Straw and rammed earth insulation and a greenhouse roof, who says you can't produce bio gas in cold climates :-)
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Everything Old is New Again
"…The boom continued to gather strength. In 1885 the harvest was
prolific, the price of wool was high, the railways made a profit for
the first time in the colony's history, and optimism reigned
supreme. A few warning voices were raised overseas, but heard as
from afar…"
Extracts from the book "The Land Boomers" by Michael Cannon,
published in 1966…
Victoria was made rich by gold, and populous by the immigrants who sought it.
Two great economic booms and depressions had already shaken nineteenth century Victoria. The first occurred shortly after the early Melbourne land sales of 1837, reaching its peak about three years later. The discovery of gold sparked off the second great boom, which reached its peak in the 1850s. People had money to burn, and either dissipated it in wild extravagance or bought property at inflated prices. But because of the continuous rich flow of gold, there was comparatively little suffering when the inevitable crash followed.
Then came the land boom of the 1880s. This time every type and degree of man was involved. Clergymen, labourers, widows, schoolmasters all grasped at the chance of quick wealth and invested their savings.
The land mania of the 1880s took two main forms. The first was based on a plethora of building societies, whose optimistic officials were relieved that every family in the colony could simultaneously build their own house, keep up the payments through
good times and bad, and support an army of investors who were being paid high rates of interest for the use of their money. The second form of mania was the deeply held belief that it was impossible to lose money by investing in land a belief that persists to the present day.
The boom continued to gather strength. In 1885 the harvest was prolific, the price of wool was high, the railways made a profit for the first time in the colony's history, and optimism reigned supreme. A few warning voices were raised overseas, but heard as from afar.
In 1886 it appeared to some of the associated banks that the land boom had reached its zenith and would now plunge downwards. They became alarmed at the large withdrawals being made to meet land payments, and increased the interest rate on deposits and overdrafts by 1 per cent. For a year land speculation became less profitable
Then in 1887 there began a new wave of speculation, the land boom proper, so forceful that it over-rode all considerations of interest rates. Land selling in Surrey Hills for 15 shillings a foot in 1884 rose to 15 Pounds in 1887. Land at Burwood rose from 70 to 300 Pounds an acre.
In the city there was fantastic competition for blocks, fanned by constant reports of fortunes which had been made by holding on to the blocks for a few months and reselling.
Once again the banks, dismayed by wildly fluctuating values, began calling in overdrafts. Unfortunately, some of the leading banks had encouraged speculation when money was plentiful, and ruthlessly suppressed it when the inevitable reaction set in. This traditional banking policy, aimed primarily at safeguarding the banks' own
interests, proved utterly ruinous to the general community.
The land promotors began looking elsewhere for easy finance. Thus the years 1888, 1889 and even 1890 saw the formation of most of the disastrous land and finance companies, and so-called land banks.
Under the loose banking and company laws of the time, they were able to take savings deposits, issue shares, float loans, discount promissory notes and other commercial paper, and in general perform all the functions of an established bank.
The boom soared upwards to dizzy new heights. How could such values last? The maximum rentals which tenants were willing to pay often amounted to only 2.5% return on the money spent on sites and buildings. As the boom petered out, many tenants could not pay even that. A few experienced speculators realised what would happen, and quietly began to sell off their shares and land while there was yet time.
Simultaneously, there began a series of calamitous industrial conflicts between employers and the developing unions, mainly in the maritime and pastoral industries. The strike collapsed. But business never fully picked up again.
For a few months, many investors still appeared to be hypnotized by the boom. By the time they realised that the crash was indeed final, practically every land company was in liquidation and calls on their shares had gone forth. The same pressure was felt by the land banks, many of which owned shares in associated speculative companies. Some were able to use the public's cash deposits to stay open a little longer. But one after another they toppled, the pressure multiplying each day as their depositors took fright and withdrew their cash. From July 1891, when the Imperial Bank suspended payment, to March 1892, when the Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank suspended, no fewer than 20 major financial institutions, with liabilities of nearly 20 million Pounds, closed down.
Every day brought news and rumours of fresh disasters, of another
land company folding up. And when they folded, there came the inevitable calls of capital on their partly paid shares to help pay the creditors. Suicide became a commonplace solution.
