April 18, 2005
Letters to the Future:
Oil Peak Poses Dramatic Challenges
By Suzanne Duarte
April 8, 2005
Dear Ones of the Future,
I haven't been able to write you for quite a long time. The main reason is that I was convinced that nobody would want to publish or read what I had to say. The bubble of delusion was too thick. I'm speaking of the delusion that everything would continue as it has, that technology would solve any problems we humans had created, that something or someone would save us.
The Bush administration managed to steal another election in November last year. It was carefully and thoroughly choreographed. Many of us were plunged into a psycho-spiritual crisis at the prospect of another four years of this destructive regime. We worked really hard to get them out of office. But, as I have written, they are predators and the culture of the predator seems to be spreading. Those of us on this side of the polarization know it can't last; but at the same time, half the population of the US, cheered on by the media, is in an obdurate state of denial, convinced that their precious American Way of Life was a God-given right and that their government would ensure that it would never end.
You know, I've been saying for the last 20 years that "This can't last". I've been observing and learning for 20 years about why it can't last and what people need to do in order to survive. But the way I see things has seemed too much at odds with what the publishing world wanted to publish, or even what most of my friends wanted to read or hear. So it's been hard to have confidence and conviction that these Letters to the Future would ever see the light of day.
However, strangely, that has changed recently. All the threats seem to be coming together and getting attention at the same time, just since the beginning of this year, 2005. Peak oil (aka the energy crisis) is finally breaking through the delusional bubble at the same time that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has announced that the majority of the Earth's ecosystems are on the brink of collapse, and at the same time that global warming is beginning to be taken very seriously. In fact, we now know that global warming will probably be much worse than previously estimated, even if all carbon emissions ceased right now, which they won't. So in other words, everything the ecologists have been warning about for decades is finally becoming reality, although the politicians and the corporate media are barely acknowledging it.
At the same time, economic collapse in the United States now seems quite near, and if it occurs, it will trigger the collapse of the global economy. The skyrocketing price of oil will contribute to this collapse. Many people think that there will be global warfare over resources: first oil, then water, then whatever is left. But global war depends entirely on fossil fuels and will become increasingly expensive.
Ross Gelbspan and others say global warming is the most serious threat to the planet and human survival because it places all ecosystems under stress and makes climate, weather, and growing seasons unpredictable. Food is definitely going to be a problem. Lester Brown has been warning about this for years. Already harvests are yielding less than expected and needed for the growing world population. Already there are water shortages. And soils have been depleted and sterilized by decades of improper use: pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, the removal of natural cover due to overgrazing and clearcutting, and erosion. Severe food shortage would lead to famines.
But I think that the energy crisis is going to hit even earlier than the impact of global warming. That's just a guess. Estimates vary, but it appears we are about to reach the peak in oil production worldwide. This news is coming out now in a torrent over the internet, though barely noted in the corporate media. But everyone nationwide is feeling the impact of rising prices at the pump, with no decline in sight.
For those of us who can comprehend what peak oil means, it is very sobering to realize how profoundly this will change our lives in the near future. It effectively means that the entire support structure or infrastructure of global civilization, the global economy, could collapse quite suddenly. It's all built on the illusion of an unending flow of cheap oil, for which there is no replacement. This means that everything that we have taken for granted and consumed during my lifetime, as we deplete most of the world's resources, will deteriorate and disappear within a matter of a few years &endash; perhaps as soon as 2008 or 2010.
That is, delivery systems for food and water, energy for electricity and heating, sanitation systems, waste disposal, communication and transportation will all come to a screeching halt within my lifetime. All the things I depend on to keep this old body going will no longer be available. I'll be lucky if I live in a place where food can be brought in by horses. I don't know how water will be purified. I don't know how we'll keep warm.
Anyway, this is what I've been thinking about lately, and telling others to pay attention to. Only a few friends are receptive to this information at this point, but that even a few are willing to acknowledge the reality and implications of peak oil is encouraging. Survival will depend entirely on our ability to work together with other sane human beings. Meanwhile, the corporate media persist in maintaining the illusions of the industrial growth society. They have to. If they tell people the truth, people will stop consuming and their corporate advertisers and owners will silence editors and journalists who tell the truth. This has happened.
Television is surreal. It focuses on the rich and famous, on celebrities, corporate predators and politicians, and the opulent, glitzy life they lead, with the promise that "You can, too"&emdash;if only you buy our products. Television broadcasts fantasies of the possibility of gaining limitless wealth and consuming endless quantities of resources: living in huge mega-mansions, having multiple expensive cars and vast closets full of designer clothes. There is no attention given to the wastefulness of this way of life or the consequences for the future.
What a shock it will be to the television-viewing masses to realize that they can no longer get whatever they want from whatever part of the world it comes from, that they can no longer hop on a plane and fly off to some exotic resort or go home to visit distant relatives, that they can no longer talk to a loved one on the other side of the planet, or even send and receive mail. People will become isolated in their geographic regions again, but with fewer resources to sustain them than ever before in human history, and fewer means to create what they need because all the old pre-fossil-fuel technologies have disappeared.
For people like me, knowing that what we are used to is all going to come to a screeching halt and that all we'll be left with is toxic waste dumps and landfills full of the discarded junk of the 20th century, there is or will be no pleasure in saying "I told you so." So I won't bother. This is definitely a Pyrrhic victory. It is no victory not to have been heeded while there was still time.
So what I've been thinking about is how to contribute to sanity. For the last ten years I've been telling friends and students that the most important thing we can do for future generations is to keep our sanity. (Perhaps not coincidentally, that is also how long I've been writing these letters, almost exactly ten years. Interesting.) I still think sanity is going to be a precious commodity for future humans. I think of sanity as the ability to think in an orderly fashion, the capacity to synchronize memory, imagination, intuition, sensation and reason into accurate perception and decision making. Personal sanity is the basis for sane human relationships, and we will need sane relationships in order to work together.
