Blah, blah, blah
I'm watching "Rent" this morning/afternoon. It's a snow day. Second in a row. Cold outside. Doesn't excite me to think of skiing in weather this cold...
I know I've heard some of the music from "Rent" in the past, but I don't recall having seen the movie before...
I'm taking classes now. I have two intro classes... macro-Economics and Sociology. I'm taking them at the local community college. The professors are interesting, although I can imagine ones that are much better at teaching... I guess that goes with the territory. The classes are half filled with high-school junior and seniors, and a few who've just graduated high school. The rest are older, but I don't think any have achieved degrees yet... Nonetheless, the discussions are starting to get a bit more interesting.
I enjoy reading both of the texts, although the Sociology one is tough to understand since I don't have any background at all with the technical terms or theories... "Culture", "Society", various sociology thinkers, etc... Well, I've heard of Marx, but that's about it, and more in relation to economics than Sociology... The Econ is a bit easier to understand, but that too is a bit convoluted. The author of the text is such a free-market, no-rules, use-up-the-planet type fellow, that I find myself constantly mentally debating the reading... LOL... Takes a while to read a chapter.
I'm taking the classes for a couple reasons... Most essentially I suppose is that I had to earn 6-credits before July in order to retain my professional teacher credentials... But the site selection and the courses were up to me... so I picked a couple that would give me a bit more insight into what the heck is going on in the world... and with the people that I spend my days and weeks with at work... And community college because I wanted to take courses close to home, and those were the closest, plus I wanted to try out the local CC.
Another consideration is that I wanted to understand more about how the new culture will look after peak oil and global warming force new changes in civilization and humanity. Funny that those two issues are so closely tied together... We are addicted to energy, and we are on the way to being force-ably weened... and we don't have a culture in place that can survive as it is ... without this huge influx of energy that we are siphoning off the planet, and off other societies...
I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Syriana", so the two concepts are foremost in my mind at the moment. Yes, we are sucking energy away from other nations. And the conventional petroleum already seems to have peaked, and is in decline. So, we are going to continue consuming like vampires, sucking off the rest of the world, and watching them fall into decline, one nation at a time. There will come a time when we will either go to war for control of the remaining scraps, or we will come to some economic collapse where we will suddenly find ourselves unable to fight... not to odd that the US President just suggested that we double the size of the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve".
Not to say that I think the "Depletion Protocol" is a bad idea. I think it is terrific, but it is going to take incredible efforts to deter our military-industrial-congressional complex from preferring war.
And how would I feel about this war? Aren't we at it already? Well, yes, we have been in a systematic war or struggle for oil for the last 100 years or so. In fact, the success of the USA as a nation is due to the huge energy base that we started with... trees, coal, oil, natural gas... it is not really a surprise that we are the largest consumers in the world...
Of course, I am the one who is causing global climate change... and the one who is running us toward the collapse of peak oil... in so much that I am in the top 20% income bracket... and I spend or save in banks all of my money... In fact, at this very moment, I am polluting the atmosphere with CO2 and using up more and more of our energy inheritance... I have the furnace set at 69 F, burning up propane... going right up the smokestack... Plus all of the electricity I am consuming... refrigerator struggling to keep that same heat on the outside, powering this computer and the internet usage stretching out to who knows where, my home entertainment system that uses probably three times the power of most... all this coming from the burning of coal at our local power plant... I am creating greenhouse gasses right now. I am to blame. I am the problem.
But that's not it... Oh no, there's much much more... I eat food... lots of food... and its not as if my 2500 or so Calories a day is the only energy. I will grant that probably all of the food energy that my body consumes does come from the Sun. Thank goodness, I'm solar powered... Unfortunately, a huge amount of petroleum and coal had to be burned up to provide the energy to get that food from field to my mouth... transportation, agriculture, packaging, preparation... I think it works out to about 10 times as much energy to get the food to my mouth than is actually in the food... so, in effect, I'm an energy hog. At this very instant, sitting here and typing, I'm burning at least 100 Calories/hour... times ten for the embedded energy... so 1,000 Calories/hour...
