Visioning a Sustainable Future: Some Ideas That Inform and Inspire Me
Compiled by David MacLeod

I was asked to speak to a class at Fairhaven College last week, to consider a long term vision/hope/dream of a healthier, more sustainable world. Below is a compilation of material  I put together that informs and inspires my thinking.

David 

Relocalization: A Strategic Response to Climate Change and Peak Oil
By Jason Bradford

Relocalization advocates rebuilding more balanced local economies that emphasize securing basic needs. Local food, energy and water systems are perhaps the most critical to build. In the absence of reliable trade partners, whether from peak oil, natural disaster or political instability, a local economy that at least produces its essential goods will have a true comparative advantage.

In general, common themes include decentralization of political and economic structures, less material consumption and pollution, a focus on the quality of relationships, culture and the environment as sources of fulfillment, and downscaling of infrastructural development.

Relocalization is based on a systems approach that doesn’t solve one set of problems only to make another problem worse….Relocalization is based on an ethic of protecting the Earth System--or Natural Capital-- knowing that despite our cleverness, human well-being is fundamentally derived from the ecological and geological richness of Earth.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2598

Powerdown Excerpts
by Richard Heinberg

The four principal options available to industrial societies during the next few decades are:

Last One Standing – The path of competition for remaining resources.
Powerdown – The path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing. Powerdown would mean a species-wide effort toward self-limitation.
Waiting for a Magic Elixir – Wishful thinking, false hopes, and denial. Most of us would like to see still another possibility – a painless transition in which market forces come to the rescue, making government intervention in the economy unnecessary.
Building Lifeboats – The path of community solidarity and preservation. The fourth and final option begins with the assumption that industrial civilisation cannot be salvaged in anything like its present form, and that we are even now living through the early stages of disintegration.
After a certain point, money is likely to lose value, and immediately useful goods will instead become the basis of trade. These “new monks” would need… the practical arts of the growing and preservation of food, metalworking, the keeping of animals, the making and use of hand tools, the making of clothing, the building of houses, and so on. It would be important to keep scientific knowledge about how ecosystems function, or about chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, and geography. The survivors will have to establish seed banks to preserve the genetic heritage from millennia of bioregionally-adapted agriculture. Perhaps the single most important thing to conserve for future generations would be the moral lesson inherent in the growth and collapse of industrial civilization. Nature is teaching us once again.

Ultimately, ignoring the population issue will be a catastrophe for human rights, since population pressure is reliably one of the primary drivers of environmental destruction. Population pressure and resource depletion are not side issues; they are the issues.  Almost no one speaks frankly about the crisis ahead of us.

The Movement largely ignores the core dilemma facing humanity because it has no politically agreeable solution for it. The elites have no solution either, but they do have a fallback strategy: competition, repression, and war. It is a terrible strategy, and someone needs to propose a workable alternative.  

http://www.energybulletin.net/2291.html

Powerdown Revisited
by Richard Heinberg, Oct. 2007
After a few years of further thought, it seems to me that my description of these options could stand some modification. I would now say that our future options consist of three broad scenarios.

...Here are the three scenarios that I see as most likely.

1. Feudal fascism. This is basically similar to the Last One Standing option in Powerdown, though now I would frame it somewhat differently. A strong central government will organize work - though not in a way that many people will enjoy. Think agricultural work camps and slave-labor factories.
2. The Eco Deal. Economist Susan George calls this option “Environmental Keynesianism” (see her essay at www.globalnetwork4justice.org/story.php?c_id=313). For a snapshot image, think of the 1930s New Deal revisited in the context of global ecological crisis.
3. Bottoms Up. There is a strong likelihood that, at least in some nations or regions, strong central government will not survive the end of cheap energy - especially if electrical grids fail. In that case, neither the Feudal Fascist nor the Eco-Deal strategy would play out; instead, localities would be on their own. Local governments and citizen groups would have the task of maintaining order and flows of basic necessities. ...

In any case, two things are absolutely clear: business as usual is not one of the options; and the more we do now to prepare at every level, the better off we all will be.

http://www.energybulletin.net/35739.html

Post Carbon Living: Beyond Technofix
by Richard Heinberg
http://www.energybulletin.net/41231.html

Plan C: Community and Curtailment
by Pat Murphy

Plan A - Business as Usual

Plan “A” is the most widely discussed option concerning energy depletion and climate change. It is often called the “business as usual” plan. It represents the growth-oriented paradigm …Individual self-interest is its underlying philosophy and its basic thesis is the capitalistic doctrine of “substitution,” which means that we can never run out of a resource because the free market will always find an alternative; i.e. technology will always find a solution to every problem.

