[The administration] is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic national security and military supremacy, interlinking of religion and the ruling elite, obsession with crime and punishment, disdain for the importance of human rights and intellectuals who support them, cronyism, corruption, sexism, protection of corporate power, suppression of labor, control over mass media, and fraudulent elections. These are the defining elements of fascism.

The situation has progressed, and not in a suitable manner from the perspective of the typical self-proclaimed progressive. Along with fascism, we’re firmly ensconced in a totalitarian, surveillance-obsessed police state. We’ve been in this state for many years and the situation grows worse every year, but most people prefer to look away and then claim ignorance while politicians claim we’re not the people indicated by our actions. As long as you’re not in jail (yet) or declared a terrorist (yet) and subsequently killed outright (yet), you’re unlikely to bring attention to yourself, regardless what you know and feel about the morality of the people running ruining the show.

But why? Is fear such a great motivator that we allow complete destruction of the living planet to give ourselves a few more years to enable and further the destruction? Is the grip of culture so strong we cannot break free in defense of planetary habitat for our children? Have we moved so far away from the notion of resistance that we can’t organize a potluck dinner without seeking permission from the Department of Homeland Security?

I know many parents who claim they can’t take action because they want a better world for their children. Their version of a “better world” is my version of a worse world, as they long for growth of the industrial economy at the expense of clean air, clean water, healthy food, the living planet, runaway greenhouse, and human-population overshoot. I’ve come to call this response “the parent trap.” Trapped by the culture of make believe, these parents cannot bring themselves to imagine a different world. A better world. A world without the boot of the police state on the necks of their children. A world with more carnivores every year, instead of fewer. A world with less pollution, less garbage, and less lying — to ourselves and others — each and every year.

All evidence indicates we prefer Fukushima forever, if it means we can have electric toys. We prefer near-term extinction by climate chaos, if it means we can cool the house to 68 F in the summer. We prefer genocide, if it comes with a milkshake and an order of fries. Henry Ford was wrong when he pointed out, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” On the other hand, General Omar Bradley’s sentiments from 1948 ring true: “The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.”

Even though we’re willingly tapping six scary extreme energy sources to fuel the post-peak oil industrial economy, power outages have become exponential within the last decade, as indicated in the figure below. We clearly don’t care about the environmental consequences of our greed, so we keep soldiering on, wishing for a miracle and ignoring the evidence for imperial decline, human-population overshoot, runaway climate change, and a profound extinction crisis. Will the final power outage come in time to save us from our unrepentant selves?

Ultimately and sadly, I suspect it comes down to this: When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. We simply can’t be bothered to contemplate a single issue of importance when the television calls or the shopping mall beckons. Political “activists” spend hours every day elaborating the many insignificant differences between the two dominant political parties in this country, but they cannot bring themselves to throw a wrench into the gears of industry. They continue to ignore the prescient words of Desmond Tutu long after the consequences of inaction are obvious: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

The only reason I can imagine wanting to retain this horrific system for a few more years is to safely shut down the nuclear reactors that are poised to kill us. But increasing the number of these uber-expensive sources of electricity, as President Obama desires, means shoving more ammunition into the Gatling gun pointed at our heads. One bullet does the trick. In classic American style, we prefer more. Always more.

How much of this is too much? When have you had enough?

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Please join me in supporting Mike Sosebee’s film. To learn more, click here.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents and Island Breath.

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My monthly essay for Transition Voice was published today. It’s here. After the essay was submitted, new data appeared to substantiate that all life on Earth will be gone by mid-century: methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century. Carpe diem.
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There’s still time to support Mike Sosebee’s film. Click here.

My recent trip to the northeastern United States included 13 presentations. At least one was recorded. I presented on the topic of three paths to near-term human extinction to the New Roots Charter High School in Ithaca, New York on Tuesday, 3 April 2012. The incomplete video, in four parts, follows (big thanks to Wendy Bandurski-Miller for the venue and the video, and also big thanks to Vickey Kaiser for organizing the trip and hosting and to Karl Klein for hosting and loaning his vehicle to a stranger for nearly two weeks).

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There’s still time to support Mike Sosebee’s film. Click here.
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I’ll be presenting on Saturday, 2 June 2012 at the Bueno Vista Audubon Nature Center, 2202 South Coast Highway, Oceanside, California. Topic is “The twin sides of the fossil-fuel coin: Prospects for humanity in light of global climate instability and energy decline.” I hope to see you there.

