Alchemy

The Solstice is fast approaching and now is the perfect time to start thinking about the 2012 garden.  In the not so dark days of winter here in Los Angeles,  December is the perfect time to think about the foundation of all of our garden wealth.  Before you review your portfolio at year end, take a moment to learn how to make gold in the Soil and Compost section.  Investing in the Ponzi scheme of modern economics can't compare to applying a little alchemy to simple raw materials and creating some real wealth.  No CDO's needed~!

Make Gold and Create Wealth!!   

The alchemists devised all sorts of methods for creating gold but none are as simple as described here.  No mysterious symbols, no hazardous ovens,  there will be Earth, Water, Fire and Air however, and a certain amount of work, but the results, unlike the ancient alchemists, will be real.  And it smells good too.

Let's have compost tea

Peak Oil WTF??

If you have never heard the term, I have some new links and reading suggestions that might help to clear up the confusion.  Peak Oil is old news - it's behind us, we can see it in the rear view mirror now (2005) -  and that raises some serious questions about our way forward with this industrial society we have created.

Robert Hirsch explains in an interview:

The peak oil story is definitely a bad news story. There’s just no way to sugar-coat it, other than maybe to do what I’ve done on occasion and that is to say that by 2050 we’ll have it right and we will have come through the peak oil recession—quite probably a very deep recession. At some point we’ll come out of this because we’re human beings, and we just don’t give up. And I have faith in people ultimately. But it’s a bad news story and anybody’s who’s going to stand up and talk about the bad news story and is in a position of responsibility in the government needs to then follow immediately and say “here’s what we’re going to do about it,” and no one seems prepared to do that.

Peak oil is a bigger issue than health care, than federal budget deficits, and so forth. We’re talking about something that, to take a middle of the road position—not the Armageddon extreme and not the la-la optimism of some people—is going to be extremely damaging to the U.S. and world economies for a very long period of time. There are no quick fixes.

He further goes on to explain the ramifications.

"There are no quick fixes for something like this..."

His concern was that it would be sooner, rather than later as a soft landing would require 20 years to transition towards. Seems like we don't get that 20 years, so fasten your seat belts, put your tray in the upright position, and secure your oxygen mask before helping others. And plant a seed, or three.

Occupy your Garden

The last few months have seen the emergence of the expected reaction to what has been created in our society over the last 150 years.   The Occupy phenomenon has captured the attention of the world, and resonated across all sectors of our global society.  The underlying plea seems to cry out "We want a different world!" and those with the most skin in the game, the young, are the first to raise the cry and rightly so. 

As I look deeper, I can see the many threads that weave the tapestry of this emergent frustration, the economic justice thread being thematic, but also the threads of dignified work, food security, planetary stewardship and the realization that relying on a system based on trading digital chits which often represent a vicious plundering is no longer possible as we reach the limits to growth.


We have reached the limits of this current game and it is time to start a new one with new rules.  "A world that works for everybody, a sacred world, a world of peace."    

Starting the new game requires re-thinking the underlying premises of the current game and facing the realities of the future boldly, with no denial.  There are a few points which can inform me as I move forward into the new game: 

1. Limits to Economic Growth
2. Peak Oil
3. Need for a Suburban Transition
4. Climate Disruption

I can leave the big picture studies and projections to the professional academics.  My concern here is how do I work this on a personal level, at the level of a suburban household outside of the large metropolis of Los Angeles.  How do I teach my children and friends the reasons why we need to change, and the steps we can take toward a better, or at least survivable future? This blog will hopefully answer part of that question, my garden and life will answer the rest.

As just a single individual, a small man with my small suburban home, I can only work my own corner, I can only Occupy my own garden and be content with being a small cell in the vast body of ongoing change.  But work here I can, and the new areas of this blog will hopefully teach as well as encourage.   Compost, Soil, Gardens and Seed, Reusing, Reducing, and Recycling are my areas of interest.  Reducing my reliance on the corporate system, living lightly on the planet, improving my mind and soul as I retreat from the consumer culture, making the effort in spite of the setbacks and my own ignorance, these are the steps I feel necessary to nudge along my society into a new form.  

It is so overwhelming at times, facing the behemoth of modern industrial civilization, this global edifice that is eco-suicidal and even now beginning to tremble towards its' inevitable collapse.

But moving away from this is as simple as planting a seed.  Planting a seed is the first step on this journey of a thousand miles.  

 I thank every one of the young and old who pitched a tent and Occupied a town, I thank you for overcoming the inertia and allowing Change to be seen now as not only possible, but inevitable. 

Mountain Mandala

Happiness Begins With Compost

Fresh food.  Healthy bodies.  Smart minds.  Well Being.  Security.  Warm in winter, cool in summer, and a nice hot shower. Computers, Gardens, and Music.   Abiding Happiness.
 
