninsulated boxes.)

This year part of this new photovoltaic center will use 'tracking' technology whereby the panels can turn themselves to follow the sun. This is expected to increase electricity production by between 20 and 30 per cent.

France has 30 times less photovoltaic stock than Germany

France's 175 MW of public stock of photovoltaic panels was multiplied by three in one year, but remains 30 times less than the German stock.

Yves Bruno Civel, General Director of the Observatory of Renewable Energyies, commented, "If France tried to catch up with Germany by making giant photovoltaic installations, it would run into limitations eventually due to competition for ground space, which is already intense, between those who want more land to expand cities and roads [2]and those who want it for biofuels and food."

Tariffs for grid-feed

Photovoltaic panels are not only found in vast fields. More and more are found on house roofs. Individuals sell all their production to EDF. They get 60c per kilowatt and can buy back electricity for only 10c a kilowatt.

Erwan Tesson, Director of Arkensol Society says this isn't the only benefit. You get money back on income tax, which, for the average family in France, would amount to 8000 Euros.

Retirement income

Frederic Borrot, a farmer in Gironde says, "It's better than life insurance. The return over 20 years is 10-12 per cent."

With 200 square meters of photovoltaic panels on his outbuildings a farmer can pay back his loan. Borrot's aim is to prepare for the future.

"To have additional revenue and for my retirement, because today farmers haven't got much of a retirement income - far from it. With this one can expect a monthly return of 1,500 Euros.

But future profits may not be guaranteed

The possibility that the rates the EDF currently pays may be revised downwards is causing some anxiety - especially for professionals.

In France 34,000 projects are in a queue for connection.

Australia

From Bill Parker, Editor of Australian Solar Energy Society's on-line magazine

The PV industry in OZ is dominated by installers. There is no longer any pull through that builds a real industry with the departure of BP Solar. Their factory is now in the hands of a nuclear company and the only other organisation is Spark Solar in Canberra.

The "industry" is hardly stable and has to react to the mismanagement in Canberra - the investment is not there and the
players are scratching at the edges. Australia has failed and failed to get to grips with an industrial development policy that creates stability and certainty. The knee jerk operates. There is no sound thinking, and any of the sound thinkers who were left are now gone.

The country needs a uniform GROSS fee in tariff, like France, to create the proper settings for a sunrise industry. It MUST be enshrined in legislation nationally otherwise we are just talking greenwash and hot air. On a bigger scale, there is a simple mechanism that would assist - a bit like the completion guarantee for a film. Indemnify the companies that would build bigger solar plants. The money is out there.

Frankly, Australia is not even in the race anymore and to even contemplate that K. Rudd would change that is wishful thinking only.

Bill Parker

Ontario, Canada

Don Chisholm writes:

In Ontario Canada, our provincial gov has take a lead in promoting "green" energy. Last May they passed the Ontario Energy Act.

Its Feed In Tarrif (FIT) program provides easier access to the grid by large produces, and long term contracts for wind and solar developers, with prices significantly higher than current fossil fuel costs, today.

I live in an island county on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, with excellent wind potential. However, a very strong well-financed NIMBY lobby has, to date, prevented wind-farm developers from becoming established here. I'm co-chair of a local group called, the County Sustainability Group, and we have written an essay to rebut the NIMBYists, and to elaborate on why their disinformation holds appeals to many in the general public. You can see this essay
here.

At the home owner level, the FIT provides great incentive for rooftop or backyard wind or solar, up to 10 kw. For example, it gives a 20 year contract for solar energy paying about 6 times the home owners cost from energy from the grid. Buy low, sell high – it should work! ROInvestment should be over 10%/year, significantly better than money invested anywhere else these days. I have recently had a contract proposal accepted and am currently working on getting a 10kw system system in place.

Of interest might be the Ontario hourly energy that provides our grid.
Details here
The CANDO reactor chug along providing almost half of our energy with the other large contributor hydro, especially the Beck generators at Niagara Falls.

Don Chisholm (watching the snow fall at -15c,)

New York, USA

Sir Edmund the Green writes:

I just had a 2.08 KW solar PV system installed on a shed i built for the purpose in New York State.
We qualified for a New York State rebate of $4. per watt (this has since been lowered to $2.50 per watt.)

We were required to use a "professional" installer approved by NYSERDA (NY Energy Authority) to receive the rebate.

Between a labor charge of $2,000 for about 40 hours of work, and hidden mark-ups of about $5 - 6 K, the entire rebate went to the installer, who made out like a bandit. We could have purchased the materials, (10 Sharp panels, 216's rather than the 208's we got , a Sunnyboy SMA3000 US inverter, and a rail mounting system) in the competitive marketplace from a supplier like Solar Electric Supply in California, for LESS than we paid after the rebate!

The rebate system as it currently exists in NY is a rip off, basically a welfare program for approved installers, and does little or nothing to encourage more people to go Solar.

Most of the work of installing a PV system involves knowing how to operate a ladder, and basic electricity. The rebate system needs to be re-oriented towards allowing the do it yourselfer to take advantage of it, and the greed of professional installers needs to be capped. Of course, as in any electrical project, there must be rigorous safety inspection.

But as marginal as the financial payback is for photovoltaic, the current rebate system is a killer for anyone but the true solar fanatic.

sir edmund the green

In general, cut down

From Dave Kimble, North Queensland, Australia
[Referring to report on France]:

76 MW is the peak power of the installed panels under full summer midday sun.
Most of the time the panels will produce a lot less than that.
Customers actually consume energy, not power.
In Queensland the average household uses at an average rate of 21 KW.h per day.
But they don't use it at a continuous rate of ( 21 / 24 ) KW, nor at the rate at which the solar panels supply it (mostly around midday).
So the solar farm must be connected into an electrical grid that has sufficient generating capacity of other kinds to be able to match supply to demand.

While it is important to know the peak power, so that electrical equipment can be sized to cater for full load, what is also important is the KW.h produced each hour over the day and over days at different times of year.

In France an average day for a 1 KW panel might produce 4.5 KW.h ( that's a guess - search for "insolation" ).
If each household uses 21 KW.h per day then 76 MW is equivalent to 3,619 households, so that 40,000 citizens looks wrong - more like 14,000 .

As well as being weaker in winter, when the sun is lower in the sky, and the days are shorter, there is also the interruption of clouds. As solar becomes a larger proportion of the national energy mix, the "matching" capacity must get larger to cover for the cloudy days and cloudy hours.

Coal and nuclear cannot do this matching capacity job because they are very slow to change their output.
Wind can't do it either, because it also is variable.
Hydro is good, but good locations are few and far between.
Gas is OK, but it is wasteful to keep it "ready to go" - it might be economically OK because the grid controller will pay highly for matching capacity, but it is poor from the GW viewpoint to have gas running at night and gas spinning in reserve during the day.

And the solution is ...
there is no good solution.
Cut down.

Dave Kimble

Candobetter invites people to describe their experiences in different places.

Articles are also welcome.

NOTES

[1] Source of pictures and much of report: France2, (tv news) 1 Jan 2010

[2] Note that France is not intentionally growing its population, which is projected to fall after the deaths of the 'baby-boomer' bubble, over a period extending between around 2010 and 2060. Only the English-speaking polities are currently afflicted by their property development magnates with a populate and perish democratic opposition mentality. See more on The Growth Lobby

[image from Sheila Newman & wikipedia] ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — "The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has released photos from the first large-scale census of jaguars in the Amazon region of Ecuador—one of the most biologically rich regions on the planet.
The ongoing census, which began in 2007, is working to establish baseline population numbers as oil exploration and subsequent development puts growing pressure on wildlife in Ecuador's Yasuni National Park and adjacent Waorani Ethnic Reserve. Together, these two protected areas make up some 6,500 square miles (16,800 square kilometers) of wilderness."

Mother Nature recognised at law

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. Original Article source.

Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”

Nature not just an object for economic appropriation

The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Environmental Legal Defense Fund, worked closely over the past year with members of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly on drafting legally enforceable Rights of Nature, which mark a watershed in the trajectory of environmental law.

Ecuador’s leadership on this issue may have a global domino effect. Margil says that her organization is busy fielding calls from interested countries, such as Nepal, which is currently writing its first constitution.

Flawed by failure to mandate indigenous community consultation

For all of the hope and tangible progress the Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador’s constitution represent, however, there are shortcomings and contradictions with the laws and the political reality on the ground. A fundamental flaw in the constitution also exists due to Correa’s refusal to include a clause mandating free, prior, and informed consent by communities for development project that would affect their local ecosystems.

“I expect them [the multinational extractive industries] to fight it,” says Margil. “Their bread and butter is based on being able to treat countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels. Multinational corporations are dependent on ravaging the planet in order to increase their bottom line.”

Mining treats countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels

Investigation of Texaco [Caltex in Australia] oil-exploration in the Amazon.

The new Mining Law, introduced by Ecuador’s own President Rafael Correa and backed by Canadian companies, which hold the majority of mining concessions in Ecuador, is a testament to Margil’s forecast. The Mining Law would allow for large-scale, open pit metal mining in pristine Andean highlands and Amazon rainforest. Major nationwide demonstrations are being held in protest, with groups accusing Correa of inviting social and environmental disaster by selling out to mining interests.

Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag, who has been a tireless defender of the environment against transnational mining companies, says that while the new constitution looks good on paper, “in practice governments like Correa’s will argue that funding his political project, which will bring ‘well being and relieve poverty,’ overrules the rights of nature.”

Yet even as Ecuadoran President Correa embraces the extractive economic model of development, the inclusion of the rights of nature in a national constitution sets inspiring and revolutionary precedent. If history is any indicator, Ecuadorians will successfully fight for the Rights of Nature, with or without their president.

U.S. Media: Update by Cyril Mychalejko

When Ecuadorians drafted and passed a new constitution, which gave nature inalienable rights, the US media largely ignored this historic development. In the case of the Los Angeles Times, one of the few mainstream outlets to cover the story, the newspaper’s editorial board trivialized the development (“Putting Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution,” September 2, 2008) by suggesting it sounded “like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council” and that it seemed “crazy.”

“As ecological systems around the world collapse, we need to fundamentally change our relationship with nature. This requires changes in both law and culture, and ultimately our behavior as part of nature,” said Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Defense Fund, who is disappointed in how the US media largely ignored the story.

In Ecuador, at the time of the constitutional vote, the optimism over how the “Rights of Nature” clauses would translate into policy was guarded.
“As exciting as these developments are, it was also inevitable that the people in power would, and will, find ways to circumvent, undermine, and ignore those rights,” said Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag.

Multi-national mining companies dangerously influence national laws

According to Zorrilla, a major disappointment has been President Rafael Correa’s new mining law.

“The law takes rights-to-nature loopholes and widens them so that giant dirt movers could easily drive through them,” said Zorrilla, who has been working with communities of Ecuador’s Intag region to resist mining and promote sustainable development. “To mention a couple of examples, the law does not prohibit large-scale mining in habitats harboring endangered species, nor the dumping of heavy metals in rivers and streams.”
See also,"Ecuador Rising"..

Indigenous leaders file law-suit

Indigenous leaders responded by filing a lawsuit before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in March 2009, seeking to overturn the mining law, which they believe is unconstitutional. Article 1 of the “Rights of Nature” clauses states: “Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.”

Regardless of the ongoing struggles to ensure that the true meaning and scope of the constitution is upheld, Dr. Mario Melo, a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law and Human Rights and an advisor to Fundación Pachamama-Ecuador, believes that the nature clauses which reflect the traditions of indigenous peoples could offer a path to an ecologically sustainable future.

Rights to nature = progress

“I consider that the recognition of the ‘Rights to Nature’ as a progress on a global scale and one that deserves to be globally broadcast and commented on as a contribution from Ecuador towards the search of new ways of facing the environmental crisis due to climate change.”

