Disorganized thoughts on personal responsibility and other stuff

[mousme]

I have been doing far more thinking than is probably good for me in the past month or two. Some of this has revolved around the spiritual aspect of my life, and a lot of it has revolved around my sense of personal and civic responsibility: namely, what kind of responsibility should I take upon myself in the face of the problems I can see facing both myself and society as I know it.

Allow me to ramble a bit about the environmental and social crises which have me the most concerned. This is not meant to be an exhaustive essay, so there will be no documentation to back up what I'm saying. Nor is this meant to be a politcal post, so even if you think I'm spouting a bunch of liberal rhetorical garbage, while you are welcome to your opinion, bear in mind that I'm not going to engage in debate with you on the topic. Just sayin'.

The environment is in crisis. In fact, the earth is in crisis. The whole planet is warming up at an alarming rate, the weather has gone batshit crazy, the icebergs are melting faster than a snow cone in Arizona in July, there are smog alerts everywhere you turn, oil slicks on the oceans hundreds of kilometers wide, and every day hundreds of species of animals and insects of which we've never even heard go exinct.

If I say the words "peak oil," I know that a good number of the people on my flist will roll their eyes heavenwords and call me an alarmist freak. I don't think I am, though. We're running out of our main source of fuel and energy production, and when I think of all the things we have and do that are directly dependent on petroleum products, my mind boggles: food, water, transportation, everyday household appliances, computers, telephones, hell, even our clothes, all either contain some sort of petroleum product, or are produced using petroleum.

Factor in that, with the arrival of China on the car market, we're adding about half a billion extra cars to the world, which will require oil to make, maintain, and to run, and we've got ourselves one hell of an interesting product.

In another few years, we'll be 7.5 billion people on this planet. The words "carrying capacity" are also the words of alarmist freaks, but I'm not so sure the concept can be so easily dismissed. Our current mode of production, complete with waste and overconsumption in industrialized countries, is going to get us into trouble sooner rather than later.


Which brings me back to, well, me. Here I am, puttering along, only now truly starting to be ecologically responsible, trying to reduce my ecological footprint, etc. So far, so good. I'm still driving a car many days of the week, and I daresay that most of my lifestyle is probably hell on the environment, in spite of my efforts to recycle, to compost, to whatever.

Apart from personally becoming a hippy freak (and I mean that in the kindest way possible), I'm worried that I'm really not doing enough. In essence, I'm not doing my part at all. It won't matter in two years that I've been recycling and walking and composting. Not if the entire world carries on as it has been up until now. Leading through example is great, but it's not enough.

As someone said the other day, it would take internation cooperation at the same level as that seen during World War II to make sure we don't destroy ourselves. Whether it's in two years or ten or even twenty, I am pretty sure that we're seeing the end of the world as we know it (not in an Armaggedon sense, but in a society-can't-carry-on-this-way sense). In our lifetime, society is going to change irrevocably, and right now our chances of surviving that change don't look good.

A few of my friends share this opinion. A few are putting together a contingency plan, to make sure we get through the bad times. I wonder, though, if it's not somewhat selfish of me not to try to raise the alarms elsewhere: to send letters and make phone calls to all the Candian political parties, to ring the bells and at least *try* to make things better. To participate in grassroots movements. To do something, anything, that might work. I can't and don't want to bury my head in the sand, and hope that the political leaders of Canada will somehow fix it. For all of Dion's pretty speeches, it's going to take consensus from all the parties, and all the provinces, that we need to make drastic changes to how this country is run, if we (and the rest of the world) are to have a fighting chance.

The problem is figuring out where to start.

Comments

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

I think you may enjoy this blog:

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

There are a lot of good links on it, and it is well written, interesting and has lots of ideas on what might help. I have friends on LJ who think technology will solve everything, and I wonder where their minds are. Doing what you are doing will help, if only locally for you right now. Skills that are going to be useful in the post-peak world are good things to practice now too.