Oh, I also forgot to mention all of the energy required to get the coal to the power station, and to keep the infrastructure in place, including the ongoing capital investments... Plus the energy to get the propane in my tank... and, of course, all of the energy and matter resources being expended to make sure both the petroleum gets to the USA... I'm not sure even how to calculate that.... Probably something like taking the Gross National Product and dividing by the amount of energy that we consume as a nation... But since I'm in the top 20% for US consumption, well, I use a ton of energy.
I create carbon dioxide, I create global warming, I am causing climate change, I am pushing the world to the brink of peak oil... and money... oh boy... don't get me started on money...
You would think that I, a person who has a good sense of how money works, would make sure that my spending was very low, and that I was taking the money out of the system... Nope, not me, money in the bank, and probably directly spend at least 50% of my income every year, if not more... and that money doesn't just represent the energy that I consume... as soon as the cash gets to the next person, they use it to consume some more... and the chain keeps going... who knows, within a year of my spending on any particular thing, that money could change hands 10 to 100 times... and it just keeps on going... so my impact on the world is some big multiple of the pollution that I cause directly because I allow the money to get out of my fingers...
This is the most tricky concept for me to explain, but it is the one that is the most upsetting. My use of money is driving global warming, creating green house gas pollution, and just making a mess of the planet... ick, it's a rather upsetting thought...
But, am I just a leaf on the river, that can not see where it is going, but only know where I have been... just floating along through time, consuming and destroying the environment and changing the climate like a wreaking ball...
My vision for myself is that I will escape this prison of consumption and destruction that I find myself within... this cultural, social, or selfish place that makes me desire my own personal comfort as the most valuable thing, no matter what my logic and philosophy can tell me about the world... And I wonder to myself, should I just ride out this party? Party on until it comes crashing to an end? The Earth will probably shake us off... or civilization will fail and the remaining few hearty souls will be left to carry on this human race... probably those societies that use very little energy other than that which the sun provides...
Consume, consume, consume... every instant I consume and cause the ill's that worry me, trouble me, concern me, and make me feel like I am trapped in in some sort of earthly hell... but I enjoy it, of course... my basic needs are met... I'm just not doing anything to help the needs of the species... or mammal-kind... or life on earth... Which is exactly what I should be doing.
Hrmph... Was that a rant? And the most upsetting thing? Even if I could make myself a zero-energy user, there are another billion people out that are living un-sustain ably. Perhaps there are more, maybe half the world population... destroying the world in a systematic yet oblivious manner... so that the other half... and all future generations are stuck with the consequences...
The purpose of this blog, and the Local Future web site is to try to come up with a solution so that individuals, families, and communities can come up with a plan so that they can survive and live happily without this huge energy and resource consumption... Gee, seems like a big goal. But what else are we here on earth to do if not to ensure the survival of life on earth, and more specifically, to protect the great variety of life in the seas, on the land, in the air...
After all. Every bit of energy that I use to live comes from the sun. Every atom in my body comes from the earth. I am the living combination of matter and energy. One package, with incredible possibilities, held together for a blink of geologic time by the inevitability of life of this globe.
If I was the Earth before birth... and will be the Earth again after death... then I am this moment part of the Earth. I am not seperate or seperatable from the earth. In fact, no one has ever left the earth (aside from a few ashes of some rich folks that sent a few of their burned ashes into outer space)... I am part of the earth. My energy comes from the sun. And the way that energy gets to my body, as well as the energy that I consume outside of myself, as I burn these Calories... all that external energy came from the sun (or its predecessor).
What a weird situation. Being part of the Earth... Being one with the Earth... Being matter and energy... Life, for a blink of the eye... And changing the climate with my fellow humans so that we can destroy other species and ecosystems.
Hmm... I think I could go on a bit longer, but my hands are getting tired from talking to probably no one at all, other than my own thinking process... Perhaps I will deleted this journal as being a crazy incoherent walk around the insides of part of my mind. Ah well. Until the hands heal, and the next inspiration and/or compulsion strikes me.
