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.

Unsurprisingly, the black helicopters haven’t arrived yet. Apparently the authorities are otherwise occupied.

If you click the “tags” button on my blog, you’ll see what I write about, which is what I’ve written about for a long time. Among the largest items: economic collapse and civilization (and during none of this time have I been heralding the advantages of the latter). Here’s a couple lines from my fourth essay in this space, going back to 7 September 2007: “The longer and harder we promote civilization, the worse will be the collapse — more people and other animals will die horrible deaths. So, we need to bring down civilization, now.”

Seems I’ve been calling for termination of civilization for quite a while. So what’s the big surprise, dear readers? Why bother throwing your fits, removing your essays, and calling the authorities at this late date? You could have saved us all a lot of huffing, puffing, and distracting bother if you had paid the slightest bit of attention before you contacted me, unsolicited, to write an essay in this space, or even before it appeared in print pixels. You could have alerted the unnamed authorities back when the police departments had money to track me down and arrest me, instead of waiting until all the relevant municipalities were flat broke.

While we’re all gathered here, let’s take a step back for some definitional clarification. I have adopted and used the definition of civilization provided by Derrick Jensen: “I would define a civilization much more precisely [relative to standard dictionary definitions], and I believe more usefully, as a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts— that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined–so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on–as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life.”

Returning to a theme I last considered many years ago, again I ask each of you to read, and then re-read, each of the 20 premises underlying Jensen’s 2006 book, Endgame. Premise 4 seems particularly noteworthy in light of recent discussions here: “Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.”

And let’s not start with that tired line about the hypocrisy of using contemporary technology while promoting an anti-civ message. If I believed my forgoing this laptop in this off-the-grid house would move us one iota further along the path toward a durable set of living arrangements, I would gladly pull the plug. Indeed, as I’ve indicated countless times, I would gladly give my life, immediately, to terminate the industrial economy. Alas, as my mother-in-law used to say when she was alive, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Even in a nation based on militaristic force and filled with wishful thinking and dreams of propping up a dying empire, not all our wishes come true.

Can you say the same about your commitment to propping up civilization? Are you willing to die right now to keep the industrial economy cranking along? Or, are you merely willing to keep killing humans and other animals in support of an industrial economy that is making us crazy and killing us while also taking down dozens of species every day? Bear in mind Premise 3 from Endgame: “Our way of living — industrial civilization — is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.” If you’re propping up civilization, even if you claim to believe in non-violence and even if you claim to support non-aggression, your actions are louder than your words.

And, too, let’s not go down the misguided path of referring to my actions as rooted in financial gain or seeking attention. My goals are completely contrary to both notions. I eagerly anticipate the day money no longer matters. Ditto for ego-centrism.

I don’t discuss merely civilization in this space. In the words of the great American poet Walt Whitman, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Thus, whereas I could easily restrict my writing to the horrors of civilization, occasionally I take a turn toward the pragmatic. I consider, for example, topics as varied as philosophy, war, education, anthropogenic climate change, chickens, ducks, goats, greenhouses, and gardening.

Greenhouses and gardening are evident in the tag cloud because they are among the pragmatic issues worthy of our attention. These and other essays describe how we can muddle through, and even thrive, during and after economic collapse. These essays thus provide an example of my efforts to help humanity while also acting as if the remainder of the world matters. Which, of course, it does.

Ultimately, as should be obvious to even the most obtuse reader, I do what writers do: I experience the world, and I describe my experiences. These experiences include the mundane as well as the horrifying, the boring and the riveting (if only to me). And my writing is, by necessity, a reflection of the way I view the world, as a rationalist, a scientist, a conservation biologist, a social critic, a son, a brother, a husband, an uncle, a teacher, a student, a mentor, a colleague, a friend, and an imperialist who grew up during an era when resistance against the dominant paradigm mattered.

It certainly could be true, as I’m often told, that my efforts are wasteful and even counter-productive. But I am certain my efforts take us in the correct direction, away from civilization and toward a durable and better way of living. Continuing the current murderous path, or even supporting that path, is an activity in which I can no longer participate because I care about non-industrial cultures, non-human species, and future generations of humanity.

