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OUR JOURNEY HOME: THE POWER OF COMMUNITY
Our Journey Home: The Power of Community
Megan Quinn Outreach Director The Community Solution
Keynote at Going Local! Solutions to the Accelerating Energy Crisis Boulder Valley Relocalization Boulder, CO January 14, 2006
[ED. NOTE: Jim's comments are in red bold.]
Introduction
Good afternoon. I’d like to start by sharing the wisdom of a Hopi elder.
Throughout this powerful conference I have seen that you are the ones that the community of Boulder has been waiting for. I have been so inspired by all of you, your energy, your passion, your desire to learn. Your commitment to Boulder and its future.
Where do we go from here? How do we move forward keeping this energy, this passion, this commitment alive? When you step out that door, you will face a world that has consumed more than 30 million barrels of oil since you walked in this morning. You will confront ignorance, apathy, doubt, and denial.
But you will know about the inevitability of world oil production peaking and beginning its irreversible decline within the next few years. You will know that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and in more than 60 other countries since then, that global oil discoveries have declined over the last 40 years, and that today we consume five barrels of oil for every barrel we discover.
You will know about how unrelenting population growth, made possible largely by cheap, abundant oil, brought us ever quicker to the brink of peak. You will have inspiration – options and solutions such as developing local food and renewable energy systems, car sharing, and conserving energy. And you will have each other, a community of support.
My theme is “Our Journey Home: The Power of Community.” I’m going to talk about how community defines us as humans, and how peak oil provides an opportunity for the resurgence of community in this world. I will talk about the immediate and real problem at hand, which is not peak oil, but our over-consumptive way of life. After that, I will offer some strategies for how we can move forward, as a community, and re-create Boulder as a model and an inspiration in a post-peak oil world.
Then I will introduce and show a pre-view version of my organization’s new documentary film, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.” I first went to Cuba in 2001 as an American college student at the University of Havana. I returned as part of a documentary crew in October 2004 to capture on video the Cuban experience of being the first nation in the world to transition to a post-peak oil era. For Cubans it was more of a cliff than a slope, as they lost 50 percent of their annual oil imports overnight when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
When the crisis hit in Cuba, Cubans didn’t have the time or money to invest in high-tech solutions. So the Cuban people acted at the grassroots level and survived. What Cuba teaches us is that the solution to peak oil is in our communities and in our individual actions. And that the solution is primarily in our way of life, not in our sources of energy.
I’m not a petroleum geologist or an energy investment banker. My work, my experience, and my passion are in the peak oil solutions movement. I have been writing and speaking on this issue for three years. So I believe I have some perspectives to share. But I’m really just like you – someone who is concerned about the future of humanity and the earth and dedicated to work until my final moment to preserve this beautiful planet for the coming generations.
We publish a quarterly newsletter, run a website on peak oil and have several other major projects including a model post-peak oil neighborhood-community we call Agraria, and Peak Oil Workshops for Community Leaders, which seek to train people to educate and mobilize their community on peak oil. Two organizers of this conference – Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn – just completed this training in December in the community of Stelle, Illinois. The next workshop will be there in the Spring.
We are a small non-profit organization based in the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio – but our ambitions are big. We were founded in 1940 by Arthur Morgan, a visionary, a prominent engineer and the first president of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Above all, he believed in the value of small, local community living. He wrote several books on the subject and founded the organization to continue that work. By small, local community he meant small towns, yes, but more than that, a way of living and of interacting with your neighbors – of deep relationships, of cooperation, of mutual support, and the sharing of common resources.
But a few years ago the organization began to question the continuing relevance of small, local communities in an age of large cities and ever-sprawling suburbs, an individualistic culture, mass entertainment, declining community involvement and civic engagement – in an age too, of rampant consumerism and in a world where common resources were not shared and conserved, but depleted and destroyed.
We began to wonder: Is small, local community extinct? Answer this: Do we still have the desire to connect with other human beings? To develop strong relationships? To care about our friends, as well as our family? To preserve resources for future generations? To take care of the earth and our non-human community? Of course we do.
So community is not extinct, it is just sleeping – lying dormant in the depths of a dominant, impersonal, mass consumption society.
So we asked another question: How did we lose community? In answering this we discovered the role of oil.
Just as recently as 150 years ago, Boulder was a small, local, more-or-less sustainable community. Boulder residents lived locally, traded locally, got nearly all of the goods and services they needed to survive locally. 150 years ago most people around the world lived in small, local communities. But during the last century, the century of oil, this all changed. Oil was the best energy source we humans had ever come across. First of all, it has the highest concentration of energy of any fossil fuel, and secondly, it is liquid, which made it easier to store and transport. Imagine carrying a load of heavy, solid coal to fuel your car, or a huge tank of disperse natural gas. It just isn’t possible without oil.
Cheap, abundant oil gave us the opportunity for cheap, abundant transportation. So the apple from across the country was now cost competitive with the apple from down the street. Cheap abundant oil gave us urban sprawl, industrial agriculture, and globalized corporations. We watched as the family farms and the mom and pop stores went out of business; the small towns across America died; sustainable communities around the world disappeared; local living became rare, community went to sleep.
Our excessive and unmitigated use of oil over the last century destroyed community. Today we live globally, not locally. Our food, the essence of our survival, travels 1500 miles on average from the farm to our plate. Our clothes and manufactured products travel thousands of miles from Asia, South America, and elsewhere. This fossilized energy -- which powers our jetliners, SUVS, Hummers and the 18-wheel trucks which haul our foods and other commodities -- comes from all around the globe.