The struggles of Ecuadorian social movements and the Ecuadorian government to uphold the “Rights of Nature” and to create a new development model that places human beings as interdependent parts of nature, rather than dominant exploiters of nature, is something we should continue to monitor and learn from.

Source:
Upside Down World, September 25, 2008
Title: “Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature”
Author: Cyril Mychalejko
and
Project Censored
Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD
Sonoma State University

A typical member of the growth lobby, for several years now, Bernard Salt, of KPMG, he has been in the business of boosting population growth in Australia, with the idea that people with the same values as him can make a lot of money out of it. Now he is coming out of the closet and telling us that all this population growth means we have to go nuclear. Unfortunately, I don't think he knows what he is talking about.

According to my calculations, if Bernard Salt is allowed to continue to take the stage, and garners support from state governments and the Federal government, along with others of his ilk and values - that means that Australia is up S--- Creek without a paddle and we are headed straight for the rapids - with no lifeboats and carrying far too many passengers, with more coming on all the time. See below on the logistics of power supply and the costs of setting up nuclear.

See more and related articles here Ziggy Switkowski, Population Numbers and Nuclear in the Australian and Nuclear Fission and the future for Fast Breeder Reactors

Australia and Peak Oil: The North Korea route or the Cuba Route?

Short term to 2050

In theory there should be two choices available for Australia in the short term: the ‘Cuba route’ and Nuclear Power (the Growth lobby route) to deal with decline in fossil fuels and the problem of global warming.

The Cuba route: After the fall of the iron curtain, cheap soviet oil was no longer available for North Korea or for Cuba, so both had to lear to live without much fossil fuel. Korea went the industrial agriculture and nuclear power route. Cuba went the relocalisation and permaculture route. Guess which polity did the best? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't North Korea.

You will find all the references for this article in Chapter 20, "France and Australia After Oil," in Sheila Newman, (Ed.) The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Edition, Pluto Press, UK, 2008. In the same book you can read more in Antony Boy's articles about North Korea and also about Japan's options for the future without cheap and abundant oil.

The Cuba option

The biggest problem for Cuba was and remains transport. Bicycles can only do so much. Servicing a population and infrastructure shaped by oil but without that oil is fraught with difficulty. Cuba had relied on importing food, agricultural fertilizers, and petroleum for road transport. Relocalisation of institutions as well as food production was the main solution. People in the cities were assisted to produce their own food and state farms were turned into small leaseholds and cooperatives. Permaculture techniques and draft animals replaced fossil-fuel based fertilizers and petroleum for farm machines and transport. Cuba is now self-sufficient and Cubans purchase 80 per cent of their food at local markets. Throughout and still, the state remained a vigilant welfare provider, attending particularly to health and education, with an unusually high ratio of doctors per capita.

The key to the Cuban solution was land redistribution, which was possible within Cuba’s system. This alternative is not going to be easily available in Australia because of the land-use planning and housing system, which makes relocalisation very difficult. That is a pity because many see this alternative as a desirable way of profiting from adversity by reducing centralization and aggregation of land, energy resources and utilities, and strengthening democracy, independent and collective economic and social participation.

The North Korean option for Australia

The Nuclear route is the opposite way. It implies total electrification, synthesising, using complex technology, the pattern of settlement and transport which arose from exploitation of the natural endowment of petroleum. It requires massive investment, and in Australia’s case, the investment sought is likely to be private. This implies ongoing loss by citizens of control over the country’s energy systems and all that flows from that – the future of work, the state of the environment, natural amenity. It implies the reshaping of Australian society by corporations with profit alone in mind, for the benefit of a small dominant asset-rich class, with the electorate a mere captive market.

In Cuba the energy supplies and materials which permitted centralized power were suddenly withdrawn and Cuba lacks the mineral resources to attract capital intensive investment. This situation surely facilitated local reorganization. In uranium-rich Australia, an opposite structuring is more likely. Because government policy favours commercial investment over public investment, nuclear facilities would tend to consolidate corporate power and its relationship with national and state government. Australia’s Anglophone mainstream media derives largely from syndicated US sources and these cultural mediators not only do not support communism or socialism, but they do not support dirigisme or relocalisation either.

In the space of a few years long-established Australian government anti-nuclear power policy reversed under Mr Howard, in spite of public disapproval. Mr Rudd is similarly surrounded by nuclear power fans in the form of the Growth Lobby. See also"Ziggy Switkowski, Population Numbers and Nuclear in the Australian", and
"Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy". Bernard Salt is right there in among them.

I do not expect Mr Rudd to maintain any opposition to nuclear power in this country for long.

Nuclear is seen as an investment opportunity which will provide employment, international importance, and new industries. Rationales offered to the public are the [manufactured] imperative to provide power for projected (politically engineered) population growth and the desirability of off-setting greenhouse gas contributions from coal-fired electricity and coal exports. (Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter.) Australian planning is dominated by what the corporate sector wants. There are many indications that public sector scientists are expected to support private, corporate research and development rather than leading with public research responding to public need, which might result in moderation rather than accelerated consumption.

According to the ABARE, in the financial year 2005-6 Australia’s total primary energy consumption was 5640.7 petajoules (PJ) , growing at an average of 2.2 per cent or about 120 PJ per annum over the past 20 years. No-one is seriously suggesting replacing all this with nuclear. The suggested figure is more like 25 power plants in the next 15 years supplying one third of Australia’s (doubled) electricity demand. But many people believe that nuclear will actually take care of the problem of fossil-fuel depletion, permitting business as usual.

To do so would theoretically take 225.6 thousand MWe nuclear power plants each supplying 25PJ, plus an average of 4.8 new nuclear plants per year to supply annual growth in consumption. Each plant’s initial cost would be around $USD2 billion, in an economy currently valued by the World Bank at $US768 billion, but heavily indebted and privatised.

Of that 5640.7PJ primary energy, around 55 per cent comes from petroleum (35 per cent) and gas (19 per cent). To rely on nuclear to replace this by powering an electric car or hydrogen road transport system is a further absurdity. In addition to the 225.6 imagined nuclear power plants, more would be required to supply electricity to plug-in electric cars and to split water into hydrogen to carry more electricity to fuel the creation of new infrastructure to manufacture and service hydrogen-carrying electric vehicles, requiring more electricity (obviously).

Each 1000 MWe nuclear power plant would itself require around 1.3PJ per annum or 52PJ over a 40 yr life-time according to the Australian Uranium Association.

The government is counting on coal and gas to fill the initial gaps in petroleum supply, but coal is being exported so fast and the world is using it up so quickly with the gas peak already looming, that nuclear will presumably be called upon to supplement coal, gas and oil as well. Perhaps the government is desperately trying to attract nuclear development money by enlarging its population base and intensifying its other extractive industries, in a plan where uranium mining is, of course, a keystone. None of the above calculations factor in the amount of new energy required to build the cities around the plants – to supply and service the infrastructure required for the projected population growth, which is used to lure investment.

In a totally electrified economy, attempting to preserve something like the current consumer-goods based economy, the most likely option is to produce hydrogen electrically and also use it as an electricity carrier, to fuel electric cars and trucks. This implies a vast increase in the need for electricity and a complete renovation of road transport support infrastructure as well as vehicle design and manufacture. The corporations will demand profits from any new ventures. How are the Australian people going to pay for this? What are they going to need to give up for this? In Australia’s ‘trickle-down economy’ who is going to be left out? At the very peak of oil production, public priorities have shifted so far in favour of private enterprise that the Australian government is not capable of providing affordable housing for its constituents.

In the meantime the VAMPIRE index (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgages, Petrol, Interest Rate Expenditure) is rising. The people at the high end of the VAMPIRE index are those locked into bloating mortgages in remote suburbs with little or no public transport, captive to rising gasoline prices for cars without which they cannot get to work, get their children to school, or get to shops to buy food.

Such hostages to sprawl are most in need of the Cuban route, but Australia’s systemic inability to plan and adapt infrastructures, industry and national resource use to radically changing conditions is perhaps its biggest problem.

Planning departments and tribunals palliate a bewildered electorate with superficial choice between styles, but, whilst allowing endless sprawl on the city-edges, continue to ram through intensified developments in the cities; to purposefully overshoot water resources and transport infrastructure in response to the growth lobby’s insatiable demand for big projects at public expense. These take the form of desalination plants, sewerage recycling plants, complex road-tunnels and expressways and, biggest of all, geological restructuring of seaports to accommodate giant container-ships for anticipated quadrupling in trade. With chilling disregard for the consequences, Australian lobby groups of planners, developers, builders and financiers have successfully campaigned for government led policies to increase population growth and energy demand.

An Australian monument to prominent members of the Growth Lobby

Mr Salt and Mr Peter McDonald (another growthist demographer), the members of the Scanlon Foundation, AATSE, the Multicultural Foundation, the Property Council of Australia, Australia 2020, APop, and a host of other persons, such as Mr Pratt (deceased), Mr Lowy, Mr Bracks, Mr Kennett, Mr Brumby, Mr Rudd, Mr Swann, and politicians in opposition who failed to stand up to this tyranny should have their names carved in stone in a public place so that the people of Australia will know who is responsible as our survival margins decline.

Observations on how we are being backed into a corner

The propaganda against the 1/4 acre block started a few decades ago. - appearing as opinion pieces in newpapers. I believe this propaganda was aimed at very ordinary people in or suburbs with traditional blocks. It was to prepare them to relinquish their lifestyle and for their children not to expect it in the normal course of events. I don't think it was aimed at rich people as they are different - a special case. The very rich can actually do the opposite to "urban consolidation." The rich can buy the next door property in Toorak, bulldoze the house and annexe the land for their own pleasure in the form of a tennis court or swimming pool.

The propaganda seems to have been on behalf of those who wanted to effect radical change in values and rights for the sake of population growth, which for various reasons they derived benefit from - usually financial.

Why this is important

The 1/4 acre block affords some local self sufficiency to the ordinary person. 50 years ago it was quite common for people to keep chickens in the suburbs- some still do but I don't think it's as usual. There is probably an economic reason for this . Vegetable gardens were common then and they may be trying to make a return now.

Recently in Sydney I visited a cousin who has built her eco friendly dream home in the suburb of Ryde. The garden was for low rainfall, the house worked on passive temperature control and in the corner of this living arrangement was a chicken house with inhabitants. Area of block- 1/4 acre approx.

As oil depletion continues I believe self sufficiency will become more important. The more land per family we lose the less self sufficient we can be.

How dare we be talked into denying children the rights that we grew up with?

I believe the people of Melbourne are losing their land by stealth and propaganda. I also wonder how people can, on the one hand, be talked into having more children, and, on the other hand, talked into letting go of those children's rights.

In 2007 I made a submission to the Melbourne 2030 review. I made some of the points below. (Now Melbourne 2030 is out of date, of course. They are trying to bring in something even worse. )

Urban temperatures rising, trees and water disappearing

Urban temperatures are higher than those in the country, and made worse by air conditioners. I worry about the reduced ability of land to absorb water with increased concrete bitumen, housing and impermeable surfaces in general. I can see this affecting the water table and possibly having ramifications with regard to street trees and other trees and vegetation on public land. We should be preserving trees to keep the city cool and moist instead of infilling and concreting everything.

I would have thought with all the apartments and townhouses shooting up in the bastardized process known as suburban infill, that we would want to keep backyards full of trees etc. Never mind that I'll never own a $1.8M 3BR house in Hawthorn East, I'm just glad someone owns it so that there aren't twenty people in 6 townhouses there instead.

So God bless those rich people in their big houses!! (Unless of course they are developers and politicians telling the rest of us to go and live in high-rise infills.)

