Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Released smartly in time for the COP27 climate change conference, the film “The Oil Machine”, presents a stark picture of the imperative to cut our use of fossil fuels, in particular crude oil, but moreover of our utter dependency on the “black gold” for practically all aspects of modern civilization.
We need a realistic plan for energy descent, instead of foolish dreams of eternal consumer abundance by means other than fossil fuels.
In my mind what must undergird any energy transition is the building of a new way of being that is made possible by a much lower-consumption world coupled with living more communally.
Finding a way out of this “polycrisis” requires a deep transformation in how energy and food are produced and distributed, with actions that challenge corporate control head on.
Sustainability means living as nature lives. It means no depletion of the elements of the ecosystem humans have been treating as economic resources, and no waste. What we pursue is up that tree.
We’re currently on a pathway to collapse, but the future doesn’t have to be bleak. We can develop communities where we take care of one another and the ecosystems we inhabit.
The time is now or never. Cooperation is fundamental to our success, and only by uniting as a human family, on all levels from local to global, can we hope to achieve an equitable and concordant future on our Mother Planet.
What this book forces us to ask is that, if ‘contemporary issues’ were accurately described and diagnosed fifty years ago, why has no progress been made since then?
We can still choose our path forward, we can still sacrifice for what we value. But to do so we must recognize the power we possess, build on it in community with others, and acknowledge the ways in which we wield it.
The transition to a smaller, slower and less energy intensive economy will be made vastly more smooth and pleasant if we enact this transformation deliberately, intelligently and voluntarily.
But what if our voracious appetite is less to blame than the types of things that hunger has been directed toward? Could we direct our attention instead toward beauty, tenderness, and collective action?
This book provides a fairly short but detailed critical discussion of the nature of our basically capitalist economic system, its faults, why it is not just unsatisfactory but is leading to global breakdown, the alternative we must work for, and how to achieve it.
