I'm so excited! I got a few comments on last month's blog even though we don't have a comments mechanism set up yet. (The website overhaul we plan to launch in June will have a comments section at the end so everyone can read all the comments made and where it can function as a discussion forum. In the meantime, reply to this email and I'll get it.)
Let me share a couple comments: "Hello Mr. Slabaugh, I am looking forward to reading your next blog. This one made me want to shout 'Yes!' so many times that I must be a PPA too [Person Paying Attention]. I am sorry that I was sick on the Solar Array ribbon cutting day, it must have been a great day." Thank YOU. You made my day!
The other comment mentioned an important issue for any Transition work, how to fully let in what is happening on our home planet and yet still stay positive and constructive: "You're off to a good start! I do hope future issues brighten and feature our prospects locally! Americans have a low threshold for bad news!" I hope to be able to hold this creative tension and I plan to end each post on a positive, local note, today calling attention to some resilience created by a local business.
Here's a quote relevant to this issue from today's featured author, Charles Eisenstein. This comes from his book, The Ascent of Humanity (see below) after he acknowledges some environmental improvements, for example in Great Lakes water quality or LA air quality, but suggests that the same manufacturing processes have just gone overseas and now are polluting Chinese rivers, or Indonesian air. He goes on, "Nonetheless, mine is not actually a doom-and-gloom viewpoint. I am an optimist. My optimism does not depend, however, on ignoring the gravity of our situation. It will take an extraordinary transformation in human beingness to create the beautiful world my heart tells me is possible." -Page 328. (By the way, in making a point about the privatization and monetization of intellectual property, he tells you that the book in its entirety is online.)
This author, Charles Eisenstein, keeps coming to my attention in different ways and I've come to see him as a most important voice articulating our current challenges and brilliantly analyzing how we got to where we are, and suggesting creative responses. Here's how Eisenstein first came to my attention: Last summer I read two new books on economics by my two favorite peak oil authors: The Wealth of Nature-Economics as if Survival Mattered by John Michael Greer and The End of Growth-Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg. Both books are excellent-I highly recommend them-and they cover a lot of the same ground: that economic theory does not take into account nature, both the inputs of natural resources and outputs of wastes into the environment and that growth can't continue infinitely on a finite planet, growth being required by our current economic model. Both authors are non-economists (probably an advantage) and they point to an economic reality very different than we are used
to hearing about from professional economists and a long ways from what has been 'business as
usual' for the past few decades.
I was thinking of writing a review of both books for
Vermont Commons, a favorite publication
of mine-for this year only online-but then in the print Issue 43, Fall 2011, I found an excellent review by Ron Miller, the owner of Yankee Books in Woodstock,
Vermont. He reviewed both of those books plus a third one called Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition by a Charles Eisenstein. I ordered that one and got his earlier book, mentioned in the review, The Ascent of Humanity: The Age of Separation, the Age of Reunion, and the Convergence of Crises that is Birthing the Transition from interlibrary loan. Ascent is very scholarly, dense, well argued and still lots of fun to read! His basic hypothesis is that from the beginning of our species' history, we have been creating a human domain we
view as separate from nature. He shows how our language, our culture, our technology, money, science and much more result in this perspective and allow us to 'manage,' 'harvest,' dump wastes, and basically abuse nature (and ourselves). His solution is a new self-identity for our species as a part of nature--not apart from nature. I haven't yet finished the book so I've not begun Sacred Economics. Stay tuned!
I also got a link from someone to
a YouTube video of CE at Occupy Wall Street where he comes
off as an activist. (I just now Googled him and read a bio that is pretty amazing at charleseisenstein.net. He teaches through Goddard College now.)
Next month I plan to muse a bit on ways to prepare for the Transition.
One local business in Middlebury, Otter Creek Bakery, has created some local energy
resiliency with PV panels on their roof. The picture of the panels that's on their website has a hot link to a monitoring site for those very panels. While it takes a long time to load, it's fun to look at. It plots output throughout the day, showing the fall-off when the sun sets and gives the amount of power produced yesterday, last week and since installation. With their prominence for anyone coming west on the new Cross Street bridge and entering the rotary, these panels are are a good inspiration to others.
