DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE

Since I can’t find it on a webpage anywhere, I’m posting a letter that was forwarded to me because it describes “change from the bottom up” which I think is the only thing that will avert or at least blunt catastrophe.  I have linked the references to Non-Violent Communication and some other modalities that Kornfield mentions, but for those of you who would rather have a summary than chase down a link, I would call them “listening disciplines”–ways to remind ourselves that the best way to be heard is to listen well and ask good questions.

A SHINING WEB OF GOOD HEARTS AND GOODWILL

IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

Jack Kornfield Ph.D.

                   Woodacre, Ca 94973   415-488-9780

part 2 of an excellent interview by Carolyn Baker:

My top priority is to keep my mind open. And not to lose my sense of humor-in the grand sense. Our number one responsibility, I believe, is to come to grips with our psychological self, to take a good long look inside and find out who we really are, learn how to rid ourselves of greed, learn to how bridle ego and petty desire, learn how to share and to give and to live with less and more simply. At bottom, we must learn how to cooperate. To be member of a group or a team with no motivation other than enabling the whole. This is good advice regardless of the global situation.

Should the economy collapse or a catastrophic weather event decimate the region where you live, the coming out of it will occur through the spontaneous forming of community, either as an emergency enterprise or a long-term way of living. And this is best done when an individual has given up selfishness, shed vain materialism, and embraced the interconnectedness of all life and each other. I work on my attitude and humor more than anything else because it is my being and my mental health that will make me the most helpful to others if conditions are reduced to basic survival. In this, I am no better than a work in progress.

plus another, similar essay:

After 25 years of college teaching and administration, I left college as my primary work environment for agriculture in the early l990s. I sensed that many of humanity’s support systems and the natural capital that sustains us were breaking down. I wanted to learn more about the basics of food, water, plants, animals, the soil, climate, and the elements. I wanted to be able to feed myself and others with good, nourishing food during an uncertain future of diminishing natural resources and heightening conflicts.

After a search I decided to move to Sonoma County, remaining in the state of my birth. Whenever this native son tries to leave my home-state, California, my body goes where I direct it, but only for a while; then my feet take me back home. Sonoma has nearly 500,000 people and is within the creative San Francisco Bay Area. I bought land with berry vines, apple trees, oaks, redwoods and a tiny house in the uplands of the Cunningham Marsh near the small town of Sebastopol, where less than 8000 souls live.

Our community actively deals with issues such as making a transition to alternative energy sources and the increasingly chaotic global climate. We have active neighborhood groups and support each other to buy local and re-localize. Among the effective groups here are the Climate Protection Campaign and the Post-Carbon Institute. Sebastopol citizens regularly elect well-informed officials who seek to deal with the real issues. We welcome newcomers as we work together to build community during this transition to a post-carbon future.

and this one from the other side of the continent:

At a Barak Obama rally in Putney last week, his foreign policy advisor, Anthony Lake, said that an Obama presidency would help “America once again lead the world.”

O, Tony, that ship has passed, passed, passed. Thanks to GATT, NAFTA, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and torture, we’ve done what I used to think was impossible - we’ve turned America into a third-world nation. Obama might be able to clean up some of the mess, but we won’t be leading the world any time soon.

Yet here in Vermont, we’ve accepted the idea of peak oil. We talk about running our cars on fry grease, heating with wood, and, in general, doing the back-to-the-land thing, 2.0-style.

We talk about starting a barter economy and creating local “dollars” to trade for goods and services. We talk about growing our own vegetables, buying local foods and turning ourselves from omnivores into localvores. We talk about using rags for tampons and diapers. We talk about learning to be self-reliant and curbing our consumerism.

It’s like living in a different America. Outside, people are pretending the economy is chugging along, while we’re preparing ourselves to live after a fall which most Americans don’t believe is coming.

from Bloomberg News:

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — California, Florida schools and the owner of John F. Kennedy International Airport joined a growing list of municipal borrowers exiting the U.S. auction-rate bond market as record failures push taxpayer costs higher.

Thousands of auctions run by banks to set rates on the debt failed this month as investors shunned the securities and bankers refused to submit bids, sending interest costs to 10 percent or higher on some bonds. Auctions covering as much as $26 billion of bonds a day failed to attract enough buyers since Feb. 13, according to Bank of America Corp.

