Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 05:32:43 -0700 Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE): From: Ecological Options Network From Richard Heinberg, author of “The Party’s Over” and Katrina, Rita, and Peak Oil Like just about everyone else, I was transfixed by news reports The damage to oil production and refining facilities, while Then, in the last week of September, a second major The American Petroleum Institute says that 58 Gulf of Mexico The four refineries that remain shut after Katrina account for Katrina also inundated the important offshore oil service port at U.S. gasoline refining capacity was practically maxed out Oil production from the Gulf was down by over half as of the All of this was before Hurricane Rita struck one of the most Consequences for Peak Predictions For oil and gasoline the bottom line seems to be that—once As a result of Katrina and Rita, forecasts for the global oil A decade from now we will probably be able to look back and So far the media have failed to grasp the storms’ Up to 38% of US natural gas production from the Gulf was shut In some respects the natural gas market is less elastic than All told, the economic consequences of the two storms may be And from these economic impacts there will be knock-on A Gaping Wound The head of International Energy Agency forecast on While the bringing to market of stored oil and gasoline The United States is the center of that system. Think of New Atlantis of the South? Will New Orleans be rebuilt, and how? These questions are As of mid-September, it seemed that the only event likely to Rebuilding, to the extent that it occurs, may proceed in the Moreover, the unfolding reports of geo-ecological changes Before Rita, a battle loomed over the form that rebuilding would Now, after renewed flooding from levee breaches from Rita, Deliberate Relocalization or Haphazard Disintegration? During the week of the Katrina disaster a mass-mailed letter Sale’s and Naylor’s effort seems quixotic, yet it may be one A couple of insightful locutions have recently caught my This structure is hideous in its impacts on nature, culture, and We still need clean water, food, and shelter, just as our In short, the disintegration of large social structures—desirable The Next Disaster No one can say there wasn’t sufficient warning prior to Katrina. In the event, it was as though no one had ever thought such a In the event, hundreds died, while hundreds of thousands were The response to Rita appears to have been far swifter—no As with Katrina, we can see Peak Oil coming from miles (or Nevertheless, actual preparations on the part of government Is there are deeper pattern here? I think so. In my view, the US Now we have the test case of José Padilla, a US citizen held in Next stop for the Padilla case: the Supreme Court. How I would have loved to be a Senator at the hearings for the Maybe one of the Democratic Senators questioning Roberts What’s as important to realize as that we have a dictatorship I’m sorry if I sound dire, but I see no point in continuing to In short, it appears to me that the U.S. government has neither Lessons Katrina tells us just how bad things could get if society First, place is important—both geographic and social. Be Re-localize now, ahead of the rush. Don’t wait to begin forming Of course, with Peak Oil the breakdown will not be as sudden At recent presentations—to city and county officials in As a result of the two recent storms we seem to have been ====================== www.eon3.net ==========================================================================================================
From: “President, USA Exile Govt.”
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of
All Species. NOTE: I agree with almost all of what Heinberg
says here but wish to point out that his statement “With
Peak Oil, there is no ‘outside’ to come to the rescue” is
true only because for years he and other commentators
(e.g., Mike Ruppert) have failed to understand that indeed
there are viable alternatives to oil; in this important
regard, they are hapless culturebound victims of
Newtonian physics; but Big Oil hasn’t failed to understand
this–and thus they’ve been busy murdering those best
placed to establish energy modes (e.g., Zero Point) swiftly
rendering petroleum quaint. — kl, pp
Date: September 29, 2005 10:13:29 AM PDT
Subject: Katrina, Rita, and Peak Oil (a must-read)
“Power Down.”
MuseLetter 162, October 2005
from New Orleans and the Gulf coast of Mississippi and
Alabama during the week of August 29. My wife Janet grew up
in New Orleans, most of her family members still live there (to
the degree that anyone can for the moment say they do), and
we visit the city every year. The scenes were heart-wrenching
and mind-boggling: an entire modern American metropolis had
effectively ceased to exist as an organized society. The tens
of thousands of survivors who had been unable or unwilling to
evacuate prior to the storm were utterly helpless as they
awaited rescue, some of them reduced to looting to obtain food
and other necessities, a few even joining armed gangs.
