A Quiet Watercourse

I’ve been watching the economics news over the last couple of weeks of writers’ block with a sinking feeling.

Nobody mentions the Elephant in the room, the end of Oil and the limits to growth.  There just seems to be a vague feeling of ‘oh, somebody must do something’, but no sense that business as usual is not possible long term and that certain limits are approaching.

I have spoken to people who see the end of oil, it makes me wonder that if those of us on the ground can see it with a simple common sense, why can’t those in charge?  The technology is there, but maybe because it’s not shiny and new; some kind of shiny impersonal Ithing with no soul, nobody wants to know.

One of the things that made me smile in all this cold weather was the story of a modern diesel locomotive rescued by a steam engine in England.  I’ve been of the opinion for quite some time that newer ways aren’t always better, reading Robert M Pirsig’s view in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that the correct question is not “what is new?” but “what is best?” confirmed my beliefs.

I’ve seen folks arguing that the renewable technologies need huge factories and lots of energy to build and all sorts of things, but windmills and water wheels have been around for centuries, they’re and ancient and time honoured technology and can provide a valuable contribution without all the rare elements and industrial wizardry, what is so hard to understand about that.

Or maybe we’re in denial because it’s not shiny and doesn’t fit our self image?

I’ve been getting out on the bike a bit more recently, one of the things I’m enjoying is the greater level of awareness it brings to the process of travelling.

I have a better understanding now of what Robert M Pirsig was talking about in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he wrote:

“In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through the car window everything you see is just more TV.  You’re just a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone.  You’re completely in contact with it all.  You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”

I agree, I also know that I am also more present in the moment when I’m on the bike, there are fewer distractions.  Now leaving aside the practise of cyclists who wear mp3 players, which to my mind is just plain dangerous, there are just fewer things to distract you on a bike as opposed to driving a car.  I speak as a driver with more than 15 years experience, no stereo, no conversations or arguments, no mobile phone while driving.  Know what?  It’s great….

The sheer extra sense of presence is well worth it, and I’m rediscovering a whole side to my home town I’d forgotten about and areas that I’d never seen but can now explore more easily.  It occurs to me that you really do miss an awful lot in a car.

I’ve been keeping up with the commentary on the unfolding storm.  One of the things I’ve noticed is that there is a definite tendency to go a little apocalyptic, in feel if not in explicit content.  It’s all too easy to get frozen in the headlights of the oncoming storm, with the feeling that we will be torn apart, a wrecked destitute society.

I’m of the opinion that this will be a huge challenge for us, and that our lifestyles will change.  The general phrase used is that our standard of living must come down.  I was talking on the phone to a very old and dear friend last night and something we agreed on has bubbled to the surface of my mind.  Most of the things we take for granted, could be described as “frivolous”.  CDs, DVDs, Playstations, large wardrobes, flashy cars and I’m sure that each reader can add to this list with your own examples.

So… Let’s re-examine it.  Given the above, how far does our quality of life really fall now?  Granted, access to medical treatment is an issue, but with the reduction of car use and a corresponding increase in our activity level shouldn’t we be generally healthier?

If a lot of what we are going to lose is our illusions and largely unimportant frivolities, how far will our “standard of living” really fall?  I honestly believe that we can rise to this.  Perhaps if we accept that we might just gain a sustainable, ethical way of life, coupled with my own belief that this change will bring opportunities for those prepared to forge ahead.  Could it be that our perception of our “standard of living” needs a reassessment?  I don’t have the answers right now, but as a correspondant once said of me, I tend to ask the questions and try to provoke my readers to think.

Guess what I’m doing now…..

We know we have a global problem, and if we’re serious about tackling it, the effort must start with us individually.  We cannot afford to wash our hands of this and rely exclusively on the authorities.  I’m going to sketch out the territory where I see the solutions being, and I’ll do it over a few posts.  I’d like to start by pointing out that I’m speaking from a UK perspective here, so your mileage may vary.

We use a huge amount of our energy in transport, I’m finding the march to electric cars and other ‘alternatives’ interesting to watch.  We already have the problem that without cheap, plentiful and energy dense fuel, we can no longer use the methods of air travel that we do, how much more true is this for cars?  The fuels we use in cars and planes provide us with a lot of energy in a small space, more than you might think, in fact they are far superior to any solid fuel, to quote a site that covers alternate energy sources:

“to replace your petrol tank with plant biomass, for instance, it would require two and a half times the mass (rather simplified, of course).” -  The Wolf at the Door. (the graph in figure E2 is illuminating)

The problem we have is getting that much energy around the place, and generating it in the first place.  We can keep pace with our current energy demands, but what happens when everybody starts plugging their electric cars into the electricity grid and demanding that sort of energy from it several times a week?  Remember, we don’t have to generate all that energy in oil, it’s conveniently there already.

