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“The problem is that it is an entirely new situation for never before has a resource as critical as oil begun to decline without sight of a better substitute. Oil is central to the modern way of life, so the consequences of its decline are immense. It is therefore difficult for people to accept and react.”

- Petroleum geologist Colin Campbell, one of the founders of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO)

A Look at the Future? One Anthropologist's View.
By Graham F. Pringle
Much of what's wrong with America today consists of unintended consequences of the U.S. Constitution, with its unalienable rights of the individual.  Thus the right to bear arms has shifted from a collective right of the citizenry to bear arms against a possibly repressive government to an individual right to carry a gun for whatever reason one chooses.  This intense focus on the individual is etched deeply into every aspect of our culture, from the American preoccupation with suburban living to a disregard of the poor because they’ve failed to exert themselves sufficiently in competition with others.  In other words, they’re lazy and deserve what they get.  The French Revolution was fought in the name of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.  The American one apparently neglected the last of those three words.

This doesn't mean that America can't adapt many aspects of its culture to changing conditions.  Of sheer necessity, it will.  But it will only do slowly, in a protracted battle to preserve the rights of the individual and his family to live as they please, where they please, surrounded by as much private land as they can afford, and travel as, when, however they like.  The rights of the individual over those of the collectivity constitute one of our society's core values.  Such things don't change in a hurry, and they can't just be replaced by other values that are popular with one or another segment of society even if they’d be better adapted to external reality.  The hippy revolt of the 1960s showed that.  The next generation after the hippies was the "me" generation, which brought the American preoccupation with individual rights, regardless of the consequences to others, to an all-time high.

More to the point is the belief that one can get Americans to shrug off a culture that has its roots in Anglo-Saxon England well before the Norman Conquest.  What the American Revolution and Constitution did was to adapt the ancient English concept of personal freedom to a new, more egalitarian nation with an ever-expanding frontier.  This initial geographic expansion eventually turned into an economic one as America changed from an agricultural society with plenty of land to an industrial one with plenty of opportunities.  The pie always got larger, and everyone couls have as big a share of it as he could get, since his share wouldn't diminish that of others.  This is probably the biggest difference between Western Europe and the United States.  In Western Europe the pie reached its limit centuries ago when the Germanic invasions filled up and cultivated all the available land.  That's why there are so few forests; the last of them were cleared for fields and pastures in the Middle Ages.  So the question about the pie was not how to expand it, but who would control it and how it would be shared, and that was a collective problem, not an individual one.  And with the end of the last remnants of feudalism and the development of an industrial system, still dominated as the American one was not, by a hereditary elite, European society, once polarized between a landed aristocracy and a working peasantry, evolved into an industrial one equally polarized, but now in a virulently hostile manner, between capitalists and workers.

As a result, the modern European welfare state has its origins in the collective need of an industrial working class to protect itself from the impartial workings of a free-market capitalist system and the dominance of those who controlled it, which it did through strong trade union movements and the development of worker-based communist and socialist parties.  Over time the workers mostly won, and Western Europe's "cradle-to-the-grave" welfare systems came into being, mainly in the aftermath of World War II and the de-fanging of the ruling classes.  The welfare systems worked well and by and large they still do, though battered today by high unemployment rates and American-led globalization.  But they're anathema to Americans, because they represent the collective rights of the people, often in opposition to the rights of individuals to increase their wealth by all legal means in pursuit of the now-elusive American Dream.  Of course, there never was a European Dream, just a long memory of European nightmares.  And just as almost four hundred years of largely unfettered expansion has produced some of the underlying characteristics of a generalized American culture, so a long history of a fixed pie, of which the biggest share was gobbled up by an entrenched, hereditary ruling class, has produced some of the underlying characteristics of a generalized West European culture.  Within both of these mega-cultures there exist, of course, the many national, regional, state, and local cultures that give the Western World the cultural variety that makes travel such a delight.

One should not, however, confuse culture with habits.  These are less deeply ingrained, are thus more amenable to change, and need to be the starting point for warding off global disaster.  At the bottom of the scale is changing light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent; a little higher up is trading in SUVs for fuel-efficient cars; then comes the substitution of  biofuels for those made from petroleum, and the extensive use of wind, water, solar, and geothermal energy.  None of these things will require a significant change in people's lives.  Changes in agricultural methods, eating habits, and the shifting of financial resources at the family level from consumer goods to food, will be harder to achieve; and changing our transportation system from a primary reliance on roads to the building of a modern, efficient rail system will require major political and economic upheavals.  But it can be done.  Japan has done it with its monorails, and France with its ever-expanding high-speed TGV rail network. 