Soon the Internet began pulsing with stories of how the Bush
administration had exacerbated the tragedy by encouraging the
destruction of wetlands and barrier islands, by appointing
FEMA heads with no experience in disaster management, by
focusing the agency’s resources on counter-terrorism rather
than disaster relief, by refusing funds for upgrading New
Orleans’ levees, and so on. By the end of the week,
mainstream media had begun picking up on some of these
stories.
serious, was seemingly (according to most media sources)
rather quickly repaired or compensated for.
storm—Rita—temporarily shut down nearly all refining and
production capacity and damaged some infrastructure not
already affected by Katrina.
oil and gas platforms and drilling rigs were damaged or lost as
a result of the first hurricane. Port Fourchon, the hub for oil and
gas production in the gulf was able quickly to be pressed back
into service. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which is
the only port in the nation designed to receive supertankers,
was also soon operational, though it is still unclear if it will be
able to work at full capacity because a complete inspection of
the underwater pipelines connecting it to the mainland has yet
to be completed. Altogether, there are thousands of miles of
undersea oil and gas pipelines that will take weeks to inspect.
If the overwhelming destruction of the wetlands and barrier
islands of southern Louisiana and Mississippi is any basis for
judgment, there is likely to be damage to many of these
pipelines, which will require months to fix. In addition, 21 of the
region’s refineries were temporarily closed, with four likely to
be off-line for many weeks or months (again, this is only the
damage from Katrina). Relighting refineries is a process that
takes about a month and requires large amounts of nitrogen
delivered by pipeline or tank. Repair efforts will be hindered by
the lack of a nearby functioning port or city from which to base
operations. Intermittent communications in the Gulf region have
slowed the recovery, as has a shortage of helicopters, boats,
divers, and power.
5% of U.S. gasoline production capacity. Damage to the
Empire petroleum terminal, operated by Chevron, slowed the
delivery of output from Gulf producers that were otherwise
unaffected.
Venice, La., and significantly damaged natural gas processing
plants that have the capacity to handle more than 40% of Gulf
output.
before Katrina, and, as of September 24, was down about 5%
from pre-storm levels. Some resulting shortfalls will last months.
third week of the month (about 800,000 barrels/day, or about
10% of total US oil production capacity). The easiest of the
repair operations—ones that consisted essentially of throwing
switches and opening valves—were quickly completed; the
remainder will be slow and arduous, and reduced flow rates are
expected for a year or more.
important oil-producing and -refining regions of the Gulf. We will
not know the full extent of Rita’s impact for many more days;
however, the Financial Times noted on September 27 that
“Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any
other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling
for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial
damage assessments show.” The loss of drilling rigs means
delays to new production projects stretching years ahead. It
appears that at least one more large refinery will likely be down
for weeks, and additional oil production capacity from
existing fields will be shut in for up to eight weeks. The
cumulative loss of oil production from shutdowns and damage
to facilities is likely to amount to upwards of 5% of the year’s
expected total. These are not minor problems.
the market has figured out how serious the shortfalls are going
to be and that releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
cannot make up for them over the long term—prices will climb,
putting downward pressure on economic activity in the US and
then the world as a whole.
production peak must be adjusted. Whereas previously it was
possible to envision a definable peak occurring perhaps in
2007, the picture now is less certain. Shut-in production from
the Gulf of Mexico will gradually come back on-line over the
next year. Meanwhile, high prices will have destroyed some
demand and sparked worldwide economic problems (more
about that in a moment). As a result, we are likely to see a few
years, possibly even a decade, of bumpy plateau during which
production and prices gyrate unpredictably, with political and
economic events—and perhaps further natural
disasters—serving as triggers.
confidently say that the world has passed its all-time oil
production peak. But it will be difficult to pinpoint a certain
moment in time when geology alone caused the downturn.