These are for me, the best of life, and the foundation required to realize  my own potential as a sentient being in this wondrous universe.   No matter the endeavor - writing some wicked Android code, or spinning psytrance in a virtual world, or producing a tasty track of electronic eargasm, or writing,  or working in my small shop battling a luthier’s dream, or trying to understand the latest issue of Science magazine, or planning a night out at the opera or a week at Burning Man, the beginning of all this happiness is  my compost pile. 

It is clear to me that the rest of my life will be spent surfing the huge energy gradient we will be sliding down as oil depletes and the world realizes we should have been planning for this 40 years ago.   8 years ago for me  it was the warning being raised by the likes  of Kunstler, Heinberg, Campbell, Greer, Orlov, and certainly being affirmed and validated by the 30 year update of Limits to Growth that drove my panic to seek the escape farm.  Upon my return to my suburban home, I realized I had it all right here, and there really is no where to go other than where you are.  It’s the space where you are that needs to change. 

As mentioned earlier, I got the message, and began the transition.  My ‘panic’  has been tempered a bit, and I see a Long Descent (Greer) and a Long Emergency (Kunstler) as being the way of it.  But is IS underway.  Look out your window, fill up your tank, buy some groceries, paying your heating bill, and you will feel it unfolding.  The Brent Spot price for a barrel of oil is 118.86 as I write this.  This is 3 years after the worst economy   since the Great Depression.  In the current agricultural, food processing and distribution system,  Oil=Food.  Got Oil? 

An appropriate solution for suburban dwellers  is in becoming as self –reliant as possible.  As local as possible.   I begin to produce food around my house, learn how to store it,  begin to understand the energy requirements in my suburban household,  begin to trust my skill and begin to make the changes.  I make the transition from a mental  map based on the realities of 1930 (40 years before U.S. peak oil production)  to a mental map that is based on the realities of 2010 (40 years after U.S. peak oil production).   My expectations, my responsibilities, my priorities are now adjusting to a future with 70% less energy than I have known in my lifetime.

Oil and food are so tightly connected in this current social system, that the expense of feeding myself can be projected just by watching the gas stations change their prices.   I certainly don’t expect to be able to produce every morsel of my diet,  but knocking 40-60% off my grocery bill by eating  guaranteed  organically grown, salmonella free, un-processed vegetables, soups and salads moves me a lot further along into my own  sustainable future.  My only cost is sweat of my brow, same as it ever was.

The true pillar of this abiding happiness is, believe it or not,  Compost.  The beginning of the journey to a more self reliant future, to a future based on wind and sun, to a future economy that maintains rather than grows, to a future with less toxins, less radiation, less anxiety,  is one compost pile.  In My yard (and yours). 
Food not Lawn.  Compost, not petrochemicals.  Organics, not pesticides.  Clean food for clean bodies and smart minds. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the train has left the station for the demise of Industrial civilization. Rather than being a set of chilling thought experiments or doomer fantasies, the Long Descent now underway will be an exciting time of innovation, action movie, and zombie technologies morphing into a new way of life.

Out of the Fog of Collapse there are a few voices of clarity that stand out due to their pragmatic, realistic, yet hopeful suggestions for a way to proceed. Some apply dark humour, some provide dry dusty data, and some provide integration of the data sets with the right harmonic of solutions to the oncoming transition times. Many of these voices can be heard here:

http://energybulletin.net

John Michael Greer is one of these chaps. I've been following his blog out on the Energy Bulletin for a few years, and just finished his book The Long Descent where he pulls together the problem and offers some possible solutions. He writes beautifully, is well versed in the Peak Oil data sets, and hails back to a time we are all familiar with, offering anew many of the solutions which might have made this a more leisurely journey if we had persisted in them back in the 70's.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

Appropriate technology, gardens, compost, bikes, and working with Nature instead of beating her to death. I want to build this world, and sweep up the current capitalist manifestation into the compost pile. From this seat, there are about 3 years left to continue to have access to relatively cheap fuel, which we can use to get some foundations in place for a lower tech, lower energy future. After that, the wheels look to come off this game, in not so slow motion, just like Saint Donella told us in Limits to Growth.

All the latest energy reports from DOD, , universities , and even the venerable Lloyd's seem to be circling the 2012-2015 time frame when the planet starts losing the ability to meet the demand for oil, DOD and others expecting a 10% shortfall. And then it is just down the slope of 4% depletion rate per year from there on out ad infinitum. Not a show stopper, not an immediate collapse, hell in 20 years we will still be producing as much oil as we were in 1970, but with China and India joining the fray of the last minutes of Industry, the depletion curve might move a bit quicker than expected.

In 1990 , two countries lost 10% of their oil imports - Cuba and N. Korea - when the Soviet Union collapsed. One country, Cuba, weathered it because they had local communities with a small garden ethic, and were willing to roll back to less energy intensive technologies. The other country, followed a path of the aristocracy protecting themselves, allowed 1 million of the 'small' people to starve to death. It seems to matter which choice you make.

Anyway, same old story. Look busy, Santa's coming.

Peace Love and composting toilets,

Thom