I know I've heard some of the music from "Rent" in the past, but I don't recall having seen the movie before...
I'm taking classes now. I have two intro classes... macro-Economics and Sociology. I'm taking them at the local community college. The professors are interesting, although I can imagine ones that are much better at teaching... I guess that goes with the territory. The classes are half filled with high-school junior and seniors, and a few who've just graduated high school. The rest are older, but I don't think any have achieved degrees yet... Nonetheless, the discussions are starting to get a bit more interesting.
I enjoy reading both of the texts, although the Sociology one is tough to understand since I don't have any background at all with the technical terms or theories... "Culture", "Society", various sociology thinkers, etc... Well, I've heard of Marx, but that's about it, and more in relation to economics than Sociology... The Econ is a bit easier to understand, but that too is a bit convoluted. The author of the text is such a free-market, no-rules, use-up-the-planet type fellow, that I find myself constantly mentally debating the reading... LOL... Takes a while to read a chapter.
I'm taking the classes for a couple reasons... Most essentially I suppose is that I had to earn 6-credits before July in order to retain my professional teacher credentials... But the site selection and the courses were up to me... so I picked a couple that would give me a bit more insight into what the heck is going on in the world... and with the people that I spend my days and weeks with at work... And community college because I wanted to take courses close to home, and those were the closest, plus I wanted to try out the local CC.
Another consideration is that I wanted to understand more about how the new culture will look after peak oil and global warming force new changes in civilization and humanity. Funny that those two issues are so closely tied together... We are addicted to energy, and we are on the way to being force-ably weened... and we don't have a culture in place that can survive as it is ... without this huge influx of energy that we are siphoning off the planet, and off other societies...
I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Syriana", so the two concepts are foremost in my mind at the moment. Yes, we are sucking energy away from other nations. And the conventional petroleum already seems to have peaked, and is in decline. So, we are going to continue consuming like vampires, sucking off the rest of the world, and watching them fall into decline, one nation at a time. There will come a time when we will either go to war for control of the remaining scraps, or we will come to some economic collapse where we will suddenly find ourselves unable to fight... not to odd that the US President just suggested that we double the size of the "Strategic Petroleum Reserve".
Not to say that I think the "Depletion Protocol" is a bad idea. I think it is terrific, but it is going to take incredible efforts to deter our military-industrial-congressional complex from preferring war.
And how would I feel about this war? Aren't we at it already? Well, yes, we have been in a systematic war or struggle for oil for the last 100 years or so. In fact, the success of the USA as a nation is due to the huge energy base that we started with... trees, coal, oil, natural gas... it is not really a surprise that we are the largest consumers in the world...
Of course, I am the one who is causing global climate change... and the one who is running us toward the collapse of peak oil... in so much that I am in the top 20% income bracket... and I spend or save in banks all of my money... In fact, at this very moment, I am polluting the atmosphere with CO2 and using up more and more of our energy inheritance... I have the furnace set at 69 F, burning up propane... going right up the smokestack... Plus all of the electricity I am consuming... refrigerator struggling to keep that same heat on the outside, powering this computer and the internet usage stretching out to who knows where, my home entertainment system that uses probably three times the power of most... all this coming from the burning of coal at our local power plant... I am creating greenhouse gasses right now. I am to blame. I am the problem.
But that's not it... Oh no, there's much much more... I eat food... lots of food... and its not as if my 2500 or so Calories a day is the only energy. I will grant that probably all of the food energy that my body consumes does come from the Sun. Thank goodness, I'm solar powered... Unfortunately, a huge amount of petroleum and coal had to be burned up to provide the energy to get that food from field to my mouth... transportation, agriculture, packaging, preparation... I think it works out to about 10 times as much energy to get the food to my mouth than is actually in the food... so, in effect, I'm an energy hog. At this very instant, sitting here and typing, I'm burning at least 100 Calories/hour... times ten for the embedded energy... so 1,000 Calories/hour...
