What If They Are Right?

Ran across a great article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times yesterday (thanks to the re-localization email list). The whole thing is worth a read, even if you have to register (for free) to read it.

In the article, Pollan discusses why he finds the little things he does to reduce his carbon footprint important, despite these personal changes of habit/sacrifice being only one drop in a very large bucket. He also touches on the whole confusion about the carbon footprint - for instance - is growing a greenhouse tomato in New England (with head & fertilizer) any less energy intensive than importing an organically grown tomato from California? (From what I remember, there is no easy answer).

Naturally, one of the main thrusts of the article is about planting gardens - be them container gardens in the window sill to tilling up your lawn or buying a multi-acre farm. He brings up Wendell Berry, which is someone I have just recently discovered and am completely fascinated with, although I have yet to track down certain works of his (mainly because I am still trying to find time to finish Heinrich's "Mind of the Raven").

It was a good read, and I don't want to give it away. Go read it yourself.

Which brings me to my second thought - doom & gloom. It's easy to shrug and say "we'll come up with something" and "it'll never get THAT bad" when talking to believers of peak oil and those preparing for a post-carbon society. But it COULD be that bad - most people would just prefer not to think about it because it's too big to wrap their minds around. It's hard to accept what the climate scientists are telling us because no one knows what to do, what they can do, when things suddenly get very, very bad. It's very much like burying your head in the sand. And as far as "we'll come up with something" is concerned: well, biofuels were a great idea. Even I was on board at first. But then we stopped growing edible food and converted productive land into growing GMO-corn for ethanol production, and that has helped push world food prices higher while simultaneously not doing a damn thing to lower the cost of fuel. (I will however, say that at least we got the MTBE out of gasoline by replacing it with ethanol, which is at least not contaminating the drinking water as easily).

So... what if they doomsayers ARE right? What if? What if? I once read Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. The basic premise was that the oil and fuel dried up, and society (as we know it) collapses, and follows these two sisters living in the northern California woods 30 miles from the closest town. It was a good story, and I remember much of the book (a miracle for me - after several minor head injuries in the past, I swear my memory is not quite right). Kind of puts the whole "what if" scenario into perspective. Gardening, or the ability to know the wild, edible plants (hunter-gatherer style) is key to the two sisters' survival in the novel.

It's very hard to think about life in a post-carbon society without quickly coming to the conclusion that you just might, finally, be loosing your mind.

So... lets just say for a second that our energy supply becomes intermittent. We have power for a few days, then its out for a week. We have power for a few hours and then it goes out for a few hours. Let's say it's summer. Then let's think about all of the insulin-dependent diabetics out there - including two of my close family members. That insulin requires cool storage. I can live without a refridgerator easily enough. But my father cannot. What about the people who require dialysis, or a respirator, or any other sort of medical device that requires electricity to run and can't survive power interruptions? I know, I know, this is America. But think about it - much of the rest of the world is already living like this. At some point, this could easily happen as the oil dries up. As the countries that have it stop selling it to us and keeping it for themselves.

There are thousands of somewhat plausible (plausibility varies depending on what you know or who you talk to) scenarios you can mentally run through in order to keep you up at night. Thousands.

So I garden. This is my approach. I garden because I can, and because I find it fun to put these little itty-bitty seeds into soil, apply varying amounts of water, light & heat, and see what happens. It's one thing that I can do, that I know I can do, in the face of uncertainty. Not to mention that it saves gas (not driving to the store to buy veggies that have been imported from somewhere else), thus saving money. And I have control over what goes into my food. And who knows - with the climate changing, our growing season just might be getting longer. Might as well use it to my advantage.