Even if I have hardly any garden at all, I want to protect other people's gardens. They are part of the environment and even if the garden is not mine- I benefit if I walk past or live near it. I breathe the oxygen that its greenery exudes. I am cooled by the transpiration of the leaves. Even if I live in a one bedroom apartment in the same street, I am better off if this house and garden remain than if this house in turn is bulldozed for another block of apartments. I can see what the obvious counter argument is to this - homelessness - but that problem is circular; the root cause of homelessness is rapid population growth.

Urban wildlife is yet another issue - one I feel so deeply about that I can hardly even write of it. Gardens provide some habitat for native animals, birds reptiles, and insects. The more the city is consolidated, the more predictable every space within it becomes and there will be little room for any species other than humans, dogs and cats. And, even then, the dogs must be on leads and the cats must be kept indoors. It would make more sense if we made friends with the neighbourhood possums, but the government has designated them as pests.

If we continue with population growth at 2% per annum- we stand to lose the few advantages we still have very quickly. If we have a population growth rate of 1% per annum we will still lose it but at half the speed.

I do not think that Australian politicians have a moral or any other right to do this to us.

Article by Professor Julian Cribb originally published on Online Line Opinion on 27 August 2009. The version here is slightly updated. Join in the discussion, there or here.

In all the debate over the Gorgon gas deal with China there has been not a whisper of discussion of the issue most vital to Australia's -- and the entire world's -- future.

Nowadays not many people seem aware that nearly everything they eat and most of what they drink is produced using nitrogen fertilisers. And nitrogen fertilisers are almost entirely made using natural gas.

Indeed half the world's people would not be here today were it not for the tripling in global food production achieved largely through the use of this invaluable petrochemical byproduct. Admirers of Brillat-Savarin might plausibly contend the present human race is mostly made of gas.

Today's high-yielding food crops, to a very great degree, depend on high levels of applied nitrogen: without it, yields collapse. Since the Green Revolution the entire world food supply has become more and more critically reliant on this input.

However, worldwide, natural gas reserves are running out just as quickly as oil which, presumably, is why China wishes to secure such a long term contract for gas from Australia and no doubt many other suppliers.

Earlier this month (Aug 09) the International Energy Agency's chief economist Dr Fatih Birol told Britain's The Independent newspaper that world oil production will peak within 10 years. The average rate of decline in the world's 800 major oilfields is now 6.7 per cent a year -- almost double what it was two years ago. "One day we will run out of oil. It will not be today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us. We have to prepare ourselves for that day," he said.

A similar story, though far less well advertised, applies to natural gas which, within a few years of oil, will also reach its peak and start to decline. According to the International Fertilizer Industry Association, natural gas currently furnishes feedstock for 97 per cent of the world's ammonia-based fertilisers. As gas output dwindles these will become increasingly scarce and unaffordable to most farmers, Australia's included.

Unless an inexpensive replacement source of ammonia for making fertiliser is found, then quite simply, global food output will progressively revert towards what it was in the 1960s, around a third of what we enjoy today. Those who are tempted to deride this statement can easily test the proposition in the privacy of their own back yard or balcony by growing one lettuce or tomato plant in plain sand with a standard N fertiliser, and one without.

In the 1960s we only had 3 billion mouths to feed (one billion of them actually starving). By the time the gas runs low and global food supplies start their downward plummet, there will be 8 billion humans on the planet. According to UN population forecasts this number will be reached in 2025.

Furthermore about five billion of these people will live in cities. Unlike the 1960s, most will have not the slightest capacity or knowledge of how to produce their own food.

A compounding factor is that more and more of the world's nitrogen fertilisers are already being used to grow biofuels of various kinds -- from grain ethanol through to specialist diesel crops and even algae. Biofuels, however green they may be depicted, often use quite high inputs of dwindling fossil energy -- and compete against food crops for these. In other words the more crop biofuels we burn in vehicles, the quicker we will exhaust the world's nitrogen fertiliser supplies.

There are alternatives to natural gas, of course. Recycling sewage and urban organic waste is one option. Increasing legume rotations, manuring or genetically engineering crops which fix nitrogen from the air are others. But they are either much more expensive, riskier from a health perspective, unproven or else produce far less food than the current gas-based N fertiliser system. Many of them, indeed, are the same systems our great grandparents used to grow food over a hundred years ago when there were fewer than a billion people to feed.

Today's governments are a long, long way from even asking themselves how they are going to replace the missing fertilisers on a scale sufficient to nourish the human race. One suspects the matter has not even entered their heads.

Except perhaps in China. There the spectre of past famine still haunts and the ageing rulers are uneasily mindful of the consequences both for their people -- and for themselves. Sure, they need the natural gas for industry. But they also need it for food -- and there is unlikely to be much argument over which comes first.

A couple of decades from now Australians will wake up to find that, besides selling a heap of gas, we have also sold the primary means of food production, both our own and the world's.

Makes you wonder who China will feed first.

See also: Global Food Crisis pages on Science Alert, Garrett defends Gorgon approval in the SMH of 27 Aug 09, Gorgon gas project 'environmental vandalism' by Naomi Woodley for the ABC's PM of  Aug 09, Greens call for judicial inquiry on oil spill on the ABC's PM of 24 Aug 09, Gorgon gas development on Barrow Island approved in Perth Now of 10 Aug 09, Gorgon gas deal could set inflation hare running on the ABC news of 19 Aug 09, Turnbull demands credit for Gorgon gas project in the Australian of 27 Aug 09, Joe Hockey claims Coalition credit for $50bn Gorgon gas deal by Nicola Berkovic in the Australian of 19 Aug 09.

The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) has recently put out an 'alert' about peak oil and the existence of a group it has formed called the MAV Transition Community Working Group. It talks about the need for local governments to lead the adaptation to peak oil.

"To the Council CEO and Councillors (all Victorian Councils).
August 2009, LG ‘ALERT’ from the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) Transition Community Working Group

This ALERT is predicated on four factors:

1. The human race is facing its greatest challenge.

2. Individual communities need to collaborate to address the challenge and transition to a reduced-carbon, sustainable future. The time to act is now.

3. Local government needs to support communities in planning to address this challenge. Local government is likely to bear a significant proportion of the brunt of climate change, peak oil and other related impacts, and the sector is most effective when it collaborates to address major challenges.

4. The Transition Community approach is an empowering local response to crisis situations and offers the hope of achieving an improved local economy and improved social cohesion."

Editor: It will be difficult for local governments to lead people in a polity where all the power is being taken from local communities and they are being plugged into state and national power systems which have been commercialised and which have no obligation to their 'customers' except to submit to some vague 'competition' in prices. The cost of land and resources makes it very difficult for people to act locally as well because corporate style business is the only kind that can survive with those kinds of costs. For this reason we see our corporatised government helping big business to take over farmland. And housing developers are taking over suburban land with high density. This will prevent people from making the best of backyards to produce food and other needs locally. And the supermarkets and transport companies have stakes in preserving the current energy intensive food production and distribution system. Citizens have few remaining rights and no way of reaching a monolithic style government block which is barely, if at all distinguisable from a commercial finance, property and infrastructure development company with State and National branches and outlets in local areas to market projects and population growth.

Still, we folk have to work around this commercial system that has supplanted our self-government. See also this article by Dr Ted Trainer: The Transition Towns Movement; its huge significance and a friendly criticism. He writes:

"It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn’t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs."

More on the MAV Transition Community Working Group

The MAV Transition Community Working Group, comprised of interested Councillors and officers, was formed to assess the Transition Community framework, developed in the UK and now spreading rapidly around the world, and its relevance to Victorian local government and communities. The Working Group has now considered the matter and has determined to issue an ‘ALERT’ to Councils across Victoria. The ‘alert’ refers to the need for Councils and their communities to be aware that:

1. communities will face an unprecedented number of significant (global) challenges in the relatively short term and need to develop the necessary resilience to cope with these issues, which include:

a. water shortages/drought (increasing cost)

b. more expensive energy (including global demand for oil exceeding supply). CSIRO modelling has forecast petrol prices of up to $8 per litre by 2018. Also please see (attached) the recent comment from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a division of the OECD, which is warning that oil prices could reach $200 per barrel within the next 2-3 years.

c. more expensive food

d. the impacts of climate change

e. economic constraints in the wake of the global financial crisis

2. living in a carbon-reduced world will inevitably result in significant changes to the way communities live, including:

a. moving away from a dependency on oil

b. reducing greenhouse gas emissions

c. using resources more efficiently

d. a greater development of the local economy, including more local food, local energy generation, and self-sufficiency in many ways.

3. the good news is that the Transition Community framework provides a positive mechanism for communities to be able to become fully aware of the nature of the challenges to be addressed, and to work together to produce plans to achieve the desired transition to a better future at the local level. The common element of the many Transition Plans that have been produced to date around the world is that they focus on what can be done by acting locally. While much of the discussion around climate change and ‘peak’ oil can be quite depressing, the Transition Community approach offers the prospect that members of a community can connect and plan for a fundamental vision of a healthier, more resilient local community.

4. this focus on ‘local’ revitalisation represents a major opportunity for local government to assume a key role in supporting communities to plan for a transition to a more sustainable future. While individuals may feel powerless in relation to climate change and more expensive energy, communities can act collaboratively and creatively to generate a real sense of hope and commitment.

5. The Kinsale (UK) Energy Decent Action Plan (access via Google) is a good example of a community plan that describes the proposed actions that will take place on an annual basis to enable the Kinsale community to transition from the ‘status quo’ to a reduced-carbon, more sustainable future. The plan includes modules for food, energy, transport, recreation, health, employment and other relevant areas.

6. The Maribyrnong Council has taken a lead position in planning for a reduced carbon future by developing a Peak Oil Policy and Action Plan, as well as Australia’s first local government Peak Oil Contingency Plan. This Plan uses various scenarios to assess the likely impacts on Council operations, and the next step is to assess the community impacts. The Maribyrnong initiative is attracting national and international attention.

Darebin Council has taken a different approach and integrated Peak Oil related issues together with Climate Change adaptation to develop a Climate Change and Peak Oil Adaptation plan which is currently out for community consultation. There are large confluences between the two issues identified in this plan.

7. The MAV Future of Local Government Program has identified the role of local government as being to facilitate the development of strong and successful communities. This is entirely consistent with the need for Councils to be pro-active in these challenging times and support their communities to address the global imperatives. The MAV also convened a Peak Oil Conference in 2007, which highlighted the fact that the demand for oil will exceed supply in the near future.

8. There are now over 500 community plans in place across Victoria. These ‘bottom up’ community planning processes provide an excellent platform to integrate with the Transition Community planning framework. Both planning processes are very similar and it makes sense to link them together rather than operate discrete processes simultaneously. They both aim to improve community sustainability.

Next Steps

All Victorian Councils need to ask themselves a number of questions in relation to the challenges referred to above:

a. Are you aware of the implications of climate change and peak oil for your Council?

b. Does your 4 year Council Plan adequately address the challenges of climate change, peak oil and more expensive resources/goods? There is little doubt that the world will be a different place by 2013 and that those Councils and communities that have planned for that future will be significantly advantaged.

c. Does your Council’s risk management plan/process take account of these issues?

d. Are your communities doing anything to plan and prepare for a carbon- reduced future?

The MAV Working Group is proposing:

e. that each Council nominates a ‘champion’ Councillor and a champion’ officer who can be ongoing contact points in relation to these matters. These nominations are sought before the end of September 2009, by emailing [email protected]

f. Councils work together to agree on a sector-wide approach in support of Transition Communities, and to link existing community planning processes to Transition planning processes.

g. Training and awareness sessions be made available to Council representatives in the near future.

h. Councils act to positively support, via advice and knowledge-sharing, communities that wish to embark on a Transition Community initiative (eg. prepare an Energy Descent Action Plan).