An article written by Larisa Alexandrovna and published online at RAW STORY discloses that two of the 9-11 hijackers stayed for several weeks immediately after their arrival in the US with an employee of a Saudi Arabian defense contractor.  The employee’s name was “redacted” in the public report here in the US but inadvertently released overseas.  The man was allowed to return to Saudi Arabia without being interrogated; when the FBI talked to him abroad, he insisted that he had “just happened” to find the two a couple of weeks after they arrived in southern California, although the timeline that the FBI put together on their movements made it obvious that they had been in contact from the time they arrived.

The article also makes much of one of the hijacker’s having purchased tickets that involved travel after 9-11, but it seems to me like a reasonable thing to do to cover your tracks.  You don’t want to be like that nudge  who told his flight instructors that he was only interested in flying airplanes, not landing them!

”But from the FBI’s timeline, we now know the hijackers started staying at Bayoumi’s place on Jan. 15 – the very same day they arrived,” Thompson says. “So obviously they must have been met at the airport and taken care of from their very first hours in the US. That’s huge because the FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US.”

from the New York Times:

Federal regulators are particularly concerned about the exposure of smaller banks to the commercial real estate market, which has begun to soften in some parts of the country.

“There were people in denial six to nine months ago,” said Keith D. Maio, the president of the National Bank of Arizona in Phoenix, a small bank owned by the Zions Bancorporation based in Salt Lake City. “I don’t know if anybody is in denial anymore.”

Well, it looks to me like the Times is in denial, for one…the article keeps insisting that things are not near as bad as the S&L crisis, and won’t get that way….I bet they turn out to be wrong about that.

this just in from The Hill:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) proposal to mandate that all people purchase health insurance would be a boon to the industry, filmmaker Michael Moore said Friday.

“Can you imagine, every time Sen. Clinton says that, the licking of the lips that goes on with these health insurance executives?” Moore said during a conference call with reporters.

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Moore, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary “SiCKO” about the U.S. healthcare system, criticized both Clinton and her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), for failing to support a universal system of government-financed health coverage during their runs for the White House. “The two Democratic candidates don’t quite get it,” he said.

and a mostly conservative Canadian paper casually reveals that

Republicans have created budget deficits with their tax cuts for plutocrats, CEOs, Wall Street hedge fund pirates, lawyer ambulance chasers, overpaid doctors and insurance companies. (Their combined profits last year were nearly what provinces spend on providing health care to 32 million Canadians).

Merrill, Lynch analyst says Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae are in trouble…not deep doodoo yet, but trouble:

Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell Friday after a Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst said the housing and debt market slumps would stifle earnings at the mortgage-finance companies through 2011.

Fannie Mae, the largest source of money for U.S. home loans, declined 27 cents to $28.72 after the Merrill analyst said investors should sell their shares in both companies. Freddie Mac, the second-largest provider, fell $1.14 to $26.61.

The companies, which own or guarantee about 45% of the $11.5 trillion in U.S. residential mortgages outstanding, may need to raise more money to cope with loan defaults, the analysts wrote in a report.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported $3.4 billion in combined third-quarter losses and are expected next week to report similar results for the fourth quarter.

“We do not think the stocks fully reflect the severity or duration of the financial headwinds facing the companies,” Merrill analyst Kenneth Bruce in San Francisco wrote in a note to clients. There is “more pain than gain.”

the nervousness is spreading:

Frightened financiers are pulling back from credit markets — going on strike, if you will — to escape the unraveling daisy chain of securitized assets and promissory notes that binds the global financial system. As each financier tries to protect against the next one’s mistakes, the whole system begins to sag. That’s what we’re seeing now, as credit market troubles spread from bundles of subprime residential mortgages to bundles of other kinds of debt — from student loans to retailers’ receivables to municipal bonds.

Investors are nervous because they aren’t sure how to value these bundles of securitized assets. So buyers stay away, prices fall further, and the damage spreads.

The public, fortunately, doesn’t understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands.

And the worsening credit market is starting to affect the ability of city and state governments to function:

In recent weeks, many larger governments - and other credit issuers - have faced unexpected interest rate spikes when auctions of their debt drew no bidders. The interest rate on this debt is variable so it soared after the auctions failed. For example, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey saw its interest rate skyrocket to 20%, up from 4%.

not to mention the livelihoods of thousands, if not millions, of people:

(washington post is loading verrrrry slowly and i’m ready to go to bed…will add a quote in the morning!)

food prices are starting to rise and the possibility of scarcity is drifting into focus…

A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club’s 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday.

“It’s not a matter of if, but when,” he warned investors. “It’s going to hit this year hard.”

Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry.

“The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it’s getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we’ve got to expand food output dramatically,” he said.

