Post Carbon in Eugene

First, here's a picture of the 1991 Geo metro that I bought on Friday.
There is another shot of it next to my trailer and some thoughts about why buy it on the Aftershock main website here.
I met three of the Post Carbon group in Eugene yesterday at a quick meeting out at Kevin's farm near the Willamette river. Doug, Denise, Kevin and I talked about where Doug would like to put the efforts of the Post Carbon group in the immediate future. More, it was a chance for me to see how wide the subject is, and how exhausting.

I tried last night to get my thoughts straight. Why was I there at all? I guess I'm what is known in the Peak oil circles as a "doomer." I have not yet found any confidence, plan, or suggestion that takes our current society and moves it through the loss of free and easy, hell, magical, oil to a lower energy future without deadly, enormous disruption. That does not mean that I am not looking for the path for me, and my close people. But yes, I'm a doomer and remain unconvinced about people's ability to change, and about the very structure of this machine civilization to transmute to a non machine civilization.

In the short time that the four of us met yesterday, with a larger meeting coming on Tuesday, I found several viewpoints that really reflect that all four of us came to that point in the greenhouse from very different directions. Doug is a methodical activist seeking change in practical ways through the political system as it really exists. It is a very slow process and he chips away at the entrenched Chamber of Commerce machine that controls even a small thing like a Peak Oil resolution - which Portland has already done!
Denise represents a Peak Oil person who has already made changes based on what she has learned, relocating herself and her husband to Eugene. Kevin is living the life that is probably the only real choice in 50 years. A very nearly completely self sufficient farm on 23 acres that supplies almost every need and creates a surplus. I enjoyed basking in his energy because it is calm, quiet and directed, as most people who work physically hard seem to possess.

The consensus was that relocalization is the key to future community change. Learning to grow, buying food locally, supporting the structures that will still exist when the Walmart trucks roll less often and the price of gas isolates you where you are.
But what did I feel about all of this? Was I bouyed with new hope and enthusiasm? I was devestated that there is no consensus of the smallest of issues. Anyone who has the courage to not flinch and look away, anyone who begins the process of self education about energy finally one day realizes there are at least already 4 billion more people than the earth can carry, and second, that every political system in the world is the wrong tool for getting through this. The political systems are the problems. They are exactly how we got in this mess, and whoever is left at the end of the next 80 years will probably not fondly remember us, those people who used the most magical gift of the 120 million years of earth oil production in 150 years. And, we did it with no view of the future and of the time when it would be gone. We have been very bad dogs. Unfortunately our political systems exist to preserve the status quo. Investement, ROI, exist on stability - that tomorrow will have the same cheap energy as today. Some of the smartest people I know personally can simply not look at this, can not entertain running out and the business model collapsing, investment collapsing, debt overwhelming them as the bills of nearly free energy are called in.
I and those people see the future that would work here in the Willamette valley - Kevin's farm in a wonderful model of what will be common, among those left in 2082 (when oil becomes a collector's item - maybe we'll sell it on a primitive version of local ebay by the cup then?). But how to reach across from massive belief that this party can go on forever? We could be using the last half of oil reserves (the very hard to get last half) to build sustainable energy, wind, and solar at the local level on every home, as Cuba is currently doing. They are pumping oil from off shore and selling it, using the proceeds to buy and build solar panels for every school and eventually all rural homes. It is not much power, enough for a light bulb and a radio. That's it. But I can personally tell you, there is a huge difference between no power and even a very little bit of power.
But I was in Las Vegas two weeks ago as blog readers know, and there was no sign that anyone can stop. The machine is self perpetuating, and those that control investment can not accept the physical laws and math that you learned in 1st grade. You have three apples and subtract two apples and you have one apple. Oil was a two time event in geological history, I have read, 90 million years ago, and 120 million years ago. Find it all, pump it all, wait a few hundred million years and maybe there will be more. From now until then, no oil.
I hope to learn more from these people, and I strangely am driven to make people look right at it. It's bad enough that we used it all in completely stupid ways, but then to not have the balls to look at the what we did and the coming result? Somehow we have to let it in, if only to grief it's loss. If you want to wait until you are like a little baby rabbit saying "what happened, what happened, it's not fair!!!" then we have not matured as a species at all. We have to stare right at it, do the best with what is left, and accept that we have been, since the dawn of agriculture, the problem on this planet, not the solution. I would just like us all to look, and then have the grace to say, "oops." And then use what is left to build a sustainable new world. Whatever I think or you think, whether you bothered to read this far or not, the end of oil comes because the pumps are running.