Nearly two hundred years later, de Tocqueville has been vindicated not only as a superb social critic but also as a forecaster. Knowing nothing about de Tocqueville, the ten-year-old son of a friend put his own spin on recent history: “Mom, I think people value Father Time more than they value Mother Earth.” His words sting me like freezing rain, squeezing tears from the corners of my eyes. There’s nothing new there for me, except the perspective of youth: I often weep when I think about the hellishly overheated world we’re leaving him and his young friends. We’re destroying this world in large part because we care more about chasing fiat currency than we care about the living planet and its occupants.

Although it seems unlikely they met, de Tocqueville was writing during the time of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. As if he, too, could see the future, Kierkegaard was plagued with anxiety. However, Kierkegaard didn’t call anxiety a plague: As he pointed out, anxiety is fundamental to our sense of humanity. Although I’m tempted to discard Kierkegaard’s every thought based simply on his ludicrous leap of faith, I can’t convince myself to disagree with him about anxiety. His writings about anxiety resonate with me as strongly as anything I’ve read by Lao Tzu, Schopenhauer, or Leopold.

It’s small wonder I’ve slept so poorly since August of 1979, when I reached a vague, subconscious understanding of the dire straits in which humanity is immersed. More than three decades after that summer of my nineteenth year, “my distress is enormous, boundless,” and growing by the day. I envy those who know about ongoing climate change and yet can remain comfortable with that knowledge. If you’re among them, perhaps this essay will drag you with me, into the abyss of despair. If so, I encourage you to abide the prescient words of Edward Abbey: “Action is the antidote to despair.”

According to NASA, anthropogenic climate change is primarily due to human actions. The ongoing crisis is intensifying, and much of North America is experiencing summer in March. Ninety degrees in winter is not normal, climate-change deniers notwithstanding. Ditto for this year’s Silent Spring.

If you’re under the age of 35, you’ve never experienced “normal” temperatures despite a weakening sun. In fact, February 1985 was the last time global mean monthly average was below the twentieth-century average. Already, climate has shifted to a new state. That state can only be described as dire. And yet because Earth’s climate system behaves in a nonlinear manner, future changes could occur very rapidly, making it seem as if more than three decades without a below-normal temperature reading were the good ol’ days.

What does the future hold? First, a warning: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

A global average rise in temperature of 2 C is now optimistic, according to French scientists. Climatologist Matthew Huber agrees. But even that seemingly modest increase in temperature raises sea level 40 to 70 feet. In fact, an increase in global average temperature of 1 C is potentially catastrophic, as pointed out by the United Nations in 1990. Meanwhile, the OECD concludes we’re headed for an average temperature increase of 3-6 degrees Celsius by 2050 (full original report is here). Supporting documentation is far more abundant than revealed by these recent headlines:

Climate change is shaking the world, literally

Global warming borders is close to being irreversible, according to conservative scientists

Greenland’s ice will melt at a much lower temperature than previously estimated

It might be irreversible already

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu claims to be suprised

The Arctic death spiral continues unabated

After all, a carbon time bomb has been dropped in the Arctic

At the other pole, an iceberg the size of New York state is about to break away from Antarctica

For many years, people have been metaphorically stealing glaciers to put into cocktails. Now they’re literally doing it.

Habitat for millions of people will disappear with flooding from the oceans

Water, water, everywhere, but the world’s rivers are failing to make it all the way to the oceans

Oceans are acidifying at an ‘unparalleled’ rate, and will not survive business-as-usual disaster-as-usual

Conveyor belt tipping point has been reached, as I pointed out in this space more than a year ago

As I also pointed out, at the same time under slightly different name, ‘Compost bomb’ is latest climate change ‘tipping point’

Meanwhile, drought in the southwestern United States is intensifying even as U.S. heat waves are set to intensify from New York to Los Angeles

According to tables of flowering dates in 1840s Massachusetts, average temperature already has risen 2.4 C in Concord since the industrial revolution began

Elsewhere in the United States, the heat is unprecedented, with 7,000 record high temperatures so far this year