The impact of tighter food supply is already evident in raw food prices, which have risen 22% in the past year.

while Carolyn Baker reviews how the Russians dealt with something similiar in the 90’s:

The old normal is that life will go on just like before. The new normal is that nothing will ever be the same Rather than attempting to undertake the Herculean task of mitigating the unmitigatable-attempting to stop the world and point it in a different direction-it seems far better to turn inward and work to transform yourself into someone who might stand a chance, given the world’s assumed trajectory. Much of this transformation is psychological and involves letting go of many notions that we have been conditioned to accept unquestioningly. Some if it involves acquiring new skills and a different set of habits. Some of it is even physiological, changing one’s body to prepare it for a life that has far fewer creature comforts and conveniences, while requiring far more physical labor.

***

During this hour of national election mania in the United States, I cannot resist Dmitry’s sardonic observation that “The two capitalist parties offer a choice between two placebos,” (55) later noting that “…all successful adaptations to the new circumstances will have to be made at the local level, and will have to rely on existing infrastructure, inventory and locally available talents and skills.” (61) In pondering his analysis of collapse-how it manifested in the S.U. (Soviet Union) and is now manifesting in the U.S., one is dumfounded with the utter vacuousness of all American political party platforms in the face of a crumbling empire. The Soviet experience confirms that when societies collapse, all issues become acutely and intensely local, and communities and neighborhoods-or large numbers of the dispossessed in a particular venue–must address them.

Whereas some may feel guilty about political apathy or their unwillingness to participate in the national election charade, Dmitry argues that “Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power?” (114) Thank you Dmitry; you’ve just described how I’ve felt after departing a voting booth every four years for the past three decades.

 yeah, i know this is a Green Party blog, but I’ve got a lot more faith in localism than nationalism at this point….

see below for part 1….

high-efficiency, affordable automobiles, for one thing–one for those who still have some money:

March 3, 2006 Why do we need 1.5 tons of steel to get an 80 kg person from A to B? That’s the question Gerhard Heilmaier, Stefan Ruetz and Uli Sommer asked themselves six years ago which led them to form an innovative company named LoReMo - Low Resistance Mobility. LoReMo used this week’s Geneva Show to introduce its first car - a featherweight (450 kg), highly aerodynamic (Cw value of 0.20) 2+2 auto powered by a 20 PS (15 kw) two-cylinder turbo-diesel motor capable of 1.5 litre/100km (157 mpg) that will sell for 11,000 euro (US$13,200). Want more speed? The 50 PS (37 kW) three-cylinder turbo-diesel Loremo GT can top 220 km/h (138 mph) returning 2.7 l/100 km (88 mpg) for less than 15,000 euro (US$18,000).

and one for those with less money, who like to tinker with old cars:

Finally something to wipe the smug off you hybrid owners, you high-mileage acolytes, you global-cooling zealots who wash your Priuses (Prii?) with graywater while wearing reclaimed plastic fleece and hemp undies.

Don’t choke on your organic soy-double-decaf-fair-trade-carbon-neutral macchiato, but how does 376.59 miles per gallon sound? Makes your Honda Civic hybrid look Hummeresque, doesn’t it?

That number doesn’t come from some manta ray-shaped, wind tunnel-vetted carbon fiber space car. No, it’s from a chop-top, steel-frame 1959 Opel T-1 (think melting jelly bean, but uglier). And the record was set in 1973 in a contest sponsored by Shell Oil Co.

hey, here’s what Bloomberg News says about the price of oil:

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil prices of $100 may look “cheap” within five years if OPEC production fails to keep pace with global demand growth, according to Alfa Bank.

“We may hit peak oil in the course of the next three, four or five years, in which case $100 oil will look somewhat quaint,” Alfa Bank’s Moscow-based Head of Research Ronald Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg television.

and of course we might want to eat….

ECO: Eastern Carolina Organics - An Interview with Sandi Kronick, marketing manager for Eastern Carolina Organics.

By Trace Ramsey
Produce Manager

Eastern Carolina Organics is a distributor for organic and transitional produce from small to mid size North Carolina farms. ECO is located in Pittsboro, NC, a small town in eastern Chatham County. As Tidal Creek carries produce from ECO, we thought we would get some background and get our ownership caught up with them.

1 - How did ECO get its start?

ECO was started in 2004 under a project of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, sponsored through a small grant from the NC Tobacco Trust Fund Commission. North Carolina has been blessed for a long time with a strong progressive consumer community and a lot of small organic growers who have worked together to make direct market connections a reality in restaurants and grocery stores. However, there are plenty of restaurants and groceries that weren’t getting enough volume or consistency to meet their demand for local organic produce. Additionally, there are plenty of farmers for whom direct marketing through a CSA or farmers markets either isn’t right for them or isn’t enough to sell all they can produce. ECO was started to serve the needs of these consumer and farmer groups by coordinating the logistics, communication, marketing and deliveries. We aim to help buyers achieve their goals of purchasing as much as possible from local organic farmers and hope you’re noticing the difference in your own shopping at Tidal Creek!