And whereas 150 years ago you knew all of the people that provided what you needed to survive, now these people are faceless. The Indonesian sweatshop seamstress, the Mexican migrant farm laborer, the oil rig operator in Kuwait – all of those people who provide our necessities are all faceless.
And those whose faces we do know – our neighbors – they are strangers. We have no economic relationships with them. We don’t share and conserve scarce local resources, but exploit seemingly abundant global resources. And with mass media and mass entertainment, we are losing social relationships with them. Why talk to your neighbor when you can be talked to by your TV?
So cheap and abundant oil has led to the loss of community. How then, do we reclaim community? Consider this: What if oil were no longer cheap and abundant, but scarce and expensive? Would the historical tide reserve itself? Would we experience a resurgence of community? Loss of community leads to estrangement among neighors which leads to the willingness of neighbors to exploint one another, such as our current poverty wage market.
That is exactly what we envision as global oil production peaks and begins its irreversible decline. Peak oil is an opportunity to reclaim community, to rebuild community, to re-create community.
So peak oil is the solution for community. But community is also the solution for peak oil. As our ability to live globally becomes more difficult due to rising fuel costs, we will need to re-develop the infrastructure to live locally.
And that is why we changed our organization’s name from Community Service to The Community Solution, and why we changed our mission from trying to keep this flicking flame of community alive, to creating a bold new vision for a post-peak oil world. A vision we call – The Journey Home.
The Journey Home
I’d like to say a few words about this, because I think it is important to bring peak oil into the whole context of human existence. We think the community solution is a journey home.
First of all, it is a journey, a path and not a destination. To illustrate the importance of this, I’d like to share a story about a student approaching a great martial arts master.
The student says, "I wish to become the finest martial artist in the land. How long must I study?” "Ten years at least,” the master answered. "Ten years is a long time,” said the student. "What if I studied twice as hard as all your other students?” "Twenty years,” replied the master. "Twenty years! What if I practiced day and night with all my effort?” "Thirty years,” was the master's reply. "How is it that each time I say I will work harder you say it will take longer?” the student asked. "The answer is clear, " said the master. “When one eye is fixed on your destination, there is only one eye left to find the way.
A valuable lesson, indeed. Once I went deep into peak oil I found myself living in the future more and more often. I was fixated on the possibilities, the scenarios – both positive and negative. We must always remember that tomorrow never comes, that we create our future today and that we must remain present and aware of that which guides us down the path.
While the destination is unclear, the direction of the path is becoming clearer each day. The path we need is toward sustainability and toward community. It is a cooperative and just path. Imagine, if you will, the path, or rather, the highway that society travels and the words that come to mind to describe its direction: consumptive, materialistic, competitive, unsustainable. As a society I think it is safe to say that we’re going in the wrong direction. We need a new path.
Secondly, it is a Journey Home. We call it The Journey Home because living in community is a way of living that has persisted for nearly all of human history. It is our essential nature. We need community to survive. We also need community to thrive.
The dominant culture of individualism and disconnection, which arose from the influx of cheap, abundant oil, is an aberration. It is an eddy of a greater flow which is the human story. Indeed more than 99.5 percent of our time on this planet has been spent in small mobile groups of a few dozen to a few hundred people, living more or less in balance with the earth. If all of human history, including some of our recent ancestors, was condensed into a 24-hour day – agriculture would have started in the last seven minutes and the age of oil and other fossil fuels the last seven seconds.
That is why all of us are fundamentally community-oriented and indeed, indigenous people. It is the basis for our genetic inheritance and our cultural memory and traditions. Stories like the Garden of Eden, which refer to our time as hunter-gathers, living in abundance, are still told.
So how to start our Journey Home? Well, as I once heard, we got into this situation one bad decision at a time, and we will get out of it one good decision at a time.
But this presupposes that we can make informed, enlightened decisions. Can we? Conventional economics assumes our highest goal is to pursue our self-interest -- accumulating as many material possessions as possible. And what about our biological drive to consume the resources of the planet without thought of depletion, population overshoot, or the impact on future generations?
Examples abound from Easter Island – where the people deforested the island to build large stone statues, causing the ecosystem to collapse and nearly all of the people to starve – to the famous reindeer who were introduced to an island with abundant food, then overgrazed and over reproduced, leading to a population overshoot and die off – to bacteria in a Petri dish, who multiplied one too many times, consuming all of their food and dying off.
How are we any different? How can we break the cycle of resource abundance, increased consumption, population growth, resource scarcity, and collapse? After all, the earth is, in effect, one big island, or one big Petri dish, isn’t it? Well, we humans have something that other animals do not have – we have the gift of foresight, of planning ahead. And now we see that our way of life may lead to our extinction.
I mentioned that peak oil is not the real problem – our way of life is the real problem. But what then is peak oil? Peak oil is a warning sign, a wake up call, that we are exceeding the ability of our planet to sustain us. Peak oil is a symptom of the industrial disease. If we do not change, if we cannot quickly adapt to a low-energy way of living through community, then continued exponential growth will take us over the cliff as oil production collapses.
The key word here is adapt. Adapting to changes in our environment is the success of the human beings. That is evolution. So what we need is not a revolution, but an evolution. We need both.
Now, you’re probably thinking: It’s easy to say that humanity needs to evolve or return to low energy living in community. But what actually can we do about it? The problem is so daunting – and we are just a few in a world of 6.3 billion people. And Boulder is just one small place with 100,000 people or so in a nation of 300 million, most of whom are living high energy lifestyles with little thought of other ways to live.