In conclusion, it is worthwhile noting the words of the Maribyrnong Council: ‘whatever you can do to prepare for peak oil, you should do, because you will be glad that you did’.

If you have any queries in relation to the above, please email [email protected]

John Hennessy (on behalf of the Working Group)

Attachment

The IEA warns of shortages - "The next oil crisis is coming" 27/2/2009.

A shortage of oil could trigger another global recession around 2013 – says the IEA. By 2010 the price will reach new highs. The IEA in Paris is warning of a new, much more severe global economic crisis around 2013. The reason is that investments in oil from new projects are being cancelled by large oil companies. If demand starts increasing in 2010, the oil price could explode, fire up inflation and put global growth at risk.

"We are concerned, that oil companies are reducing their investment levels. When demand returns a supply shortage could appear. We are even predicting that this shortage could occur in 2013." said Nobuo Tanaka, head of the IEA in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

He is alarmed, because he has data that shows that the global oil supply capacity is declining and that oil reserves will likely be markedly reduced by 2013. The stronger oil demand will be in a recovery starting in 2010, especially in the US, China and India, the sooner the shortage will appear and strangle global growth.

According to the IEA, the oil price could then exceed the records achieved in the summer of 2008 and reach $200 per barrel. "We could be steering into a new crisis, which could be greater than the current crisis", said Mr. Tanaka

Nothing is more vital to the survival of human populations than an abundant flow of cheap energy. Most well-informed persons are vaguely aware that oil and gas supplies are peaking or have now peaked; yet there are still government departments and many news media that would prefer to know and think about this as little as possible.

First published in People and Place magazine Volume 17 No 2 of 2009. See also: Final Energy Crisis blogs, Mark O'Connor's web site, australianpoet.com, review of Mark O'Connor's Overloading Australia.

Survival

Nothing is more vital to the survival of human populations than an abundant (if possible an infinite) flow of cheap energy. This is what we thought we had all through the 20th century, and what we now find we do not. Most well-informed persons are vaguely aware that oil and gas supplies are peaking or have now peaked; yet there are still government departments and many news media (including as yet ABC TV Current Affairs) that would prefer to know and think about this as little as possible. Despite warnings from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Academy of Science, the possibility that a future Australia might lack the fossil energy to transport food to its cities, or to make the nitrate fertilizers and import the heavy rock phosphates without which crops won't grow, has had as yet no effect on Australia's population or immigration policies.

Growth Economics and Australia's population numbers

Growth economists and many who see themselves as experts in fine-tuning immigration policy do not find it easy to accept limits to growth. Yet a piece of stockmarket wisdom runs: 'If something can't go on for ever, sooner or later it won't.' The current population boom, which has Australia's population growing at nearly two per cent a year and, if this growth rate continues, on course to pass 100 million by the end of the century, almost certainly won't.

A World running out of energy

This collection of essays on a world running out of energy first appeared in 2005. It has now been re-edited, and updated. Twenty of the twenty-four chapters are new or substantially re-written. Sheila Newman, the Australian polymath who co-edited the first edition with the international energy economist Andrew MacKillop, is now the sole editor. Indeed much of the book is the Sheila Newman show. She has pulled together an impressive range of technical experts, including Seppo Korpela and Colin Campbell, then expanded the book's range through her wide-ranging introductions to each section. She also contributes nine of the book's 24 chapters, plugging what might otherwise be gaps in the argument.

How the world energy system works

Population and demography are not the main focus of this book, but they are issues waiting in the wings of every chapter. It is taken as read that if there were fewer people our energy options would expand, and vice versa. Yet the main focus is on why the world's energy system currently works the way it does -- and why it can't go on like this much longer.

A chilling future dystopia for Australia

However the chapter, 'France and Australia after Oil', canvasses a chilling future dystopia for Australia. A century or more into the future, if we keep on growing Australia's population while energy runs short, she predicts a much leaner Australian society -- one that its present inhabitants might not recognise. (Note though that Mark Diesendorf's Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy, UNSW Press 2007, argues that renewable energy can, if very carefully managed, sustain the present population.)

Bilingual author pitched to compare different political systems

Bilingual in French and English, Sheila Newman regularly contrasts the economic culture of three pioneering Anglophone countries (Australia, USA, Canada) with the more conservative economic and energy policies of France and much of Europe. By contrast the Anglo cultures, she writes, allowed the drawdown of fossil fuels to be 'multiplied by the needs of a much greater population'.

Different energy sources, different population carrying capacities

The population that can be sustained by oil is vastly larger than the one that coal could have made possible, which in turn dwarfs the less than one billion humans that wood and natural biomass could have powered. How many of the present six to seven billions will be able to survive when the age of cheap oil and gas (and therefore, presumably, of cheap fertilizers) ends? Will Caspian oil, solar power, wind, or nuclear fusion save us?

Many peaks investigated in this book

The book's experts take us through the fascinating problems of peak oil, peak nitrate fertilizer, peak phosphorus, peak soil, geopolitical struggles for oil, China's car explosion, natural gas, coal emissions, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion—and possible alternative (or post-disaster) life-styles. I for one emerged vastly better informed -- and about issues I thought I had more or less known.

The Final Energy Crisis, edited by Sheila Newman, Pluto Press, UK, 2008, ISBN 0-7453-2717-6, A$44.50 in Australia, from Palgrave Macmillan, US$26.66 from Amazon

Author note: Mark O'Connor is a co-editor of Protected Area Management (Oxford University Press, 2001), and co-author of Overloading Australia (Envirobook, 2008)

This review first published in People and Place magazine Volume 17 No 2 of 2009.
See also: Final Energy Crisis blogs, Mark O'Connor's web site, australianpoet.com, review of Mark O'Connor's Overloading Australia.

We are entering can era of severe scarcity

Illustration: Gustave Doré's Don Quixote

We are entering can era of severe scarcity in which centralised and globalised systems will fail to provide for us and we will have to develop highly localized economies. Most people would probably doubt that we could organize satisfactory communities without vast state bureaucracies and corporations. The achievements of the Spanish Anarchist workers collectives in the 1930s show what miracles ordinary people can do.

One of the strong beliefs reinforcing the acceptance of consumer-capitalist society is the assumption that it has to be run by authorities up there somewhere, by governments, bureaucracies, corporations, experts, CEOs, via big complex systems that ordinary people like us can’t fathom and couldn’t possibly run. People take it for granted that there is a vast distinction between our governors and we who are governed, and this is inevitable in a modern complex technocratic society. Our only role in government is to elect our governors occasionally, then submit to their rule. Meanwhile it is best if we devote ourselves to working diligently, consuming, football, celebrities and trivia.

In my very firm view consumer-capitalist society will soon be over. It is extremely unsustainable and unjust. There is no possibility that the per capita rates of resource consumption the 1.5 billion rich have can be extended to the other 7.5 billion we will soon have on earth. The Australian footprint of 8 ha of productive land per capita is about 10 times the area that will be available per capita in 2050. Well before that we will run into savage and insoluble shortages of oil, water, food, fish, several minerals, phosphorus, and the ecological consequences of the greenhouse problem, destruction of soils and forests, and a holocaust of species loss, the social and political impacts of collapsing states, resource wars and massive refugee movements.

Globalisation is over

Whether we like it or not we will localize. Globalisation is over. If complete collapse and die-off is avoided the only viable path will be in terms of mostly small and self-sufficient local economies in which people cooperate to organize their own local productive capacity to produce for themselves most of the things they need with little trade. In the coming age of severe scarcity economies must be mostly focused on needs and not profits, and organized by rational and cooperative control of the economy as distinct from driven by market forces (although they could still have a role.) Above all there can be no economic growth at all, and affluent “living standards” must be abandoned. The goal must be satisfactory but frugal and self-sufficient ways in stable or zero-growth economies.

Most people would probably totally reject this vision, believing that conservation effort and technical advance will enable us to go on pursuing ever-increasing affluence and GDP. In addition they would not believe that an acceptable alternative defined in terms of frugal living standards and no growth could remotely be designed. However I have no doubt that we could easily and quickly build a very satisfactory as well as sustainable and just society…if we wanted to. Its principles would have to be frugal but adequate living standards, high levels of self-sufficiency in mostly small local economies of the kind indicated above. (For a detailed discussion see The Simpler Way website, .) In my view this is the direction we will be moving in soon, whether we like it or not.

Again l think one of the most powerful ideological forces blocking such a transition is the general conviction that a satisfactory society could not be run without all those heavy bureaucrats, experts and CEOs, and rule by authoritarian and complex governments. Well if that’s your view, let me tell you about what the Spanish Anarchist collectives did in the 1930s.

The Spanish Anarchist Workers Collectives

In a period of about six years after 1933, during a civil war, the anarchists got control of large areas of Spain, containing 8 million people. Possibly 1800 collectives were established. Often they were able to take over factories and estates abandoned when their owners fled the war. With remarkable speed collectives made up of workers in these firms formed and organized to continue production. Many very large ventures were quickly put back into operation. For instance three days after a battle in Barcelona the trams were running again.

Attention was focused on the most important needs, for instance the setting up of communal dining halls. The collectives plunged into the reorganization and improvement of industries, for instance combining many previously struggling small firms, coordinating and integrating. In some regions they ran the fishing industry, from the boats to the canning factories and the distribution networks. They actually organized and ran whole regional economies, including public services such as policing, road construction, flood control, water supply, transport, maintenance of parks. They set up banks, flour mills, theatres an aluminium industry, organized international importing, printed their own money, abolished interest payments, and ran railways and telecommunications systems. Entire health systems were established, including medical centres, hospitals and sanitoria. In Barcelona six hospitals and eight sanitoria were built. Dental services and surgery was free, provided by doctors receiving set payments. Schools were free. Ordinary people gained access to medical services they previously could not afford when doctors only served the rich. They even established engineering and optical training institutes, and a university. The city of Barcelona with a population of 1.2 million was run in these ways.

Towns exchanged surpluses. Some towns and collectives abolished money, arranging all production and distribution in terms of needs and vouchers. Abundant things, such as fruit in season, were free, but scarce things were rationed.

The basic format for this “governing” was the weekly assembly of all workers in the factory, reviewing all operations, planning, electing managers, making decisions. Factories would send delegates to meetings handling issues involving several factories, and similar delegations up to larger and more centralized assemblies would deal with wider regional issues. These latter gatherings had little or no power because recommendations would be taken back down to the factory assemblies where everyone had a vote. That’s the essential Anarchist principle; all power is held by citizens and any centralized issues are thought out by delegates but the recommendations are taken back to the citizen assemblies for approval. They refused to resort to bureaucrats, let alone paid or professional officials, managers or politicians. Managers were just more experienced workers elected by the assemblies, recallable at any time. Committees mostly met after work hours or on the weekend. In other words the government of factories, farms, industries and entire regions was actually carried out by ordinary people deliberating in citizen assemblies. Of course in all these domains more experienced people had key roles but were not bosses or privilelged.

From accounts such as those in Dolgoff, The Anarchist Collectives, (1973) the production of goods, the efficiency of operations, the effectiveness of distribution and allocation, and the social welfare and justice consequences were huge improvements on what had prevailed before when control was in the hands of privileged elites and most people lived in poverty and oppression. They reorganized and innovated extensively and quickly. Men and women became much more equal. Large transfers of goods were organised to poor towns, supplies to hospitals were quickly established. A voluntary retirement age of 60 was set. Unemployed people were paid a full wage. By bringing previously idle and inefficiently used productive capacities into operation huge surges in output and welfare were quickly achieved.

