Ideas
Theo Kitchener

How We Can Change the World

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

How We Can Change the World

by Theo Kitchener

We are living at an extremely exciting time to be alive. The world is about to change drastically, potentially for the better, potentially for the worse. There is much we can be doing now to influence the course of events. Of course this brings up a question of strategy.

For the past few decades, efforts to make the world's economy sustainable have focused on campaigning for a transition to renewable energy and increased energy efficiency. This is understandable given the western world's recent history of relative prosperity and technological progress. However, times have changed and we are in the beginnings of a crisis which is not yet widely understood. So I'm going to explain first of all, why this strategy is unlikely to succeed at this late stage in the game. It comes down to a lack of money, a lack of resources and a lack of political will. Secondly and more excitingly, I'll outline a theory of change for how we can realistically create the world we want to live in. One which is sustainable, or getting closer and closer to sustainable, and one which offers humanity more opportunities for justice, security and happiness.

I believe the transition movement is already well on its way, and I'd like to explain how a large scale shift in our society could occur. I think this is important to talk about because if we don't believe that our actions are likely to make a big difference, most of us are likely to do nothing.

Money

The main thing stopping a transition to large scale renewable energy is a lack of money. This may come as a shock to some, but the world economy is essentially bankrupt, I'll take a few paragraphs here to explain the situation briefly, but you can find much more detail elsewhere, particularly at www.theautomaticearth.org/primers.

Over the past few decades, since a deluge of overly-optimistic financial deregulation in the eighties, countries, businesses and people have been taking out more and more loans. Which increases the money supply, and is what has fuelled inflation and rising housing and stock prices. And so it has gotten to the point finally where we can no longer afford to pay our debts. And one by one, we're now defaulting on those debts, contracting the money supply and creating a deflationary spiral.

A deflationary spiral sets in because when there are many defaults, banks become less willing to lend, and that reduces the money supply. Because every time a loan is defaulted on, the loan that the bank considered to be money it would have in the future, no longer exists, and that reduces the money supply. When the money supply contracts, prices go down because there is less money chasing the same goods, services and assets. When prices start to go down, people worry and start to sell their assets. And of course, the more sellers there are in a market, the more prices continue to go down.

As prices crash, many businesses go bankrupt, unemployment skyrockets, many people lose their homes, and banks stop lending almost altogether. The financial system is then likely to collapse altogether in one of two ways. As people lose faith in the system, they take their money out of banks and trigger bank runs. Or as the large financial institutions sense that the economy is going nowhere slow, they can take action to bankrupt companies and collect big on their bets (credit default swaps) with other financial institutions. In either case it's a race to the bottom, get as much money out as you can, and help bring about complete financial collapse at the same time.

As all of this happens (and of course it has already begun), businesses become less likely to invest in anything, because its very difficult and expensive to get loans (and all new investment is done on loaned money these days) and because even smart investments such as renewable energy and energy efficient appliances become risky in an age where people can afford to buy very little. Governments are even less able to invest as they are receiving much less money than usual in taxes, dealing with higher interest rates and trying to provide for a much higher social welfare burden.

Energy and Resources

Just like we're running out of money, we're also running out of cheap fossil fuels and other resources, which also makes it impossible to transition to renewables and efficiency and continue with even business at nearly usual. If you think about the society we live in, the levels of wealth, consumption and ease of living are absolutely unheard of compared to ever before in human history, let alone even just 50 or a 100 years ago. Correspondingly, our use of fossil fuels has been increasing exponentially up until just recently. There is a finite amount of fossil fuels on the planet, and it becomes less and less worth getting the stuff out as it gets harder and more expensive.

Even though we're not running out of the stuff, at the point when it costs one barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil out of the ground, there won't be any more point. Even at ten barrels out to one invested, there is little point since so much energy goes towards maintaining our civilisation's level of complexity. Peak oil has happened even though our technologies have been getting more and more efficient, both for finding new oil and for getting it out of the ground. There is such a thing as a hard limit. Technology and innovation are still always reliant on energy, and while we have no readily harvestable energy source anywhere near the scale and power of oil, I wouldn't be counting on the myth of infinitely continuing progress to get us out of this bind.

Completely retrofitting the economy with renewable energy and efficient products, is not something that can be done with innovation alone. It would also require an enormous amount of resources and energy to make it happen (not to mention time, money, political will, and more). Large wind turbines require rare earth metals for their lightness and strength, many of which have already peaked. Solar panels are nearly always manufactured using fossil fuel energy. Electric cars require lithium for their batteries which is likely to peak as soon as we scale up demand, and plastic for their lightweight bodies, which is made of post peak oil. The list could go on and on.

Peaked resources aren't impossible to use as I've explained above, but they are continuously more and more expensive. Particularly in a situation of economic collapse (but even without that), making such an expensive large scale transition in time to ward off dangerous climate change seems unlikely.