By the end of 1891 the bottom had completely dropped out of the land market. As bank shares and other stocks began to slide in value, the Directors of certain companies sent out dummies to buy their own shares and prop up their value temporarily while the Directors sold their personal holdings.
Said Table Talk, just before Christmas 1892, "Never before in the history of the colony has a Christmas holiday been shrouded in such deep gloom. Shop-keepers complain that their customers appeared to have forgotten that the season of good cheer was at hand, and started on being asked for the accustomed order, as if reminded of the changed condition of their purses that does not admit of luxuries or extras."
The year 1892 may have been sombre, but the disasters to come in 1893 were quite unprecedented. Enough misuse of financial power had been revealed to make every man suspicious of the soundest institutions, and to be fearful about the safety of his own bank deposits. Quietly, and then more quickly, a general run on the established banks began.
Public disquiet was multiplied by the suspension of the Commercial Bank on 7 April 1893, following heavy withdrawals and a slump in the value of its shares.
On the weekend of 29-30 April 1893, the great and powerful National Bank privately advised the Premier that because of the continuous run on its deposits, it intended to suspend business on the Monday. On Sunday 30 April, Cabinet met secretly and decided to declare the whole week a banking Holiday. On Monday 1 May 1893, men picked up their morning papers to read the incredible news that the colony's entire banking system had apparently broken down.
The Angel of Death came early and stayed late in the Melbourne of 1892 and 1893. The collapse of the boom economy was sudden and dramatic. As each company closed its doors, it dragged others down with it. Clerks, surveyors, accountants, builders, and every other kind of employee was thrown out of work, and onto a labour market which was harsh enough in good times, but almost non-existent in bad times. Their savings ran out, and still there was no work to be had. Nor was there any form of help, beyond private charity which usually came too little and too late.
In the absence of trustworthy statistics, it is difficult for us today to form a complete picture of the extent of unemployment and the human suffering it produced. Some contemporary observers claimed that every second man was out of work, but these estimates could only be guesswork. Thousands of people were privately supported by others. Thousands left Melbourne. Thousands lived on scraps and municipal handouts. All we can say for certain is that this was the worst depression in Australian history, before or since.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Featured/TheLandBoomers.html
prolific, the price of wool was high, the railways made a profit for
the first time in the colony's history, and optimism reigned
supreme. A few warning voices were raised overseas, but heard as
from afar…"
Extracts from the book "The Land Boomers" by Michael Cannon,
published in 1966…
Victoria was made rich by gold, and populous by the immigrants who sought it.
Two great economic booms and depressions had already shaken nineteenth century Victoria. The first occurred shortly after the early Melbourne land sales of 1837, reaching its peak about three years later. The discovery of gold sparked off the second great boom, which reached its peak in the 1850s. People had money to burn, and either dissipated it in wild extravagance or bought property at inflated prices. But because of the continuous rich flow of gold, there was comparatively little suffering when the inevitable crash followed.
Then came the land boom of the 1880s. This time every type and degree of man was involved. Clergymen, labourers, widows, schoolmasters all grasped at the chance of quick wealth and invested their savings.
The land mania of the 1880s took two main forms. The first was based on a plethora of building societies, whose optimistic officials were relieved that every family in the colony could simultaneously build their own house, keep up the payments through
good times and bad, and support an army of investors who were being paid high rates of interest for the use of their money. The second form of mania was the deeply held belief that it was impossible to lose money by investing in land a belief that persists to the present day.
The boom continued to gather strength. In 1885 the harvest was prolific, the price of wool was high, the railways made a profit for the first time in the colony's history, and optimism reigned supreme. A few warning voices were raised overseas, but heard as from afar.
In 1886 it appeared to some of the associated banks that the land boom had reached its zenith and would now plunge downwards. They became alarmed at the large withdrawals being made to meet land payments, and increased the interest rate on deposits and overdrafts by 1 per cent. For a year land speculation became less profitable
Then in 1887 there began a new wave of speculation, the land boom proper, so forceful that it over-rode all considerations of interest rates. Land selling in Surrey Hills for 15 shillings a foot in 1884 rose to 15 Pounds in 1887. Land at Burwood rose from 70 to 300 Pounds an acre.
In the city there was fantastic competition for blocks, fanned by constant reports of fortunes which had been made by holding on to the blocks for a few months and reselling.
