Having heard some of the friendlier ideas of how humans are going to respond to the changing world at conferences like the Future of Food in the Kootenays, I can relate to comments like this, directed at Tim Flannery in a conference in Australia…
In the din of all this brave green planning, a psychologist suddenly intervened: “You Australians are just playing around with the results of climate change”, she said, “you haven’t mentioned guns or fences…” As a child raised in war wrecked East Germany, she recalled how city dwellers thronged to her rural town and stole anything portable, including vegetables, petrol, oil and bags of coal. “I admire the spirit of this lunch, she snorted, “but you are babies”. She has a point. Creating the resilient, self-sufficient off-the-grid communities we would need to survive if the oil runs out, itself remains a fantasy. Let alone dealing with the rampaging hordes. “You’d have to go a lot further out West than here”, someone said, “if you really wanted to feel safe”. The mood darkened.
The ideas of growing food in your backyard, and sharing of resources that represents the Utopian alternative opportunity for the coming energy descent and the related impacts of climate change seems to be a nice idea, but which of the options is closer to the reality that most people in your region are likely to fall towards?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Wandering Coyote 06.23.08 at 10:58 pm
I think you left last I think you left last Thursday’s meeting before Gary Camozzi got up and began talking about “ecological refugees” and the predicted pole shift in 2012 - oh, and the flash frozen mastodons.
There are a LOT of guns here in the Kootenays.
Incidentally, have you heard of/read a book entitled “Cool It” by Bjorn Lomborg? It’s a very interesting read.
Mike 06.24.08 at 2:40 am
Gary is scary in a pacifist Gary is scary in a pacifist kind of way. The pole shift thing is just too weird to consider, I’m not sure humans would actually survive it either.
Somehow I think that discussion is a little bigger than golf courses and Rossland’s taxes.
Do you have a copy of “Cool It”? It does sound interesting.
Wandering Coyote 06.24.08 at 7:22 pm
Yes, I happen to have a copy Yes, I happen to have a copy of Cool It. I review books for that publisher, so I got one a while back for review purposes. I’ll get it off my sister-in-law, who probably won’t read it before she moves this summer, and let you know. It’s a well-written, concise book, that shouldn’t take too long to read.
Mike 06.25.08 at 1:24 am
I’d love to read it, let me I’d love to read it, let me know when you have it. Thanks!