Pirates, all

Hung suspended with a sense of motion all around, but so many things to fall into new, old, changed patterns in the next few days and weeks. I'm in Florence OR after a miserable night at the Mill Casino in Coos Bay. The fog and rain were so cold it was hard to even walk in it. The dish could not find my internet satellite through the soup, and worse, the trailer was clammy, moist.
At my points of turning - my six months on, six off - so many patterns are set and locked in a day or two, where I'll stay, how much it will cost, what sort of internet connection and how much, all add up to decisions about my future for the next six and 1/2 months. That is so odd when I'm not sure what will happen in the world in the next six months. More germane, I have changed on this trip. I am less bound by the law of the land, the laws of conformity, and I have given myself my own letter of permission to do what I must to prepare for what I see headed our way.
Part of that permission is deciding to be active in the Post Carbon group, part of it is realizing that when you are on the Titanic, despite how good the music is in the ballroom, it is OK for me to go and get my own lifeboat setup. So everyone will party on around me, at work, in town, at the coffee shop, and I will dedicate my energy and my time to acting personally on my beliefs, not as a philosophical experiment, but a new and larger degree of action.
Does that sound like perhaps I've received a letter from the Crown presenting me with the authority to seize the shipping of enemy nations? What did Pogo say? "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Begin the time of Pirates matey. My time for thinking wider is at a turning point.
Society is not your friend. Your government serves the rich, and medicates the poor. If you try harder and live a better life you child will never grow up to be president. We are distinctly class society while pretending not to see that we have class structure in every decision, expectation and action. This society, the world captalist society is cracking at the seems, it does not have the capacity to do other than what it is doing right now, growing hard up against the edge of resource depletion and fouling all of us in the process.
You, me, us, our ability to affect our futures is pretty small compared to the size of our Titantic juggernaut sailing into self destruction. But our small world is all we can affect, all we can change. That is the cusp of thought and action that has woken in me this last 5 months. I have lost friends and acquaintances, I have gained confidence commitment.
Find the pirate in you, set sail from conformity, drudgery, powerlessness, and depression. Embrace the life of the pirate, for though the nations of the world unite to enslave you, only by your acquiescence can they perpetuate their parasitic position.
You, me, everyone was born as co owners of this wonderful planet, third from the sun, in a minor arm of what some call the Milky Way. You have every right to land, opportunity, health and space, clean water, sunlight, and love that the most priveleged class member would suggest that you do not. There is no part of the country club golf course that does not belong to you in absolute reality. Perhaps you cannot put your foot there today because of your beliefs and the beliefs of police and our overlord ruling class, but in fact, you were born on this planet, it is yours, or rather, you are hers. There is nothing here that is not yours.
You may choose to accept the imprisonment of your body by society, at work, at your tiny house, by your debt, by the criticism of your family and friends, but even as you are harnessed to their tasks, you must not, I must not, accept that prison in my heart. It is not what I believe. I believe that you are creators of all that you see and experience and love. The only real prison, the only real sadness are the limitations we accept for ourselves. Just because everyone says it, just because everyone says you're only worthy "this much", never never never accept that. You are and remain a miracle in motion, a miracle of potential and this world gave you life and no one, anywhere can do more than kill your body. Rage, rage, and love, against the dying of the light. And I will rage and love with you.
Remember who you are! Laugh at the petty tyrants, The chains we must strike off are not society's chains but those you accepted as true, your limits, your worth, so long ago. Those chains were never true. You are a swashbuckler in your heart, you know it. Live it.