ecoyear

Not one to stay down for too long, I did in fact purchase a Kill-A-Watt today, the little gizmo that allows one to determine how much energy appliances use.  My thought is that I am after all responsible for the majority of electricity expenditure in this house, and if I want to decrease it substantially (say by 50%, though 80% seems like what is needed for the Earth), I should be able to at least look into that.

A young woman working with the Sierra Club ran my doorbell yesterday, as I sat on the couch reading John Michael Greer's "The Long Descent".  The Sierra Club is promoting a bill to have higher levels of renewable energy (20%, I think) mandated for certain users (this is nationwide, because Colorado already has higher standards, I think she said...).  Anyway the point is, I found myself lukewarm about supporting that approach.  It is too small a step that does not address the fundamental problem of flagrant energy waste.  I will support energy-efficiency measures, and measures that encourage homes and businesses to get all their energy from renewables, to the extent that it makes one realize that you need to cut down before it will all work out.

I highly recommend Greer's book.  It is a better read than Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" in that it goes further behind the causes for why we act the way we do, tying the "myths" that pervade our society and make it so hard to change course, with the stories humanity has lived with for millenia.  It attempts to base predictions about our future on a reading of history, or rather, looking for patterns that have been repeated throughout history. Very thought-provoking.

One issue he addresses is the question of why most people won't even consider the possibility that human "ingenuity" will not be up to the task of keeping "business as usual" going.  First of all, it is a very deeply based myth, the myth of progress, that all human activity tends towards an improved condition over time. He contrasts it with the myth of Armageddon, or the Second Coming, which would state that the world is going down the tubes until the point at which some of us will be "saved".  He states that some people who are making sacrifices in their lives but are essentially "keeping up" tend to be wedded to the myth of progress.  To them, the suggestion that they are sacrificing in vain, because society is about to unravel (starting with the financial markets, then the 96% of food based on fossil fuels, etc.. ) is unthinkably threatening.  On the other hand, there are those who are not "keeping up", and they often tend to feel that the world is sinking into chaos, and they may "long for a catastrophe massive enough to topple the proud towers of the civilization they loathe".  To me, that could begin to account for Islamic extremism, for example.

Armed with those paradigms, it is easier for me to go back to my life where almost everyone but me does not begin to believe the urgent need to plan for transition, and go ahead and do my own planning.  I think I can live with the paradox that I won't be presently changing my life drastically, just understand how it would be done, and be mentally ready when inevitable circumstances come knocking.