Plan B - Clean/Green Technology

Plan B proponents can be described as advocates of “clean or green” technology. Plan B advocates are more or less happy with the status quo, particularly their lifestyle, and hope to simply replace non- renewable energy products with renewable ones.

Plan A and B types do not see any particular action to be done by consumers. For them, it is the responsibility of government and corporations to make the necessary changes. They do not hold themselves accountable for the energy crisis nor responsible for the poor choices made.

Plan D – Die Off

Those who expect Plan D believe it is too late to avoid catastrophe. These people tend to be very discouraged by our energy and climate change problems. The scenario is associated with the term “Die-off” – thus Plan “D.”

Plan D assumes there is no viable solution to peak oil and climate change, that economic growth, population and consumption will continue to increase unabated and that mankind can expect economic collapse, chaos, wars and other forms of violence – possibly even mass starvation. They tend to focus on individual and family survival and the need for defense of whatever sustainable communities can be formed.

Some dismiss this view with a few flip remarks, but there is reason to take it seriously – a major population die-off is not out of the question. Wars over dwindling fossil fuels, possibly involving nuclear weapons, are only the most precipitous events that could occur. The effects of climate change on agriculture, exacerbated by the loss of fossil fuel inputs could result in widespread hunger and unrest. We have passed the carrying capacity of the planet and remedies are not at all obvious. A negative perspective is not an unfounded one.

Plan C - Curtailment and Community

Plan C differs from Plans A and B by assuming that the relatively recent availability (a blip in geological time) of fossil fuel energy has caused a temporary detour in the evolution of humankind. Fossil fuels have led to a two-century long addictive fascination with oil-based technology and machines, which in the future can no longer be sustained.

Under Plan C, the first priority for society as a whole is to drastically reduce our consumption of fossil fuel energy and products derived from it. We must “curtail.” That means buying less, using less, wanting less and wasting less. Curtail means to “cut back” or possibly to “downsize.” It is more reflective of the seriousness of our current situation than the probably more politically acceptable word “conserve.” Conservation often implies a relatively small reduction in consumption, possibly recycling or buying compact fluorescents or maybe buying a hybrid car. If conserve is to be used as a synonym for curtail, it would be appropriate to preface it with some modifier such as “radical” conservation or “extreme” conservation or “rapid” conservation.

http://www.energybulletin.net/20501.html
http://www.communitysolution.org/

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
by David Korten

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequenses play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility."

Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things. Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that “Earth Community” — a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering human society based on democratic principles of partnership — is indeed possible.

Korten believes spiritual renewal is a necessary for the Great Turning to occur. He writes "To navigate successfully the turbulent waters of the Great Turning, we must revisit and update the stories by which we communicate our common understanding of our human origin, purpose, and possibility." He argues that we need to move beyond the "Religion of the Strict Father" that tends to support domination heirarchies, and we also need to move beyond the strictly mechanistic view of pre-20th Century conventional scientific wisdom. "Religion and science are two contending sources of the creation stories by which we humans define ourselves, our moral codes, and the meaning of our existence," he writes. "In keeping with the win-lose dynamic of Empire, the struggle for power between the two competing establishments has trumped the search for truth. this leaves the rest of us to choose between two partial stories or to live in divided allegiance between them. To guide our steps on the pathway back to life, we need a shared creation story for our time that honors the whole of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the species."

Magazine article summary of The Great Turning here:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1463

Online videos of David Korten's slide show presentation on The Great Turning here:
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/781 and David Korten on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+korten&search=Search

Making Other Arrangements to Survive the Long Emergency
James Howard Kunstler

http://sustainablebellingham.org/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=BanquetOfConsequen...
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency

Rob Hopkins
Transition Culture: An evolving exploration into the head, heart and hands of energy descent
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? Transition Culture explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations

“Environmentalists have often been guilty of presenting people with a mental image of the world’s least desirable holiday destination – some seedy bed and breakfast near Torquay, with nylon sheets, cold tea and soggy toast – and expecting them to get excited about the prospect of NOT going there. The logic and the psychology are all wrong.”

