It's not Plastics anymore

How many of us here will live to be 102?
How many of our kids will live to be 82?
How many of their kids will live to be 52?

Will we be the first generation that fails to provide survival information to our progeny? As we begin to experience the planetary climate adjustment, the likes of which we have not seen for 20,000 years (the Last Glacial Maximum) it seems possible that whatever info we can provide our children will be relatively useless. Our climb into civilization, if it can be called such, has been possible because of the relative stability of our planets climate. As it becomes evident that this period of stability has ended, what useful information can we give them? Plastics? Get an MBA? Be a lawyer? Get an aerospace engineering degree? Be a rock star?

Or does, learn how to do with less, learn how to manage your food supply, learn how electricity works, learn how to make things yourself, make more sense? And if it does, how can we impart that when most of us don't have that knowledge to begin with? When we live in a faith based society - I believe the electric company will continuously supply me power, I believe the food will be on the A&P shelf, I believe I will be able to drive my car tomorrow - when we deal with this kind of low level faith every day, what do we do when the gods go away?

Taking the position of the reality of our looming bottleneck of problems: population, oil and energy, water, climate change; the next 50 years will determine how we embrace our future, or more accurately, the future we leave the coming generations, our kids and theirs. What I don't see in the media, or governmental debates, is the sense of urgency that a reading of the data relating to all of this should produce. We have talked about voting with our wallets, writing our reps, debating the benefits of wood burning pellet stoves, and even wasted bandwidth on debating the scientific basis for anthropogenic climate change. All of it has been interesting discussion, but little of it helps us to build the future in a concrete sense. And seeing how it is quite evident that we will not see any leadership at the federal level on this, we are left to our own resources.

This is happening now. Today, 3/26/2006. Peak oil is here, climate change is here. The manner of living we have known for our entire lifetime, and our parent's lifetime, is over. O-V-E-R.

Building the future will require a different set of premises, and a different set of skills. If we remain sanguine in the face of millions of refugees within the US, if we remain sanguine in the face of an economy relying on a diminishing resource, if we remain sanguine in the face of drought and famine, we can only do so by knowing we are acting Now, and not cooking our generations books by off loading the environmental consequences onto our children.

No matter the cause, anthropogenic or sunspots, the thought of dealing in 2080 with millions of refugees, New Yorkers and Floridians, roaming the country essentially homeless, should give all of us pause. The rise in sea level will force these millions out into the country, and at a time when oil, our foundation energy source, has depleted to a few small remaining pools. The ability of us to deal with a small disaster like Katrina should abide as our abject lesson in the scale of the coming displacements. The latest report of millions in refugee camps and political disruption may very well be coming from the US in a very near future.

The meme of urgency needs to spread. The realization of this epochal shift, forget the blame of how and why, raises serious concerns about the viability of our institutions and their continuance. The premise of catastrophic climate change coupled with the depletion curve of our business as usual energy base makes everything else pale in comparison. It should galvanize our greatest efforts as individuals and as a nation to prepare for a time we know little about, a new era that will be evident within our lifetimes.

Sustainable living in the suburbs seems like an impossible task. It is only easy when compared to living in a collapsing society of refugees, where the infrastructures and institutions are incapable of providing enough assistance, where the economy is crippled, and where the effects of destroying the natural fundaments on which we depend are being manifested all around us. It can't happen here, right?