In the short term, there is going to be deep trauma when the masses, especially in the United States, wake up to the reality that the future they've been ignoring is upon us, when they've been thinking it would be their children's or grandchildren's problem. There's going to be rage when they realize how much they've been lied to, how much they've been betrayed by the leaders they trusted to take care of them. Those who experience this kind of rude awakening are going to want to blame somebody. Their reptilian brains will take over, and all the predatory instincts will kick into gear because survival will be the priority. It will get ugly. There will be violence and madness and suicide. I have no doubt of this.
Blaming, of course, will be beside the point. Killing off the bastards who have betrayed us will do nothing for our survival. They won't have much worth stealing, because you can't eat a Mercedes and there won't be any gas to drive it to where there's food. The food won't be grown in the guarded enclaves of the rich. The sane response will be to build with others something that will last, systems to sustain life.
So sanity will be a priority for survival&emdash;the kind of sanity that can deal with the insanity of those who are desperate and lack understanding; the kind of sanity that can preserve the knowledge about what works and what doesn't. There will be a great need for wisdom to understand why we brought this upon ourselves and how to avoid doing it again. Storytelling will be needed to explain how this happened, to teach lessons about how our reptilian and primate brains are not going to serve us now, about how we have to evolve our consciousness to deal with the unconditional realities of our planet.
I think women and those who have been living close to the Earth will be the people who will figure out the best survival strategies. Women because we understand relationships and how to nurture them. We are going to need sustainable relationships based on honesty and trust. None of us is going to make it through this alone. We have to work together. Those who have been living close to the Earth and understand her necessities will be valuable members of any community that is trying to grow food and save water and seeds. I foresee that it will be "sane, reverent beings," in the words of Caroline Casey, who manage to survive and carry our species through the coming time.
That's why I've decided to keep writing and try to get this book published, in the hope that it will help others to awaken to the truth, the reality we're facing in our lifetime, without losing their minds. If this book survives and doesn't get burned to provide heat for somebody's dwelling, I hope it will help you future people to receive the thread of sanity from this time. I hope it will help you to understand.
More to come.
With love,
Clarissa
SOURCES
Good Articles
On Nature and Ecology
The state of the world? It is on the brink of disaster On: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 4/2/05 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=624667
End of the Wild: The extinction crisis is over. We lost. http://bostonreview.net/BR29.2/meyer.html
How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveearth.html
The Value of the Remaining Wilderness
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040805_remaining_wilderness.shtml
Earth To Humankind: Back Off
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/04/13/notes041 305.DTL
On Effects of Peak Oil
Short Flashmedia Introduction to Peak Oil http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/images/stories/animoil.swf
The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, Rolling Stone (3/24/05) http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?rnd=1111797407968&has- player=true&version=6.0.12.1040
GLOBAL WARNING: When cheap oil disappears Interview with James Howard Kunstler
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21737/
A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE by Richard Heinberg http://www.museletter.com/archive/110.html
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil by Norman Church, 4/1/05 http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=563&Itemid=2
The oil we eat: following the food chain back to Iraq http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
The Neurobiology of Mass Delusion
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/337
Are we at Peak?
Goodby to all that Oil by Stan Cox AlterNet 4/4/05 http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21588/
Heading For Peak: Skrebowski's Oilfield Megaprojects Update http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/041305_world_stories.shtml#top
Bank says Saudi's top field in decline 12 April 05 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08B97BCF-7BE6-4F1D-A846-7ACB9B0F8894. htm
IEA warns against possible acute oil shortage http://www.energybulletin.net/5074.html
IMF says that surging demand and falling supply could spark 'permanent oil shock' http://news.ft.com/cms/s/afe1b4f8-a7ca-11d9-9744-00000e2511c8.html
World Bank: WORLD ECONOMY 'IS HEADED FOR SLOWDOWN' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/04/07/cnecon07 .xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/04/07/ixfrontcity.html
ChevronTexaco's CEO Banking on Peak Oil Situation http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/041105EC.shtml
Video:
On Powerdown - Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/347 for Richard Heinberg's 47 minute VIDEO discussion (given 2/16/05) of the main points in Powerdown. Pay attention to the "Lifeboats" part at the end!
Audio:
Interviews with James Howard Kunstler
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/people/james_howard_kunstler
Recommended Peak Oil websites
On Richard Heinberg and Muse Letter http://www.museletter.com/index.html On James Howard Kunstler http://www.kunstler.com/ On Peak Oil http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/content/peak_oil On Peak Oil Scenarios http://www.oilempire.us/peakoil-scenarios.html Be sure to scroll down this page to the "responses," including personal, neighborhood, bioregional, national, and global responses.
Recommended Bioregional and Lifeboat websites
Individual Self-Sufficiency http://herbfarmer.net/living.htm Community Self-Sufficiency http://herbfarmer.net/community.htm Resources for Bioregionalists - Planet Drum Foundation http://www.planetdrum.org/ Peak Oil Action http://www.peakoilaction.org/ Life after the Oil Crash: Prepare/Get Ready http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Prepare.html Titanic Lifeboat Academy http://lifeboat.postcarbon.org Post Carbon Institute http://www.postcarbon.org/ Citizen's Committee on Oil Peak & Decline Petition http://www.copad.org/ Powerswitch UK http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/ Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (UK) http://www.feasta.org/
Good, helpful websites for preparing for the crash: http://www.simpleliving.net/
http://www.awakeningearth.org/
http://www.newdream.org/index.php
Highly Recommended
THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream DVD for $24 http://www.peakoilaction.org/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=2 Available in UK from http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/