Well I hope to answer some of those questions. And I’ll start with a simple quote, my favorite quote:
The peak oil solutions movement is a very small, very thoughtful, and, as I’ve observed here today, exceptionally committed. I have no doubt that we in the peak oil solutions movement can have a major impact on the future of the world, nor do I have any doubt that you in the Boulder Re-localization movement can have a major impact on the future of Boulder.
So what are we to do? We know the problem – that our way of life is unsustainable. In the words of the late anthropologist Margaret Mead once again, “We are living beyond our means…we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.” So we know the problem.
We have an opportunity to wake people up – that’s peak oil. We have a small, group of thoughtful, committed people who are aware – that’s all of you. And finally, we have a vision of where we need to go – The Journey Home, The Community Solution, Re-localization.
What do we do first? I would argue that we first need to educate our communities, to give people the information, the knowledge to realize the impact of their way of life – the impact of their decisions on themselves, other people, the environment, and future generations. Many people are already aware of these impacts, and they are our natural allies. They include those in the renewable energy movement, the global climate change awareness movement, the simplicity movement, the communities movement, and the environmental movement. But the majority of people aren’t aware of the impacts of their lifestyle, and they are not going to change their lifestyle if they don’t see its harmful effects.
So how are we to reach them? Again, peak oil is the opportunity here. In exploring the peak oil issue much is revealed: how dependent our economic system is on fossil fuels, How burning fossil fuels affects the environment and our health, and how using fossil fuels results in global inequity, geopolitical confrontation, accelerating globalization, as well as continuing urban and suburban sprawl and farmland destruction. The energy lens, and particularly the peak oil lens, is quite illuminating, as many of you know by now.
I have an important suggestion to make here. That is not to view your role as convincing people or converting people, but helping people discover it for themselves. Peak oil is in some ways intuitive, isn’t it? And after all, it is ultimately their choice whether or not to plunge into the river.
So help them discover that their conveniences, their luxuries, are not without a huge price. Help them discover that the future will not be a Jetsons paradise. Help them discover that they are dependent on energy and therefore vulnerable. Most importantly, help them discover the essence of community and compassion that is within them, that has been dormant, and help them realize how to re-incorporate it into their lives.
What next? They’ve had some time on their own, to come to their own realizations. Well, if they’re like me, then at this point they’re going to go through what has been called peak oil despair. I know few people that have not gone through it. Part of this despair, at least for me, was the sense of powerlessness that I had. Everyone else seemed to be sleepwalking into the future while I was wide awake and keenly aware of the cliff ahead. I felt like my message was falling on deaf ears, and that as every moment went by we were getting closer and closer to the end.
I felt like a fish out of water. I had this whole understanding of another reality – a reality of an energy constrained world – and everyone else that I would talk to, those fish who had never broken the surface of the water and seen another reality, would laugh at me, saying that it didn’t exist. They would come up with all sorts of reasons why it could not be possible that there would be a world outside of the water, because that was all that they had ever known.
So I was very discouraged because I felt alone and powerless. Then I had a realization, and this saying brings it home – “It is not possible to know what’s possible,” and that really is the ultimate message of hope. We are not doomed to one fate or another, nor are we powerless. My sense of powerlessness was an illusion perpetuated by those to whom we give our power. But just as we give it, we can take it away.
This is the point where I realized that there was hope, and from there I could act. Despair leads to inaction, whereas hope gives us the strength to act.
So what do we do now? I mentioned taking your power back from those to whom you give it. Another way I like to think of it is disconnecting ourselves from the system. Now, its certainly not easy or quick. It takes time and effort, and most importantly, it takes the development of another system into which we can connect. The answer is not in fighting or trying to change the existing system, but in creating an alternative system which people can join. When the old system loses its people, its power, it will dissolve. We have to be on guard since the old system will actively fight us since we are a threat (real or preceived) to the old system-- namely the super-rich who are heavily invested in the old system. Example: the Investor and Managerial classes have fought unions for decades and today many, if not most, states are “right to work” -- or “right to starve” states. Montana, at one point, was the lowest wage state in the nation, lower than Mississippii and Louisana.
That is why this alternative system is so important. We are not all going live in the wilderness. A few hundred years from now, that is a possibility. But now we have to take small steps toward our community future. New institutions adapted to the reality of declining energy is how we will get there, and how we can avoid outright collapse.
What do these institutions look like? Well, as you all know by now, a key word is local. Oil allowed us to expand far beyond our local resources by providing cheap transportation, but without it we need to re-develop local institutions. And everywhere in the world these local institutions will look very different, as they are all adapted to their specific resources.
Examples of the Possible
So does this mean will we have to wait for every community in the world to re-localize? Do we have that kind of time?
I don’t think that we do have that kind of time and I don’t think we have to wait. All we have to do is create a few models, examples of what is possible, evidence there is an option to the dominant system, another way of living. And we have to show that this model is preferable to the current system, and better adapted to an energy-constrained world.
In other words, we have to create a place for the fish who jump out of the water to live and survive. And we are the leaders who must create that place. If we don’t, no one will disconnect from the system because they have nothing into which they can connect. Correct, the issue is how do the majoirty of folks transition from the mainstream to the sidestream such that the latter becomes the former?
Models instruct and inspire. First of all, they instruct others to proceed, not by creating something for others to copy, but by sharing strategies and suggestions, and what works and doesn’t work, so we don’t all have to make the same mistakes twice. Secondly, they inspire others to do it. They show what is possible, and bring hope.
