Stratification, Germination And Climate Change

We are finally getting a bit of snow here in the Portland metro area. Snow levels are quite meager; it's as if someone decided to bake a cake and got very stingy in applying the frosting. Today our snow is melting as soon as it hits the ground. By Wednesday, there will be very little evidence that it snowed at all here.

Otherwise, the snow drought of 2011 seems to be continuing into 2012 throughout the Pacific Northwest. We probably won't see any more snow this winter. This same snow drought has also affected most of the United States and Europe. A mounting body of increasingly plain evidence continues to point to a deranging global climate, a climate that is being wrecked by human activity.

In response, someone recently wrote a somewhat denialist piece about weather in Maine. In his piece, he wrote that “a little global warming would be a gift for Mainers paying for heating oil. Somewhere in New England, the climate may actually improve because of greenhouse gases.” It seems odd that this guy's piece made it onto the Energy Bulletin website, but then they've done a few odd things over the last several months, such as publishing Tea Party propaganda and articles by shills praising Ron Paul.

Being the contrarian that I am, I thought I'd point out a few disadvantages of anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. I'd like to point out something else as well, namely, that while most mainstream media either does not acknowledge climate change at all, or relegates its worst effects to a time frame around 100 years from now, I think we can start looking for serious adverse effects right now.

One of the adverse effects I see – a phenomenon that is probably starting to affect us now – regards the effect of warmer weather on seed germination of valuable trees, shrubs and other plants. Right now I have in my refrigerator a packet of currant seeds. The planting instructions on the currants say that to prepare them for planting, I am supposed to stratify them by leaving them outdoors in pots all winter or by putting them in the fridge for at least 60 days prior to planting. Last winter or the winter before, I would probably have left the seeds outdoors. This winter I was not certain that the weather would be consistently cold enough for successful stratification. Hence, the fridge.

Cold stratification is necessary for a number of plants of economic, agricultural and medicinal interest. Echinacea, evening primrose, and a number of other medicinal perennial herbs and flowering plants all require a period of cold stratification to achieve a high degree of successful germination. Without this cold stratification, most of these seeds will not germinate. This also applies to fruit-bearing shrubs such as juneberry, pawpaw, quince, crabapple, and the shrubs of the hawthorn family. Some species of maple trees also require cold stratification for successful germination. Speaking of trees, there are several species of stratification dependent trees that, while not useful to humans for food, are useful for their wood. Interestingly, some of these trees and shrubs are native to the American South, and typically require a few months of temperatures averaging around 40 degrees Farenheit for successful germination of a large portion of their seeds.

This brings up a pertinent question, namely, how man-made climate change will affect the continued cultivation and survival of these plants. As I said earlier, it's something to worry about right now. Some other questions:

• What non energy-intensive processes can be used in place of cold stratification where the climate is becoming too warm to guarantee successful germination of valuable cold-dependent seeds? (We can't rely on refrigerators forever.)

• How will agricultural and horticultural climate zones evolve and shift over the next ten to fifteen years?

• How will man-made climate change affect small farmers and urban gardeners over the next ten to fifteen years?

• Is there any research being done, either by formal institutions or by talented, well-organized volunteers and amateurs, to formulate and document effective adaptive strategies for small farmers and urban gardeners to employ over the next ten to fifteen years?

These questions can serve as a homework assignment for some enterprising souls. I'd tackle them myself, but I am already teaching one class and preparing to teach two others, so I'm about as busy as a cat with a long tail in a room full of rocking chairs. Maybe I could threaten to interview an urban farmer to find out how he would answer these questions. That might provoke someone over at the Energy Bulletin website to try to beat me to the punch. If I were beaten to the punch, it wouldn't break my heart. (It might also make up for some of the er, recent er, lapses on that site.) These questions are too important for one person to sit on them. Failure to consider these questions might leave more than a few of us without much to eat for dinner over the next several years.

The Snow Drought of 2011, And Other Matters

Riffing off of my most recent post, I wanted to point out something that is being covered only tangentally by the American mainstream media, namely, the snow drought that has gripped large portions of the Northern Hemisphere over the last few months. I am now in Southern California, after driving down from Portland yesterday. From Portland through the Siskiyous, and on down through the San Gabriels into Southern California, I saw snow only once – a pathetic scattering of a few light patches maybe an inch thick in shadowed places near Ashland and Medford. (Of course, there was also a bit of snow - but not much - on some mountain peaks higher than 4000 feet.)

CBS News reports that much of the United States is experiencing a lack of snow and unusually warm temperatures. And the snow drought has affected Europe, according to stories from Finland and Austria. Meanwhile, the Global South is suffering from record rainfall and heat waves. Climate change is in the air. That's anthropogenic – man-made – climate change. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Yet climate change is not yet part of the adult conversation of many Americans and other inhabitants of the Global North, addicted as they are to their consumerist lifestyles.

Speaking of consumerism, it seems that the Nike Corporation, in concert with marketing experts, have created a very potent combination of basketball shoes and advertising capable of turning millions of Americans into raving idiots. The psychopharmacology of this shoe/advertising combination hasn't been fully documented, but Nike has been able to induce rioting in several American cities over the release of their doofus shoes. Nike officials issued nuanced statements of public regret concerning the riots, yet privately, they were probably quite pleased – as the executives of Wal-Mart must have been pleased by the effectiveness of advertising powerful enough to induce crowds to trample one of their employees to death a couple of years ago.

A Yuletide Rumination

It's that time of year again, isn't it? (For some retail store chains it's been that time of year since before Halloween.) And along with this time of year there are many people who are torn between celebrating, ignoring or denouncing the Christmas season.

As for me, being a Christian, and someone who has for several years had a love affair with ritual and ceremony, I enjoy the thought of having a special season, culminating in a special day, to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Note, however, that I did not say that I enjoy the thought of shoving that particular celebration down the throats of any who disagree with me. To those outside the orbit of Christianity, I can only hope that my life may persuade you to think about things you would not ordinarily consider. On the other hand, there are those who claim to be solidly inside the orbit of the Faith who oppose Christmas because it's supposed to have evolved from pagan holidays, and because we don't see Christmas celebrated by the apostles in the book of Acts, yadda yadda. To such people, whether they be Plymouth brethren, Jehovah's Witnesses, subbotniks (субботники), or others, I have a deal to offer you. If you promise not to rain on my parade, I promise that I won't insult you by wishing you Merry Christmas (or Happy Birthday, for that matter).