Rob admits,” I am aware that being one of those people who can read a desperately depressing book about peak oil and societal collapse and draw from it the inspiration and motivation to do something practical puts me in an extremely small minority.”

http://transitionculture.org/

“Happy Relocalisers”, Doomers, Wheelwrights and the concept of Resilience
by Rob Hopkins
http://www.energybulletin.net/24055.html

Review of “Transition Handbook” by Rob Hopkins
http://www.energybulletin.net/41091.html

The Five Stages of Collapse
by Dimitri Orlov

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for "kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity" (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes "May you die today so that I die tomorrow" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

Although many people imagine collapse to be a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages. That all the players seem poised to make just such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy - a conscious but inexorable march to perdition - rather than a farce.
...While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1 and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is probably worth everyone's while to dig in their heels at Stage 3, definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical survival to avoid Stage 5. In certain localities - those with high population densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial installations - avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely at Stage 4.

Although it is possible to prepare directly for surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable if you plan to become one of the Big Men.
http://www.energybulletin.net/40919.html

Review of “Re-inventing Collapse” by Dimitri Orlov
http://www.energybulletin.net/40989.html

Dan Armstrong, Mud City Press (author of Prairie Fire):
What suggestions would you give our readers regarding relocalization and collapse preparation?

First, know who you are. Know your strengths, know your weakness. Verify your real needs and adjust your mind and your emotions to embrace change. If peak oil or financial crisis will do anything good, it will be teaching Americans to live with less and to waste nothing. Learn to welcome this like a drink of cool spring water.

Then take a good long look at where you live. Does the bioregion you live in have the capacity to feed itself? Does it have a secure water system? Is there a high potential for drought?  What will it look like if civil order is lost? These are basics. Figure them out.

If you are satisfied with where you live, work on personal and community self-reliance. If there is a crash of any kind and you have three months worth of food and water, you will not have to take part in the first stages of crisis and the violence of cleaning out food stores shelves. Know your neighbors. Be prepared to rebuild with the people that live around you. Prepare to work cooperatively. Even plan large cooperative neighborhood meals to practice working together.

Should the global economy collapse and business as usual come to stop, the hard shell of infrastructure will remain. In a way, much like William H. Kötke describes in his article The Revolution that is Arising from the Earth, workers from closed manufacturing plants can return without management and form a work cooperative to get the up plant producing again. This is what we'll need once the smoke has cleared: cooperation.
http://www.energybulletin.net/41031.html

Living Simply in A Post-Peak World
by Vicki Robin, Sept. '06
"We're standing in times that, as my friend Tom Atlee says "are getting better and better and worse and worse faster and faster." ... the most important thing somebody can do is actually take in at a deep emotional, physical, and body level, the better and better and worse and worse, and allow the better and better and worse and worse to speak to them in such a way that they feel inspired to take a step towards whatever their solutions are. In other words, it activates. If you can actually live with the conditions of our time, it activates an inspired commitment to be where the tide is turning. Not to stand outside and say, "Is this getting better or worse? Better or worse?" You know we're not spectators in this world. The tide is turning for better or worse through us in every moment.
http://sustainablebellingham.org/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=LivingSimplyInAPos...

Ken Wilber and Alan Seid: Integral Sustainability
The Integral Vision articulated by Ken Wilber is to cultivate body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. In order to reach the goal of sustainability, we have to work collectively - creating mutual understanding without coercing people. Human consciousness grows from Ego-Centric to Ethno-Centric to World-Centric (where Ego-Centric is all about ‘me’, Ethno-Centric is about people ‘like me’ and World-Centric is a holistic view of all things and people).
Video interview with Whatcom County’s Alan Seid, “A Sustainability Renaissance Man”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_iYoGRhjUw

Rhizome Theory
By Jeff Vail
Rhizome takes it name from plants such as bamboo, aspen, or ginger that spread via a connected underground root system. As metaphor, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari used rhizome to refer to a non-hierarchal form of organization. I have extended this metaphor, refering to rhizome as an alternative mode of human organization consisting of a network of minimally self-sufficient nodes that leverage non-hierarchal coordination of economic activity. The two keys concepts in my formulation of rhizome are 1) minimal self-sufficiency, which eliminates the dependencies that accrete hierarchy, and 2) loose and dynamic networking that uses the "small worlds" theory of network information processing to allow rhizome to overcome information processing burdens that normally overburden hierarchies.
http://www.jeffvail.net/