Once again the banks, dismayed by wildly fluctuating values, began calling in overdrafts. Unfortunately, some of the leading banks had encouraged speculation when money was plentiful, and ruthlessly suppressed it when the inevitable reaction set in. This traditional banking policy, aimed primarily at safeguarding the banks' own
interests, proved utterly ruinous to the general community.
The land promotors began looking elsewhere for easy finance. Thus the years 1888, 1889 and even 1890 saw the formation of most of the disastrous land and finance companies, and so-called land banks.
Under the loose banking and company laws of the time, they were able to take savings deposits, issue shares, float loans, discount promissory notes and other commercial paper, and in general perform all the functions of an established bank.
The boom soared upwards to dizzy new heights. How could such values last? The maximum rentals which tenants were willing to pay often amounted to only 2.5% return on the money spent on sites and buildings. As the boom petered out, many tenants could not pay even that. A few experienced speculators realised what would happen, and quietly began to sell off their shares and land while there was yet time.
Simultaneously, there began a series of calamitous industrial conflicts between employers and the developing unions, mainly in the maritime and pastoral industries. The strike collapsed. But business never fully picked up again.
For a few months, many investors still appeared to be hypnotized by the boom. By the time they realised that the crash was indeed final, practically every land company was in liquidation and calls on their shares had gone forth. The same pressure was felt by the land banks, many of which owned shares in associated speculative companies. Some were able to use the public's cash deposits to stay open a little longer. But one after another they toppled, the pressure multiplying each day as their depositors took fright and withdrew their cash. From July 1891, when the Imperial Bank suspended payment, to March 1892, when the Australian Deposit and Mortgage Bank suspended, no fewer than 20 major financial institutions, with liabilities of nearly 20 million Pounds, closed down.
Every day brought news and rumours of fresh disasters, of another
land company folding up. And when they folded, there came the inevitable calls of capital on their partly paid shares to help pay the creditors. Suicide became a commonplace solution.
By the end of 1891 the bottom had completely dropped out of the land market. As bank shares and other stocks began to slide in value, the Directors of certain companies sent out dummies to buy their own shares and prop up their value temporarily while the Directors sold their personal holdings.
Said Table Talk, just before Christmas 1892, "Never before in the history of the colony has a Christmas holiday been shrouded in such deep gloom. Shop-keepers complain that their customers appeared to have forgotten that the season of good cheer was at hand, and started on being asked for the accustomed order, as if reminded of the changed condition of their purses that does not admit of luxuries or extras."
The year 1892 may have been sombre, but the disasters to come in 1893 were quite unprecedented. Enough misuse of financial power had been revealed to make every man suspicious of the soundest institutions, and to be fearful about the safety of his own bank deposits. Quietly, and then more quickly, a general run on the established banks began.
Public disquiet was multiplied by the suspension of the Commercial Bank on 7 April 1893, following heavy withdrawals and a slump in the value of its shares.
On the weekend of 29-30 April 1893, the great and powerful National Bank privately advised the Premier that because of the continuous run on its deposits, it intended to suspend business on the Monday. On Sunday 30 April, Cabinet met secretly and decided to declare the whole week a banking Holiday. On Monday 1 May 1893, men picked up their morning papers to read the incredible news that the colony's entire banking system had apparently broken down.
The Angel of Death came early and stayed late in the Melbourne of 1892 and 1893. The collapse of the boom economy was sudden and dramatic. As each company closed its doors, it dragged others down with it. Clerks, surveyors, accountants, builders, and every other kind of employee was thrown out of work, and onto a labour market which was harsh enough in good times, but almost non-existent in bad times. Their savings ran out, and still there was no work to be had. Nor was there any form of help, beyond private charity which usually came too little and too late.
In the absence of trustworthy statistics, it is difficult for us today to form a complete picture of the extent of unemployment and the human suffering it produced. Some contemporary observers claimed that every second man was out of work, but these estimates could only be guesswork. Thousands of people were privately supported by others. Thousands left Melbourne. Thousands lived on scraps and municipal handouts. All we can say for certain is that this was the worst depression in Australian history, before or since.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/Featured/TheLandBoomers.html
Monday, 25 February 2008
Update
G'day, just a short post to say that I've finally begun trading after 18 months of gathering equipment and satisfying various legal requirements, will concentrate on LPG conversions to petrol and diesel vehicles for the moment but am continuing R+D on woodgas with an emphasis on power generation and combined heat and power plants (CHP)
Cheers
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
The Future With Less Oil
New Queensland Sustainability Minister on the future with less oil.