Where wages were retained they were made more or less equal. However in many industries wages were abolished, for ideological reasons. Wages are elements in the system where capital hires labour, controls production, and takes the product, and workers have no involvement in production other than selling their labour and they can be dumped at any time at the whim of the employer. Instead in some cases they simply organised to provide all workers with listed necessities, sometimes via voucher or coupon systems. These entitlements varied with need, for instance being greater if there were children in a family. Thus they implemented the basic “communist” principle of allocating according to need not work done or skill.

In his introduction to Dolgoff, Bookchin makes some important observations on the mentality of the industrial worker. A lifetime of taking orders, discipline to often mind-numbing grind, no control or responsibility or concern with the uses of the product or its social value or who benefits, is likely to produce passive consumers primarily interested in their wages, i.e., purchasing power. Workers tend not to think they should do any managing. It is not surprising that in Spain the alternative thrived most in the rural regions because in addition to the collectivist traditions, the peasant way of life involves conditions and dispositions that are foreign to the industrial worker. Small; farmers must be multi-skilled handymen, energetic, thoughtful and responsible. I believe the coming revolution will be led by the spirit of the peasant and homesteader. When your welfare depends not on a wage, but on whether you organise and manage and fix and plan and think ahead and troubleshoot, and plant the beans in time,…and maintain the cooperative relations with the people in your community you depend on…then you are more likely to have the dispositions Anarchism requires.

Marx didn’t grasp any of this. In my view Marx’s analysis of capitalism, how it works, why it has problems, where it is taking us, is of the utmost importance. But what he thought about the post-capitalist society and how to get to it are I think of little value or mistaken (apart from the principle “From each according to ability, to each according to need.) If we get through to a sustainable and just society it will not be via violent revolution led by the working class led by a vanguard party which will rule from the centre until we become capable of communism. None of that can lead to local economies run by local people in participatory ways. In addition Marxists still fail to see that a satisfactory society cannot be heavily industrialized or affluent. But what’s most important here, as Bookchin points out, Marx didn’t think the outlook and personality of the worker was important (except in so far as he would support revolution.) That could be left until after the revolution. All that mattered was harnessing workers to revolution. The Anarchists in Spain had a totally different view, realizing that everything depended on how aware, committed and autonomous ordinary people are. They put a great deal of thought and effort into developing what they called “personalities”. That’s our main problem now.

Achievements were more impressive in rural areas than in the urban and industrial areas. Many impoverished peasants were able to come into larger and more farms. They were not coerced to do this and many remained outside the collectives as independent farmers. These received surprising levels of assistance from the collectives, often enjoying the benefits they would have enjoyed had they joined. They were not allowed to own more land than they could work.

These achievements were made in difficulty conditions, with many able bodied people away at the front, produce sent from regions to the troops, and at times under destructive attack from enemies.

The material I have read does not throw much light on how they were able to coordinate things. How were they able to make sure that enough bolts of the right size turned up at the right factory when they were needed. Remarkably it seems that such things were sorted out well enough just by people organizing to get and send the necessary information and supplies. They did put a great deal of effort into collecting statistics to enable sound decisions, and into research to improve production.

The extremely important point for us in all this is that their achievements demolish the claim that you have to leave the mass of decisions to the workings of the market or to centralized state bureaucracies. They seem to have shown decisively that rational planning carried out by citizens can run an economy at least well enough. Remember that in the coming era our economies will be far less complex than they are now, greatly simplified by the absence of growth, making the control of small and local economies more tractable.

Note that although they did these things without huge professional planning bureaucracies. They did plan and make rational decisions, based on the detailed statistics they continually collected. But apparently they could quickly see what needed doing and then make the necessary decisions and carry them out via grass-roots assemblies and elected managers. Compare that with our bureaucracies where if you are lucky you get a letter back in two months.

So there, we can do it! Ordinary people can run economies via participatory democracy, without states, capitalists, bureaucracies or authoritarian rule.

As I see it Anarchism defines political maturity. For thousands of years humans have tolerated rule by kings, tyrants, dictators, and politicians. Representative democracy does not allow people to govern themselves. They are treated as infantile and untrustworthy. The goal must be citizens taking responsibility for running their own collective affairs directly, with no one having power over anyone else, via highly participatory procedures. In his discussion of the way this was done by the Ancient Greeks, the Medieval and New England towns, Bookchin stresses the educational significance of this, its importance for the development of mature, thoughtful, caring and responsible citizens. When your fate and that of your town depends on whether or not you can help make good decisions in the assemblies you have a strong incentive to develop conscientious thoughtful and caring dispositions.

So it’s a bit more complicated that I have made it appear to be at the start. I misled you by saying that in Spain “ordinary people” achieved all those things. The key to the Anarchist success is to be found in the long history and powerful ideological traditions of the regions. For hundreds of years rural villages had functioned in highly collectivist ways. In addition Bakouknin’s Anarchist theory had been brought to Spain in the 1880s and had been widely influential. The movement had grown significantly in the decades before 1930, so when the opportunity came with the civil war large and sophisticated pre-existing forces sprang into action. Ideas, values land practices that had been in existence and rehearsed for a long time could be quickly put into operation.

The point is that the remarkable achievements of the Spanish Anarchists were made possible by extra-ordinary people. We will not be able to do these things unless the right ideas and values have been widely established. People in consumer-capitalist society are far from the necessary state. Governments cannot do it for them. They cannot develop the new local participatory economies, firstly because they can’t think in any other than centralised, top-down solutions, free markets and capitalist control. More importantly, the required economies of The Simpler Way will by definition be run by the citizens of the town or suburb. Only they can learn their way to the procedures for doing this that suit their local conditions. We cannot begin down that path until people in general see that it is the way to sustainable and just society, and eagerly seek to take that path because they can see that it will yield a much higher quality of life.

We are sadly very far from having anything like the necessary ideology and values among the passive, trivia-preoccupied consumers of late capitalist society. That defines the task before those who want to help solve global problems. We have to work very hard to build the required world view, values, and commitments, and there isn’t much time left to do it.

How do we do it?

In my view the Left has always been remarkably weak on the nature of ideology and how to liberate people from the dominant ideology of consumer-capitalist society. Here are brief notes on how I think we should try, given the global situation we are in. (For a more detailed discussion see.)

Again we are in a historically unique situation because after hundreds of years in which increasing wealth and abundance were taken for granted we are likely to rapidly enter an era of permanent and intense. Especially as petroleum dwindles, people will realise with a jolt that the old systems will fail to provide for us and that communities will have to organise local economies. This is already happening, most inspiringly within the Transition Towns movement. By far the most important step that can be taken by anyone who wants to save the planet, prevent global warming, eliminate Third World poverty, bring peace to the world, etc., is not to join a green party, buy a Prius, lobby against wood-chipping, or learn how to fire an AK47. It is to come and help us start building aspects of the new society, here and now, within the towns and suburbs where we live. This is not just because those are the alternatives that must eventually be built. More importantly it is because working there side by side with ordinary people will give us the best possible access to build the necessary critical global consciousness, that is, to get people to understand that the old systems cannot be made sustainable or just, that vast and radical change is needed, that free markets, growth, competition and acquisitiveness must be scrapped, and that there are far more satisfactory ways.

Dolgoff, S., Ed., (1990), The Anarchist collectives : workers’ self-management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936-1939 ,Montréal, Black Rose Books.

Ted Trainer
6.6.09

Source of illustration
The only way the global sustainability and justice predicament can be solved is via something like the inspiring Transition Towns movement. However thought needs to be given to a number of themes or it might fail to achieve significant goals.
The Transition Towns movement began only about 2005 and is growing rapidly. It emerged in the UK mainly in response to the realisation that the coming of “peak oil” is likely to leave towns in a desperate situation, and therefore that it is very important that they strive to develop local economic self sufficiency.

What many within the movement probably don’t know is that for decades some of us in the “deep green” camp have been arguing that the key element in a sustainable and just world has to be small, highly self sufficient, localised economies under local cooperative control. (See my Abandon Affluence, published in1985, and The Conserver Society, 1995.)

It is therefore immensely encouraging to find that this kind of initiative is not only underway but booming. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if this planet makes it through the next 50 years to sustainable and just ways it will be via some kind of Transition Towns process. However I also want to argue that if the movement is to have this outcome there are some very important issues it must think carefully about or it could actually come to little or nothing of any social significance. I want to suggest l below that there is a need for a much more focused and detailed action strategy, giving clearer guidance to newcomers, and following a much more radical vision than seems to be informing the movement at present.

My comments won’t make much sense unless I first make clear the perspective on the global situation my comments derive from. Most people would reject this view as being too extreme.

Where we are, and the way out.

The many alarming global problems now crowding in and threatening to destroy us are so big and serious that they cannot be solved within or by consumer-capitalist society. The way of life we have in rich countries is grossly unsustainable and unjust. There is no possibility of the “living standards” of all people on earth ever rising to rich world per capita levels of consumption of energy, minerals, timber, water, food, phosphorous etc. These rates of consumption are generating the numerous alarming global problems now threatening our survival. Yet most people have no idea of the magnitude of the overshoot, of how far we are beyond a sustainable levels of resource use and environmental impact. ln addition our way of life would not be possible if rich countries were not taking far more than their fair share of world resources, via an extremely unjust global economy, and thereby condemning most of the world’s people to deprivation.

Given this analysis of out situation, there must be transition to a very different kind of society, one not based on globalisation, market forces, the profit motive, centralisation, representative democracy, or competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness. Above all it must be a zero-growth economy, and most difficult of all, it cannot be an affluent society.

However almost everyone in the mainstream, from politicians, economists and bureaucrats down to ordinary people, totally fails to recognise any of this and proceeds on the comforting delusion that with more effort and technical advance we can solve problems like greenhouse without jeopardising our high “living standards” or the market economy or the obsession with growth. Our fundamental problem therefore is one of ideology or consciousness. Most people in this society are a very long way from having the understandings and values required for transition. Most seem not to know or care that they live as well as they do because the global economy is extremely unjust, or that affluence and growth are incompatible with ecological survival. Changing that consciousness is the key to transition.

I have appendixed some of the support for this perspective on out global situation. A more detailed account can be found at http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/

Given the above view of our situation, we must work for transition to a very different kind of society. I refer to it as The Simpler Way. Its core principles must be

- Far simpler material living standards

- High levels of self-sufficiency at household, national and especially neighbourhood and town levels, with relatively little travel, transport or trade. There must be mostly small, local economies in which most of the things we need are produced by local labour from local resources.

- Basically cooperative and participatory local systems,

- A quite different economic system, one not driven by market forces and profit, and in which there is far less work, production, and consumption, and a large cashless sector, including many free goods from local commons. There must be no economic growth at all. There must be mostly small local economies, under our control via participatory systems.

- Most problematic, a radically different culture, in which competitive and acquisitive individualism is replaced by frugal, self-sufficient collectivism.

Some of the elements within The Simpler Way are, -- mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies with many little firms, ponds, animals, farms, forests throughout settlements – participatory democracy via town assemblies – neighbourhood workshops – many roads dug up – “edible landscapes” providing free fruit and nuts – being able to get to decentralised workplaces by bicycle or on foot voluntary community working bees – committees - many productive commons in the town (fruit, timber, bamboo, herbs…) – having to work for money only one or two days a week – no unemployment – living with many artists and crafts people – strong community --small communities making many of the important development and administration decisions.

Simple traditional alternative technologies will be quite sufficient for many purposes, especially for producing houses, furniture, food and pottery. Much production will take place via hobbies and crafts, small farms and family enterprises. However modern/high technologies and mass production can be used extensively where appropriate, including IT. The Simpler Way will free many more resources for purposes like medical research than are devoted to these at present, because most of the present vast quantity of unnecessary production will be phased out.