Oh, I also forgot to mention all of the energy required to get the coal to the power station, and to keep the infrastructure in place, including the ongoing capital investments... Plus the energy to get the propane in my tank... and, of course, all of the energy and matter resources being expended to make sure both the petroleum gets to the USA... I'm not sure even how to calculate that.... Probably something like taking the Gross National Product and dividing by the amount of energy that we consume as a nation... But since I'm in the top 20% for US consumption, well, I use a ton of energy.
I create carbon dioxide, I create global warming, I am causing climate change, I am pushing the world to the brink of peak oil... and money... oh boy... don't get me started on money...
You would think that I, a person who has a good sense of how money works, would make sure that my spending was very low, and that I was taking the money out of the system... Nope, not me, money in the bank, and probably directly spend at least 50% of my income every year, if not more... and that money doesn't just represent the energy that I consume... as soon as the cash gets to the next person, they use it to consume some more... and the chain keeps going... who knows, within a year of my spending on any particular thing, that money could change hands 10 to 100 times... and it just keeps on going... so my impact on the world is some big multiple of the pollution that I cause directly because I allow the money to get out of my fingers...
This is the most tricky concept for me to explain, but it is the one that is the most upsetting. My use of money is driving global warming, creating green house gas pollution, and just making a mess of the planet... ick, it's a rather upsetting thought...
But, am I just a leaf on the river, that can not see where it is going, but only know where I have been... just floating along through time, consuming and destroying the environment and changing the climate like a wreaking ball...
My vision for myself is that I will escape this prison of consumption and destruction that I find myself within... this cultural, social, or selfish place that makes me desire my own personal comfort as the most valuable thing, no matter what my logic and philosophy can tell me about the world... And I wonder to myself, should I just ride out this party? Party on until it comes crashing to an end? The Earth will probably shake us off... or civilization will fail and the remaining few hearty souls will be left to carry on this human race... probably those societies that use very little energy other than that which the sun provides...
Consume, consume, consume... every instant I consume and cause the ill's that worry me, trouble me, concern me, and make me feel like I am trapped in in some sort of earthly hell... but I enjoy it, of course... my basic needs are met... I'm just not doing anything to help the needs of the species... or mammal-kind... or life on earth... Which is exactly what I should be doing.
Hrmph... Was that a rant? And the most upsetting thing? Even if I could make myself a zero-energy user, there are another billion people out that are living un-sustain ably. Perhaps there are more, maybe half the world population... destroying the world in a systematic yet oblivious manner... so that the other half... and all future generations are stuck with the consequences...
The purpose of this blog, and the Local Future web site is to try to come up with a solution so that individuals, families, and communities can come up with a plan so that they can survive and live happily without this huge energy and resource consumption... Gee, seems like a big goal. But what else are we here on earth to do if not to ensure the survival of life on earth, and more specifically, to protect the great variety of life in the seas, on the land, in the air...
After all. Every bit of energy that I use to live comes from the sun. Every atom in my body comes from the earth. I am the living combination of matter and energy. One package, with incredible possibilities, held together for a blink of geologic time by the inevitability of life of this globe.
If I was the Earth before birth... and will be the Earth again after death... then I am this moment part of the Earth. I am not seperate or seperatable from the earth. In fact, no one has ever left the earth (aside from a few ashes of some rich folks that sent a few of their burned ashes into outer space)... I am part of the earth. My energy comes from the sun. And the way that energy gets to my body, as well as the energy that I consume outside of myself, as I burn these Calories... all that external energy came from the sun (or its predecessor).
What a weird situation. Being part of the Earth... Being one with the Earth... Being matter and energy... Life, for a blink of the eye... And changing the climate with my fellow humans so that we can destroy other species and ecosystems.
Hmm... I think I could go on a bit longer, but my hands are getting tired from talking to probably no one at all, other than my own thinking process... Perhaps I will deleted this journal as being a crazy incoherent walk around the insides of part of my mind. Ah well. Until the hands heal, and the next inspiration and/or compulsion strikes me.