The alternative fuels revolution is looking, at least to me, like us sticking our head in the sand and pretending we can keep doing “Business As Usual”.  I don’t agree with this, we can’t keep on this way, I’m increasingly of the opinion that “BAU” is not a viable option.

So, where do I see our options?  Greater use of Public transport is a good place to start, allowing us to quickly increase the efficiency of our travel with services that are already in place and working.  Of course, public transport networks do need improvement in many areas, and in others are, for the moment, almost unavailable.  For freight, rail travel is much more efficent than road, with the advantage of removing the huge HGVs from most of our roads.  I think that a network of mostly light rail and walkable / rideable cities, with the option of electric vehicles for commercial use will go a long way towards making a much more pleasant environment for us and our children and keep the wheels turning in a more sustainable way.

There is another option, one that’s good for our waistlines as well as our bank balances. Many of us can act quickly to improve our health, cut our emissions and our fuel bills by cycling around the place.  Even if it’s just one day a week to work, or to the shops and back, we should try to replace car trips with bike trips.  A bike uses, far fewer resources to make, maintain and run than many other modes of transport.  A good cycling advocacy website is Why Cycle?.

So, am I preaching from my armchair here?  No, I bought a mountain bike and some accessories on the weekend of the 4th April and started practising with it, and I’m having a really enjoyable time.  I have a greater degree of choice on my routes than I do with a car and also few of the associated costs, unlike a car, I can expect the bike to pay for itself with fuel savings.  Maintenance is something that needs doing, but is enormously cheap compared to a car.

I’m also discovering that if you’re a little outgoing with it, you speak to people more and it makes things much more rewarding.  I’m finding something Robert M Pirsig said to be very true, in Zen and The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, he says that on a motorbike you’re part of the scene, not seperated from it by a car.  As I’m travelling more slowly and quietly, I’m finding that very true, even more true for a bicycle than a motorbike.  This changes the whole nature of travelling.

I’m also getting into situations that are completely new to me, let me give a very cool example from the morning of Sunday 12th.

I’d gone out for a ride along the local canals and got to a local nature reserve, I decided to try my lights and went through the Netherton Tunnel, nearly 2.8 km (1.7 miles) of darkness with light and air shafts in the ceiling.  I got through there fine and had a ride round the canals at the other end then turned and came back.  As I got to the tunnel a narrowboat was going in and the driver and his wife joked about me riding a bike through the tunnel.  So I slowed down and kept pace with the boat through the tunnel, using their boat headlights to provide much better light than my smaller lights.  We wound up having a good conversation while travelling for nearly an hour way underground and bumped into some other cyclists on the way.

I’ll no doubt return to my bike in future posts.

In my previous post, I compared what’s happening to the ‘End of Rome’, if we’re not very careful then this is going to be very much the case.  Of course, this whole thing does provide us with an opportunity, all it requires is a change in the way we look at things.

I think this is an important change to make, as I think we seem to be largely in denial of the scale of what’s happening, but also unable to see a way through it.   Now, my personal conviction is that this isn’t a deficiency in intelligence, or in our ability to rise to the challenges ahead of us.  I think it’s a problem of perspective, we cannot accept the change because we seem to lose everything, and I admit the sheer enormity of the idea is frightening.

So can we turn that perspective around?  I think the answer is yes, we have an opportunity here to learn much more about living lightly on the Earth in a sustainable way, but also a chance to learn to take pleasure in something other than reckless consumption.  We could gain a better environment to live in, with less noise and traffic fumes.   A chance to slow down the pace of things maybe, gain some much needed time for reflection?  I feel that we lose a great deal because of our frantic pace, we miss a lot and I know I’m not the only one who feels like that, but more of that another time.

It’s easy to point the finger and call this wishful rusticism, but the alternative is unsustainable and will come crashing down around our ears sooner rather than later.  So we may as well find the silver lining, I don’t think it’s such a bad one.

So, this could be our chance at a new age, not a ‘Golden Age’ by today’s standards, but given where those standards have led us to, how much faith can we put in them anymore?

I’ve been watching the unfolding story of our global economic problems with a growing sense of foreboding.

People are running round trying to prop up the system without realising that it might just be time to question a few of the basic assumptions that underlie that system.