We need models at all levels. At the national level we have Cuba. And that is the powerful story we tell in our documentary, which I will talk about shortly. But we also need models at the community level – and that is what Boulder can be. Finally, we need models at the individual level, and that is what all of you can be.
Starting with the individual level, we have to practice what we preach. It’s as easy as that. For me, it was a matter of taking personal responsibility for the impact of my decisions, of my lifestyle on the earth, on people around the world, and future generations. Then I started to look beyond that, at the impact of my society, to which I was indirectly contributing, if only with my complacency.
So what do we do? I recently heard some very practical advise: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Let’s start with the last one – where you are. Start by looking at where you are, how you’re using energy. What energy and material inputs sustain your lifestyle? How much? Where are they from? What pollution and waste do you generate? Where does it go? What are the results? The key is to account for, and take responsibility for, of all that flows into us and all that flows out of us. In many ways, this is a radical, new idea and if adopted by more people, could have dramatic effects.
Now let’s take the part “with what you have.” Look at what you have that will help you to transition to a lower energy lifestyle and how you can use it. What skills do you have? What skills can you learn? What are your assets, financial and otherwise? Your relationships, your connections? What about your personality can be beneficial in making the necessary changes?
Finally, “Do what you can.” Start slowly. Take small steps. Not everybody is going to be able to build a brand new energy efficient house, or move to a self-sufficient community in the mountains. Just do what you can. Set achievable goals – like “I’m going to reduce my energy use by 10 percent this year, and here’s how.” While 10 percent is clearly not enough, we will find that it renews us and motivates us to do more. So after you’ve achieved that, set another goal.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Set a personal example and share it with others. Share with them your successes and your challenges. Involve those around you in what you’re doing. Show your joy and passion. This, along with a commitment to support them, will inspire lifestyle changes in them as well.
The Community Solution is now working on an Internet forum for people to share their individual stories on reducing their energy use, so that people can learn effective strategies. I will share mine: I live in a small town – Yellow Springs, Ohio – walk to work, do most of my shopping locally, garden, preserve my own food, share a 500-square-foot apartment and keep the thermostat at about 60 degrees in the winter (which flannel sheets make much more comfortable I might add). In the future I plan to further reduce my use of the car by only driving on weekends, canning food, and learning about wild edible plants.
I would like everyone in the audience to take a moment and think of what they have done, and what they plan to do to reduce their energy use. If you have a piece of paper in front of you, write it down. Make a commitment to yourself. Let’s just take one minute.
But while it is critical to take action in your own life, it is equally critical to take action at the community level.
How do you begin to do so? Again, start from where you are, actually from the seat you are now in. Look around you. This is the beginning of a very exciting movement in Boulder. Boulder can lead the country. Boulder can be a model, a model that instructs and inspires.
So here you are. Now – what do you have? What are the assets of Boulder? I would suggest the size, the University of Colorado, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the abundant sunshine, the progressive-minded population, the presence of the top leadership of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA in Denver, and certainly you have the work of Michael Brownlee, Lynette Marie Hanthorn and the other organizers of this conference. I’m sure you can come up with many assets that Boulder has to help it to become a model. Then, look at what are the key problems or challenges in re-localizing Boulder? Who would lose the most? Who would gain the most?
Finally – what can you do? What is possible? What is the easiest change to make in Boulder? What will take more time? What is the most important change to make? With whom must you work for these changes? There are lots of questions to explore.
But your opportunity is so great because you have come this far. I cannot think of another city in the country as large as Boulder, that has come as far as Boulder. So the experience of Boulder can teach other communities how to move forward to re-localize.
And in terms of inspiration, I am inspired already by the people of Boulder coming together to explore this issue today. I know this organization and this movement will continue.
I don’t know what Boulder will or should look like 5 or 50 years from now – That’s for Boulder to decide. But I do know that in a few years, I may come back to Boulder with a documentary crew to help share your achievements with the world. For you are the ones Boulder has been waiting for.
And finally, at the national level, we have the story of Cuba.
In Cuba, the people didn't hope for someone to save them after the Soviet Union – their oil lifeline – collapsed. Instead, they took the initiative in their communities and survived. Cubans didn't have the time or funds to invest in nuclear power, or large-scale wind and solar energy so they cut back their energy use and developed small-scale renewable energy projects. Their fossil-fuel based large-scale agricultural production collapsed. So they started growing food organically in their backyards and neighborhoods and on their rooftops. And they couldn't fuel their aging cars, so they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.
We met many amazing people in our travels in Cuba. Nelson Aguila, an engineer turned farmer, raises chickens, rabbits, and gerbils for the neighborhood on his rooftop. Carmen Lopez, a permaculture instructor, teaches urban residents how to grow their own food.
We visited "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills, where individual solar panels power radios and lamps, and provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room. We visited an organic farm in downtown Havana that uses hand tools and labor to save energy, worm cultivation to create productive soil, and drip irrigation to save water.
Throughout our travels, we saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people. We often heard the mantra "Si, se puede." Yes it can be done.
And perhaps the most powerful lesson that Cuba can teach is the lesson of Community. Amidst 16 hour daily blackouts, shortages of food, medicines, and basic materials – Cubans never stopped smiling, never stopped laughing, and never stopped celebrating.
Let me end with this thought from Margaret Mead: “Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does dance.”
Thank you.
Megan Quinn Outreach Director The Community Solution
Keynote at Going Local! Solutions to the Accelerating Energy Crisis Boulder Valley Relocalization Boulder, CO January 14, 2006
[ED. NOTE: Jim's comments are in red bold.]