There could still be many small private firms, and market forces could have a role, but the economy must be under firm social control, via local participatory processes. Thus local town meetings would make the important economic decisions in terms of what’s best for the town and its people and environment. Rational assessments of basic necessities would be the main determinants of economic activity. We would not allow market forces to bankrupt any firm or dump anyone into unemployment. We would make sure everyone had a livelihood. The town would have to work out how to adjust its economy in the best interests of all.

Thus only an Anarchist form of government could work. Only if all participate in making the decisions and implementing them without authoritarian institutions will people enthusiastically contribute to effective town functioning. (There would still be some functions for state and national governments.)

Because we will be highly dependent on our local ecosystems and on our social cohesion, e.g., for most water and food, and for effective committees and working bees, all will have a strong incentive to focus on what is best for the town, rather than on what is best for themselves as competing individuals. Cooperation and conscientiousness will therefore tend to be automatically rewarded, whereas in consumer society competitive individualism is required and rewarded.

What we will be doing is building a new economy, Economy B, under the old one. Economy B will give us the power to produce the basic goods and services we need not just to survive as the old economy increasingly fails to provide, but to give all a high quality of life. The old economy could collapse and we would still be able to provide for ourselves.
Advocates of the Simpler Way believe that its many benefits and sources of satisfaction would provide a much higher quality of life than most people experience in consumer society.

It must be emphasised that The Simpler Way is not optional. If our global situation is as has been argued then a sustainable and just society in the coming era of scarcity has to be some kind of Simpler Way.

The Transition.

In my view the contradiction between consumer-capitalist society and The Simpler Way is so enormous that we are unlikely to make it. Nevertheless it is clear what we must try to do. Following are a few of the key points to consider in the discussion of transition strategy.

There is not much to be gained by trying to fight against the present system directly. Not only is it far too powerful and the dissenting forces far too weak, there isn’t time to beat it in head-on conflict. More importantly, even if we could for instance take state power, either by violent revolution or green parliamentary action, it would not be of any value to us whatsoever. State power cannot build self sufficient, self-governing local economies full of conscientious, responsible, creative, happy citizens. If the old industrial centralised system was still a viable model for a post-revolutionary society then maybe coups and revolutions and rule from the top might be relevant – but that model is irrelevant now.

Transition must therefore be a grass roots process whereby people slowly develop the consciousness, the skills, the local systems and infrastructures that will enable ordinary people to come together to run their own local communities. Much diminished state governments could have a valuable although secondary role, but we will have to do most of the thinking, work and learning ourselves in the towns and suburbs where we live. This is a basically Anarchist vision, and given the need for localism, frugality, participation, cooperation etc. set by the coming era of intense scarcity, we will have no choice about this.

The good society can and must be, as the Anarchists say, “prefigured”. We can begin now building aspects of it here within the failing old system, and indeed there is no other way to get from where we are to the kinds of settlements and systems we must have eventually.

There is no chance of significant change while the supermarket shelves remain well-stocked. Almost everyone will stolidly plod on purchasing, watching sport and playing electronic games until scarcity hits with a jolt. However, as the old systems run into more serious problems, people will come across to join us, realising that we are enjoying the benefits of the new ways. When oil starts to get seriously scarce people will see that they must either take up our examples or starve.
This revolution could therefore be smooth and non-violent. If we are lucky the old system will more or less just die away as people “ignore it to death”. The super-rich will resist desperately but without oil and confronted by millions of scattered people in their towns and suburbs doing their own thing they will have little capacity to stop us.

It is therefore of the utmost importance that we get the alternative examples up and running. Nothing will be more persuasive than pockets here and there where The Simpler Way can be seen as being lived and enjoyed within mainstream towns and suburbs.

Until around 2000 the basic pioneering work had been done by the Global Eco-village Movement. It’s possibly thousands of small communities have shown that a better way is possible. However the world’s soon-to-be 9 billion people cannot all form Eco-villages on green field sites. What they can do, however is transform the settlements they are living in into Eco-villages. And this is what the Transition Towns movement is in principle about.

The Transition Towns Movement.

The Transition Towns movement has emerged very rapidly and is spreading around the world. Towns in the UK have led the way, the best known being Totness. Although Rob Hopkins and his colleagues seems rightly to receive most of the credit for getting the movement going, its rapid spread testifies to a strong general grass roots readiness to take up the idea. There are now towns in several other countries joining the movement, including Australia and New Zealand. The website is inspiring, linking to many towns and projects, reflecting energy and enthusiasm. A handbook and other documents have been published.

The key concept referred to is building town “resilience” in the face of the coming peak oil crisis. The kinds of activities being taken up include, “re-skilling” whereby courses are run on things like bread baking, the planting of commons, e.g., nut trees on public land, local food production and marketing, especially community supported agriculture, and the encouragement of volunteering. These are not new ideas of course, but it is important that they are being linked together in whole town strategies for resilience. Notable is the fact that these initiatives have not come from states, governments or official bodies, but from ordinary people.

Concerns.

Despite my enthusiasm, I have serious concerns about the movement and I want to suggest some issues that require careful thought. If we do not get them right the movement could very easily end up making no significant contribution to solving the global problem.

Goals? Only building havens?

First there is the danger that it will only be a Not-In-My-Backyard phenomenon, that it will be about towns trying to insulate themselves from the coming time of scarcities and troubles. This is a quite different goal to working to replace consumer-capitalist society. It is not much good if your town bakes its own bread or even generates much of its own electricity, while it goes on importing hardware and appliances produced in China and taking holidays abroad. It will still indirectly be using considerable amounts of coal and oil in the goods it imports. The wider national society on which it depends for law, postal services, security etc. cannot continue as it is unless it maintains the Third World empire from which it draws so much wealth. Unless we eventually change all that then our Transition Towns will remain part of consumer-capitalist society, and will go down when it goes down.

In other words, given the view of the global situation sketched above the top concern must be to work to make sure the movement is explicitly, consciously and primarily about nothing less than contributing to global transition away from consumer-capitalist society. That kind of society is the cause of our problems, it is leading us to catastrophe, it is not possible for all, it is only possible for us because the Third World is plundered, and it destroys the environment. It condemns billions to dreadful conditions. Our top priority must be to replace it, as distinct from making our town “resilient” in the face of the trouble it is causing. This vision is not evident in the Transition Towns movement literature or in its web sites. If it was the movement would probably be much less popular.

Does this mean I should accept that I want to see a quite different movement, one that is for quite different goals, and therefore I should back off and not lecture the existing movement that its goals are mistaken, and go form my own? Perhaps this is so, but my hope obviously is that the existing movement will be willing to endorse goals that are wider and more critical/radical than they are at present. If it doesn’t then I don’t think it will make much difference to the fate of the planet. I have thought in terms of a Simpler Way Transition Strategy whereby we try to work within Transition Towns initiatives to get the broader vision and goals accepted. The practical involvement in building town self-sufficiency is the best means for doing that.

What are the sub-goals? The lack of guidance.

The website, the handbook and especially the 12 Steps document are valuable, but they are predominantly about procedure and it is remarkably difficult to find clear guidance as to what the sub-goals of the movement are, the actual structures and systems and projects that we should be trying to undertake if our town is to achieve transition or resilience. What we desperately need to know is what things should we start trying to set up, what should we avoid, what should come first. Especially important is that we need to be able to seethe causal links, to understand why setting up this venture will have the effect of creating greater town resilience. But unfortunately people coming to the movement eager to get started will find almost no guidance in the current literature as to what to actually try to do, let alone anything like a suggested plan of action with steps and do’s and don’ts and clear explanation of why specific projects will have desirable effects.

The advice and suggestions you do find in the literature are almost entirely about how to establish the movement (e.g., “Awareness raising”, “Form subgroups”, “Build a bridge to local government”), as distinct from how to establish things that will actually, obviously make the town more resilient. There is some reference to possibilities, such as set up community supported agriculture schemes, but we are told little more than that we should establish committees to look into what might be done in areas such as energy, food, education and health.

The authors of these documents seem to be anxious to avoid prescription and dogma, and it is likely that no one can give certain guidance at this early stage, but that does not mean that advice regarding probably valuable projects should not be offered. The lack is most evident in The Kinsale Energy Descent Plan, which does little more than repeat the process ideas in the 12 steps documents and contains virtually no information or projects to do with energy technology or strategies. It lists some possibilities, such as exploring insulation and the possibility of local energy generation, and reducing the need for transport, but again there is no advice as to what precisely can or might be set up. We need more than this; we need to know l how and why a particular project will make the town more resilient, and we need to know what projects we should start with, what the difficulties and costs might be, etc. Just being told “Create an energy descent plan” (Step 12) doesn’t help much when what we need to know how might we do that.

I suggest some possible concrete projects below, drawn from my tentative thoughts on The Simpler Way Transition Strategy. We might eventually realise this is not a good approach, but they indicate the kind or guidance people coming to the movement must be given. Otherwise we run the risk of people not having much idea what to set up, and rushing into exciting activities that are a waste of time, or becoming disenchanted with the failure to make much difference to the town’s situation.

What should be the top goal? Build a new economy, and run it!

I want to argue that the focal concern of the movement should not be energy and its coming scarcity. Yes all that sets the scene and the imperative, but the solution is not primarily to do with energy. It is to do with developing town economic self-sufficiency. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs.

It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn’t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. You will only escape that fate if you build a radically new economy in your region, and run it to provide for the people who live there.

All this flatly contradicts the conventional economy. We have to build a local economy, not a national or globalised economy, an economy designed to meet needs not to maximise profits, an economy under participatory social control and not driven by corporate profit, and one guided by rational planning as distinct from leaving everything to the market. This is the antithesis of capitalism, markets, profit motivation and corporate control. Nothing could be more revolutionary. If we don’t plunge into building such an economy we will probably not survive in the coming age of scarcity. The Transition Towns movement will come to nothing of great significance if it does not set itself to build such economies. Either your town will get control of its own affairs and organise local productive capacity to provide for you, or it will remain within and dependent on the mainstream economy, and be dumped.

In other words, the goal here is to build Economy B, a new local economy enabling the people who live in the town to guarantee the provision of basic necessities by applying their labour, land and skills to local resources…all under our control. The old economy A can then drop /dead and we will still be able to provide for ourselves. This kind of vision and goal is not evident in the TT literature and reports I have read. There is no concept of a Community Development Cooperative setting out to eventually run the town economy for the benefit of the people via participatory means. The movement at present implicitly accepts the normal consumer-capitalist economy and merely seeks to become more resilient within it.

The need for coordination, priorities and planning – by a Community Development Co-op

If we focus on the goal of local economic developed run by us to meet our needs we realise we must somehow set up mechanisms which enable us to work out and operate a plan. It will not be ideal if we proclaim the importance of town self-sufficiency and then all run off as individuals to set up a bakery here and a garden there. It is important that there be continual discussion about what the town needs to set up to achieve its goals, what should be done first, what is feasible, how we might proceed to get the first and the main things done, what are the most important ventures to set up? Of course individual initiatives are to be encouraged but much more important are likely to be bigger projects requiring whole-town effort.

This means that from the early stages we should set up some kind of Community Development Cooperative, a process whereby we can come together often to discuss and think about the town plan and our progress, towards having a coordinated and unified approach that will then help us decide on sub-goals and priorities, and especially on the purposes to which the early working bees will be put. Obviously this would not need to be elaborate or prescriptive and would not mean people would be discouraged from pursuing ventures other than those endorsed by the CDC.