Instead, we will be reflecting on years of periodic chaos, during
which production declines were always seemingly explainable
by immediate events.
consequences for natural gas availability and prices in North
America. Here impacts are likely to be even more severe than
for oil.
in by Katrina (about 3.8 billion cubic feet/day), according to the
Minerals Management Service of the U.S. Dept. of Interior; by
now 78% is off-line as a result of Rita (only some of that
results from damage; most is simply from prudent equipment
shut-downs and employee evacuations). How much is likely to
remain off-line for days, weeks, or months to come has yet to
be determined, but having so much production shut down even
for a few weeks will almost certainly result in supply shortfalls
this winter. As readers of Julian Darley’s excellent book High
Noon for Natural Gas well know, North America is approaching
a natural gas supply crisis anyway due to depletion (prices
tripled in the past five years, from $2 per thousand cubic feet
to $6); now gas is selling for over $13 with no ceiling in sight,
even before the commencement of the winter draw-down
season.
that for oil or gasoline. We use gas for home heating,
chemicals, plastics, nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing, and to
power peaking electrical generating plants. Gas shortages
could therefore mean that some people will have difficulty
affording to heat their homes, farmers will be unable to afford
fertilizer, manufacturers will face much-higher materials costs,
and power blackouts will increase in frequency. Again, these
are effects we are likely to see beginning this winter.
dramatically worse than those of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. In
the months ahead, as the administration attempts to fund a
$200 billion rebuilding effort in the Gulf on the back of the Iraq
occupation and record deficits, and as the Fed responds to the
inflationary pressure of high energy prices by continuing to
raise interest rates, we are likely to see the US descend into
economic turmoil, with higher levels of unemployment and high
relative prices for food, transportation fuel, electricity, and
natural gas for home heating. The airline industry is at risk and
we will probably see at least one more major carrier (in addition
to Delta and Northwest, which filed this month) enter
bankruptcy before year’s end. Soon air travel may no longer be
the reliable and affordable means of transport we have come to
expect and rely on. The trucking industry will also suffer.
political consequences. George W. Bush’s approval ratings,
now around 40%, are unlikely to recover if the nation lurches
into recession. Americans have extremely high expectations
for their personal futures, and only the oldest retirees
remember what it was like to live during a depression. Dashed
expectations will quickly translate into disorganized fury. The
American people will scan the horizon for scapegoats, and, as
the crisis snowballs, civil unrest may ensue. Efforts to repress
localized, sporadic uprisings will only deepen the growing social
rifts between haves and have-nots. Dissention may occur
within the government itself as well: the Bush administration
may seek to provoke conflict with foreign enemies (or foment
more terrorist incidents on domestic soil) in order to justify
crackdowns and to win allegiance from the masses; however,
large segments of the increasingly disgruntled Defense
Department, CIA, State Department, and other agencies might
resist efforts in this direction, given the fiasco that ensued from
their somewhat grudging acquiescence in the invasion of Iraq.
September 3 that Hurricane Katrina could set off a worldwide
energy crisis. “If the crisis affects oil products then it’s a
worldwide crisis. No one should think this will be limited to the
United States,” Claude Mandil told the German daily Die Welt.
That same day, 26 nations—including the United
States—agreed to release onto the general market some 60
million barrels of oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products
from their emergency reserves over the next 30 days. This
nearly unprecedented move (the IEA also opened its taps
during the first Gulf War) was surely a measure of the
seriousness with which national leaders viewed the problem.
temporarily calmed speculators and prevented what would
otherwise have been immediate price spikes, it cannot balance
the global supply-and-demand equation for more than a few
weeks (the world uses 84 million barrels of oil each day, after
all). The trick may be repeatable in the aftermath of Rita;
however, once these nations’ stores are gone, the world will
have no cushion whatever in the event of further supply
threats. In the best case, Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production
will come back on line quickly and a few months or years will
intervene before really serious shortages ensue. But in the
worst case, Katrina and Rita may mark the beginning of the
years- or decades-long inevitable unraveling of the
petroleum-based industrial world system.
Orleans and the Gulf Coast as a gaping wound in the national
body. Organisms need a steady flow of energy in order to
maintain their ordered existence; a wound is like an intrusion of
entropy within the system. When wounded, the body
essentially takes energy away from other parts of itself to
restore order at the site of injury. In ordinary times, nations as
“organisms” do this very well. But in this case the timing is bad,
as energy is scarce anyway (the wound was incurred at the
onset of what will within months or years snowball to become a
global energy famine); the nation has already been
hemorrhaging trained personnel, materiel, and money in Iraq for
three years; and the site of the wound couldn’t be worse: it is
in the part of the national body through which much of its
energy enters (the region is home to half the nation’s refining
capacity and almost 30% of production). Thus it seems likely
that, without deft leadership to muster popular cooperation in
cutting demand and funding alternative sources, the available
energy may not be sufficient to overcome the entropy that has
been introduced; rather than being contained and eliminated,
disorder may fester and spread.