What about you? Where do you draw a line in the sand? Where do you say, “enough is enough”? At what point do you stop signing petitions and start fighting back against a culture that is killing us all? Are you so comfortable with your role in the dominant paradigm you are unable to see it for what it is, and then act accordingly? Are you willing to sit back and watch — or stand up and cheer — as the doublespeak continues from the fascists running the show, and destroying our future? As the industrial economy continues to destroy every aspect of the living planet on which we and future generations of humans need to survive, are you working to preserve habitat for humanity, or are you merely preparing an apologetic letter to them?

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath, Before It’s News, and Kickitover.

Liberal teaching means putting everything I know, and everything I am, at risk in the classroom. And not just in general, but specifically as well. That is, I put it all on the line during every meeting of every class. I’ve been wrong often enough to know it could happen again, and I’m willing to admit my errors in the pursuit of truth.

How courageous is this approach? Remember how it turned out for Socrates.

Pursuing a liberal approach to teaching is dangerous. It requires courage, a thick skin, and recognition that the personal costs of pursuing liberalism in the classroom are far exceeded by the opportunity costs of failing to do so. Indeed, I would argue that the pursuit of a liberal approach to any of life’s important activities is dangerous.

I am often criticized for continuing my educational efforts here at Barefoot College. During the last couple years, I have hosted more than 200 people, showing how we might muddle through an ambiguous future if we work together. In return, many people question whether I should be demonstrating this doomstead to potential future marauders. Most of these people are anthropocentric, short-sighted, narcissistic cowards commenting anonymously on fora focused on economic collapse.

Image courtesy of Lesley Ash

When I point out I’m anti-civ, these and other people take issue with the language: “It’s better to be for something than against something, so your message should be pro, not anti.” I point out anti-civ means pro-life, but the latter label has been co-opted by a group with which I fundamentally disagree.

And so it goes, spiraling down into the uncomfortable abyss of talking past one another. We are so adept at finding an other with whom to part ways.

And I am not surprised many people fail to understand that we’re all in this together. Our culture has driven us apart, valuing competition over cooperation. I am not surprised many people fail to understand that, as the expression goes, divided we fall. And so we are. Our culture has promoted faux individualism instead of real collaboration. It’s all about me and my stuff, me and my success, me and my ego in this hyper-indulgent morass of American exceptionalism. It’s small wonder, then, that many people fail to understand the importance, to me, of educating others. It’s everything to me, more important than life itself.

I am profoundly committed to a life of service. For me, a life lived otherwise is not worth living.

As any real radical reformer knows, some things are worth dying for. Service to community and lifelong learning certainly fill the bill.

Mind you, I’m not acting heroically. I’ve built a lifeboat, after all, that might allow my survival for a few years beyond completion of the ongoing economic collapse. I’m not dependent on western medicine to maintain my life. In addition, absence of free will precludes an alternative route.

If you’re looking for heroes, look no further than Derrick Jensen. His level of commitment extends beyond his own life. He depends in the short term on the industrial economy, a system that is killing him in the long term. Yet he is willing to sacrifice the ability to extend his life to give the living planet a chance. Somebody who comments now and then in this space, demonstrating he is halfway along the path toward becoming an idiot savant, used Jensen’s example in a botched attempt to argue the contrary point. Jensen’s writing and speaking are heroic because he argues for termination of the industrial economy, knowing it will lead quickly to his own death.

I recognize that it’s too late to save society, and industrialized society is irredeemable, regardless. Capitalism is assumed to be the best, most efficient economic system, but I think it’s better described as a pathology than an economic system. So I’ll keep moving seemingly immovable individuals beyond their comfort points. I’ll inject empathy, therefore resistance, into a sociopathic culture largely devoid of people willing to stand in opposition to the mainstream. I’ll move individuals beyond dark thoughts and into the light of a new world. I’ll move them beyond inaction. I’ll move them beyond the oppression of civilization and into the brave new world of a life that gives as well as taking.

Or die trying.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents.

