ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

William Kötke’s book The Final Empire (first published in 1993) is now available in new hardback and paperback editions. The book’s republication has prompted Carolyn Baker to write a review which she calls perhaps “the most important article I’ve ever written in my life.”

Kötke rails against what we have been taught all our lives: that materialistic values of civilization and the accumulation of wealth is progress. The material wealth of the civilization is derived from the death of the earth, the soils, the forests, the fish stocks, the “free resources” of flora and fauna. The ultimate end of this is for all human species to live in giant parasitical cities of cement and metal while surrounded by deserts of exhausted soils.

Kötke traces the environmental scars of civilization through the ages. Empire after empire, desertification of the top soil winds its way around the globe in an erosive helix from China to India to Mesopotamia to Italy to North America.

You may ask what relevance Kötke’s book and Baker’s review have to do with land use. What got my attention was that the attitudes of empire as described by Kötke are embedded in Oregon’s land use planning statutes and goals. Resources exist for no other purpose than to be exploited for economic gain.

“No one in the empire advocates long-term gain in soil fertility when the short-term gain of profit margins or production quotas are the whole point of the effort. This is the reason that nothing real will be done to avoid the final collapse of civilization. The structure of empire is to enrich the emperor/elite at the expense of the earth and society, not to manage affairs for the benefit of the whole life of the earth.”

Kötke’s book is a direct challenge to humankind – a demand for radical change a primer for the recovery of the planet.

Baker describes the book as containing two parts:

“It is written in two parts: The first contains Kotke’s extraordinary analysis of why civilization is collapsing and must collapse, and the second offers his vision of what is possible when empire has been eliminated.”

The culture of empire is one in which the earth is a “resource” to be used for the benefit and gratification of empire – to put bluntly, fascism. Kotke’s analysis of the cultural dynamics of empire confirms the desirability, indeed the absolute necessity, of the collapse of civilization. Our culture conditions us toward psychological disintegration while feeding on the Earth like a tumor.
But what is most important is Kötke’s vision of possibility imbedded within the core of apocalypse.

Baker sums up the lesson thusly:

Stop trying to fix a dying system. Rather, * * * [focus] on the new growth, the area of healing.

Baker describes her personal journey beyond hope as a spiritual one:

“The spiritual dimension for me is non-religious and non-theistic, yet informed by something greater than myself.

“I had been a prisoner of ego, intent on doing battle with the darkness of empire, hopeful that enough grassroots momentum could be marshaled to affect change and return the United States to the principles of a democratic republic verbalized in the Constitution, albeit not always practiced, through political and community action. What I have learned from my willingness to descend into the abyss of collapse is that there is no return . . . “

Her realization is one shared by all religions: if we are to be open to grace, we must first abandon ego-driven hope and surrender to despair.