difficult to answer at the moment. Common sense would say
that the city must be salvaged: the nation needs a port at the
mouth of the Mississippi, and the port needs a city to support
and service it. New Orleans is one of the few US cities with
character and charm, and its residents desperately want to
return to their homes. Moreover, the Bush administration needs
the appearance of effectiveness, and a rotting and molding
New Orleans offers more than a mere emblem of
incompetence.
prevent rebuilding would be another strong hurricane hitting the
Gulf this season. Nature didn’t take long in sending that second
storm.
context of a national economy that is crippled, and a global
complex system of production and trade that is starting to lose
its battle against entropy.
inflicted by Katrina on the wider southern Louisiana region
suggest that New Orleans’ survival in any recognizable form
may be threatened by factors beyond politics or economics.
Without wetlands and barrier islands—previously under attack
by developers, now largely destroyed by the storm—the city
will be even more vulnerable, capable now of being
overwhelmed by much smaller hurricanes.
take: would the government put up homes for the tens of
thousands of mostly black poor, or a vacation site for the
well-off? Would New Orleans end up as a whiter, more
Republican city? And would the administration merely use the
immense recovery budget ($200 billion promised for Katrina
alone) to line the pockets of campaign contributors like
Halliburton?
more questions may be raised as to how much of the city
should be rebuilt. In any case, whether New Orleans ends up
as a Creole Venice, a jazz-and-gumbo Disneyland, or a
Spanish-moss Atlantis, it is unlikely ever to be recognizable by
the majority of its former residents.
appeared in my box, obviously composed and sent before the
hurricane was on anyone’s mind (at the time the letter arrived, I
was in Guatemala—one of the many beautiful and
resource-rich but fiscally poor Latin American nations still run
by remote control from Langley, Virginia). The missive was
from the Middlebury Institute, which “hopes to foster a national
movement in the United States” that will “place secession on
the national political agenda; develop secessionist and
separatist movements here and abroad; . . . create a body of
scholarship to examine and promote the ideas of separatism;
and work carefully and thoughtfully for the ultimate task, the
peaceful dissolution of the American Empire.” The authors,
Kirkpatrick Sale and Thomas Naylor, note that “the national
government has shown itself to be clumsy, unresponsive, and
unaccountable in so many ways” that “power should be
concentrated at lower levels.” They also point out that “the
separatist/independence movement is the most important and
widespread political force in the world today,” the United
Nations having grown from 51 nations in 1945 to 193 in 2004.
whose timing is uncannily opportune. The American people are
looking to recent events in the Gulf and asking, “Can we rely on
the Federal government for protection, service, and guidance?”
While low approval ratings for Bush seem warranted (it is
difficult to avoid understatement in this regard), they are also a
danger signal. The man will most likely remain in office for the
next three years, barring an unforeseen personal health crisis
or another “lone gunman” scenario for which America is
infamous. During that time, unless the soon-to-be-indicted (let
us pray) Karl Rove can do something to inspire greater
confidence in the Oval Office, the nation will suffer from a lack
of common assurance in the legitimacy and competence of its
leadership. Without the presence of a coherent opposition
party, the consequence is likely to be a splintering of
allegiances and a drift toward factionalism and regionalism.
Sale and Naylor would no doubt say that this is a good thing
(and, in principle, I agree), but in the instance the process will
be messy to say the least.
ear—one from the lips of Permaculturist David Holmgren, who
referred to the “drip-feed” of industrial society; another from
Julian Darley, who said that “We humans are the only creature
that does not live within walking, swimming, wriggling, or flying
distance from its food.” These are evocative and concise ways
of summarizing our dependency on a social structure that is
overly mechanized, incomprehensibly elaborate, beyond our
individual control, and inherently unsustainable.
the human soul. But because it has almost fully replaced
whatever self-reliant, subsistence, place-based cultures that
preceded it, it has left us with no immediate alternatives.