Depression + Inflation + Famine = Chaos! by Michael Fox 

Oftentimes it seems so inconceivable that we could have come to this place, yet here is exactly what we are facing, right now:  Depression in the housing market; retail inflation (due entirely to the price of oil and the plummeting dollar), credit availability all but shut down, and today we discover that grain stores are at their lowest point since they began measuring in 1960: 53 days.  According to the CEO of Potash Corp., the Canadian fertilizer giant, if there is any disruption to this year’s grain harvest, the world will be facing famine in 2009.  And this is not a question of the rock-concert-for-third-world-countries famine, folks.  He is describing global shortages of wheat.  Food prices are already on the rise; with grain shortages, will surely come hoarding and hyperinflation in food.

 

If you think times are getting tough, add a real food shortage.   Now it’s time to grow backyard farms (Victory Gardens) – in fact it’s not at all a bad idea.  You can’t eat grass (even in a brownie), so you may re-think the practicality of planting vegetables where your hydrangeas are.

 

and the government responds with half measures

Administration officials say they still oppose any taxpayer bailout for either people who borrowed more than they could afford or banks that made foolish loans during the height of the speculative bubble in housing.

But with the current efforts to arrest the housing collapse so far bearing little fruit, Washington is being forced to explore new ideas, among them the idea of a federal mortgage guarantee for troubled borrowers.

and the threat of full Nelsons:

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”

- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.“

while the landslide rolls faster and faster

Parts of the ice sheets covering Antarctica are melting faster than predicted, with the net loss of ice probably accelerating in recent years because of global warming, a study has found.

A satellite survey between 1996 and 2006 found that the net loss of ice from Antarctica rose by about 75 per cent as the movement of glaciers towards the sea speeded up.

Scientists estimate that that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet lost about 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, compared with a loss of 83 billion tons in 1996. In addition, the Antarctic peninsula lost about 60 billion tons of ice in 2006.

“To put these figures into perspective, 4 billion tons of ice is enough to provide drinking water for the whole UK population for one year,” said Professor Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol. “We think the glaciers of the Antarctic are moving faster to the sea. The computer models of future sea-level rise have not really taken this into account.”

Yep, it’s costing $275 million dollars a day to occupy Iraq.  Okay, so that’s not quite 2B a week.  But close enough, y’know?

Meanwhile, projects like this one are begging for funds:

Solar Fire Technologies offer one of the most cost effective ways to concentrate and use solar energy. Helping people and saving our environment is our driving vision.

By providing abundant, affordable and clean energy, the Solar Fire Project is a tool in the interrelated fights against global warming, deforestation, waterborne disease, pollution, desertification, soil degradation, poverty and general unsustainability.

Powerful enough to bring a liter of water to boil in 5 minutes, Solar Fire Technologies are do-it-yourself machines, on the same level of complexity as a bicycle. They are built from widely available materials, and simple enough to be operated by a child. Once built, SF technologies can meet the basic energy needs for a family for more than 10 years.

And Carolyn Baker interviews Dan Armstrong about efforts to relocalize food production around Eugene, Oregon:

So what can I say? I’ve seen positive changes in the last half year. Not regarding less car use, not regarding a moratorium on building new highways, not regarding legislation to expand mass transit, not regarding a change of business as usual-all of which is frustrating, but in the actual connection of farmers, markets, and food system infrastructure. A full and meaningful transition, however, will take time. An individual buyer makes the decision to support this transition every time he or she buys food. Farmers make this decision each growing season as they buy their seeds for either food products or lawn products. And the infrastructure can take anywhere from one to five years to rebuild.

All in all, as a point of emphasis, what really advances the discussion of food security is organizing presentations and meetings around a meal. This breaks down the wall between the audience and the presenters and gives everyone the opportunity to talk casually, to get to know each other, and to begin linking the threads of community. Nowhere else in all my involvement have I felt or seen the kind of community building that I’ve seen in the food relocalization movement. While emotional Peak Oil or climate change presentations, sadly, have done little to change business as usual, food discussions do. If you want to get involved, I suggest food security as a good place to start, not because it will change the world today, not because it will bring salvation, but because you can see incremental positive response. And if you’re fighting your state of mind, this helps.