I have to admit, however, that lately I can't really get into Christmas. Partly it's because for the last few years, I haven't been able to attend church on Christmas due to visits to relatives. But increasingly it's because in this country, the Christmas season has been so thoroughly corrupted to serve the interests of capitalism. Every aspect of the season – even those aspects that were once baldly religious – has been converted into a Pavlovian goad to make people buy stuff. (Just this week I was at Trader Joe's and on the way into the store, I heard a non-stop stream of pop-soft rock arrangements of religious carols and other seasonal music being broadcast into the parking lot, thanks to the outdoor intercom system.)

Christmas has become the complement of the 4^th of July in a certain way. Independence Day is supposed to be a celebration of freedom, yet “freedom” in this country has been redefined by corporate interests into a justification of addictive behavior. Christmas on the other hand is a commercially broadcast appeal to go out and act like an addict. For those who don't choose to live like addicts, Christmas has become a dangerous time of year. Just try bicycle commuting on a daily basis any time between Thanksgiving and New Years and you will see just how dangerous, as you find your life being threatened by tantrum-throwing consumatron beasts in big SUV's. (How many people will be trampled to death or pepper-sprayed at stores betweeen now and New Year's?)

The pushers who run our society have succeeded in turning Christmas into a rather strange season. And this particular Christmas promises to be very strange indeed, as the consequences of our addictive behavior increasingly catch up to us. One of those consequences is the weather. Around here in the Portland metro area, it has been very unsettling – not in a violently demonstrative way, but in a quietly creepy, unsettling way.

For one thing, there has been almost no precipitation this month. According to the Weather Underground site, average precipitation for December should be 4.32 inches. We have received less than two tenths of an inch so far. Not one flake of snow has fallen in the Portland metro area since October. Daytime high temperatures have been exceeding historical averages – not drastically, but by enough to cause concern for those who should be paying attention. I can't predict the future, but I suspect that this may turn out to be a very dry winter. A dry winter may mean a hot summer, and an extreme fire danger, which is not typical for this area. There is a lot to burn here. We may also be introduced to something else that is not typical to this area, namely, drought.

Even with this year's La Niña weather, global average temperatures are beginning to move into dangerous, potentially irreversible territory. Atmospheric CO2 levels are now at 390.31 parts per million. Our addiction is destroying our climate, yet like many dysfunctional families whose members are addicts, our society is unwilling to talk frankly about the consequences of our addiction. This week, as I walked through my neighborhood, I was treated to a sight that I haven't seen since I lived in Southern California – houses decorated with Yuletide lights, Santa Clauses, and fake icicles – and not a speck of snow on the ground. It would be most ironic to find that some of the residents in those homes were listening to Bing Crosby singing about his dreams. This year I think I'll buy myself a weather thermometer for Christmas.

I must bring this short meditation to a close. I will shortly be driving down to So. Cal., and I have a few things to do yet. My MP3 player is loaded full of interesting stuff that I haven't yet heard. One thing I have is a LibriVox recording of The Slavery Of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy. It promises to be good listening for those who don't want to be addicts. Merry Christmas.

The Death Of The Central Valley

I will begin this post by amending my policy for comments on this blog. In the sidebar on the right, I originally wrote, “A Word On Comments: Comments are always welcome. I am flattered by those who read, and gratified by those who comment (even though we may disagree). I only ask that comments be 'family-friendly' – clean language, if you get my drift.”

That part of my comment policy still stands. However, I am now adding a new condition, namely, that anyone who wants to post a comment on this blog must do so via a valid OpenID. I will no longer be accepting anonymous comments. Why the change? Because of anonymous comments supportive of certain economic interests which were submitted for my posts, “The Chicken That Laid Leaden Eggs, And Other Horror Stories,” and “The 'Congress Created Dust Bowl'.”

But here's a paradox: today I am violating my own comment policy – just a little bit, and only this once. This past April, an anonymous commenter submitted two very hostile comments on the “Congress Created Dust Bowl” post. (I am just now getting around to addressing this person's comments. In April I was up to my neck in teaching and my office job.) Despite the hostility, I found the comments highly entertaining. (In another setting, they would have been downright funny, although the commenter was not trying to be humorous.) In many ways these comments are typical of the mindset of the “conservative,” jingoistic, materialist, supremacist, anti-intellectual element in modern-day America, even to the emotive name-calling, bad grammar and misspelling of simple words. The commenter also accuses me of allowing only comments with which I agree. Today, I have proven him wrong. If you want to read what he wrote, check out “The 'Congress Created Dust Bowl'” post. (And yes, Mr. Anonymous, whoever you are, I no longer live in California.)

Now I'd like to give a response to this person's comments, a response which will shed a rather different light on the challenges facing Central Valley agriculture. Hopefully this response will also shed further light on the fallacy of promoting unrestrained resource use of any kind in pursuit of economic growth. The truth is that in so many ways, our society has hit the wall.

My anonymous reader starts by saying, “The Central Valley produces 8% of the Nations (sic) ag on 1% of the total ag land in the country. Reservoirs made it possible to farm and feed you, yes feed you...When the state regulates your water use, and doesnt (sic) let you WATER YOUR CROPS its called, its a top down regulation. THUS CONGRESS CREATED...” He drives home his point by concluding, “IF THE STATE REGULATES YOUR WATER AND DOESNT (sic) LET YOU USE (sic) TO THE POINT THAT YOUR CROPS DIE AND YOU CANT (sic) FEED YOUR FAMILY! ITS CONGRESS CREATED!!!” (Emphasis in original.)

To provide some background to this man's rant, over the last few years the United States Federal government and certain California state agencies have imposed water use restrictions on Central Valley farmers in order to protect Central Valley groundwater supplies and to prevent ecological damage resulting from the over-exploitation of the Sacramento River. In response to these restrictions, a number of wealthy agribusinesses mounted a protest campaign whose most visible manifestation was the installation along Interstate 5 of hundreds of yellow signs with red letters reading “Congress Created Dust Bowl,” “Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl,” and the names, Boxer, Costa and Pelosi (politicians who were being targeted by farmers for removal from office for helping to “create” the supposed “dust bowl”).

Here we have a very typical fight between a group of people who want to pursue economic growth at all costs, regardless of the collateral damage, and a group of people who acknowledge the very real limits to economic growth caused by limits on resources and the magnitude of the damage resulting from over-exploitation of those resources. Those who worship growth above all else demonize those who acknowledge limits and warn against trying to breach those limits. Those who see limits to growth in the Central Valley are branded as “Socialists!!!” and “LA liberals!!!” as my anonymous commenter called me.

But what if the pro-growth agribusinessmen got their way? I'd like to suggest that they would soon hit the wall anyway. In the Central Valley, that would mean the demise of large-scale agriculture, sooner rather than later – even if farmers were allowed to take as much water as they possibly could from available supplies. For intensive irrigated agriculture on a large scale carries the seeds of its own destruction.