A vital species of tree killed by climate change brings to mind one my favorite lines from Derrick Jensen: “Forests greet us and deserts dog our heels”

The abundance of dire information and a slow news days causes even ABC “News” to point out the weather weirding

How bad is the situation? Desperation is leading to long-shot technical “fixes.” Naturally, these do not include changing the behavior of people in the industrialized world. As usual, Americans, still affluent relative to people in other nations, can’t be bothered because they’re too concerned about the industrial economy to worry about persistence of Homo sapiens. The occasional thoughtful American writes a letter of apology to his grandchildren, preferring the ease of an apology over the difficulty of action. On the other hand, President Obama continues to ignore the issue, even though he certainly knows he is committing his family and young children to hell on Earth.

If we didn’t already have enough reason to terminate this absurd set of living arrangements, human extinction might do the trick. It might be too late, of course: More than two years ago Tim Garrett pointed out that only collapse of the industrial economy prevents runaway greenhouse. In those two years, we’ve set records for carbon emissions on this overheated planet. But if we act as if it’s too late, our actions become self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the spirit of Edward Abbey, let’s channel some Kierkegaard-inspired anxiety to act as if the future matters. Let’s act as if we have a future. Let’s act now, while the idea of a future still persists. Before it’s too late. Before there’s no tomorrow for our entire species.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

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There’s still time to support Mike Sosebee’s film. Click here.

My latest piece for Transition Voice is here. It’s also linked, along with several other articles I’ve not pointed out, on the “Selected articles” tab.

I’d be happy to meet you, individually, at one of my appearances in New York and Massachusetts. For the full list, which will be updated often between now and the events, click here.

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I’m featured in an essay published online today: Can you grow your own food?, by Cindy Salo

The first video clip describes my personal journey in the usual, self-indulgent manner, and the program allowed no time for subsequent questions. The second clip humorously describes the efforts we’ve made at the mud hut, and the formal presentation is followed by my answers to a few softly spoken questions.

Also on 13 November 2011, during a break from the conference, I was interviewed by KMO along with Kurt Cobb and Henry Warwick. The resulting audio file is posted at KMO’s C-REALM radio.

Finally, my monthly essay for Transition Voice was published a few days ago: Is terminating the industrial economy a moral act? The latter essay is permalinked at Counter Currents.

Also, as I’ve indicated many times, there are a couple general approaches one can pursue along the path of climate change and simultaneous collapses of the industrial economy and the living planet. You can hit the road, or you can mitigate in place. Either way, you’ll need to secure clean water and healthy food, maintain body temperature, and create and maintain a decent human community.

I recommend a life of travel for most people, although I’ve taken a different route for personal reasons. Either way, an adventure-filled life awaits. On the road, you’ll need quick wits, good interpersonal skills, and astonishing amounts of creativity, compassion, and courage. Ditto for mitigating in place. In this post, I’ll address the primary concerns associated with mitigating in place, with a particular focus on me and the mud hut (my favorite subject and my favorite location, respectively).

If you’re staying put, I suggest you pay attention to the 3 Rs of the future. No, not the educational ones from years gone by. And it’s far too late for the three Rs targeting reduced consumption in a nation build on consumption, two of which we have ignored because there is no financial profit in reducing and reusing. Recycling — the only one of these three relevant actions fascist Amerika promotes — is like an apology after a punch in the face (credit Mike Sliwa). We punch the planet in the face with every cultural act, and then we apologize by sorting plastic and aluminum into separate bins.

The three Rs of interest in this post are relocalization, resilience, and redundancy. We’re headed for a severely constrained future with respect to transport of materials and humans. The days of the 12,000-mile supply chain are nearly behind us. Forget about cheap plastic crap from China, expensive watches from Switzerland, and decent hand tools from the Sears Roebuck catalog: We’re going to have to make do with what we’ve got in the very local area. Before the supply chain breaks, we should work toward building a resilient set of living arrangements steeped in redundancy. After the supply chain breaks, it’ll be a little late to start digging a well and learning how to grow food.