With a greater or lesser degree of difficulty, I think all these changes will occur, but only incrementally and when all else fails.  But weaning Americans from their love of open space, which they consider their natural heritage, to become a nation of city-lovers would be a much tougher proposition, and I doubt it will happen.  Here one comes up head-on against one of America's core cultural beliefs, and every drop of fuel and every possible use of technology will be rallied to save the suburbs.  I remember the film, The End of Suburbia, a look at a supposedly imminent suburban collapse, and I think that it got it wrong.  Instead, I think the suburbs will evolve from being mere dormitories from which workers commute each day to largely self-sufficient commercial-industrial-residential communities with their own infrastructures, thereby continuing and accelerating a trend that had started at least by the mid 1960s as companies, out of sheer convenience, began to relocate their offices to the suburbs where a white-collar work force already existed without need for undue travel.  And I think that these communities, as healthier places to live and work than in dense urban centers, will ultimately be linked to each other, as well as to the cities they once served, by an efficient rail system linked to frequent intra-suburban shuttle bus services, thus minimizing the need for automobile travel.  Perhaps this could become the New American Dream, individual-friendly but community oriented.

The top five environmental developments of 2008
January 8, 2008, Times Argus
Daniel Hecht
submitted by Lori Barg of Community Hydro, who comments:
Vermont's undeveloped hydro opportunity did get a single line mention in the following article by Daniel Hecht as one of the top environmental developments of 2008.  Small hydro was on the cutting edge for 1910 - and it is still true a hundred years later.  The study that Community Hydro completed on Undeveloped Hydro Potential in Vermont for the Vermont Department of Public Service in 2007 is available from them. It is not posted on the web, but needs to be requested.

Excerpts from Hecht's article:
Last week I promised to list the five most important environmental developments of 2007, as suggested by 40 experts I consulted. Winnowing the list to five was tough. . .

Global warming awareness led the way, underscored in Vermont by the October release of the Governor's Climate Change Commission report. . .

In April, the Supreme Court determined that the U.S. EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. . .

In September, the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of Vermont in Green Mountain Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge v Crombie, supporting the state's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. . .

The U.S Energy Bill, signed on Dec. 19, was certainly big news – but was it good news or bad? . . many of my respondents complain that the cellulosic ethanol goal is unfeasible and that corn-derived ethanol (the bill mandated doubled production) has disastrous environmental and economic impacts. And 36 mpg is far too little; 2020 is far too late. The final bill lacked a portfolio standard that would have required energy companies to produce at least 15 percent of their energy from renewables. Also axed were provisions to terminate subsidies to oil and gas companies and to invest the money in solar, wind, hydro, and biomass instead. (VPON editor inserts sigh here...)

Localism blossomed. . .  Localized energy efforts also abounded. . .

[W]e also saw the emergence of: New technologies, such as inexpensive electronic sensors that cut electricity consumption. Unexpectedly rapid acceptance of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Energy from algae, producing huge amounts of biodiesel in a relatively small area. Widespread recognition of the huge potential of Vermont's green enterprise economy. Energy from food waste: available almost everywhere, it produces much more methane than manure when biodigested. Major restructuring of the Agency of Natural Resources, promising a more vigorous, engaged, role. A changing view of solid waste as a raw material that can turn into innumerable value-added products and industries. Grass as an energy crop. . .

As for 2008 – hold onto your hat.  [Read full article here.]

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

NASA research scientist on peak oil and climate change
David Room, Global Public Media  
Archived on Energy Bulletin Dec. 28th.


NASA research scientist Dr. Pushker Kharecha spoke recently with David Room about "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate," a paper Kharecha co-wrote with one of the world's foremost climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen. The paper, which has been submitted for peer-reviewed publication in a scientific journal, is one of few that consider both climate instability and oil depletion.

Dr. Pushker Kharecha is a research scientist with NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the Columbia University Earth Institute. Dr. Kharecha joined GISS after earning a dual PhD in Earth science and astrobiology from Pennsylvania State University in 2005. In the interest of conducting research that has direct relevance to environmental policy, Dr. Kharecha shifted his focus to the field of climate science.

His paper, "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate," co-written with GISS Director Dr. James Hansen, is available at pubs.giss.nasa.gov. Examining the impact of a range of peak oil scenarios on CO2 emissions, Kharecha and Hansen conclude that peaking of global oil production could have a major effect on 21st-century climate change, depending on the timing and magnitude of the peak, and subsequent energy choices.

They argue that a fair yet effective price on carbon emissions should be implemented in order to move energy choices in a direction that averts dangerous climate change. They also outline several key policy recommendations regarding global use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels -- specifically, that coal CO2 emissions (not necessarily coal use) should be phased out globally within the next few decades, and that unconventional fossil fuels such as methane hydrates, tar sands, and shale oil should not be widely used unless their emissions are also captured and sequestered.

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Link to video of David Room's interview with Pushker Kharecha here.

Green Mountain Challenge
VPR commentary by Ron Krupp, available here.
In this VPR commentary, gardener and author Ron Krupp shares his delight in Vermont's growing interest in local foods, while also outlining the challenges to becoming food self-sufficient and suggesting the components to a model for doing so. Despite the fact that Vermont enjoys, per capita, "the largest small farm initiative in the country, including the greatest per capita purchasing of local food from direct market outlets," we continue to produce less than we consume (except in dairy). Vermont's agricultural diversity, and the infrastructure to support local food production, are both in need of extensive cultivation. This insightful piece is archived on the VPR website, here.

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FARM FRESH MILK RESTORATION ACT INTRODUCED IN VERMONT HOUSE!
from Rural Vermont