My impression from the Transition Town literature is that this is something that needs urgent attention. Often it seems that inspired and energetic people are doing good things, but as independent “entrepreneurs” and according to their individual interests and skills. There will always be plenty of scope for this and every reason to encourage it, but the most important projects will be collective, public works which provide crucial services for the town. For instance the building of community gardens, sheds, premises for little firms, orchards, ponds, woodlots and the commons from which free food will come are whole-town projects that will be carried out by voluntary committees and working bees. Before these projects could sensibly begin we would need to have thought out at least an indicative plan which included priority, logistical, geographical, feasibility, research, resource etc. considerations.

What should the CDC actually do?

Following is an indication of the kind of projects that I think of as making up The Simpler Way Transition Strategy. These are the kinds of actual projects I had hoped to find in the TTR literature (and some are there).

• Identify the unmet needs of the town, and the unused productive capacities of the town, and bring them together. Set up the many simple cooperatives enabling all the unemployed, homeless, bored, retired, etc. people to get into the community gardens etc. that would enable them to start producing many of the basic things they need. Can we set up co-ops to run a bakery, bike repair shop, home help service, insulating operation, clothes making and repairing operation.... Especially important are the cooperatives to organise leisure resources, the concerts, picnics, dances, festivals? Can we organise a market day?

One of the worst contradictions in the present economy is that it dumps many people into unemployment, boredom, homelessness, "retirement", mental illness and depression – and in the US, watching 4+ hours of TV every day. These are huge productive capacities left idle land wasted. The CDC can pounce on these resources and harness them and enable dumped people to start producing to meet some of their on needs, thereby moving towards the elimination of employment. To do this is to have begun to set up Economy B. We simply record contributions and these entitle people to proportionate shares of the output. (This is to have initiated our own new currency; see below.)

This mechanism puts us in a position to eventually get rid of unemployment – to make sure all who want work and "incomes" and livelihoods can have them. It is absurd and annoying that governments, (and the people in your neighbourhood) tolerate people suffering depression and boredom when we could so easily set up the cooperatives that would enable them to produce things they need and enjoy purpose and solidarity. (Of course any move to do this would be rejected as “socialism”, which we all know does not work.)

• Help existing small firms to move to activities the town needs, setting up little firms and farms and markets. Establish a town bank to finance these ventures. Making sure no one goes bankrupt and no one is left without a livelihood.

• Organise Business Incubators; the voluntary panels of experts and advisers on gardening, small business, arts etc., so that we can get new ventures up and running well.

• Organise the working bees to plant and maintain the community orchards and other commons, build the premises for the bee keeper...and organise the committees to run the concerts and look after old people...

• Research what the town is importing, and the scope for local firms or new co-ops to start substituting local products.

• Decide what things will emphatically not be left for market forces to determine – such as unemployment, what firms we will have, whether fast food outlets will be patronised if they set up. We will not let market forces deprive anyone of a livelihood; if we have too many bakeries we will work out how to redirect one of them. The town gets together to decide what it needs, and to establish these things regardless of what market forces and the profit motive would have done.

• Stress the importance of reducing consumption, living more simply, making, growing, rep-airing, old things… The less we consume in the town the less we must produce or import. Remember, the world can't consume at anything like the rate rich countries average. As well as explaining the importance of reducing consumption the CDC must stress alternative satisfactions and develop these (e.g., the concerts, festivals, crafts…) It can also develop recipes for cheap but nutritious meals, teaching craft and gardening skills, preserving etc. The household economy should be upheld as the centre of our lives and the main source of life satisfaction, more important than career.

• Work towards the procedures for making good town decisions about these developments, the referenda, consensus processes, town meetings.

• Throughout all these activities recognise that our primary concern is to raise consciousness regarding the nature, functioning and unacceptability of consumer-capitalist society and the existence of better ways.

One concern the CDC would have is what not to try to do, or not yet. For instance in my view it is not at all clear that in the early states towns should make much effort to produce their own energy. Producing most forms of renewable energy in significant quantities is difficult and costly. Further, its significance for town independence or resilience is questionable. For instance if your town builds a wind farm this will benefit the nation but is not likely to be of much benefit to the town, other than as an export industry (sending surplus electricity to the grid…without which it could not function.) When the wind is down the town would have to draw from the grid.

More significant however would be the effort to reduce energy consumption, as distinct from increase production, by for instance insulating houses, cutting down on unnecessary production, localising work, cutting town imports, increasing local leisure resources and especially increasing local food production. (The Kinsale Energy Descent Plan recognises this.) Town resilience is going to depend more on the capacity to get to work and produce necessities without using much energy, than on whether the town can produce energy.

The introduction of local currencies.

Although the introduction of our own local currency is very important there is much confusion about local currencies and often proposed schemes would not have desirable effects. There is a tendency to proceed as if just creating a local currency would do wonders, without any thinking through of how it is supposed to work. lt will not have desirable effects unless it is carefully designed to do so. I have serious concerns about the currency schemes being adopted by the Transition Towns movement and I do not think the initiatives I am aware of are going to make significant contributions to the achievement of town resilience. It is not evident that they are based on a rationale that makes sense and enables one to see why they will have desirable effects.

It is most important that we are able to see precisely what general effect the form of currency we have opted for is going to have; we must be able to explain why we are implementing it in view of the beneficial effects it designed to have. To me the main purpose in introducing a currency is to contribute to getting the unused productive capacity of the town into action, i.e., stimulating/enabling increase in output to meet needs. (Another purpose is to avoid the interest charges when normal money is borrowed, but this can’t be done unless the new money is to be used to pay for inputs available in the town; it can’t pay for imported cement for instance.)

Following is the strategy that I think is most valuable. Consider again what happens in the above scenario, when our CDC sets up a community garden and invites people to come and work in it. When time contributions are recorded with the intention of sharing produce later in proportion to contributions, these slips of paper function like an IOU or “promissory note” (although that’s not what they are.). They can be used to “buy” garden produce when it becomes available. They are a form of money which enables everyone to keep track of how much work, producing and providing they have done and how great a claim they have on what’s been produced. The extremely important point about the design and use of this currency is that it helps in getting those idle people into producing to meet some of their own needs. Obviously the introduction of the currency was not the most important element in the process; organising the “firm” was the key factor. Also obvious is the way the currency works; you can see what its desirable effects are. So just introducing a currency of some kind does not necessarily have any desirable effect and it is crucial to do it in a way that you know will have definite and valuable effects.

At a later stage we can use our currency to start trading with firms in the old economy. We can find restaurants for instance willing to sell us meals which we can pay for with our money. They will accept payment in our money if they can then spend that money buying vegetables and labour from us in Economy B. But note that the normal shops in the town cannot accept our money and we in Economy B cannot buy from them, unless there is something we can sell to them. They can’t sell things to us, accepting our money, unless they can use that money. Nothing significant can be achieved unless people acquire the capacity to produce and sell things that others want. So the crucial task here for the Community Development co-op look for things we in Economy B might sell to the normal firms in the town.
Councils can facilitate this process, for example by accepting our new money in part payment of their rates—but again only if there is something they can spend the money on, that is, goods and services they need that we in Economy B can provide. Therefore the CDC must look for these possibilities.

Sometimes it makes sense for a council to issue a currency to enable use of local resources, especially labour, to build an infrastructure without having to borrow and pay interest to external banks. This can only be done for those inputs that are available locally. If for instance the cement for the swimming pool has to be imported then it will have to be paid for in national currency, but it would be a mistake to borrow normal money to pay the workers if they are available in the town. They can be paid in specially printed new money with which they are able to pay (part of) their rates. Note however that the council then has the problem of what to do with these payments. If it burns them the council has actually paid for the pool via reduced normal money rate income, and will have to reduce services to the town accordingly. Better to keep the money perpetually in use within a new Economy B, so those workers and the council can go on providing things to each other.
Now consider some ways of introducing a new currency that will not have desirable effects.

What would happen if the council or a charity just gave a lot of new money to poor people, and got some shops to agree to accept it as payment for goods they sell? The recipients would soon spend it…and be without jobs and poor again. The shops would hold lots of new money…but not be able to spend it buying anything they need. (They could use it to buy from each other, but would have no need to do this, because they were already able to buy the few things they needed from each other using normal money.) Again if things are not to gum up it must be possible for the shopkeepers in the old economy to use their new money purchasing something from those poor people, and that’s not possible unless they can produce things within a new Economy B.

Sometimes the arrangement is for people to buy new notes using normal money. This is just substituting, and achieves nothing for the town economy. What’s the point of people who would have used dollars now buying using “eco”s they have bought? Again there is no effect of bringing unused productive capacity into action.

What about the argument that local currencies encourage local purchasing because they can’t be spent outside the town? This reveals confusion. Anyone who understands the importance of buying local will do so as much as they can, regardless of what currency they have. Anyone who doesn’t will buy what’s cheapest, which is typically an imported item. Obviously what matters here is getting people to understand why it’s important to buy local; just issuing a local currency will make no significant difference.

Similarly, currencies which depreciate with time miss the point and are unnecessary. Anyone who understands the situation does not need to be penalised for holding new money and not spending it. In any case it’s wrong-headed to set out to encourage spending; people should buy as little as they can, and any economy in which you feel an obligation to spend to make work for someone else is not an acceptable economy. In a sensible economy there is only enough work, producing and spending and use of money as is necessary to ensure all have sufficient for a good quality of life.

Conclusion

The TransitionTowns movement is characterised by a remarkable level of enthusiasm and energy. I think this reflects the long pent up disenchantment with consomer-capitalist society and a desire for something better. There is a powerful case that the only way out of the alarming global predicament we are in has to be via a Transition Towns movement of some kind. To our great good fortune one has burst on the scene. But I worry that it could very easily fail to make a significant difference. My hope is that the foregoing thoughts will help to ensure that it does become the means whereby we get through to a sustainable and just world.

Appendix: An indication of the limits to growth case re the global

situation.
Consider some basic aspects of our situation. I have detailed this case in several sources including http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/ and will only refer here to a few of the main themes.

• If all the estimated 9 billion people likely to be living on earth after 2050 were to consume resources at the present per capita rate in rich countries, world annual resource production rates would have to be about 8 times as great as they are now.

• It is now widely thought that global petroleum supply will peak within a decade, and be down to half the present level by about 2030.

• “Footprint analysis” indicates that the amount of productive land required to provide one person in Australia with food, water, energy and settlement area is about 7- 8 ha. The US figure is closer to 12 ha. If 9 billion people were to live as Australians do, approximately 70 billion ha of productive land would be required. However the total amount available on the planet is only in the region of 8 billion ha. In other words our rich world footprint is about 10 times as big as it will ever be possible for all people to have.

• It is increasingly being thought that in order to prevent dangerous increase in global warming all CO2 emissions will have to be totally eliminated by 2050. There are good reasons for concluding that this is not possible in a consumer society, firstly because the alternative energy sources such as the sun and wind cannot meet demand, (Trainer, 2008) and even if they could there isn’t time to do so.

The point which such figures makes glaringly obvious is that it is totally impossible for all to have the ”living standards” we have taken for granted in rich countries like Australia. We are not just a little beyond sustainable levels of resource demand and ecological impact – we are far beyond sustainable levels.

However the main worry is not the present levels of resource use and ecological impact discussed above, it is the levels we will rise to given the obsession with constantly increasing volumes of production. The supreme goal in all countries is to raise incomes, “living standards” and the GDP as much as possible, constantly and without any idea of a limit. That is, the most important goal is economic growth.

If we assume a) a 3% p.a. economic growth, b) a population of 9 billion, c) all the world’s people rising to the “living standards” we in the rich world would have in 2070 given 3% growth until then, the total volume of world economic output would be 60 times as great as it is now.

So even though the present levels of production and consumption are grossly unsustainable the determination to have continual increase in income and economic output will multiply these towards absurdly impossible levels in coming decades.