Introduction
Good afternoon. I’d like to start by sharing the wisdom of a Hopi elder.
“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the hour. Do not look outside yourself for the leader.”
He continued: "But this could be a good time! There is a river flowing now, very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold onto the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and will suffer greatly.
"Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above water.
"See who is in there with you, and celebrate!
"The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration: We are the ones we've been waiting for."
Throughout this powerful conference I have seen that you are the ones that the community of Boulder has been waiting for. I have been so inspired by all of you, your energy, your passion, your desire to learn. Your commitment to Boulder and its future.
Where do we go from here? How do we move forward keeping this energy, this passion, this commitment alive? When you step out that door, you will face a world that has consumed more than 30 million barrels of oil since you walked in this morning. You will confront ignorance, apathy, doubt, and denial.
But you will know about the inevitability of world oil production peaking and beginning its irreversible decline within the next few years. You will know that U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and in more than 60 other countries since then, that global oil discoveries have declined over the last 40 years, and that today we consume five barrels of oil for every barrel we discover.
You will know about how unrelenting population growth, made possible largely by cheap, abundant oil, brought us ever quicker to the brink of peak. You will have inspiration – options and solutions such as developing local food and renewable energy systems, car sharing, and conserving energy. And you will have each other, a community of support.
My theme is “Our Journey Home: The Power of Community.” I’m going to talk about how community defines us as humans, and how peak oil provides an opportunity for the resurgence of community in this world. I will talk about the immediate and real problem at hand, which is not peak oil, but our over-consumptive way of life. After that, I will offer some strategies for how we can move forward, as a community, and re-create Boulder as a model and an inspiration in a post-peak oil world.
Then I will introduce and show a pre-view version of my organization’s new documentary film, “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil.” I first went to Cuba in 2001 as an American college student at the University of Havana. I returned as part of a documentary crew in October 2004 to capture on video the Cuban experience of being the first nation in the world to transition to a post-peak oil era. For Cubans it was more of a cliff than a slope, as they lost 50 percent of their annual oil imports overnight when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
When the crisis hit in Cuba, Cubans didn’t have the time or money to invest in high-tech solutions. So the Cuban people acted at the grassroots level and survived. What Cuba teaches us is that the solution to peak oil is in our communities and in our individual actions. And that the solution is primarily in our way of life, not in our sources of energy.
I’m not a petroleum geologist or an energy investment banker. My work, my experience, and my passion are in the peak oil solutions movement. I have been writing and speaking on this issue for three years. So I believe I have some perspectives to share. But I’m really just like you – someone who is concerned about the future of humanity and the earth and dedicated to work until my final moment to preserve this beautiful planet for the coming generations.
Small, Local CommunityAnd that’s also the mission of my organization, The Community Solution. We put on the First and Second U.S. Conferences on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, with speakers such as Richard Heinberg, Julian Darley Michael Shuman, Liz Walker, and Diana Leafe Christian and with a combined attendance of more than 600 people.
We publish a quarterly newsletter, run a website on peak oil and have several other major projects including a model post-peak oil neighborhood-community we call Agraria, and Peak Oil Workshops for Community Leaders, which seek to train people to educate and mobilize their community on peak oil. Two organizers of this conference – Michael Brownlee and Lynette Marie Hanthorn – just completed this training in December in the community of Stelle, Illinois. The next workshop will be there in the Spring.
We are a small non-profit organization based in the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio – but our ambitions are big. We were founded in 1940 by Arthur Morgan, a visionary, a prominent engineer and the first president of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Above all, he believed in the value of small, local community living. He wrote several books on the subject and founded the organization to continue that work. By small, local community he meant small towns, yes, but more than that, a way of living and of interacting with your neighbors – of deep relationships, of cooperation, of mutual support, and the sharing of common resources.
But a few years ago the organization began to question the continuing relevance of small, local communities in an age of large cities and ever-sprawling suburbs, an individualistic culture, mass entertainment, declining community involvement and civic engagement – in an age too, of rampant consumerism and in a world where common resources were not shared and conserved, but depleted and destroyed.
We began to wonder: Is small, local community extinct? Answer this: Do we still have the desire to connect with other human beings? To develop strong relationships? To care about our friends, as well as our family? To preserve resources for future generations? To take care of the earth and our non-human community? Of course we do.
So community is not extinct, it is just sleeping – lying dormant in the depths of a dominant, impersonal, mass consumption society.
So we asked another question: How did we lose community? In answering this we discovered the role of oil.
Just as recently as 150 years ago, Boulder was a small, local, more-or-less sustainable community. Boulder residents lived locally, traded locally, got nearly all of the goods and services they needed to survive locally. 150 years ago most people around the world lived in small, local communities. But during the last century, the century of oil, this all changed. Oil was the best energy source we humans had ever come across. First of all, it has the highest concentration of energy of any fossil fuel, and secondly, it is liquid, which made it easier to store and transport. Imagine carrying a load of heavy, solid coal to fuel your car, or a huge tank of disperse natural gas. It just isn’t possible without oil.
Cheap, abundant oil gave us the opportunity for cheap, abundant transportation. So the apple from across the country was now cost competitive with the apple from down the street. Cheap abundant oil gave us urban sprawl, industrial agriculture, and globalized corporations. We watched as the family farms and the mom and pop stores went out of business; the small towns across America died; sustainable communities around the world disappeared; local living became rare, community went to sleep.