The problem is the salting up of irrigated soils. This is a contributing factor to desertification – the result of farming too intensively, extracting resources too rapidly from the soils in a region, especially an arid or semiarid region, so that the land is not allowed time for natural processes to recharge and replenish it. (Desertification resulting from improper agriculture has caused a few ancient civilizations to fail, by the way.)

I will try to summarize the process by which soils become salted. Salts of various kinds are present in all soils, as well as in most naturally occurring bodies of water. However, salt accumulation in soils is usually the result of human activity. When water from lakes or rivers is used to irrigate lands used for agriculture, the salt in the irrigation water mingles with the salt in the naturally occurring groundwater. This is not a problem if the land has good drainage and if the amount of irrigation is relatively small. However, if the amount of irrigation is large or the land has poor drainage, there are a number of negative effects:

• Plants used as crops take up the irrigation water through transpiration, leaving dissolved salts behind in the soil.

• As large volumes of crops are grown in the same plot of irrigated land, the concentration of salt remaining in the soil increases.

• As land with poor drainage is intensively irrigated, a second mechanism increases the concentration of salts in the soil, namely, evaporation of water from flooded ground, leaving dissolved salts behind. This causes the naturally occurring groundwater to become increasingly saline as well.

The result of these effects is the buildup of soil salt concentrations to a level that prevents plants from growing. Then the field becomes unusable for agriculture. In extreme cases, the field can become barren.

This process is happening to the California Central Valley. It is happening because of the expansion of intensive irrigated agriculture. Many recent studies have been published which document this process. A study published by the University of California, Davis, in 2009 predicts that “...if salinity increases at the current rate until 2030, the direct annual costs will range from $1 billion to $1.5 billion...The production of goods and services in California could be reduced from $5 billion to $8.7 billion a year...the increase in salinity by 2030 could cost the Central Valley economy 27,000 to 53,000 jobs...” In short, Central Valley intensive irrigated agriculture, done intensively in order to maximize profit growth, is on the verge of serious trouble – even if Central Valley farmers get all the water they can get their hands on. The more water they get, the sooner they will all be in intractable trouble.

The problem of soil salinization and desertification is by no means limited to the California Central Valley. It is a worldwide symptom of modern industrial agriculture. In many places, man-made climate change will only make the problem worse. Smart people should begin thinking of alternative ways of getting their food.

References:

1. “Excessive Irrigation Promotes Desertification,” Willem Van Cotthem, 23 June 2008.

2. “The Economic Impacts of Central Valley Salinity,” University of California Davis, 16 March 2009.

3. “More With Less: Agricultural Conservation and Efficiency in California,” Pacific Institute, 2008.

4. “Dryland Agriculture, Irrigation, And Salinity,” University of Florida.

5. “Sustainability of Irrigated Agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley, California,” University of California, Davis; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Hydrogeologic, Inc, 25 October 2005.

6. “Irrigation Salinity – Causes and Impacts,” Cynthia Podmore, Advisory Officer, Natural Resource Advisory Services, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, 2009.

7. “Salinity In The Landscape,” Geotimes, Pichu Rengasamy, March 2008.

Watching The Well, Late March 2010

This month, it was announced that an island in the Bay of Bengal was swallowed up by the sea, due to rising sea levels caused by climate change. Five other nearby islands are also threatened with submersion.

This month, NASA scientists stated the very high likelihood that this year, 2010 could be the warmest year on record. FYI, 2009 was the warmest year on record in the Southern Hemisphere, and the second warmest year overall.

This month, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced the end of its program of buying U.S. mortgage-backed securities. The buying of these securities by the Fed was a major factor in propping up the U.S. financial system, and was quite possibly the single biggest factor in keeping American home prices elevated.

This year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration finally joined a chorus of official voices from official government and oil industry agencies who are saying that the world could start to see a decline in global oil production...right about now (actually, to be quite precise, starting in 2011). However, neither the EIA nor the U.S. government in general can yet bring themselves to say the words, “Peak Oil.”

This year, none of these pivotal stories has been covered in any meaningful way in mainstream American media. However, Scripps Networks have just launched a new “reality” TV show on their Travel Channel, called, “America's Worst Drivers.” Our media continues to lull us to sleep by petty distractions such as these, and many of us are as a mouse nodding off to the sound of the purr of a nearby cat. So few of us realize that the cat's jaws are about to close on us.

Moral Short Circuits

This week I've been doing some research on the next article in my series on digital fabbers and small-scale manufacturing. The next article will tackle the subject of organic and printable semiconductors and electronics. While I was digging up reference sources, I came across a very interesting article by Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and an associate of Whistleblowers Australia, an organization devoted to protecting those who uncover corruption within our present systems of social power.

The article that caught my interest is titled, “Scientific fraud and the power structure of science,” and it deals with the fact that the great majority of scientific research being performed at present is funded by and produced for the dominant holders of political and economic power. He also states that this produces a strong tendency in the scientific community to produce statements that are not entirely truthful, even though they are usually convenient for the agenda of the agency or corporation funding the research. Those scientists who become genuinely convinced of a point of view contrary to that of the dominant interests usually find their careers wrecked if they voice their views too loudly.

All this has an interesting bearing on the present debate about the reality of climate change, and what, if anything, should be done about it. The “Climategate” controversy has been the rage lately, with right-wing voices crying loudly that “Climategate proves that all this 'climate change' talk is just a ploy to deprive us of prosperity and the American way of life!” But the truth doesn't support their assertions.

The “Climategate” denouncers say that e-mails stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia prove that the scientists who say that global warming is real and that it is caused by our industrial society are deliberately falsifying data to make their case more compelling. I haven't read all of the e-mails; but let's assume that these assertions are true. This still leaves several troubling facts unanswered. First, the e-mails span a period from thirteen years ago to the present. But the CRU has been in existence since 1971. From the mid 1970's onward, it has been doing research on the effects of greenhouse gases on the earth's climate. Are the critics on the right going to tell me that the CRU had been doing bogus science all that time?

Secondly, the CRU was hardly alone in studying the effects of human activity on climate. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization also studied the issue, and in 1976 issued a warning that “a very significant warming of global climate was probable.” (Sources: Wikipedia and the World Meteorological Organization.) In fact, the study of man-made climate climate change has a rather long and distinguished history, starting from Svante Arrhenius in 1896 through G.S. Callendar in 1938 to the Cold War scientists of the 1950's and 1960's who sought to provide military planners with accurate models of potential changes to climate, to the scientists from the 1970's onward who built on the work of these pioneers. Are the critics on the Right going to tell me that all of these people were conspiring to “promote socialism and wreck the American way of life!”?