After burying our collective heads in the sand for two years, peak oil has crept back into the margins of the national conversation. But it’s too little, too late. The end of the world as we know it already struck when, in 2008, the price of oil skyrocketed. Keynesian economics forestalled some economic pain in the short term, at huge expense to the living planet, but the music’s about to stop playing. Better grab a chair. And don’t say you didn’t see this coming.

Three of the largest companies in the world — Exxon, Shell, and Aramco — admit we’ve passed the world oil peak. The cat’s out of the bag, though we’re working hard to convince ourselves there are no felines in a world awash with Felis catus while investors are trying to determine how to put some more fiat currency into their safe-deposit boxes as the ship goes down.

To use one example from the big oil companies, former Shell Oil president Jon Hofmeister knows the price of oil is headed much higher in 2011 or 2012. Hofmeister has company, too, in the form of energy guru T. Boone Pickens, who anticipates oil priced at $140/barrel, and soon. Financier and author Stephen Leeb is calling for a bullet train to $150 oil. In a stunning display of journalism based in reality, even Newsweek admits we’re headed for $150 oil, though speculators are held responsible (as is often the case when people are looking to cast blame).

Even the Wall Street Journal, which bills itself as the most important publication in the world (mipw), claims OPEC should be alarmed at the high price of oil. Although mipw will never admit as much, I’d bet OPEC is well beyond the point of alarm and into the arena of sheer, eyes-as-big-as-dinner-plates, crapping-their-pants terror, if only because there is nothing OPEC can do about high oil prices: The price of oil already has risen too high, too quickly to prevent dire consequences for the industrial economy, but OPEC will not respond, because it cannot respond.

Mother Jones has finally climbed aboard the peak-oil ship, although — as with most mainstream publications — it confuses the notion of “no more cheap oil” with “no more oil.” Still, Mother Jones is ahead of Forbes, which is sticking to the absurd claim that there are no limits to growth. It’s as if Forbes is vying for political office in the U.S. Even Forbes’ second cousin, Foreign Policy, knows the global industrial economy is dead and gone.

The occasional right-wing, windbag, talk-show idiot understands slightly more than the editors at Forbes. Sean Hannity knows the price of gas is going up, so he proposes invading (or re-invading) Iraq and Kuwait to “take all their oil.” If printing money is the last resort of an empire, then occupation must be the first.

Price-forecasting pros are predicting oil priced at $150/bbl by Memorial Day. Or perhaps that price will hold off until October. Either way, $150 oil puts the final nail in the U.S. coffin. In fact, $120 oil probably does the trick, as I wrote nearly 18 months ago. As with the last trip to $140 oil, demand is being driven by China, rather than by the OECD countries still gripped by an economic recession.

There is an alternative trigger, albeit with the same outcome: China’s bubble could pop, thus bringing the age of industry to an end.

If demand for oil continues to climb, then high oil prices will contribute to high food prices, thus triggering further food riots around the world. Some pundits claim food riots are coming to America, whereas others claim the high price of fuel will break out the riot gear.

I’m guessing we can’t be bothered to tear ourselves away from the television screen long enough to notice increasing prices, much less act. After all, we keep ignoring a federal government that throws trillions of dollars at the giant banks while simultaneously denying support to states and main street. We keep ignoring a Federal Reserve bank that has been laughing at us since 2005, and probably much earlier, while the Fed is busy throwing Americans under the bus.

I am not suggesting the ongoing economic collapse will be complete the day the price of oil rises to $120/barrel or higher. Rather, I suspect we’ll witness a series of convulsions similar to those that transpired in the wake of oil rising to $147.27/barrel in July 2008. In the aftermath of that event, the U.S. industrial economy nearly reached its end several times between mid-September 2008 and mid-March 2009. If we assume a similar series of events in the wake of $140 oil between late May and late October, then western civilization could commit suicide between late July 2011 (two months after late May 2011, analogous to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the associated near-collapse of the U.S. economy two months after oil hit its record high) and late June 2012 (eight months after late October 2011, analogous to near-capitulation of U.S. stock markets in March 2009 eight months after the price of oil peaked). In the middle of these dates lies the 14-month-old forecast of Société Générale, and March 2011 is right on line with predictions from the 60 or so people I cited in my recent presentation predicting complete economic collapse before the middle of 2012. Hofmeister’s most conservative forecast of a spike in the price of oil in 2012 buys a little more time for the industrial economy. And if “no limits to growth” Forbes is correct, western civilization will hang on until we commit suicide by climate chaos. The latter option is the one preferred by the world’s governments and most people I know.