"There's no question whatsoever that community driven local solutions will be essential. That's where government will certainly have a role to play in assisting and encouraging local networks, who can assist with local supplies of food and fuel and water and jobs and the things we need from shops. It was one of my contentions in the first speech I made on this issue in February of 2005... that we will see a relocalisation of the way in which we live that will remind us of not last century, but the one before that. And that's not a bad thing.
Undoubtedly one of the cheaper responses that will be very effective is promoting local consumption, local production, local distribution. And there are positive spinoffs to that in terms of getting to know our communities better. There are human and community benefits from local networks that I look forward to seeing grow."
The Honourable Andrew McNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation
Original link
Download audio
Stream audio
Relocalisation
"There's no question whatsoever that community driven local solutions will be essential. That's where government will certainly have a role to play in assisting and encouraging local networks, who can assist with local supplies of food and fuel and water and jobs and the things we need from shops. It was one of my contentions in the first speech I made on this issue in February of 2005... that we will see a relocalisation of the way in which we live that will remind us of not last century, but the one before that. And that's not a bad thing.
Undoubtedly one of the cheaper responses that will be very effective is promoting local consumption, local production, local distribution. And there are positive spinoffs to that in terms of getting to know our communities better. There are human and community benefits from local networks that I look forward to seeing grow."
The Honourable Andrew McNamara, Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation
Original link
Download audio
Stream audio
Relocalisation
Friday, 7 September 2007
Beyond Hope
This article was originally archived at http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-3om/Jensen.html
I've reproduced it here for posterity
Rob
Beyond Hope
by Derrick Jensen
THE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We're fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have—or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective—to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they're reduced to trying to protect just one tree.
Here's how John Osborn, an extraordinary activist and friend, sums up his reasons for doing the work: "As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure some doors remain open. If grizzly bears are still alive in twenty, thirty, and forty years, they may still be alive in fifty. If they're gone in twenty, they'll be gone forever."
But no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We're losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don't care.
Frankly, I don't have much hope. But I think that's a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.
To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness.
One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women's shelters in the '50s and '60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.
Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they're getting worse. Rapidly.
But it isn't only false hopes that keep those who go along enchained. It is hope itself. Hope, we are told, is our beacon in the dark. It is our light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It is the beam of light that makes its way into our prison cells. It is our reason for persevering, our protection against despair (which must be avoided at all costs). How can we continue if we do not have hope?
We've all been taught that hope in some future condition—like hope in some future heaven—is and must be our refuge in current sorrow. I'm sure you remember the story of Pandora. She was given a tightly sealed box and was told never to open it. But, being curious, she did, and out flew plagues, sorrow, and mischief, probably not in that order.
Too late she clamped down the lid. Only one thing remained in the box: hope. Hope, the story goes, was the only good the casket held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune. No mention here of action being a comfort in misfortune, or of actually doing something to alleviate or eliminate one's misfortune.
The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.
Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying "Hope and fear chase each other's tails," not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.
More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope.
You wouldn't believe—or maybe you would—how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here's the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.
I'm not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don't hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn't crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world.
By saying that, they've assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they've stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it.
I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn't drive them extinct. If coho want to leave us because they don't like how they're being treated—and who could blame them?—I will say goodbye, and I will miss them, but if they do not want to leave, I will not allow civilization to kill them off.
When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes.
When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we're in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free—truly free—to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins.
PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, "If things are so bad, why don't you just kill yourself?" The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.
Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate situation. Many people probably also fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate things are, they may be forced to do something about it.
Another question people sometimes ask me is, "If things are so bad, why don't you just party?" Well, the first answer is that I don't really like to party. The second is that I'm already having a great deal of fun. I love my life. I love life. This is true for most activists I know. We are doing what we love, fighting for what (and whom)we love.
I have no patience for those who use our desperate situation as an excuse for inaction. I've learned that if you deprive most of these people of that particular excuse they just find another, then another, then another. The use of this excuse to justify inaction—the use of any excuse to justify inaction—reveals nothing more nor less than an incapacity to love.
At one of my recent talks someone stood up during the Q and A and announced that the only reason people ever become activists is to feel better about themselves. Effectiveness really doesn't matter, he said, and it's egotistical to think it does.