Third, though I haven't read all the e-mails, I have read at least one. It isn't the dramatic “smoking gun” that Fox News would like me to believe it is.

What does this have to do with scientific fraud, some may ask. Only this: the acknowledgment of the reality of global warming, and the role human activity plays in global warming, would present a huge moral problem to those whose activities most strongly promote global warming. Moral problems are inconvenient. Thus we have “scientists” who are handsomely paid to either deny that global warming is happening at all or to deny that human industrial activity plays such a pivotal role, and workers in scientific organizations who are handsomely paid to sabotage real science. Then there is the politically motivated watering down and temporizing of the reports that actually manage to get published. The denial or watering down of climate change facts does not threaten the powerful interests who are the patrons of modern day science.

For the record, I believe that climate change is real, and that it is caused by human activity. When my family first moved to So. Cal., there were many days in the winter that were decidedly cold. One October when I was in high school, the temperature dropped to the low 30's. Much later, in the 90's after I been through the Army and gone to college and had a few more “miles under my belt,” I was surprised to witness heat waves in November. I never had a problem believing in climate change (nor did I ever doubt the man-made damage to the ozone layer, especially after I, a black man, started getting sunburned in the summertime.) But then again, maybe I was hallucinating. Or maybe I'm part of some conspiracy to wreck the American way...

For further information, check this out:

• World Meteorological Organization

• The Discovery of Global Warming - A History

The Dearth Of Waters

I'm on the road today, on a trip to a jobsite inspection. I have just driven down from Portland to the coast, beneath a doomy, portentious sky lying like a blanket over hills soaked by rain, whipped by strong winds, and clothed with trees turning color. But my mind was entertaining a very different image as I drove.

It was a vision of a formerly green, well-watered valley, now become a parched, cracked landscape beneath a sky of brass in which hung a merciless sun. The land was littered with signs of a former prosperity and fertility that had evaporated away – plantings of trees now dead from drought, a few empty shells of decrepit buildings suggestive of a ghost town, skeletons picked clean, and a desperate, humbled mass of gaunt survivors now trying to figure out how to come to peace with their altered surroundings, that they might somehow live.

Yet their efforts were being thwarted by a small group of extremely wealthy people – the very people who had drained the valley of its life-giving water. For as the valley was being exhausted of its water, the drainers of the valley were sending their agents to seize the stored and hoarded water of the poor survivors. But not even this was enough to satisfy the exponentially increasing thirst of the rich. Thus they began even to seize the survivors to feed them into a giant machine in order to suck the moisture out of their bodies. The machine had several names. Two of its names were “Corporatocracy” and “Crony Capitalism.” Those who passed through this machine were spit back onto the landscape like so much human jerky.

Maybe it's a hokey image (a novelist I am not!). But I think it fits the economic news I've been reading lately. This week, the Oregonian newspaper is running a series on the housing and foreclosure crisis. One of their stories talks about a couple who owned three houses during the height of the real estate boom, yet is now reduced to sharing a condo with a relative and taking food stamps. While it is certainly possible to find fault with this couple for over-reaching, the article makes the telling point that the (really big) banks are getting all kinds of help from the Federal Government (really, that's us taxpayers), while the banks are giving absolutely no help to the average debtor. The Oregonian article also describes the plight of many other people who were not over-extended, yet got into trouble because of the present economic downturn, and who were given no help by the banks.

There's also a blog I recently discovered, called The Automatic Earth, which talks about how out of 4 million home mortgages in trouble so far, only around 1700 have been permanently modified under the Federal mortgage rescue program. Yet the banks were given $75 billion to help rescue distressed homeowners. (You can read more here: Don't audit the Fed, pull the rug) Lastly, I have noticed that people are finally starting to get angry about the medical insurance “industry's” attempt to force the Federal government to define “health care reform” as “forcing everyone to buy private insurance.” Many more people need to get angry, and to let their anger be known. Otherwise, we'll all be sucked dry.

But now, speaking of literal water, I have noticed that my post, The "Congress Created Dust Bowl", seems to be a bit more popular than I expected it to be. Thanks to all of you who have read and commented on it. I mention this post because of a conversation I had with a co-worker a couple of weeks ago. He talked disparagingly about how “the Federal Government is interfering with economic growth by cutting off water to California central valley farmers!” Of course, he knows my views and he was trying to get a reaction out of me.

I mentioned to him that there was a sea in the Soviet Union which the Soviet government ruined in order to promote economic growth in a certain region. Basically, they pumped the sea nearly dry over a period of a few decades. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember the name of the sea during my conversation (although the mention of this event did silence my co-worker). But now I remember: it's the Aral Sea. The Wikipedia article on the Aral Sea shows how much it has shrunk since the 1960's, and describes the corresponding ecological damage:

• The Aral Sea fishing industry, which at one time produced one-sixth of the Soviet Union's entire fish catch, has been wiped out.

• The muskrat population in some of the adjoining deltas has been wiped out.

• The sea has shrunk to ten percent of its original size and is now nearly three times as salty as the ocean.

• The dry plains left by the sea's disappearance are covered with salt and toxic chemicals, which are blown onto neighboring populations via dust storms. This has led to high rates of certain cancers and lung diseases.

These are just some of the effects of human stupidity and greed in that part of the world. Could the people demanding more irrigation water from the Sacramento River do the same thing to that river that was done to the Aral Sea?

Answering that question would not be very difficult. One would only need to know how much water was being diverted for farming, how it was being altered, and the likely effect of the diversion and altering (pollution) of the water on the river and its ecosystems. But that doesn't seem like the sort of science project that would interest Fox News or the people putting up the “Congress Created Dust Bowl” signs.

The "Congress Created Dust Bowl"

My job has me back in Southern California this week. On the drive down, between Sacramento and Bakersfield, I saw again an intermittent series of signs that I had noticed on previous trips, signs which read, “CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL.” In some places, these signs were located next to former orchards, now dead or dying.

The signs told me a story, as I drove southward in 105 degree heat, beneath the plumes of smoke from a couple of distant fires. First, they were evidence of the stress under which large industrial agribusinesses are now operating in this time of resource constraints and altered climate. According to a USDA report, California's snowpack contained nearly 30 percent less water than normal this last March.

California now has over 36 million people, a sizable fraction of whom are Southern Californians. Each of them seems to want enough water to wash his SUV, fill up his pool and water his lawn. Some of them work for realtors and developers who want to get rich from enticing yet more people to move here. All these residents must compete with each other and with farmers over a dwindling supply, as the Sacramento and Colorado rivers are under stress from excessive use. Many of the competing commercial interests who rule the California economy would each like to maximize their share of the available water, as their commercial success depends on it. Yet it is no longer possible.