Our excessive and unmitigated use of oil over the last century destroyed community. Today we live globally, not locally. Our food, the essence of our survival, travels 1500 miles on average from the farm to our plate. Our clothes and manufactured products travel thousands of miles from Asia, South America, and elsewhere. This fossilized energy -- which powers our jetliners, SUVS, Hummers and the 18-wheel trucks which haul our foods and other commodities -- comes from all around the globe.
And whereas 150 years ago you knew all of the people that provided what you needed to survive, now these people are faceless. The Indonesian sweatshop seamstress, the Mexican migrant farm laborer, the oil rig operator in Kuwait – all of those people who provide our necessities are all faceless.
And those whose faces we do know – our neighbors – they are strangers. We have no economic relationships with them. We don’t share and conserve scarce local resources, but exploit seemingly abundant global resources. And with mass media and mass entertainment, we are losing social relationships with them. Why talk to your neighbor when you can be talked to by your TV?
So cheap and abundant oil has led to the loss of community. How then, do we reclaim community? Consider this: What if oil were no longer cheap and abundant, but scarce and expensive? Would the historical tide reserve itself? Would we experience a resurgence of community? Loss of community leads to estrangement among neighors which leads to the willingness of neighbors to exploint one another, such as our current poverty wage market.
That is exactly what we envision as global oil production peaks and begins its irreversible decline. Peak oil is an opportunity to reclaim community, to rebuild community, to re-create community.
So peak oil is the solution for community. But community is also the solution for peak oil. As our ability to live globally becomes more difficult due to rising fuel costs, we will need to re-develop the infrastructure to live locally.
And that is why we changed our organization’s name from Community Service to The Community Solution, and why we changed our mission from trying to keep this flicking flame of community alive, to creating a bold new vision for a post-peak oil world. A vision we call – The Journey Home.
The Journey Home
I’d like to say a few words about this, because I think it is important to bring peak oil into the whole context of human existence. We think the community solution is a journey home.
First of all, it is a journey, a path and not a destination. To illustrate the importance of this, I’d like to share a story about a student approaching a great martial arts master.
The student says, "I wish to become the finest martial artist in the land. How long must I study?” "Ten years at least,” the master answered. "Ten years is a long time,” said the student. "What if I studied twice as hard as all your other students?” "Twenty years,” replied the master. "Twenty years! What if I practiced day and night with all my effort?” "Thirty years,” was the master's reply. "How is it that each time I say I will work harder you say it will take longer?” the student asked. "The answer is clear, " said the master. “When one eye is fixed on your destination, there is only one eye left to find the way.
A valuable lesson, indeed. Once I went deep into peak oil I found myself living in the future more and more often. I was fixated on the possibilities, the scenarios – both positive and negative. We must always remember that tomorrow never comes, that we create our future today and that we must remain present and aware of that which guides us down the path.
While the destination is unclear, the direction of the path is becoming clearer each day. The path we need is toward sustainability and toward community. It is a cooperative and just path. Imagine, if you will, the path, or rather, the highway that society travels and the words that come to mind to describe its direction: consumptive, materialistic, competitive, unsustainable. As a society I think it is safe to say that we’re going in the wrong direction. We need a new path.
Secondly, it is a Journey Home. We call it The Journey Home because living in community is a way of living that has persisted for nearly all of human history. It is our essential nature. We need community to survive. We also need community to thrive.
The dominant culture of individualism and disconnection, which arose from the influx of cheap, abundant oil, is an aberration. It is an eddy of a greater flow which is the human story. Indeed more than 99.5 percent of our time on this planet has been spent in small mobile groups of a few dozen to a few hundred people, living more or less in balance with the earth. If all of human history, including some of our recent ancestors, was condensed into a 24-hour day – agriculture would have started in the last seven minutes and the age of oil and other fossil fuels the last seven seconds.
That is why all of us are fundamentally community-oriented and indeed, indigenous people. It is the basis for our genetic inheritance and our cultural memory and traditions. Stories like the Garden of Eden, which refer to our time as hunter-gathers, living in abundance, are still told.
So how to start our Journey Home? Well, as I once heard, we got into this situation one bad decision at a time, and we will get out of it one good decision at a time.
The Choice
But this presupposes that we can make informed, enlightened decisions. Can we? Conventional economics assumes our highest goal is to pursue our self-interest -- accumulating as many material possessions as possible. And what about our biological drive to consume the resources of the planet without thought of depletion, population overshoot, or the impact on future generations?
Examples abound from Easter Island – where the people deforested the island to build large stone statues, causing the ecosystem to collapse and nearly all of the people to starve – to the famous reindeer who were introduced to an island with abundant food, then overgrazed and over reproduced, leading to a population overshoot and die off – to bacteria in a Petri dish, who multiplied one too many times, consuming all of their food and dying off.
How are we any different? How can we break the cycle of resource abundance, increased consumption, population growth, resource scarcity, and collapse? After all, the earth is, in effect, one big island, or one big Petri dish, isn’t it? Well, we humans have something that other animals do not have – we have the gift of foresight, of planning ahead. And now we see that our way of life may lead to our extinction.
I mentioned that peak oil is not the real problem – our way of life is the real problem. But what then is peak oil? Peak oil is a warning sign, a wake up call, that we are exceeding the ability of our planet to sustain us. Peak oil is a symptom of the industrial disease. If we do not change, if we cannot quickly adapt to a low-energy way of living through community, then continued exponential growth will take us over the cliff as oil production collapses.
The key word here is adapt. Adapting to changes in our environment is the success of the human beings. That is evolution. So what we need is not a revolution, but an evolution. We need both.