I told him I disagreed.
Doesn't activism make you feel good? he asked.
Of course, I said, but that's not why I do it. If I only want to feel good, I can just masturbate. But I want to accomplish something in the real world.
Why?
Because I'm in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don't determine whether or not you make the effort. You don't simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn't cause me to protect those I love, it's not love.
A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn't kill you. It didn't even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die.
And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no. The you who is a part of the land where you live. The you who will fight (or not) to defend your family. The you who will fight (or not) to defend those you love. The you who will fight (or not) to defend the land upon which your life and the lives of those you love depends. The you whose morality is not based on what you have been taught by the culture that is killing the planet, killing you, but on your own animal feelings of love and connection to your family, your friends, your landbase—not to your family as self-identified civilized beings but as animals who require a landbase, animals who are being killed by chemicals, animals who have been formed and deformed to fit the needs of the culture.
When you give up on hope—when you are dead in this way, and by so being are really alive—you make yourself no longer vulnerable to the cooption of rationality and fear that Nazis inflicted on Jews and others, that abusers like my father inflict on their victims, that the dominant culture inflicts on all of us. Or is it rather the case that these exploiters frame physical, social, and emotional circumstances such that victims perceive themselves as having no choice but to inflict this cooption on themselves?
But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.
And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.
In case you're wondering, that's a very good thing.
I've reproduced it here for posterity
Rob
Beyond Hope
by Derrick Jensen
THE MOST COMMON WORDS I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We're fucked. Most of these environmentalists are fighting desperately, using whatever tools they have—or rather whatever legal tools they have, which means whatever tools those in power grant them the right to use, which means whatever tools will be ultimately ineffective—to try to protect some piece of ground, to try to stop the manufacture or release of poisons, to try to stop civilized humans from tormenting some group of plants or animals. Sometimes they're reduced to trying to protect just one tree.
Here's how John Osborn, an extraordinary activist and friend, sums up his reasons for doing the work: "As things become increasingly chaotic, I want to make sure some doors remain open. If grizzly bears are still alive in twenty, thirty, and forty years, they may still be alive in fifty. If they're gone in twenty, they'll be gone forever."
But no matter what environmentalists do, our best efforts are insufficient. We're losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on destroying the planet, and most people don't care.
Frankly, I don't have much hope. But I think that's a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.
To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness.
One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women's shelters in the '50s and '60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.
Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they're getting worse. Rapidly.
But it isn't only false hopes that keep those who go along enchained. It is hope itself. Hope, we are told, is our beacon in the dark. It is our light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It is the beam of light that makes its way into our prison cells. It is our reason for persevering, our protection against despair (which must be avoided at all costs). How can we continue if we do not have hope?
We've all been taught that hope in some future condition—like hope in some future heaven—is and must be our refuge in current sorrow. I'm sure you remember the story of Pandora. She was given a tightly sealed box and was told never to open it. But, being curious, she did, and out flew plagues, sorrow, and mischief, probably not in that order.
Too late she clamped down the lid. Only one thing remained in the box: hope. Hope, the story goes, was the only good the casket held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune. No mention here of action being a comfort in misfortune, or of actually doing something to alleviate or eliminate one's misfortune.
The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.
Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying "Hope and fear chase each other's tails," not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.
More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope.
You wouldn't believe—or maybe you would—how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here's the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.
I'm not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don't hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn't crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world.
By saying that, they've assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they've stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it.
I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn't drive them extinct. If coho want to leave us because they don't like how they're being treated—and who could blame them?—I will say goodbye, and I will miss them, but if they do not want to leave, I will not allow civilization to kill them off.
When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to "hope" at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes.
When we stop hoping for external assistance, when we stop hoping that the awful situation we're in will somehow resolve itself, when we stop hoping the situation will somehow not get worse, then we are finally free—truly free—to honestly start working to resolve it. I would say that when hope dies, action begins.
PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, "If things are so bad, why don't you just kill yourself?" The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.
Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate situation. Many people probably also fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate things are, they may be forced to do something about it.
Another question people sometimes ask me is, "If things are so bad, why don't you just party?" Well, the first answer is that I don't really like to party. The second is that I'm already having a great deal of fun. I love my life. I love life. This is true for most activists I know. We are doing what we love, fighting for what (and whom)we love.