The one I think needs to be addressed with priority is the fixation with growth and how to restart it.  We have only so much planet, and we have been burning through the available resources with abandon.  You can only grow for so long, sooner or later you run out of room to grow and resources to grow with.  That’s the problem, we’re trying to do something that just isn’t possible and if you get into a fight like that, you won’t be the one left standing at the end.  Reality is always right and denying that basic fact just stores up trouble.

It’s time to start moving towards a path based on what we can sustain, it will be slow and challenging, but there really is little alternative and the clock is ticking ever louder.

We also need to realise that we need to start questioning the assumptions that underlie our methods and beliefs in all areas of our lives, putting our heads in the sand and allowing others to think for us is no longer an option.

Dare we begin to compare this to the fall of Rome and, in our denial, are we and our leaders guilty of fiddling while Rome burns?

Many years ago, I came across this little gem of a saying in the William Gibson novel “Neuromancer”.

I’ve been thinking more about it in the last few days, events have made it quite relevant, haven’t they?  I’ve been reminded of it in Secondlife recently, though I suspect that the people involved don’t entirely realise that they’ve been teaching me.

Moreover, I’m seeing the need for this saying in the crisis round the world.  If we’d measured twice, we’d have realised that this is the end of the way things have been.  We cannot carry on in the same manner for much longer and expect to survive long term.  I’ve seen this called The Long Emergency, that’s pretty much right on the mark.

• We cannot build a future on debt and commodity bubbles.
• We cannot build a future on grandiose consumption and unlimited growth.
• We cannot build a future in which most of the wealth is put in the hands of a few, while the majority suffer.
• We cannot build a future in which the resources of the world are exploited by only a few nations, in an unsustainable way.

We must build a future based on compassion, both for others and for ourselves, it the only way we can survive and prosper.  To quote Bill Adama “It’s not enough to survive, we have to deserve to survive.”. 

We’ll only get one chance to make the cut, let’s try and get it right.

I found this blog post on The Household Economy courtesy of The Energy Bulletin and simply had to link to it.

This post goes into detail about the revival of the household economy and it’s invisibility in terms of accepted economic theories by using the example of making homemade Raspberry Jam.  It’s a wonderfully evocative example for me thanks to my memories of my own mother making homemade jam and marmalade when I was a child.

The article is highly recommended as it points out the difference between the official percieved economy and the truth of the economy, the things that happen under the radar.

I’ve talked in my most recent article about the difference between the map and the territory and the problems that can occur when the territory isn’t quite reflected in the map.  This article illustrates this principle (among others) very well with some very interesting comments as well.

I was given the heads up on this very interesting short film a little while ago and finally got round to watching it the other day, it’s certainly worth the 20 or so minutes it takes to run.

It covers our consumer culture, the origins and processes and a possible solution to our predicament.  I saw a strong case for ethical shopping in there and this film has started me thinking about the way I shop and the consequences of that.

Take a look at The Story of Stuff, oh if you’re using Firefox and NoScript, you’ll need to enable scripts for the site.

A thread on the Teahouse started me thinking again about something that I’ve been working up towards for a long time , it’s probably not the most popular position I’ve ever taken, but I do think it’s accurate.

We seem to define natural as being Earth, our biosphere, by which I mean plants, animals and things arising and related to them, and anything arising there without mans contrivance. Now that’s a slightly vague definition, I readily admit that, but that seems to me to be the closest I can get without spending more time than I’m willing to.

As we’re talking dualities, ‘unnatural’ is, therefore everything that is not covered by the definition of natural. Which I take to be industry, technology and the artifacts and effects associated with them. Again, vague, but the best I can do without being here all day. The supernatural and occult I will, for the sake of completeness, consider as well; leaving aside all judgements as to the existence or not of these things.

So my question is very simple; What if we’re wrong? What if natural/unnatural and supernatural are rather arbitrary definitions, maybe even only held by Western culture? My charge is that we are guilty of not thinking outside the box, the box in this case being Earth.

We know that the first element in the universe was hydrogen, this was enormously abundant and formed the first giant stars. These star were incredibly unstable as they were so big and exploded, showering the cosmos with all the other matter including the matter that makes up the Earth and everything on it That’s right we are starstuff, along with everything else here. That by the way, includes your car, your microwave, the monitor you’re using to read this and everything else we define as “unnatural”.

So how then do we justify this line drawing? It’s seems odd taking matter that was created along with everything else in the cosmos and that, on that scale can certainly be considered to be naturally occurring things and then dividing it out like that.

I think the whole thing seems to be based on superficial form, after all nature as we seem to mean it is something built on top of the basic building blocks of the universe but not intrinsic to them. Or to put it another way, we know something of atoms, but atoms know nothing of us.