Political Will

What's required to ensure a positive, sustainable and equitable transition to a world with less resources each year includes not only the end of personal driving, the end of global transportation of most food and goods, much less electricity for your home, and much lower consumption of all kinds of products. The problem is that no one wants to give this stuff up. Corporations and their investors want us spending money so they can keep on making money off of us, and governments need all the money going round so they can keep on getting their taxes and providing the services we expect from them. And perhaps most importantly, people don't want to give it up, that's us, the consumers. We expect to be able to buy everything we need, rather than make it, grow it, share it or repair it. We expect to be able to eat out occasionally, to travel the world, to use fancier technologies every year. Life is supposed to keep on getting easier and easier.

This is why I believe the tactics of mainstream environmentalism haven't worked particularly well so far. We can't expect our governments to agree to shut down coal fired power stations, when they have nothing as powerful to replace them with, nor the money to do it, while their populations are still demanding ongoing growth and consumer lifestyles. Many environmentalists would argue that there are ways to make our existing economy sustainable, but I would argue that they haven't been taking peaking resources or our flailing economies into account.

Of course I'm not suggesting we give up on protesting or our Greens parties altogether. I am deeply grateful to those working on campaigns against fracking for natural gas, genetically modified foods, the nuclear industry, coal power plants and much more. Campaigning is great for keeping governments and corporations in line, but personally I don't think it has much chance of succeeding in actually transforming our world to one which is just and sustainable. Likewise, a Green party in power would help mitigate the effects of the crisis on the environment and people, however there is no miracle cure to the economic crisis from a governmental perspective.

And two more reasons. The first is that from a psychological perspective, our behaviour change campaigns have mostly focused on encouraging change based on ethics and morality. Ie. Your current behaviour is bad for the environment, please do 'x' to help save the environment and our future. This has only worked on a small minority of people, usually those who already have enough privilege that buying solar panels or spending time organising protests is no issue for them (this includes me). The ethics based argument appeals to our guilt and shame, so its understandable that most people want nothing to do with it and in many cases rebel against it.

Secondly, our governments are in bed with big business. Without the money corporations donate to politicians, they're unable to run the campaigns that get them elected. What is best for the people is ignored in favour of what is best for the companies. This is legalised corruption. While a renewable powered business as usual isn't at all likely, there is a lot that governments could be doing to make our lives better and to help us manage this crisis.

Instead, governments are helping corporations and their investors to make as much money off of us as they possibly can, while giving the appearance of doing some good, enough for us not to revolt in the streets. I can't go past the Oscar Wilde quote: “the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it”. Social welfare and wide screen TVs are the bones thrown to us to stop us from rioting in the streets.

At the same time, I want to say I don't think most of the rich and powerful understand any of this. Most of them still believe that the wealth will trickle down, they've bought into a utopian vision of capitalism. To them it makes sense that people in the so-called 'third world' should work for pennies on the dollar, simply because they have less education. Cheap labour is seen as their competitive advantage that will supposedly lead to their own advancement. It's a pity that they see things this way, because it isn't fair in the present, and their theory doesn't even make sense for the future (like many of the things I'm writing about here though, that's another story).

My point with all this is that I don't wish to demonise those who are high up in government and big business. I think it's fairly understandable given prevailing ideologies and the privileged and sheltered upbringing of those in power, that they think it their responsibility to encourage economic growth or to maximise profits for their shareholders. The world is a complex place with everyone in it acting on what seems reasonable to them. While many people would argue that the problem is greed, I would say the problem is a political, social and economic system that encourages greed.

Withdraw and Build

What I'm proposing is that rather than jumping up and down trying to get our governments and big businesses to change, we just ignore them. Instead, we go about rebuilding the world in ways that make sense for people and for the limited resources we have available to us. Eventually they will have to adapt and will follow the population.

When we go shopping, when we drive our cars, when we use electricity, we are giving our support to the businesses which are running the existing system. We're giving them our money, making the rich richer, letting ourselves be dependent on them for goods and services, giving them the power to control what our governments do, and propelling ourselves further and faster into collapse.

When we choose instead to withdraw from the system, to grow our own food, to make the things we need ourselves, to start volunteer projects or microbusinesses that provide useful goods and services for each other, to ride bicycles, to use extremely low levels of electricity that we can produce ourselves, we create real security for ourselves, we build community, we become happier and healthier, we create a society that isn't heading for collapse but can be sustained for our grandchildren.

We're not really living in democracies, these are dollarocracies. If we stop buying stuff, we stop contributing to our economic, resource and environmental crises, and corporations and governments stop having much power over us. If we don't want any more coal fired power stations, the most direct way to achieve that is to reduce the energy that we, the people are demanding from the power companies.

Fear

When I talk about this to my friends and family, the first thing people say is that its extremely unlikely that people will give up their consumer lifestyles. The truth is though that we haven't got any choice. Either we slowly give them up now and start working on new ways of surviving and living well, or we wait until things get worse and worse. In that case, we either end up working and living under third-world conditions without the resources to make the transition, or hopefully making the transition at the last minute with the help of those who got prepared earlier. Both of these options are already happening for many people. There's a great quote from William Gibson, 'the future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed'.

So I'm working with fear (instead of guilt or shame) and I know that it works. When I explain to people whats going on with this debt crisis and peaking resources, people are scared, they want to know what to do. We only work full time and pay mortgages for the sake of security. With education, it can make more sense to grow your own food, and reduce your living costs so that you don't need work to secure your future.