I have no patience for those who use our desperate situation as an excuse for inaction. I've learned that if you deprive most of these people of that particular excuse they just find another, then another, then another. The use of this excuse to justify inaction—the use of any excuse to justify inaction—reveals nothing more nor less than an incapacity to love.
At one of my recent talks someone stood up during the Q and A and announced that the only reason people ever become activists is to feel better about themselves. Effectiveness really doesn't matter, he said, and it's egotistical to think it does.
I told him I disagreed.
Doesn't activism make you feel good? he asked.
Of course, I said, but that's not why I do it. If I only want to feel good, I can just masturbate. But I want to accomplish something in the real world.
Why?
Because I'm in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don't determine whether or not you make the effort. You don't simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn't cause me to protect those I love, it's not love.
A wonderful thing happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn't kill you. It didn't even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems—you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself—and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.
When you give up on hope, something even better happens than it not killing you, which is that in some sense it does kill you. You die.
And there's a wonderful thing about being dead, which is that they—those in power—cannot really touch you anymore. Not through promises, not through threats, not through violence itself. Once you're dead in this way, you can still sing, you can still dance, you can still make love, you can still fight like hell—you can still live because you are still alive, more alive in fact than ever before. You come to realize that when hope died, the you who died with the hope was not you, but was the you who depended on those who exploit you, the you who believed that those who exploit you will somehow stop on their own, the you who believed in the mythologies propagated by those who exploit you in order to facilitate that exploitation. The socially constructed you died. The civilized you died. The manufactured, fabricated, stamped, molded you died. The victim died.
And who is left when that you dies? You are left. Animal you. Naked you. Vulnerable (and invulnerable) you. Mortal you. Survivor you. The you who thinks not what the culture taught you to think but what you think. The you who feels not what the culture taught you to feel but what you feel. The you who is not who the culture taught you to be but who you are. The you who can say yes, the you who can say no. The you who is a part of the land where you live. The you who will fight (or not) to defend your family. The you who will fight (or not) to defend those you love. The you who will fight (or not) to defend the land upon which your life and the lives of those you love depends. The you whose morality is not based on what you have been taught by the culture that is killing the planet, killing you, but on your own animal feelings of love and connection to your family, your friends, your landbase—not to your family as self-identified civilized beings but as animals who require a landbase, animals who are being killed by chemicals, animals who have been formed and deformed to fit the needs of the culture.
When you give up on hope—when you are dead in this way, and by so being are really alive—you make yourself no longer vulnerable to the cooption of rationality and fear that Nazis inflicted on Jews and others, that abusers like my father inflict on their victims, that the dominant culture inflicts on all of us. Or is it rather the case that these exploiters frame physical, social, and emotional circumstances such that victims perceive themselves as having no choice but to inflict this cooption on themselves?
But when you give up on hope, this exploiter/victim relationship is broken. You become like the Jews who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.
And when you quit relying on hope, and instead begin to protect the people, things, and places you love, you become very dangerous indeed to those in power.
In case you're wondering, that's a very good thing.
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Transitional Transportation
Many folks have touted electric vehicles and bio-diesel as clean alternatives to fossil fuel based transportation and I have more than a passing interest in the subject, yet there was always a niggling doubt about their eco credentials.
Let me state up front that I'm a big fan of backyard bio-diesel as using a waste resource appeals to the scavenger in me, but there are only so many fish and chip shops around and true waste oil is a limited resource
Commercial bio-diesel was comprehensively debunked by George Monbiot last year and the Toyota Prius outdoes the Hummer in environmental damage, neither is morally or environmentally acceptable in the long term or as a transitional technology
I understand and accept that the personal car has a limited use-by date but what of those areas with no public transport, how do small towns and remote communities cope with an oil embargo or similar shock? My guess would be localised adaptations using local resources and the one resource that most areas can count on is woody bio-mass.
Wood gas powered over a million cars, trucks, buses and trains during and immediately after world war two when fuel was severely rationed and can do so again. I'm not advocating it for "business as usual" but I do see it as a useful and doable response to a petroleum emergency as it
A- uses biomass from marginal landscapes and so does not compete with food for our arable land
B- can be built by any competent workshop using scrap gas cylinders
C- can be adapted to any motorised transport so that it
D- uses existing rolling stock instead of using more resources
I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is and will post more on this in the near future
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