I'm really glad to see you post this on here.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

One of the environmental issues that has me most concerned right now is the oil sands development.... Not only are we depleting our own back up oil reserves in order to make some quick cash by selling it to the US, but the development itself is realy out of control. It really needs to be better managed, since I doubt it can be stopped at this point... And not only is it a huge ecological issue, the oil sands development is having a huge impact on Canada's eonomy in all kinds of little ways - so many people are moving out west that it is hard to find people for low level jobs in the maritimes... And even in Alberta, they can't get ehough people to work the service industry. Everytime people talk about the oil sands, or even just the peak oil problem, I keep getting this twinge of terror that in, say, less than 20 years we're goig to find ourselves in a terrible big mess...

The whole oil issue also makes me reluctuant to even want to learn to drive, even though having a license doens't have to equate with owning a car, or driving everywhere.

Blah. I am mostly just sympathizing. I wish i could do more than I am; something that would actually *matter*, I just don't know what it is...

"...keep an eye to windward..."

[fearsclave.livejournal.com]

There are days when I doubt that anything I can do will make any sort of difference, and I doubt that as a society, we're going to be able to wake up quickly enough and act aggressively enough to save our collective asses. There are days when I think that our collective Hummer is too close to the brick wall for us to turn or stop, and all I can do is buckle up my own personal seatbelt, assume the crash position, and hope the airbags deploy.

Succinctly put, a lot of the time I think we're screwed. Some days, I manage to muster enough hope to think that we might muddle through. And others I hope that the worst will hit after I'm dead. I still always have hope that I'm mistaken.

And in the meantime, I learn to hunt. I learn first aid. I plan to put a garden in. I study survival and bushcraft techniques. I'm starting to accumulate a small stockpile of canned goods, ammunition and bottled water, and I research how to make the Fearsranch more self-sufficient.

Just FYI on that "carrying capacity" thing...

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

The world's population is stabalizing and will probably level out within the next couple of decades.

There is no "Big Red Lever" that you can pull that will "save the Earth". The universe doesn't work that way. Belief in the Big Red Lever fallacy is at the root of most of the horrendous evils of the Twentieth Century and earlier.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but nobody thinks of changing himself."
-- Leo Tolstoy

"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it . . . a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished."
-- John Stuart Mill

[the-adzo.livejournal.com]

Just to note that Peak Oil is a fact. No new significant finds decades, production passing capacity, Texas expected to be dry before 2015.

It's a reality. Now, there might be lots of oil in barrels that will take a long time to sell because of increased efficiency, but humans currently aren't smart enough to manage even such a basic resource, sadly.

[ulvain.livejournal.com]

sunday morning, leaving mtl at 8:30, visiting terrain, 72 acres, lake in the middle, 150k, very promising... forwarded the info to your email! And following sunday, meeting if you end-up being able to make it..

I'll keep you posted!

[aislingtheach.livejournal.com]

Hi Mousme,

Just knowing that we're not alone sharing these concerns, that consciousness is growing, is very much precious. Might not be much in the balance, you will say. Of course, it doesn't change something by itself, but reaching a critical mass of concerned people has always been a crucial step in bringing about change.

Also, we have to start the change with ourselves, step by step, instead of just sitting on our collective asses waiting for the high ups to do something. We must signify them our refusal, but doing so while wildly consuming what they're spoon-feeding us won't be much convincing to their eyes.

Yes, I'm afraid we're not being fast enough. But every little thing we can do to soften the blow will make a difference.

Often times we're paralyzed because it's hard to think of alternatives. We are in a socio-historical context where neo-liberalism seems soooo pervasive as to display itself as the only possibility there is, everything else being utopia.

You know what, with the mess we're doing with our very concrete «lucide» reality, I think it's worth scratching our minds for alternatives. I must admit I'm very much curious about what anarchist theories have to offer. My questions are not all answered yet, but some part of these seem very sensible to my eyes. I'll post some stuff on it in the near future.