Grow your own

The Party's Over

It's not coming back. The party's over. This isn't some temporary blip in the economy that a little belt-tightening will fix. One less latte and a smaller, "fuel efficient" SUV will not make this problem go away.

It would be nice to have all that money back from our Iraq misadventure. It would have been nice to have had eight years of competent federal leadership. But even so, the party had to end some time. It just came sooner than we expected. This is what the CEOs used to call a paradigm shift. Or, to borrow another corporate buzz-phrase, this is a perfect storm — too many people, too few finite resources (oil, water, coal), too little meaningful work, etc.

James Howard Kunstler, though he angers some with his dystopian forecasts, hammers this point home on his blog (www.kunstler.com). Because he has been right far more often than wrong in the past two decades, Kunstler is worth a listen (and his books, The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere, should be required reading). In a recent entry, he wrote, "Dear Mr. President, you are presiding over an epochal contraction, not a pause in the growth epic. Your assignment is to manage that contraction in a way that does not lead to world war, civil disorder or both. Among other things, contraction means that all the activities of everyday life need to be downscaled including standards of living, ranges of commerce, and levels of governance. 'Consumerism' is dead. Revolving credit is dead — at least at the scale that became normal the last thirty years. The wealth of several future generations has already been spent and there is no equity left there to re-finance."

Love the final paragraph...

If my town is any guide, don't wait for even well-meaning government officials to take the first step. Better yet, put some crops in the ground this year in your own backyard. It's the first step toward breaking the chain of dependency and helplessness.

The revolution is upon us. Join today - or at least when the snow melts and the weather warms so you can start planting.

Now if OBushama would turn the White House lawn into a garden - set the example for everyone.