I’ve always tended to be a fan of globalization – maybe as much in a spiritual sense as an economic one. As a high school student, I loved reading Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the emerging “noosphere”, a growing field of global consciousness. I was a huge fan of Arthur C. Clarke’s book, Childhood’s End, in which a new generation of children are born with extranormal powers, communicate with each other telepathically, and ultimately reshape themselves and the earth into a self-aware mega-organism, one of many in an infinite universe.
When the internet came along, I saw that as evidence that, at least on a crude level of text, pictures, music, etc, an infosphere was emerging. It opened communication, created a forum for dissenting voices, and made all kinds of products and ideas available. The internet is a miracle of innovation, and has made possible a whole new class of entrepreneurial, home based professionals, including myself. It’s not global consciousness, but it’s a step in the right direction.
When NAFTA came in, I was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. After having lived in the US all my life, I found that products in Halifax were overpriced, of low quality, and limited selection. That was the late 1980’s. As NAFTA took effect, I had as much choice as I’d had in the States, at lower prices. I thought that was a good thing. And, it created opportunities for people in that somewhat out-of-the-way, but very creative, place to find new export markets for software, music, film, and other knowledge products.
There are lots of problems with globalization – but I’ve tended to think many of these could ultimately be fixed with sufficient attention to labor and environmental standards as part of international agreements.
Two years ago I met Michael Brownlee. Michael was the head of Boulder Going Local, now known as Transition Boulder County. The premise of Transition is that, with peak oil, the cost of transportating goods and people will become so high that we will have to create more economic and social value at the community level – the way humans have lived for most of our history.
I have to admit I was skeptical at first. Boulder County, Colorado is not a place that has supported a subsistence economy since the days of the Arapahoe. When my industrial age European-descended forebears arrived here after the Civil War, Colorado was already a commodity economy. The railroad transported immigrants and capital west, and gold, wheat and sugar beets east. Civil engineers like my great-grandfather Alpheus McNitt built irrigation ditches to bring water from the mountains into what had been called the Great American Desert.
So, isn’t re-localization just wishful thinking? Seems not. Last week Michael and partner Lynette-Marie Hanthorne held a workshop outlining the ideas of David Holmgren, one of the Australian founders of the Permaculture movement. Holmgren makes the argument that we are still living in the post-Enlightenment culture, based on a fundamental belief in human brilliance. The whole modern worldview, with its belief in progress and innovation, is based on this assumption.
But what if all the marvels of 21st century life as we know it, are in fact more the product of cheap oil than of human brilliance? I resist this idea. It sounds Marxist, the idea that our consciousness is determined by our material circumstances. I believe that thought generates our world. I’m not new agey about this. I recognize there are limits – the inevitable cycle of birth, old age, and death we all live through. The influence of parents, schools and other cultural institutions on the stories we tell ourselves, stories about who we are and what we are capable of. Nonetheless, we create the world we live in.
But the evidence for peak oil, as a constraint that we’re colliding with at 90 miles an hour, is compelling. Holmgren makes the connection between cheap oil and social breakdown. Our ability to drive many miles to our private home with our automatic garage door opener, where we don’t talk to our neighbors. Each in his/her own unit, with its own toaster. Our isolation, our addictive behaviors, which are epidemic. The fear we have of each other. Maybe life’s not so good with cheap oil after all?
Holmgren lays out four possible future scenarios of post-peak oil “Energy Descent”:
Techno-Explosion: In which we discover a new source of limitless energy and blast off into a science fiction future of no material limits. Given the dystopian view of social breakdown he lays out, it also sounds like a recipe for Timothy Leary – inspired psychosis. Perhaps we could colonize space, and humans will multiply infinitely through the galaxy and beyond. Hopefully the pharmaceutical industry will keep up and they’ll get that Holodeck invented after all.
Green-Tech Stability: After a little bumpy period, we learn to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. We don’t continue our Evel Knievel – like jump into space, but settle down into a stable, slow/no growth pattern, in which we relax into an abundant, but less frenetic lifestyle. This is the point of view advocated by many of us who believe in innovative, capitalist solutions, eg Al Gore.
Creative Descent / Earth Stewardship: Using permaculture principles, we descend gently but steadily into a localized, subsistence economy that features greater value in community and ecological harmony. Population subsides from the current level to something that respects the earth’s carrying capacity – maybe 1 billion or so?
Collapse: Think end of the Empire, Dark Ages, warlords, barbarian hordes, moats, only with automatic weapons. Not a pretty prospect.
Michael challenged us, not to believe one idea or the other necessarily, but to take a hard look at what idea we were holding of the future. And to examine the basis for that view.
I come down in the Green-Tech Stability camp. But, I wonder, can we recognize the challenge and change the system and our own worldview fast enough? And what kind of hard-facts slap in the face will we need to get moving?