Climate change activists argue against this use of fear to mobilise, since it can also paralyse people. And it's true, this is depressing, but we do move through the stages of grief towards action. Climate change is seen as being out of people's control. Even if they stop driving, everyone else will still be contributing to it, so what good will it do? The necessary response to peak oil and collapsing economies however is to prepare oneself to live without a modern economy. If you do this, you will almost certainly be better off, regardless of the scary future. The connection between action and result are a lot closer, and humans react quickest in a crisis. Luckily you preparing will also help reduce greenhouse emissions, and will also influence and help others to get prepared.

Hope

Of course for many of us, the crisis isn't quite here yet. It's not fear alone which has prompted me to start preparing and raising awareness, but also desire. Desire for a better life, a better system, a healthier environment. I believe that fear and desire, when balanced, are powerful tools. We can't know what the future holds, but we can be motivated to create the future we want.

The really cool thing is that the smartest available ways to deal with the crisis, ideas like permaculture, community, appropriate technology, participatory democracy, local currencies and voluntary simplicity will also lead to happier and healthier lives (this piece is already too long to go into the specifics, but please check out the links – available soon). Consider that if you're buying a lot less stuff, and living a lot simpler, you can also work a whole lot less.

Consider that you can't be self-sufficient alone, you need a community of people to share or trade food and other goods and services with. Consider that no one is forcing you to do any of this preparation, it's all your choice and you can do what you choose at your own pace. Consider as well that the work you do will be made up of a wide variety of tasks, some done whilst joking around with others, some done meditatively alone, some will involve physical labour, some will involve creativity and learning. We shouldn't have to be just a cog in a machine, doing the same work over and over again every day, because our boss tells us to and we need the money to live. Life wasn't always like that and it doesn't have to be.

To make this shift, what we need to give up on is the idea that more stuff and easier ways of doing things will make us more happy. We've been trying that for most of the last century, and the Western world is unbelievably unhappy. A third of us here in Australia have a mental illness, and if you include low level depression and anxiety, I'd wager its closer to 80%. Advertising is aimed at convincing us that buying the latest car, beauty product, electric juicer or movie will make us feel better about ourselves or save us time. While the things that have helped me get over my depression have been switching off the telly, giving up on caring what other people think of me, doing more physical work in the garden and around the house, and spending time with others in my community.

The Big Picture

Of course not everyone will get scared by peak oil or the financial crisis or excited at the prospect of remaking the world in the first place. A larger group go straight into denial and want to argue with me when I talk about it. This is an understandable coping mechanism. This news is big, life-changing in fact, and many of us have reasons to like our lives the way they are. I've been arguing with my family for years now on these issues and mostly they're just starting to agree with me. I've also noticed a lot less people go straight to denial now than say three years ago. When economies keep on crashing seemingly unexplainably, and the media keeps on telling us that everything is fine and should bounce back soon, people become a lot more accepting of the truth, we're not stupid.

If you're thinking this is just a lifestylist strategy for safeguarding yourself and your family, think again. As the crisis continues, governments are likely to become more violent and fascist in an effort to control their underfed and unhappy populations. If a fascist offers a target to blame for the crisis, a resource war, and security from lawlessness, people will go along with it unless there is a better option. Being one of the few who know what is going on and prepare ahead of time, means that you will be able to help your community make the transition. When people can't afford to buy food, it becomes mainstream either to starve or to grow it. When people can't afford energy, it becomes mainstream either to stop using it, or to utilise whatever appropriate technologies we know of. When the economic system stops working, it can become mainstream to despair or to share. Much depends on what those of us who are thinking about this slightly ahead of time decide to do.

If even 0.1% of people decide to start preparing themselves, I think on the whole we'll swing more towards a utopian future than a dystopian one (I don't think it likely that we'll end up at either extreme, but where we sit in between is important). As conditions continue to worsen economically, it is positive examples of new ways of life that will convince others to begin the shift and live free. This can't just be words on a website, or ideas getting passed around, people need to know neighbours, friends or family members who are actually doing it. As more and more people are losing their jobs and are unable to afford basic necessities, they'll also be seeing others around them sharing plenty of home-grown healthy food, living well on less and most importantly having fun. It's not hard to see that this choice could become a no brainer eventually. What we need is enough people to start now so that this is what happens.

Additionally, if you're worried about what could happen to society when the supermarket shelves empty out, it's in your interest to help others get prepared. You can do this by getting to know your neighbours, running workshops explaining how you became mostly self-sufficient, starting a community greenhouse that gives away fruit trees, or a small business to sell non-electric fridge alternatives, or by working to raise awareness of what is going on. There's plenty to do besides just prepare yourself if you want to help rebuild the world!

I'm not suggesting that all the activists out there take up this strategy. I believe that a diversity of tactics will get us the best result, however I am suggesting that more people take up the strategy of building an alternative life. At this stage it seems like a very powerful option. As I said earlier, we're already well on our way. There are millions of people around the world involved in this movement already. Get involved as soon as you're ready.