Unless we can recreate those alternatives very quickly, we will
be in deep trouble.
ancestors did. They supplied for themselves those necessities,
which now come from inscrutable corporate or governmental
bureaucracies. Electricity—which was a luxury only a few
generations ago, and still is for large numbers in poorer
countries—is now a basic necessity for nearly everyone in the
developed nations. Electricity is not something a
hunter-gatherer can go out and find or make (unlike water,
food, and shelter), though it is possible for communities to
generate it using intermediate-level technologies. The absence
of electricity in a modern city throws life into ruin: nothing
operates. The way most of us get electricity now depends on
highly complex tools made of mined and refined materials made
by still other elaborate tool systems energized by
globe-spanning resource delivery systems, all embedded in
complicated financial and social networks. The electrical grid is
vulnerable to disruptions in any of those systems.
though it may be for a raft of reasons—is entirely foreseeable,
but is likely to entail more than mere discomfort unless we
manage to undertake the process with unprecedented degrees
of forethought and coordination.
FEMA had for years included a hurricane-over-New-Orleans
scenario in its top-three list of likely natural disasters facing the
US. Scientific American had run a lengthy article discussing
the potential damage resulting from the flooding of the city by a
break in its levees. And the New Orleans newspaper, the
Times Picayune, had published an extensive three-part series
outlining both the risks and the actions needed to avert the
worst of the consequences.
thing could happen. By now, the story is well known: Though
Louisiana’s governor issued an immediate request for
assistance, FEMA director Mike Brown waited until hours after
Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before
asking his boss, the head of Homeland Security, to dispatch
1,000 employees to the region; Brown gave them two days to
get there. FEMA’s top officials were political appointees with
little or no background in emergency management. Prior to his
FEMA appointment, Brown himself had served for 11 years as
chairman of the International Arabian Horses Association,
where he spent a year investigating whether a breeder had
performed liposuction on a horse’s rear end. He was asked to
leave that job. Soon after questions arose as to whether he
had padded his embarrassingly thin résumé, Brown was quietly
forced to resign from his FEMA position (though he is still on
the payroll).
rendered homeless. Tens of thousands were stranded in New
Orleans with no way to evacuate and with no sources of clean
water or food. Property damage continues to be calculated,
with estimates in the low hundreds of billions of dollars. There
was much that could not have been prevented, such as the
overwhelming destruction of the forests of southern
Mississippi. But there was much that could have been.
doubt largely because of the ugly public-relations fallout from
the administration’s handling of Katrina. Is the government’s
reaction to the challenge of Peak Oil likely to resemble that of
the former or latter calamity more closely?
years) away. We have a government-sponsored report (the
Hirsch Report from SAIC) which says that Peak Oil is
inevitable, that it may have dire consequences, and that the
government should give top priority to preparing for it. We have
prominent industry leaders and analysts like Matt Simmons and
T. Boone Pickens saying that the peak is occurring virtually
now.
appear practically non-existent. No administration officials
have publicly discussed the Hirsch Report. Investments in
alternative energy supply, and in demand-reducing schemes,
exist only as miniature projects serving the purpose of political
window-dressing. In short, the US government appears to be
preparing its citizens for Peak Oil in approximately the same
way it prepared the citizens of New Orleans for Hurricane
Katrina.
Federal government is quite literally terminally dysfunctional.
There are all sorts of reasons for this. Many books have been
written about the hypocrisy, ineptness, and even criminality of
Washington’s elite, and how matters of state managed to
degenerate so utterly and completely during the past few
decades and especially the past few years. But the bottom
line, for me, is this: democracy is dead (if you think I’m
exaggerating, please read Mark Crispin Miller’s excellent and
frightening essay “None Dare Call it Stolen” in the August issue
of Harpers, available online at the www.harpers.org site), and
the functionality of the government itself, as a guarantor of
rights and entitlements, is nearly gone. The US leadership has
given up on the republican (with a small “r”) form of government
and is preparing a totalitarian future for its citizens. It will soon
be unable to deliver on its economic promises, built up over
past decades; so, rather than admitting that fact and asking for
a new consensus founded on shared but dramatically reduced
material expectations, it is hunkering down for the inevitable
class conflict. One can hardly write such words without
experiencing strong emotions—principally rage, sadness, and
fear. We Americans were brought up to admire the checks and
balances among the branches of our government, and the
guarantees of freedom and fairness in the Constitution.