But not me. I’m hoping peak oil and the consequent high price of crude oil will spell the long-overdue death of western civilization and the associated liberation, for the living planet, from the oppression of industry. Call me quirky — the government’s term is terrorist — but I’m a fan of life.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath, Before It’s News, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes in. So we’re stuck with multiple audio files and the slides in the usual awkward format. And whereas the audio files are adequate during the presentation, the only microphone in the room was near me, so the question part of the Q & A is poor.

You get the original slides this time, along with the audio file. Plagiarize to your heart’s content. Share widely. Spread the news. But please keep your complaints about the quality of these materials to yourself, unless you have suggestions for improvement.

I was speaking in the capital of the state built, economically at least, by oil. As I was speaking, I could see the Capitol, which convened the following day to deal with the state’s $27 billion deficit. Gee, I’d have never seen that coming.

My presentation was greeted with the usual mix of profound denial and fatalistic acceptance. The very few anarchists in attendance could hardly compete with the majority, who could see absolutely nothing amiss with the industrial economy, western civilization, or American Empire.

Powerpoint

Introduction from Gayle Borst, Design~Build~Live

Presentation part 1

Presentation part 2

Presentation part 3

Presentation part 4

Presentation part 5

Presentation part 6

Presentation part 7

Q & A part 1

Q & A part 2

Q & A part 3

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Special thanks to Ken McKenzie-Grant from Shades of Green Radio for the considerable effort behind the audio files and to Gayle Borst for hosting (and all the associated work).

Lesson 1

Forty-six years ago I began to volunteer in a nursing home. I was 16. This was the Erie County, New York Nursing home for poor county residents. Earlier it has been a poor house.

At that time I had heard it had been a poor house. Frankly, I didn’t know what that meant. It was during a peak-oil discussion many years later that I decided to look it up. I found that poor houses and poor farms “were common in the United States beginning in the middle of the 19th century and declined in use after the Social Security Act took effect in 1935 with most disappearing completely by about 1950.” My father told me recently that his company, an asphalt flooring installation company, installed the floors in this particular poor house as it transformed into a nursing home.

Several of the people in the nursing home became very important in my life and taught me valuable lessons. Bill was a pleasant quiet man who had Multiple Sclerosis (MS), was about 50, and was confined to a wheel chair because of his illness. At meal times I would always go see and feed Mrs. Parker. She also had MS but it had put her flat on her back for the last 12 years. She barely had enough breath to speak. She never complained, but if the staff moved her she would scream from the pain of her bed sores. I loved her dearly. One day I came in and was told that Bill had died in the night from a heart attack. Not even for a moment did I feel sad. I was so happy for him, he would not have to go through the long and painful decline that was the fate of Mrs. Parker.

I learned there that death can be a friend and that extending life without a good quality of life is not the best option.

Lesson 2

Fast forward 30 years. It’s 1993, and I had been invited to join a friend in Haiti. She knew of my interest in Mother Theresa’s Homes for the Dying. She was there with another group but offered to house me while I volunteered. Because of transportation difficulties I ended up volunteering at Mother Theresa’s Children’s home instead — this not an orphanage, but a place to treat sick children. As the months went by I began to question the “goodness” of saving lives in an overpopulated country. Children saved from early death would have lives of poverty and bring more children into poverty. Was doing good always GOOD? In Port-au-Prince there were no songbirds, the only birds were chickens. I was told the young boys killed wild birds with slingshots for food. I found this very disturbing. It began to be clear on a larger scale that good and evil were not the absolutes I had wanted them to be but were in fact often intertwined. One good might bring something bad, and an evil might bring good. A famine cuts short some lives, but a reduced population makes future famines less likely. It was perhaps the most wrenching realization I have ever had, for I wanted very much to be doing good in the world.