Here at the mud hut, we pay serious attention to multiple sources of water (two solar pumps, hand pump, rainwater harvesting from two rooftops, and the nearby river), food (wildcrafting, orchard, gardens, goats for milk and cheese, eggs from ducks and chickens, and in the future, hunting relatively large-bodied animals), body temperature (well-insulated, passive-solar house, multiple awnings, proper clothing, and abundant water and firewood), and human community (abundance in this category exceeds my patience to explain again, but search the archives for a few hints). I’ve no doubt we’re missing some things that will ease our lives in our post-carbon future. Some of these items will remain unknown, even to us, until it’s too late. I’m already missing a few things, even before the impending big crash leads to “lights out.” (As Dmitry Orlov uncharacteristically suggests, the day draws near. As “Tyler Durden” characteristically suggests, the day is near enough to be seen by a blind man.) And as I’ve mentioned a few hundred times, skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions, along with wholesale destruction of the living planet, will seal our fate as a species unless we crash this luxury ship, and soon.

I know you’ve read this one before, but I’d love to have a solar ice-maker to cool our drinks and our bodies. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to have more time to convince my human community to climb aboard the collapse train. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to make a few more trips to discuss the dire nature of our predicaments with people who are aware and interested. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect I’ll muddle through, although I’ll miss trips tentatively scheduled to Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, New England, and various places nearer the mud hut.

Closer to home, and closer to my heart, I’d love to have time for my parents — and the thousands of other winter immigrants descending on this area — to make the return trip to their northern homes. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, or even within a few months, they won’t. And I have no idea how we’ll muddle through.

All things being equal, I’d rather have the solar ice-maker in a community fully on-board with collapse. All things being equal, I’d rather make a multitude of excursions to exotic places. All things being equal, I’d rather my parents experience collapse in their own home. But all things are not equal and, more than all these things, I’d rather have a planet marked by much more abundance and far fewer extinctions than we’re currently witnessing.

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I’m scheduled to speak at several events during the coming week or so; (1) On Wednesday, 9 November at 7:00 p.m., I’ll address the Atlanta Beyond Oil Monthly Meetup, 657 Rosalia Street SE, Atlanta, Georgia; on (2) Saturday, 12 November and Sunday, 13 November I’ll deliver two, 18-minute presentations at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition & Culture Change in Bellaire, Michigan, and (3) on Tuesday, 15 November at 6:30 p.m. at 5885 M 115 Frankfort Hwy, I’ll speak about developing a durable set of living arrangements in Benzonia, Michigan (sponsored by Grow Benzie). I hope to meet you at one (or more) of these events.
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This post is permalinked at the Refreshment Center and Island Breath.

I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

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Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

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This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

Acknowledgments: Karen Sliwa performed real work on the property while Mike Sliwa shot and edited these videos. You can follow the work of Mike and Karen here.

As a result of runaway fossil-fuel consumption, the amount of carbon released to the atmosphere is still going up, even as the industrial economy is buried in a depression. We haven’t observed below-average temperatures on this planet for 25 years. Even high oil prices can’t keep a bad country down.

The response of the government and its sponsors at the Federal Reserve Bank remains unchanged: print money. Quantitative Easing (QE, i.e., printing money) has been a complete failure. But because Ben Bernanke has adopted levitating the stock markets as the Federal Reserve Bank’s prime directive, I’ve no doubt we’ll see QE 3, QE 4, and so on, right through to QE infinity until the U.S. dollar joins every other fiat currency in the dustbin of history. Alan Greenspan warned about the worthless paper certain to result from the ongoing Ponzi scheme, back in 2005.

The debt problem is as bad as they say. And probably worse than anybody is saying. Reducing U.S. debt causes the stock markets to fall profoundly. Increasing U.S. debt makes a dire predicament worse, but a missed payment on U.S. debt leads directly to junk status for the dollar, so Benny and the Inkjets will continue to print until the dollar is dead.

What are the options, after all? We’re on a train going over a cliff, and the cabin smells of natural gas. We can ride out the train wreck or jump out, sans parachutes. The banksters in charge have posed a third option: light a match. As economist Mish says, “Expect chaos.”

Every additional brick in the wall of civilization, placed there by the fascists in charge, has two profound consequences. First, each brick enriches the financially wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, even as economic collapse looms. Second, every brick further destroys the remnants of the living planet. Let’s kick Barack Obama — the American Gorbachev — out of the way so we can tear down this wall.

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This essay is permalinked at Kick It Over and Plan B Economics.

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Update: Please note the new CLASSIFIED ad under the tab, above