My friends and coworkers here are telling me that Los Angeles County and Orange County have now imposed mandatory water use restrictions on residents. There's a news report from April of this year stating that San Diego County will start reducing water deliveries to its residents, starting in July. On all sides are signs that the residents of this state will be forced to start living quite differently, quite frugally, even to the extent of changing the way they grow their food. Big agribusiness will not survive unchanged.

Yet here were these yellow and black signs in the desert (that's right – it's a desert), a visual howl of existential angst and rage against reality printed in bold block letters. It seems that the man who put the signs up believes that if Congress or the State government simply relaxed environmental restrictions designed to protect some of the endangered Sacramento River fish, happy days would be here again, and the desert would burst into magical bloom. This man has friends among watchers of Fox News and its talking heads. They don't understand that the endangered status of the fish is one of the symptoms of larger limits that they will have to face whether they want to or not. Those limits are not the fault of Congress.

Neighborhood Resilience and Safety Nets - A "Lab" Question

Among the writers whose work addresses Peak Oil and its related crisis are some who still view these crises as abstractions or events of the misty future. When they discuss possible responses to these crises, they write in high-level terms about what policies mankind (and its leading classes) should adopt, rather than delving into concrete things individuals should do. I'll start this post by suggesting that the future imagined by many who have written about Peak Oil and its related issues is here now. The economic dislocation caused by climate change, Peak Oil and other resource constraints is happening now. And the behavior to date of the masters of our present economic and governmental systems in responding to our present crisis shows exactly what we can expect from these masters as the crisis continues to unfold – namely, little to no help at all.

As writers like Sharon Astyk have noted, Peak Oil, climate change and economic collapse will not manifest themselves as some new and exotic crisis, but will look to many like ordinary human suffering that steadily gets worse. Successful adaptation to this suffering will not depend on grand governmental policy initiatives so much as the local responses of individuals, neighborhoods and communities. This adaptation must have both an individual and a community component. Being a prepared individual in the midst of an unprepared neighborhood has only limited value. In my articles on neighborhood resilience and building safety nets of alternative systems, I have attempted to explore the process of adaptation as seen by dwellers in urban and suburban neighborhoods, as well as outlining some of the hindrances to this adaptation.

Now it is time to take this study entirely out of the realm of the theoretical and to ground it firmly in the practical. Therefore I want to consider three real neighborhoods in three real cities in the United States. These are cities with which I have personal experience, having visited all three and having lived in two of them. However, the exact details of the neighborhoods under consideration will be somewhat fictionalized in this post. I want to consider a hypothetical resident in each of these three locales, a resident who one day began to become “Peak Oil-aware” or “climate change-aware” or more generally, “collapse-aware.” How that resident did so may vary according to a number of factors. Perhaps he was shocked into awareness by the run-up in gasoline prices in 2008. Or maybe she ran into a friend or relative who suddenly dived into urban homesteading with both feet, and her curiosity was aroused. Or maybe he was hanging out at a bookstore and just happened to pick up a book written by a “collapsnik.”

Anyway, let's assume that this person had or is having his or her awakening sometime between the beginning of 2007 and now. The person comes to realize that he must radically alter and simplify his life, or that she must not only alter her life but must also reach out to her neighbors and educate them about the events now unfolding. Let's say that the “collapse” message comes to this person with the same sort of urgency with which it hit me – as, in early 2007, I began to devour everything I could get my hands on concerning Peak Oil, as I followed the “World Without Oil” scenario website with all the devotion of a sports fan watching his team in the playoffs, as I downloaded podcast after podcast from Global Public Media, as I watched the weekly fluctuations in gas prices, and so on. One of the chief questions this person will likely ask is, “If these things are for real, can I successfully prepare for and adapt to these things here, right where I live? And can I successfully educate my neighbors so that we can adapt together?” What sort of answer to these questions do you think such a person will find, given the following scenarios?

Scenario 1: Willow Street, La Habra, California

You are a technical specialist for structural engineering at a CAD (computer-aided design) software reseller's office located in Costa Mesa. You live in La Habra, having bought a house on Willow Street near La Habra High School. Your morning commute takes between forty-five minutes and an hour and forty minutes, and it takes about the same amount of time to get home. It is early 2008, and you have been a homeowner for five years. In early 2008, the price of oil is already over $100 a barrel and gasoline prices are floating up toward $4 a gallon. You don't make very much, and because you bought your house for over $250K, a large portion of your paycheck goes toward the mortgage. You decide that you can't take the continual hit at the gas pump, but you don't know what to do, other than look for a job closer to home.

One day you are at Borders' Bookstore at Beach and Imperial, looking for a book on ornamental plants for your wife. You pass by a section full of books on declining oil supplies and the impending energy crisis. Your eye is attracted to a book with an unusual title, “Divorce Your Car!” You buy the plant book for your wife, but you are intrigued by the “car” book, and you buy it for yourself. As you read it, you are introduced to several new concepts, including the concept of “Peak Oil.” For some reason, this concept sticks in your mind to the extent that you do a Google search on it at lunch one day. What you find astounds, disturbs and profoundly moves you.

At home, you begin making immediate changes. First, you put a clothesline in your back yard. Then you start trying to kill the Bermuda grass so you can plant some vegetables. You start talking with one of your neighbors who lives across the street from you about the real reasons for the high gas prices, as well as where you think the economy is heading. In your conversations, you are always asking yourself, “Does my neighbor 'get' it? Would he be interested in joining me in helping the neighborhood get ready?”

But there is a big neighborhood problem, namely, a single woman with a teenage son who lives three houses down from you and whose son attends La Habra High. He has recently gotten into the habit of throwing big weekend drinking parties at his house, with his mom's full knowledge and permission. Lots of his friends and classmates show up, driving recklessly up and down the street as they arrive, and frequently urinating and/or vomiting on residents' properties as they leave. Fights are not uncommon, and the police are regularly called to that house on the weekends.

You also notice that the steps you are taking are highly unusual for your neighborhood, as most of the other residents are trying to grow room additions on their property, and not vegetables. One of your next door neighbors is annoyed by the clothesline and the vegetables in your backyard. One day you and your wife come home to find that this woman and her husband have replaced the chain link fence between your houses with a seven foot-high redwood fence.