prison for years without benefit of charges or trial. The highest
court to hear his case so far has held that the government may
continue imprisoning him. Evidently the American judicial
system believes that there are two Constitutions—one for
peacetime (in which citizens are guaranteed a trial), and one
for wartime (in which the President can summarily strip any
citizen of all rights). Of course, the President can also decide
when we are at war: after all, a state of war against Iraq—or
against “terror,” as if such a thing were possible—has not been
declared by Congress (which has the sole power to do so,
according to the Constitution), yet the courts agree with the
President that a state of war nevertheless exists; given the
fact that the Iraq occupation is likely to persist for many years,
perhaps decades, this means the “peacetime Constitution” is
effectively defunct.
confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the US
Supreme Court (Roberts, of course, is one of the judicial
proponents of the new and unprecedented citizen category of
“enemy combatant”). I would have asked him, “Would it not be
your job, sir, as Supreme Court Justice, to uphold the US
Constitution?” Once I’d obtained his inevitable affirmative
reply, I would have continued: “Then where in the Constitution
does it say that all the rights of any citizen can be revoked by
the President at his sole discretion? Don’t you think that an
interpretation of the Constitution that holds that the Constitution
itself can be held null and void at the whim of the President
must constitute the highest and most dangerous form of
so-called judicial activism?”
actually had the guts to ask that; I don’t know: I wasn’t able to
listen to the hearings in their entirely. Ultimately it doesn’t
matter much. The deal is done; the Constitution is cooked.
National elections are now a farce and the rights of citizens
exist only at the pleasure of the Executive. That is the
definition of a dictatorship. The only choice that may still be
available to the American people is, Will their police state be
administered by nasty, stupid people; or by nice, intelligent
people? But even that choice is likely more illusory than real.
is why we now have one. Surely, this can be seen as simply
the latest twist in the same old game of power and corruption
that’s been playing itself out since the founding of the
Republic—no, since the beginning of civilization itself. But
there’s more. Now the folks in charge realize that it will soon be
impossible to maintain the entitlements that have enabled the
U.S. to function as a quasi-democracy for many long. If a
minority is to preserve its comforts, this will be at the expense
of shattered living standards for the majority. The only way to
keep a lid on such circumstances, the elites have evidently
concluded, is with brutal force. For a time, a large segment of
the population can be cajoled into supporting the regime by
cowing the media and shaping its messages, and by
manipulating hot-button issues (religion, sex, and terrorism) in
the political arena. But in the end popular support is optional.
pretend that these fundamental changes to our society have
not occurred, or are not occurring.
the capability nor the intention of protecting its citizens from the
impacts of the next disaster. Please, prove me wrong.
disintegrates chaotically rather than cooperatively. And it tells
us what we should do to avoid the worst of the peril.
around people you trust—people with cool heads who know
how to work with others. Try not to be in a place where folks
are likely to become violent and desperate (that is, where they
rely overwhelmingly on the “drip feed” and have no
alternatives). And try to be in an area with soil, water, and
weather that can provide for your needs and those of your
family and community. Anticipate events. When warnings
appear, pay attention and respond.
networks of mutual aid. After Katrina, it was volunteer local
citizens groups that did the most effective rescue work. Only
later did the Feds come in with helicopters and bullhorns, and in
many instances they just got in the way.
as it was in the case of New Orleans, and it hopefully will not
be as complete. On the other hand, for Katrina victims there
was the assurance (or illusion?) that their chaos was unusual
and isolated, and that there was a still-functional outside world
that could come to their assistance—not soon enough
perhaps, but eventually. With Peak Oil, there will be no
“outside” to come to the rescue. Everywhere will be some
version of New Orleans.
Bloomington, Indiana, and Sebastopol, California; at the
Second Annual Conference on Peak Oil and Community
Solutions in Yellow Springs, Ohio; and at a prominent
conference in Frederick, Maryland with Matt Simmons, Ken
Deffeyes, and Representative Roscoe Bartlett—I have offered
basically the same advice as contained in this essay. And I
see increasing willingness, especially at the local level, to
respond. But the challenge is enormous and time is short.
catapulted prematurely into an economically, socially, and
politically volatile period. From here on out, there will probably
be no more business as usual.
EON
the Ecological Options Network
“What’s Working Where, Worldwide”