Such enormous multiples rule out any possibility that technical advance can enable us to continue the pursuit of growth and affluence while greater energy efficiency, recycling effort, pollution control etc. deals with the resulting resource and ecological impacts.

The second major fault built into our society is that its economic system is massively unjust. We in rich countries could not have anywhere near our present “living standards” if we were not taking far more than our fair share of world resources. Our per capita consumption of items such as petroleum is around 17 times that of the poorest half of the world’s people. The rich 1/5 of the world’s people are consuming around 3/4 of the resources produced. Many people get so little that 800 million are hungry and more than that number have dangerously dirty water to drink. Three billion live on $2 per day or less.
This grotesque injustice is primarily due to the fact that the global economy operates on market principles. In a market need is totally irrelevant and is ignored. Resources and goods go mostly to those who are richer, because they can offer to pay more for them. Thus we in rich countries get almost all of the scarce oil and timber traded, while billions of people in desperate need get none.

Even more importantly, the market system explains why Third World development is so very inappropriate to the needs of Third World people. What is developed is not what is needed; it is always what will make most profit for the few people with capital to invest. Thus there is development of export plantations and cosmetic factories but not development of farms and firms in which poor people can produce for themselves the things they need. Many countries such as Haiti get no development at all because it does not suit anyone with capital to develop anything there…even though they have the land, water, talent and labour to produce most of the things they need for a good quality of life.

These are some of the reasons why conventional development can be regarded as a form of plunder. The Third World has been developed into a state whereby its land and labour benefit the rich, not Third World people. Rich world “living standards” could not be anywhere near as high as they are if the global economy was just.
These considerations of sustainability and global economic justice show that our predicament is extreme and cannot be solved in consumer-capitalist society. The problems are caused by some of the fundamental structures and processes of this society. There is no possibility of having an ecologically sustainable, just, peaceful and morally satisfactory society if we allow market forces and the profit motive to be the major determinant of what happens, or if we seek economic growth and ever-higher “living standards” without limit. Many people who claim to be concerned about the fate of the planet refuse to face up to the fact that this society cannot be fixed. The problems can only be solved by vast and radical change to some very different systems.

Ted Trainer
18.5.09

Republished on carolynbaker.net.

The Property Council of Australia's "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference" was the scene of lively protest for the first time as demonstrators against unsustainable population growth and infrastructure expansion handed out leaflets about peak oil and population to incoming conference participants. See also the second part of: Melbourne 2008: Life in a destruction zone

Today outside the Property Council's "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference", there was some unexpected - but long awaited - activity. For one hour during the registration at the beginning of the conference 9 people from Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) and Beyond Oil in South Australia (BOSA) greeted conference attenders with a big SPA banner and handouts for all the delegates.

Placard: Sustainable Growth is a scam!

Their placards were much in evidence, bearing slogans, including, "Sustainable Growth is a SCAM", "Sustainable Growth oxyMORONIC", "TODs mean too many BODs". etc.

Most conference attenders received a handout from the demonstrators. SPA Member and ex-Democrat, Dr John Coulter, was interviewed by Channel 10, although noise from traffic made this hard to hear.

Property Council Australia (PCA) conference organisers looked stunned as demonstrators posed for photographs with international invited speakers, but many in the throng appeared to have a good time.

Protest outside more cost effective than ticket to conference

The cost of attending the "Sustainable Urban Growth Conference" is beyond the means of most ordinary people. Protests outside such events seem like the only way that Australians can show what they think of the policies that the PCA boasts of influencing the government to adopt.

From a Property Council powerpoint presentation slide

Policies to grow Australia's population, reduce the taxes that property developers, investors, financiers and realtors pay, and policies for endlessly renovating and extending big infrastructure and housing, despite constant resistance from people whose lives are adversely affected by these policies, which increase the cost of living and decrease quality of life.

BOSA hits the right target

Beyond Oil South Australia is a group which supports radical action by government and individuals to cope with a future constrained oil supply and high petroleum prices. It seeks to bring about a clear understanding of where economic growth is leading and that growth requires an increasing oil supply. It supports population stabilisation and eventual reduction.

Population sociologist compares situation in 2002 at the Bracks Melbourne Population Summit

Population sociologist, Sheila Newman, who wrote The Growth Lobby and its Absence (2002) about how Australia is dominated by the growth lobby and France is not, commented, "I handed out a press release on behalf of SPA Victoria naming the members of the growth lobby's peak body (which was APop then and is now the PCA) on the steps of the Steve Bracks Melbourne Population Summit in 2002. The Financial Review ran the press release in its entirety, but SPA failed to take the matter up more widely, which always struck me as a tragic lost opportunity, because, since then the growth lobby has become frighteningly powerful and population growthism has been quasi-normalised by governments with the help of the mainstream press. Recently, however, Mark O'Connor came out with a book called Overloading Australia, which was distributed by SPA and which talked about the Growth Lobby."

Growth lobby undermining democracy

"It is great that they are now linking the push for population to the development lobby. Children should be taught of this menace to democracy and sustainability at school."

Newman said that, "Unfortunately democracy has gone out the window as government simply takes its directions from the PCA and similar growth lobby groups, which are internationally powerful and very wealthy. With the public almost excluded from decisions about their towns and cities, there is nothing left to do but picket the lobby groups."

"Let's hope that this is the beginning of a whole new trend in grass-roots democracy." Newman is also the editor of The Final Energy Crisis, (Pluto Press, UK, 2008), which is about Peak Oil, alternative energies and population scenarios.

Michael Lardelli of BOSA can be contacted on E-mail: michael.lardelli[at]adelaide.edu.au or phone: (08) 8303-3212

Introduction: The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is seeking senate approval for an announced a $42 billion Nation Building and Jobs Plan to support jobs and invest in future long term economic growth. The 'plan' includes "five one-off cash bonuses (of $950) for eligible individuals". These are proposed for Australian workers whose taxable income was $100,000 or less in 2007-08. There is also a Single Income Family Bonus to support eligible families with one income earner; a Farmer's Hardship Bonus paid to drought affected farmers and farm dependent small business; owners receiving exceptional circumstances related income support; a Back to School Bonus of $950 per child from low- and middle-income families; $950 paid to eligible students and people returning study to help with the costs of education and training.

Other measures the Senate is being asked to support are: free ceiling insulation for around 2.7 million eligible Australian homes; building or upgrading a building in every one of Australia's 9,540 primary schools; building more than 20,000 new, low-income social housing dwellings and defence homes; a temporary business investment tax break for small and general businesses buying eligible assets; significantly increasing funding for local community infrastructure and local road projects.

Commentary:

While I appreciate the seeming urgency of the 42 billion dollar plan - I totally agree with the opposition and minor parties' demand that the scheme be at least given a senate review.

Yes we are in very difficult times, but what amounts to a knee-jerk response, while politically possibly advantageous, from a long term view is very foolish.

... I can fairly predict that at least 15% will be siphoned off, to nobody's benefit.

Schemes like this (even though they may have had a far longer gestation period than we tend to be told) are wonderful for the opportunist "white shoe' brigade - and I can fairly predict that at least 15% will be siphoned off, to nobody's benefit.

The only component of the scheme that I can wholeheartedly agree with is the roof insulation - but even then, it requires a far more coherent energy target - as 'roof insulation' can mean damn near anything. Are there any targets - R values, appropriate forms of insulation, what about roof space venting?? Different areas of Australia require different methods - up here in the tropics - simple sisalation (double sided aluminium foil sarking) does wonders - but not on the tablelands - where you need something more substantial, and even more substantial measures are required as you progress south. There is no indication that what we are seeing here is not a 'feel good' "one size fits all" approach - which is exceedingly foolish.

I'm not sure about the primary school improvements - after seeing the 'air-conditioner in every school' issue of last year - which raises the State's carbon footprint significally (especially as most country school buildings were never designed to accommodate A/C - being neither insulated or draft-proofed). Plus the need for A/C is restricted to only a few days a year. Maybe some schools could use some upgrades - but this seems to be a 'pork barrel' issue.

Given the rapidly approaching issue of "Peak Oil", road infrastructure would seem to be the least useful use of the money - and the use with the least useful benefits in the future. Sure - many road projects are "shovel ready" - but that doesn't make them appropriate - Facing the inevitability of a fuel constrained future (very soon) - we need to be putting the money in to the provision of public transport and light rail where appropriate.

Some obvious areas - that would have a huge carbon footprint impact - would be the fitting of solar HWS to as many homes as possible.

Another - creation of "forest regeneration corps" - to re-plant our millions of hectares of marginal land that was cleared - because clearing land was Government policy at the time. Associated with appropriate training - such a corps could be really important for the long-term "carbon -neutralisation' of Australia.

And that's just a start.

The title of the article is the clue to its meaning, "Populate without perishing". Ziggy Switkowski, who was on Australian Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear power team, is writing for the Murdoch press, which is always spruiking for population growth. If you read carefully, Switkowski doesn't actually say that Oz's 21 millions (plus) are bad; he says what they do is important. (Fine political distinction usually used to promote or excuse more population growth).

Ziggy is alluding to climate change, but he is not, I think, talking down Australia's population, any more than is Frank Lowy, of the Lowy [Climate Change] Foundation.

Why do I say this?

There are a bunch of investors and developers out there who seem to be creating a ... um... climate ... where the idea of population growth and fuel depletion and climate change can be used to promote the need for nuclear power and therefore to promote investment in it.

That might be defensible on the face of it, since the Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) of conventional nuclear has become relatively defensible with the the centrifugal separation of U235 from U238, if some very rich men, associations, and politicians did not seem to be relying on further driving up population numbers to enhance the chances of schemes for giant new nuclear-powered cities getting up. They intend to invest, not just in nuclear - and nuclear may simply be the flagship that will take a loss further on after they get out early with profits from land-speculation - but in big cities which they have managed to goad Australian governments to promise them. (An early document talked about somewhere between 50 and 150 huge new cities all around Australia.)

Continuous massive development schemes rely for funding on gambling on profits from continuous land speculation, but this is not possible if there is no project, however unsustainable, upon which further population and industrial growth can be pinned. Some big development speculators would be interested in the land and infrastructure associated with big new cities that population growth they have been promised by politicians (without agreement having been obtained from the community) will bring, far more than in investing in the power and plants themselves. They have been more or less guaranteed large dependent new cities to consume the nuclear power. They will make money on selling off land in advance and in floating schemes for other infrastructure - at least this is what they hope for.

Never mind that the nuclear power plants - at one $2bUSD plant per million or so Australians, just to provide per-capita electricity needs now [1] (not future expanded needs or replacement of fossil fuel) will probably never be achieved due to the financial cost of these plants and materials in a debt-ridden country in a debt-ridden world (where ultimately population and demand will fall in line with fossil-fuel). The gamble is that the promoters of these big city schemes will get away with funding the initial big ideas, leaving a host of unseen costs and unresolvable debt to smaller investors, and a gutted economic and political system for Australia with vast numbers of people in worse poverty than landless Mexicans, without a wealthy USA close-by to emigrate to.

In Australia the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (AATES) put together a document for a scheme like this a couple of years ago for government, with the collaboration of the Australian Multicultural Foundation. Note that Scanlon has also invested in tollways. Article and links to it below:

Scanlon report underpins threat to Australian democracy
Posted April 23rd, 2008 by Sheila Newman

What organisation has only 24 members of which the first ten comprise the current Prime Minister and nine past and present Australian Prime Ministers or Prime Ministerial contenders? And why would they be so dedicated to an organisation with a focus so antithetical to democracy and Australians? Read on.

[1] Figure based on French nuclear electric provision per capita in 2009 as provided by France 2 News covering provision of electricity during interruption to gas supplies from Russia and during severe cold spell. Note that Australians actually use more electricity per capita than the French and they also use more petroleum and more coal.]