You want to stop driving to work, but you live over 24 miles away from your office, and public transit is slow and disjointed. At last you settle on riding the Metrolink from the Fullerton station to Tustin, then heading to the office from the Tustin station. From your house to the Fullerton station and from the Tustin station to the office, you plan to travel by bike. Your wife is a bit hesitant about this at first (because she doesn't want you to become an accident statistic), but you decide to give it a go. The leg from your house to Fullerton isn't too dangerous, but going from the Tustin station along Jamboree Road and Main Street in Costa Mesa, you sometimes have to ride on the sidewalk, because there are a few parts with no bike lane and the cars go pretty fast. You wind up pedaling over 24 miles each workday. It's a brutal commute in the summertime.

Scenario 2: Olmstead Avenue, Los Angeles, California

You are a black single mother with a teenage son. You live on Olmstead Avenue, in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, in a house you have owned for seventeen years. You are an IT support staff member at a hospital near the downtown area. You are pushing your son to excel in school, and he is responding well for the most part, though he sometimes resents your pushing. You tend to be stricter with him than other parents are with their children, believing that if you don't hold him to a high standard of behavior, he will find himself being judged and treated more harshly for youthful indiscretions than his classmates who aren't black. You believe this to be true even now, years after the Rodney King beating and the “changes” in the LAPD.

It is January 2007, and while reading the Los Angeles Times on a Sunday, you find an article titled, “O Pioneers In Pasadena,” about the Dervaes family, who have turned their house into an “urban homestead.” The article arouses your interest and lingers in your mind for several days. Intrigued, you do a Google search on the Dervaes family and on Jules Dervaes in order to find out more about them. Your search leads you to the Global Public Media website, where you find not only a podcast of an interview with Mr. Dervaes, but much, much more! What you find astounds, disturbs and profoundly moves you.

You start making radical changes in your life and home. Your son initially reacts by looking at you as if you were slightly crazy. It's hard for him to grasp the need to reuse and repair things, to voluntarily make do with less, when he sees all his friends getting the latest shiny new “stuff.” You fare somewhat better with the neighbors, several of whom you have known for years, many of whom are already starting to be squeezed by the incipient economic downturn. You form an “Olmstead Avenue Gardening Club” with some of your neighbors, and you all enthusiastically plant whatever you think you can easily grow without accidentally killing it. Soon your yards are full of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes and sunflowers. One yard even has some corn and squash.

In early September of 2007, you and your neighbors decide to have a little streetside “Urban Farmers' Market” to show off your produce. You plan your “Market” for a Saturday in early October. Word gets around the neighborhood, and people from several streets away express interest in dropping by. On the day of the “Market, you all set up several tables in the front yards of your house and the houses of your next door neighbors, and there's a large, joyful crowd. Your son is also there along with his friends, some of whom have the typical “urban” uniform consisting of sideways baseball caps, baggy shorts, and long, unbuttoned shirts or long tees or tank tops with Lakers colors. These young men are not being disorderly in any way – in fact, they are helping set up tables and set out vegetables – but they attract the notice of a passing LAPD squad car. Suddenly, several LAPD units show up, and officers begin questioning people, frisking some and harassing all the young men, including your son. The officers respond very rudely to your protests that you are doing nothing wrong, nothing any more out of the ordinary than any block party or multi-family garage sale. In fact, they threaten to arrest you for disorderly conduct.

Scenario 3: SE 88^th Avenue, Portland, Oregon

You are a freight rail dispatcher at the Port of Portland, Oregon. You own a home on SE 88^th Avenue, in the Lents district of Portland, across the street from Lents Park. You have owned your home for nearly 30 years, having bought it with the aid of GI Bill benefits you received after you got out of the Air Force. Though your Port job paid well enough for you to have relocated several times to larger and more expensive housing, you have never felt the urge to move. Now you are glad that your house is almost paid for; in fact, you have enough saved up to pay it off outright if you need to.

In the latter half of 2008, you notice a steadily worsening drop in shipping and container traffic at the Port, compared to a year ago. The drop in traffic grows severe enough to force some employees, such as yourself, onto an involuntary part-time schedule, while other employees are laid off altogether. You know that the economy has something to do with your situation, and during your breaks and lunch periods, you and your workmates discuss what is wrong with the economy, as well as how to fix it. One day in November, an engineer for one of the freight lines overhears your discussions, and he starts talking about impending economic collapse. Because you and he are old buddies, he loans you a book written by a “collapsnik,” and you read it over a couple of weekends. What you find astounds, disturbs and profoundly moves you.

You start making radical changes in your life and home. This turns out to be relatively easy in Portland, with its well-connected system of mass transit and bicycle routes, in addition to its strong base of community and volunteer groups. You soon find out about organizations such as Growing Gardens and the Portland Fruit Tree Project, and after attending their classes, you are able to plant your first garden.

Several of your neighbors catch the gardening “bug” (several others already had it), and you all begin talking together about the present economic situation and what you can do about it. You make your last house payment in March 2009, and host a “Burn the Mortgage” party.

But in April, you and your neighbors find out that the City wants to turn Lents Park into a baseball stadium for a minor-league professional team. This news is profoundly disturbing, as both you and your neighbors can't afford to sell your houses and relocate, and you are wondering what sort of adverse effects you will all suffer from having a 9,000 seat stadium right next to your homes. You are especially grieved about Lents Park. Your kids played in that park. When your young granddaughter visits from time to time, you take her to that park just to sit and read stories or play. What will become of the place now?

Questions for Discussion

1. What are the destabilizing influences in each neighborhood?

2. What structural barriers to Peak Oil/economic collapse adaptation exist in each neighborhood?

3. If we assume that the persons in each of these scenarios could relocate, would you advise them to? To where would you advise them to relocate?

4. Assuming that these people cannot afford to relocate, what strategies would you suggest for helping them to adapt, to build local safety nets and a resilient neighborhood?

5. What other factors or elements would you insert into each of these scenarios? Notice that in these scenarios I haven't seriously examined the effects of massive job losses, polluted land or altered climate.

The "Small Stones" Of Adaptation

The focus of this blog, The Well Run Dry, is Peak Oil and the related issues that accompany it – climate change, other resource peaks and economic collapse. My blog is partly a diary of the day-to-day experience of this multifaceted predicament. Yet I also try to provide some in-depth analysis of these issues, as well as helpful strategies of adaptation. One disclaimer: I do not consider myself to be an expert by any means. I woke up to these issues – truly woke up – at the start of 2007, long after more well-known writers and thinkers had begun studying these issues. Consider me to be just another man on the street, yet a man who likes to tinker.