Taking Action
Now, you’re probably thinking: It’s easy to say that humanity needs to evolve or return to low energy living in community. But what actually can we do about it? The problem is so daunting – and we are just a few in a world of 6.3 billion people. And Boulder is just one small place with 100,000 people or so in a nation of 300 million, most of whom are living high energy lifestyles with little thought of other ways to live.
Well I hope to answer some of those questions. And I’ll start with a simple quote, my favorite quote:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Anthropologist Margaret Mead.
The peak oil solutions movement is a very small, very thoughtful, and, as I’ve observed here today, exceptionally committed. I have no doubt that we in the peak oil solutions movement can have a major impact on the future of the world, nor do I have any doubt that you in the Boulder Re-localization movement can have a major impact on the future of Boulder.
So what are we to do? We know the problem – that our way of life is unsustainable. In the words of the late anthropologist Margaret Mead once again, “We are living beyond our means…we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.” So we know the problem.
We have an opportunity to wake people up – that’s peak oil. We have a small, group of thoughtful, committed people who are aware – that’s all of you. And finally, we have a vision of where we need to go – The Journey Home, The Community Solution, Re-localization.
What do we do first? I would argue that we first need to educate our communities, to give people the information, the knowledge to realize the impact of their way of life – the impact of their decisions on themselves, other people, the environment, and future generations. Many people are already aware of these impacts, and they are our natural allies. They include those in the renewable energy movement, the global climate change awareness movement, the simplicity movement, the communities movement, and the environmental movement. But the majority of people aren’t aware of the impacts of their lifestyle, and they are not going to change their lifestyle if they don’t see its harmful effects.
So how are we to reach them? Again, peak oil is the opportunity here. In exploring the peak oil issue much is revealed: how dependent our economic system is on fossil fuels, How burning fossil fuels affects the environment and our health, and how using fossil fuels results in global inequity, geopolitical confrontation, accelerating globalization, as well as continuing urban and suburban sprawl and farmland destruction. The energy lens, and particularly the peak oil lens, is quite illuminating, as many of you know by now.
I have an important suggestion to make here. That is not to view your role as convincing people or converting people, but helping people discover it for themselves. Peak oil is in some ways intuitive, isn’t it? And after all, it is ultimately their choice whether or not to plunge into the river.
So help them discover that their conveniences, their luxuries, are not without a huge price. Help them discover that the future will not be a Jetsons paradise. Help them discover that they are dependent on energy and therefore vulnerable. Most importantly, help them discover the essence of community and compassion that is within them, that has been dormant, and help them realize how to re-incorporate it into their lives.
What next? They’ve had some time on their own, to come to their own realizations. Well, if they’re like me, then at this point they’re going to go through what has been called peak oil despair. I know few people that have not gone through it. Part of this despair, at least for me, was the sense of powerlessness that I had. Everyone else seemed to be sleepwalking into the future while I was wide awake and keenly aware of the cliff ahead. I felt like my message was falling on deaf ears, and that as every moment went by we were getting closer and closer to the end.
I felt like a fish out of water. I had this whole understanding of another reality – a reality of an energy constrained world – and everyone else that I would talk to, those fish who had never broken the surface of the water and seen another reality, would laugh at me, saying that it didn’t exist. They would come up with all sorts of reasons why it could not be possible that there would be a world outside of the water, because that was all that they had ever known.
So I was very discouraged because I felt alone and powerless. Then I had a realization, and this saying brings it home – “It is not possible to know what’s possible,” and that really is the ultimate message of hope. We are not doomed to one fate or another, nor are we powerless. My sense of powerlessness was an illusion perpetuated by those to whom we give our power. But just as we give it, we can take it away.
This is the point where I realized that there was hope, and from there I could act. Despair leads to inaction, whereas hope gives us the strength to act.
So what do we do now? I mentioned taking your power back from those to whom you give it. Another way I like to think of it is disconnecting ourselves from the system. Now, its certainly not easy or quick. It takes time and effort, and most importantly, it takes the development of another system into which we can connect. The answer is not in fighting or trying to change the existing system, but in creating an alternative system which people can join. When the old system loses its people, its power, it will dissolve. We have to be on guard since the old system will actively fight us since we are a threat (real or preceived) to the old system-- namely the super-rich who are heavily invested in the old system. Example: the Investor and Managerial classes have fought unions for decades and today many, if not most, states are “right to work” -- or “right to starve” states. Montana, at one point, was the lowest wage state in the nation, lower than Mississippii and Louisana.
That is why this alternative system is so important. We are not all going live in the wilderness. A few hundred years from now, that is a possibility. But now we have to take small steps toward our community future. New institutions adapted to the reality of declining energy is how we will get there, and how we can avoid outright collapse.
What do these institutions look like? Well, as you all know by now, a key word is local. Oil allowed us to expand far beyond our local resources by providing cheap transportation, but without it we need to re-develop local institutions. And everywhere in the world these local institutions will look very different, as they are all adapted to their specific resources.
Examples of the Possible
So does this mean will we have to wait for every community in the world to re-localize? Do we have that kind of time?
I don’t think that we do have that kind of time and I don’t think we have to wait. All we have to do is create a few models, examples of what is possible, evidence there is an option to the dominant system, another way of living. And we have to show that this model is preferable to the current system, and better adapted to an energy-constrained world.
In other words, we have to create a place for the fish who jump out of the water to live and survive. And we are the leaders who must create that place. If we don’t, no one will disconnect from the system because they have nothing into which they can connect. Correct, the issue is how do the majoirty of folks transition from the mainstream to the sidestream such that the latter becomes the former?
