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

An article in the UK Timesonline reports that cod are doomed to disappear from the North Sea:

Cod are doomed to disappear from the North Sea because of climate change and not just as a result of over-fishing, researchers have discovered.

In the past 40 years the average temperature of the North Sea has increased by 1C with catastrophic effects on its delicate eco-systems.

Species of plankton, on which cod larvae feed, have moved away in search of cooler waters. The decline in cod stocks has led to an explosion in the populations of crabs and jellyfish, on which the adult fish feed. The shortage of predators at the top of the food chain has had a knock-on effect on flat fish, such as plaice and sole, whose offspring are eaten by crabs.

I just finished reading Song for the Blue Ocean. Back in 1997, Carl Safina chronicled the horrifying demise of the world’s fisheries. How much worse have things gotten since then? How much worse will they get?

John Michael Greer urges us to face the truth – the future won’t be better than the present:

We are not going to have a future better than the present: not in our lifetimes, and not in those of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. We collectively closed the door on that possibility decades ago, and none of the rapidly narrowing range of choices still open to us now offers any way of changing that.

Greer advises embracing ambivalence and accepting “both the wonder and the immense tragedy of our time.” But life is yin yang, both wonder and tragedy. Always has been, always will be.  It’s not just now.

Guy McPherson takes issue with the notion that our way of life is as great as we think.  He writes at The Energy Bulletin about his trip to a family wedding. He observes that the “living arrangements” we’ve made are far from ideal:

Within the span of a couple generations, we abandoned a durable, finely textured, life-affirming set of living arrangements characterized by self-sufficient family farms intermixed with small towns that provided commerce, services, and culture. Worse yet, we traded that model for a coarse-scaled arrangement wholly dependent on ready access to cheap fossil fuels.

Yes, we’ve done that – and far worse, thoughtlessly exploiting Earth’s resources and despoiling Earth’s ecosystems to the brink of collapse and beyond.

And now we’re reaping what we have sown, in the collapse of fisheries and a looming collapse in agriculture. We eat oil – but Hubbert’s peak is now in our rear-view mirror. Shed no tears for the demise of industrial agriculture. McPherson describes what he saw throughout the Midwest:

The entire region, formerly abundant with a multitude of edible crops, currently is brimming with a single commodity: #2 corn. It’s Roundup-ready, at that, just to throw a bucket of insulting acid into the face of reason. Roundup-resistant weeds are popping up throughout the region as we bring Farmageddon to the heartland and eventually to the world. Most of the corn, which is essentially inedible until it is processed (i.e., pummeled with inordinate quantities of fossil fuels), is watered with the last remaining drops of the Ogallala aquifer, brought to the surface with the same finite fluid used to power our trucks and cars. Verdant fields of ethanol dreams are interrupted occasionally by a field of soybeans; without rotations of legumes, the soil would be so depleted of nitrogen by king corn, it wouldn’t support even the great corn desert. The corn fills our bellies with death-inducing faux sugar. But we willingly trade some of that “food” for fuel because the associated dependence on automobiles allows us to burn off the final inches of life-giving topsoil to promote our culture of death in rapid-transit, individualized death-traps. Who could pass up a deal like that?

Contra Greer, McPherson thinks better days lie ahead.

How could they not? In the near future, we’ll return to a durable set of living arrangements.

Greer points out that McPherson’s dreams of “better days” imply a human population as low as 500 million. That’s quite a crash from today’s population of almost 7 billion.  We can’t control how that crash work itself out. Suffering will not be denied. Still, life is durable.

McPherson’s “better days” are seen in some imagined “future.” Better days are here already, all around us, no matter what the political, economic, or ecological crisis of the moment. They’re here in the chipping of a squirrel, in the deep dark of a new moon, in the mist of a September morning. They’re here in a meal of local free-run turkey, fresh garden tomatoes, and copious quantities of home-grown Pinot Noir shared with dear friends. As long as there are creatures on Earth, life will be wondrous – and tragic.

Our farmer neighbors don’t seem to be interested in the debates about whether we expect the future to be better or worse, whether industrial imperialism can be saved or is worth saving. They simply get about the work of raising the best food they can while struggling to make ends meet and doing as little harm as possible. That’s true revolution.

And everybody can participate. As Wendell Berry says, eating is an agricultural act.

Agricultural acts can be revolutionary.