One thing many readers may have noticed over the last few months is that I have been talking about very small-scale, low-tech strategies of adapting to economic collapse – things like bicycle transportation, small-scale manufacturing, backyard gardening, and building resilient neighborhoods. My particular focus on resilient neighborhoods has dealt with present, obvious threats to neighborhood stability, threats that would negatively impact quality of life even without Peak Oil and the other emergent crises we face. Some may question what these things have to do with adapting to crises such as Peak Oil and climate change. Others may question the effectiveness of such low-level strategies in dealing with these issues. Some may say, “Why don't you formulate some grand policy proposals that society could implement? Why don't you come up with a technological solution?” I will now explain why I have chosen to focus on low-level strategies and local responses to these issues, and will try to make some sense of my recent posts.

First, let me tell you what I believe. I believe that global oil production peaked in 2005, and that the oil price spike of 2008 is the evidence that oil production has been falling since then. My belief is based mainly on the Oil Report of the Energy Watch Group of Germany which was published in October 2007. I also believe that the official global economy is experiencing a number of other resource peaks right about now, including peaks in such raw materials as copper and molybdenum. In this I can speak from personal experience because I work for a company that has a number of industrial clients.

Because the supplies of many raw materials have peaked and are now declining, the global economy has begun to collapse. There are fewer and fewer new sources of supply for these raw materials, and existing stores are being depleted. Therefore I don't think there is anything we can do to avert the continued shrinkage of the global economy. We must adapt to a lifestyle of living on less. Living in a way that is truly “sustainable” over the long haul means living much more simply than Americans and citizens of the First World are accustomed to.

This fact is something that we must accept if we are to begin successfully adapting to the world in which we now find ourselves. This is true both of individuals and of larger social units – families, circles of friends, neighborhoods, communities and nations. To the extent that anyone or any group fails to accept this new reality, to that extent that individual or group will fail to adapt successfully.

Yet our modern society has become addicted to the constant getting of more “stuff” – thus the insistence on growing the “consumer” economy. Moreover, the growth of that economy is for the primary benefit of the masters of that economy – the rich owners, officers and executives of corporations and the heads of governments who serve those corporations. They especially are addicted to the constant getting of “more.” (It is rumored that when John D. Rockefeller was asked how much money is enough, he replied, “Just a little bit more.”) These rich masters are the drivers and preservers of our present economy, and they are doing all they can to preserve the present economic arrangements even as these arrangements begin to fall apart.

We are a society of addicts run by an elite consisting of mega-addicts. Our present way of life is unsustainable, not only because we are running out of resources, but because our way of life is destroying the earth. Successful adaptation to our situation requires that we admit this to ourselves, just as substance abuse addicts are often told, “Get honest or die!” Yet when faced with the ultimatum to get honest, our society in general and our leaders and rich men in particular have resisted at all costs.

Consider the presidency of George W. Bush, who in concert with oil companies and automakers chose to start a stupid and illegal war rather than promote mass transit and other conservation measures in the U.S. Consider how he and the Republican-dominated Congress enacted laws designed to make it easier for the rich to prey on the poor. Consider how he turned Federal scientific agencies into climate change deniers. Consider who started our present round of Wall Street bailouts. But if one wants to believe that the Democrats are any better, one must ask how much has actually changed since Bush left office. The bailouts of the rich keep coming, as well as attempts to enact laws that would force average Americans to continue to rely on a breaking system.

A top-down, strategic, societal strategy of adaptation to Peak Oil, climate change and economic collapse would require that the leaders and those with power and wealth use it selflessly for the common good. Yet the evidence clearly shows that this is not happening – even though our collective window of opportunity for large-scale societal adaptation is shrinking. This is why I haven't written some essay for President Obama, why I no longer believe in writing my congressman, and why I am not really interested in formulating some large-scale policy that will never be implemented.

Nor am I very enthused about supposed “high-tech” solutions to our predicament. First, I don't believe that many of these solutions have much chance of working. Secondly, I am somewhat fearful of the unintended consequences that would arise if some of them did work. Now this is a personal opinion of mine, and intellectual honesty requires that it be tested in order to be considered valid – something I intend to explore in future posts. But I must say that I tend to agree with bloggers like Jeff Vail in his description of the unintended consequences and problems caused by the pursuit of ever-more complex technological fixes for the problems caused by technological advancement. I also tend to agree with those who mention the extreme technical challenges involved in implementing some of the proposed solutions to our present energy crisis. (For a good example of a description of these challenges, see Kiashu's humorous essay, “Solar power... in SPAAAACE!” at his blog, Green With A Gun.)

My focus is therefore on personal strategies of adaptation, because I believe that while the evidence is clear that many of our leaders would rather die than get honest, there are yet individuals out in the world who would rather live instead. And while we peasants have very little chance of directly influencing our leaders, there are things we can do as individuals and as neighborhoods to adapt to our new reality.

Those things include building alternatives to the failing systems of the official economy, as well as strengthening the communities in which we live. I can't fix the industrial food system, but I can grow potatoes (mine are coming up quite well now). I can't persuade the nation to fix its passenger rail system, but I can buy a Surly Long-Haul Trucker and use it for basic transportation. I can't repair the culture of my country, but I can repair the culture of my neighborhood. I can't force the mainstream media to tell the truth, but I can blog about the things I see, hear and know. Therefore I will continue to cover the small-scale adaptations that are within the reach of individuals without a lot of money or power, because I think these things will play an unexpectedly important role in our society's adaptation to our present times.

Two other things: first, I want to thank some long-time commenters for their readership and encouragement. In particular, I want to mention Kiashu, whom I mentioned earlier, as well as SoapBoxTech, author of the blog of the same name (http://litetechca.blogspot.com/), gaiasdaugter, author of the blog Homesteading on a Sandbar (http://homesteadingonasandbar.blogspot.com/) and of course, Stormchild, author of Gale Warnings which is listed on my blog under “Other Wells.”

Secondly, I see that the New York Times has published an article talking about the dangers to urban food gardeners from lead soil contamination. This is an interesting development, which I almost half expected. As more people start to decouple from relying on the failing system of industrial food production, it is to be expected that the rich owners of agribusiness will influence media outlets to write stories telling people that backyard gardens are potentially dangerous. This sort of story is what I tried to refute in my post titled, “The Chicken That Laid Leaden Eggs, And Other Horror Stories.” There is one other thing I expect, and that is that there will be many other bloggers writing pieces about remediation strategies for gardeners with lead-contaminated soil. I imagine that many of these bloggers will make the same points I made in my original piece. That piece was rather long, and I intend to write a more summary post later this week describing strategies for gardening in contaminated soil. (Who knows, someone might beat me to it... ;) )

The Real Reasons For Frugality

Frugality has often been in the news over the last several months. Sometimes it is described in faintly negative tones by the mainstream media, who portray savers as a hindrance to the recovery of our economy. Then there are blogs whose authors try to make money from the frugality trend by offering financial advice and financial planning services. There are also people who define frugality as scoring the best deals on all the stuff being offered by our consumer economy. One peculiar article, titled, “America's New Frugality,” was published by Forbes Magazine in February of this year. It describes strategies “investors” can use to get at the savings of ordinary people who are now turning frugal. Some of their recommendations include investing in saving-and-loan institutions or bargain retailers like Amazon.com, since that's where the supposedly “frugal” people are now putting their money. (Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/16/retailers-bank-stocks-intelligent-investing_0217_retailers.html.)