Lesson 3

Back up to my teen years. Somewhere in my schooling I was taking biology and I turned the page of my text book to a schematic drawing of the water cycle (like this one). It had all the requisite little arrows that showed how water moved through the natural system and returned to where it started. I can still remember my awe at its beauty. No doubt most, if not all of my classmates did not have this sense of revelation. Over the years I learned of more such cycles — the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and so on. One of the cycles not usually rendered in such drawings is that of living bodies. We are born, accumulate minerals, live, die and return those minerals to the land to be recycled.

It is the most natural and inevitable thing in the world for a living creature to die. In so doing we provide the room and resources for the next round of life. It is even written in our genes that, if we aren’t recycled as food for some other creature, we still decline and die within some preordained time frame. The beauty of the world around us now is based on death, and selective death before reproduction is what moves evolution forward. The development of rich soil comes from the death of plants and animals. Death of one generation allows the next generation to have a go at life by freeing up resources for them.

We are now anticipating the death of the largest civilization man has ever created and with it the untimely death of multiples of humans. We can bemoan this fate or we can see it as a reordering of balance, of restoring cycles of life. Humans will have to return to being part of the cycles of life and death of natural beings and remove themselves from the imagined pedestal of being above nature.

As we prepare for the future, we need also prepare our minds for a much higher death rate and most likely our own deaths coming sooner than we had thought. To know deep inside that death can be a deliverer, death frees up space and resources for others creatures to live, and that death is part of the cycles that began once organisms started self replicating, can perhaps help us to remember to live well so we depart without regrets.

Lessons on living — what a strange title for an essay that is mostly about death. One might ask “does it matter if I spend time thinking about the fact that my life is some finite number of years?” One can also ask, “would it have made a difference if we humans had thought about oil as a finite resource and decided how best to use that finite resource?” Isn’t acknowledging that something is finite the best way to begin to determine how best to use that thing, whether it be resources or years of life?
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Kathy Cumbee is a retired bookkeeper living in central Alabama with her husband, a rat terrier, and 100 chickens. The chickens range and interbreed freely, the outcomes of which provide joy for their human companions. Kathy and her husband use the Ruth Stout continual mulch method of gardening, and their garden increasingly includes a component of edible native plants that obligingly self seed. The garden supplies food for the humans and daily greens for the chickens, who in turn provide eggs and manure for the garden. Preparations for the world after oil include a well with hand pump, wood-fired cooking stove, candles, bow saws, and other hand tools. As we face an uncertain future, Kathy and her husband increasingly turn their attention to the simple joys of each day, including the pleasures of a simply life in tune with at least some parts of the natural world.

How timely, then, when the hostess walked by, sans pants. And, better yet, she dropped her pen right in front of us. As she bent down to pick up the pen, she literally covered her ass with her left hand while picking up the pen with her right hand.

At least modesty isn’t completely dead. But I have to admit that, even with her relatively small butt, her hand didn’t quite do the trick.

I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the born-again fashion scene, last popular a decade or so ago. In fact, the CYA hostess reminds me to mention, as if I haven’t done so enough already, that it’s time to start covering our own asses.

On the front of economic meltdown, the Pentagon is ratcheting up its plans to deal with civil unrest. In itself, this is not news. What’s new is that the Pentagon is not hiding it. The news broke on CNBC, which is hardly a fringe player in the realm of the blogosphere.

The government is not your friend. They are not here to protect you and yours. In fact, a quick look at the latest climate-change projections, along with the associated inaction, suggests the government is working pretty hard to kill us all.

Decent human communities offer a solution for each of us, albeit partial ones. These communities are necessary, but likely not sufficient, to fend off the ongoing evils of imperialism. It’s time to deepen the bonds within our tribes. It’s time to fend for ourselves, and prepare to fend off the government.

The prescient words of Edward Abbey come to mind: “A patriot must be ready to defend his country against his government.”