Models instruct and inspire. First of all, they instruct others to proceed, not by creating something for others to copy, but by sharing strategies and suggestions, and what works and doesn’t work, so we don’t all have to make the same mistakes twice. Secondly, they inspire others to do it. They show what is possible, and bring hope.
We need models at all levels. At the national level we have Cuba. And that is the powerful story we tell in our documentary, which I will talk about shortly. But we also need models at the community level – and that is what Boulder can be. Finally, we need models at the individual level, and that is what all of you can be.
Starting with the individual level, we have to practice what we preach. It’s as easy as that. For me, it was a matter of taking personal responsibility for the impact of my decisions, of my lifestyle on the earth, on people around the world, and future generations. Then I started to look beyond that, at the impact of my society, to which I was indirectly contributing, if only with my complacency.
So what do we do? I recently heard some very practical advise: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Let’s start with the last one – where you are. Start by looking at where you are, how you’re using energy. What energy and material inputs sustain your lifestyle? How much? Where are they from? What pollution and waste do you generate? Where does it go? What are the results? The key is to account for, and take responsibility for, of all that flows into us and all that flows out of us. In many ways, this is a radical, new idea and if adopted by more people, could have dramatic effects.
Now let’s take the part “with what you have.” Look at what you have that will help you to transition to a lower energy lifestyle and how you can use it. What skills do you have? What skills can you learn? What are your assets, financial and otherwise? Your relationships, your connections? What about your personality can be beneficial in making the necessary changes?
Finally, “Do what you can.” Start slowly. Take small steps. Not everybody is going to be able to build a brand new energy efficient house, or move to a self-sufficient community in the mountains. Just do what you can. Set achievable goals – like “I’m going to reduce my energy use by 10 percent this year, and here’s how.” While 10 percent is clearly not enough, we will find that it renews us and motivates us to do more. So after you’ve achieved that, set another goal.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Set a personal example and share it with others. Share with them your successes and your challenges. Involve those around you in what you’re doing. Show your joy and passion. This, along with a commitment to support them, will inspire lifestyle changes in them as well.
The Community Solution is now working on an Internet forum for people to share their individual stories on reducing their energy use, so that people can learn effective strategies. I will share mine: I live in a small town – Yellow Springs, Ohio – walk to work, do most of my shopping locally, garden, preserve my own food, share a 500-square-foot apartment and keep the thermostat at about 60 degrees in the winter (which flannel sheets make much more comfortable I might add). In the future I plan to further reduce my use of the car by only driving on weekends, canning food, and learning about wild edible plants.
I would like everyone in the audience to take a moment and think of what they have done, and what they plan to do to reduce their energy use. If you have a piece of paper in front of you, write it down. Make a commitment to yourself. Let’s just take one minute.
But while it is critical to take action in your own life, it is equally critical to take action at the community level.
How do you begin to do so? Again, start from where you are, actually from the seat you are now in. Look around you. This is the beginning of a very exciting movement in Boulder. Boulder can lead the country. Boulder can be a model, a model that instructs and inspires.
So here you are. Now – what do you have? What are the assets of Boulder? I would suggest the size, the University of Colorado, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the abundant sunshine, the progressive-minded population, the presence of the top leadership of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil – USA in Denver, and certainly you have the work of Michael Brownlee, Lynette Marie Hanthorn and the other organizers of this conference. I’m sure you can come up with many assets that Boulder has to help it to become a model. Then, look at what are the key problems or challenges in re-localizing Boulder? Who would lose the most? Who would gain the most?
Finally – what can you do? What is possible? What is the easiest change to make in Boulder? What will take more time? What is the most important change to make? With whom must you work for these changes? There are lots of questions to explore.
But your opportunity is so great because you have come this far. I cannot think of another city in the country as large as Boulder, that has come as far as Boulder. So the experience of Boulder can teach other communities how to move forward to re-localize.
And in terms of inspiration, I am inspired already by the people of Boulder coming together to explore this issue today. I know this organization and this movement will continue.
I don’t know what Boulder will or should look like 5 or 50 years from now – That’s for Boulder to decide. But I do know that in a few years, I may come back to Boulder with a documentary crew to help share your achievements with the world. For you are the ones Boulder has been waiting for.
And finally, at the national level, we have the story of Cuba.
In Cuba, the people didn't hope for someone to save them after the Soviet Union – their oil lifeline – collapsed. Instead, they took the initiative in their communities and survived. Cubans didn't have the time or funds to invest in nuclear power, or large-scale wind and solar energy so they cut back their energy use and developed small-scale renewable energy projects. Their fossil-fuel based large-scale agricultural production collapsed. So they started growing food organically in their backyards and neighborhoods and on their rooftops. And they couldn't fuel their aging cars, so they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.
We met many amazing people in our travels in Cuba. Nelson Aguila, an engineer turned farmer, raises chickens, rabbits, and gerbils for the neighborhood on his rooftop. Carmen Lopez, a permaculture instructor, teaches urban residents how to grow their own food.
We visited "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills, where individual solar panels power radios and lamps, and provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room. We visited an organic farm in downtown Havana that uses hand tools and labor to save energy, worm cultivation to create productive soil, and drip irrigation to save water.
Throughout our travels, we saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people. We often heard the mantra "Si, se puede." Yes it can be done.
And perhaps the most powerful lesson that Cuba can teach is the lesson of Community. Amidst 16 hour daily blackouts, shortages of food, medicines, and basic materials – Cubans never stopped smiling, never stopped laughing, and never stopped celebrating.
Let me end with this thought from Margaret Mead: “Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does dance.”
Thank you.
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