These attempts to “monetize” frugality would be really funny if the stakes weren't so high and the consequences weren't so tragic. Frugality should actually be viewed as a righteous response to scarcity, a choice to live gracefully with less. In fact, frugality is defined as “economy in the use of resources,” according to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. As we see how scarce those resources have actually become, we begin to see the real reasons for frugality.

That scarcity is what I want to address in this post. But I must warn you that for many readers, what I am about to say will seem like very bad news. So you may want to sit down (if you're not already). Put on some appropriate mood music, if you think you need it. If you can't think of any, let me suggest Turn To Stone by Joe Walsh. The version he has on his album, You Can't Argue With A Sick Mind, seems appropriately doomful.

Let's start by talking about the last four years. During this time the world saw crude oil prices shoot up from slightly over $30 a barrel to nearly $150 a barrel. The once-hot and ever-climbing real estate market crashed under an avalanche of foreclosures. Prices for food and motor fuel skyrocketed to unsustainable levels and people found themselves unable to pay for these things. The prices of raw manufacturing materials such as metals rose to such levels that thieves were stealing not only residential wiring and plumbing fixtures, but even manhole covers in some cities.

Many who reported on these things treated them as isolated events that seemed to happen without any good reason. But the proper way to view these events is as symptoms of a deeper underlying problem, signs of Something Terribly Wrong underneath. Something's terribly wrong with our present society, our present economy, our present economic arrangements.

Our modern global economy is based on debt and requires continuous growth to function properly. It is based on debt in the sense that the banks who control our money supply loan money into existence. Their expectation is that this money will be paid back with interest, which means that they expect that borrowers will grow ever more prosperous as time passes, and will thus be able to pay off their interest-bearing loans. But for borrowers to grow more prosperous, their individual “net worth” must continually increase. This means either that their wages must continually rise or that some other asset (like a house or a 401K) held by borrowers must continually increase in value.

The other side of a debt-based economy is that many of the things needed by individuals and businesses are so expensive that they can usually be bought only on credit, that is, by taking out a loan. This is true of large businesses like airlines, who borrow money to buy new jetliners, and for ordinary people, most of whom don't have the resources to pay cash for a house or car or expensive medical treatments. As long as the economy is expanding, these borrowers can reasonably expect to be able to repay their loans with interest.

An expanding economy depends on an expanding base of resources. When a resource vital to an industry becomes scarce, its price shoots up and the products made by that industry become more expensive – or scarce. Then it becomes impossible to grow that particular industry unless a substitute resource is found to replace the resource that is now scarce. Our problem is that a large number of resources have now become scarce. Peak Oil is the name for one such resource constraint we are now facing. But there are other resources that are running out – everything from inorganic phosphate fertilizers to industrial metal ores to coal, and much more. There are no substitutes for these resources. And we are using up renewable resources like fish, trees and arable land at a rate far faster than they can be renewed. A shrinking resource base means the end of the growth economy.

Not only have we hit resource constraints, but the earth can no longer safely absorb all of the wastes generated by our global industrial economy. It is now all but certain that manmade air pollutants are causing potentially terminal climate change, that it is being felt now in many parts of the world, and that within a few years we may all be feeling it. The ozone layer of our atmosphere is still being destroyed by manmade chemicals. There are now huge islands of plastic trash floating in our oceans. The pollution of our oceans is endangering the phytoplankton from which half of our oxygen is derived, as well as destroying fisheries. The destruction of our world by our industrial economy means the end of the growth economy.

All of these symptoms are behind the present economic collapse. For instance, the skyrocketing prices of basic necessities from 2005 to 2008 made it impossible for many debtors to pay off their loans, and made it impossible for markets to attract large numbers of new consumers. The crop failures caused by climate change-induced drought are a big reason why some food grains got expensive. These resource constraints and destructive consequences of our industrial system are not going away, no matter how many governments offer “stimulus packages.” The long-term direction of our economy is therefore downward.

Most of us must therefore give up dreaming of getting rich. It has been a popular dream, especially in America, but the truth is that there is no longer enough of the “official” economy left for any significant number of us to achieve that dream. Those who pursue the dream of getting ever-more stuff will hit the wall of resource constraints or of environmental damage. The pie is shrinking. The well has run dry.

Some may ask then about the present time in which many things have started to get cheaper again, like gasoline. This is not due to our finding new resource supplies, but due to the removal of buyers from the market due to economic collapse. The number of people who can qualify for a loan is shrinking; therefore, house prices are falling. The number of people out of work is increasing; therefore, fewer people are driving and gas prices are down. But oil production, to name one resource, is still falling because old oil reservoirs are still being depleted, and oil scarcity is about to make a reappearance. Any attempt to “revive” the economy will run up against the same resource scarcities that caused the present collapse. I would not view this as a good time to go into debt or run out and buy a new big truck or SUV. I have seen a few drivers of these new vehicles lately, some of whom still have the dealer tags on their vehicles, and I can only say that their actions seem dumber than a bag full of rocks.

Frugality is thus the wise, righteous and realistic response to our present times, a learning to live gracefully on less and a learning to live for something other than money and material advancement. It is not a way of getting rich! If anyone is thinking of frugality as a means of socking money away for later investment in some get-rich scheme, I've got one bit of advice: Fahgetaboudit. Those days are over, probably for good. I suggest, instead, that we view frugality as one strategy in a portfolio of strategies for preserving that good which can be salvaged out of this present difficult time, to hand it down to future generations. These are strategies well worth exploring, and there are some very excellent writers tackling these topics. Some of these writers are listed under my heading, “Other Wells,” on this blog.

For Further Reading:

• “Ocean Pollution: Destroying What We Need Most,” http://oceanpollution.blog.ca/2009/04/22/phytoplankton-and-oxygen-5985274/

• “Ocean Pollution Worsens And Spreads,” http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5474

• “Our Finite World,” http://gailtheactuary.wordpress.com/

• “Crude Oil – The Supply Outlook,” Energy Watch Group, www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Oilreport_10-2007.pdf

• “Climate Chaos Predicted by CO2 Study,” The Independent, 30 April 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-chaos-predicted-by-co2-study-1676411.html