The promise of the future: Voided by our cleverness

When they dig up the bones of people from this era, will they think of us kindly? Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Since time immemorial, the promise of the future has always been that, overall, on a global scale, each generation will be better off than the prior ones. Humans are clever, and they share what they have learned with other humans, so even young humans can access the hard-won knowledge and experience of many generations of prior learning. Moreover, our lives are short but material goods last a long time -- meaning that the wealth of the ages slowly builds up and people enjoy the results of prior generations' efforts that way too.

Earth, the only habitable planet known, is perfectly suited to support human life in relative ease and comfort. Every day, unfathomable riches of solar energy arrive, for free. Reserves of solar energy, concentrated and distilled over millions and millions of years were provided under the ground, for free. Plants and animals in symbiotic relationship maintain the atmosphere at just the right level of oxygen. If used judiciously, those solar energy reserves (known as fossil fuels) can provide all the energy needed to provide an abundance of comfort and decent livelihood for all people.

But alas! Humans are clever, rather than wise.

As a result, we have voided the promise of the future.

Because of the way we use energy, the future for many generations will be much worse than the present.

Worse, our response to this sickening realization -- that we are the first generation in 200 million years of human evolution to leave our posterity with a degraded future prospect at every point on the globe -- is a combination of angry or sullen denial and magical thinking, where we lunge after "solutions" that are really just doing more of what has gotten us into this mess in the first place. Meaning that each generation will not only be worse off than we are, for the foreseeable future, but that the degrading trend will continue, with each generation leaving their own progeny (and the progeny of all other humans alive at the time) with an increasingly unstable climate, in an environment of increasingly scarce energy, with increasingly short food and water supplies.

We cannot avoid some of this. Earth's climate is far too vast to right itself immediately, even if we were to stop pumping millions of years worth of carbon into it entirely in an instant -- the carbon we've already pumped in will continue to make itself increasingly felt for a thousand years.

But we can stop making it worse. But it would require living as if we owed something to the future, rather than only to ourselves. So, while there is little cause for hope, there is something we can do: Transition. Not a guaranteed solution or even a "solution" at all -- but a way of adapting to our predicament and learning to live so that we don't leave our children an even more limited and difficult future life.

Here in Salem, a small group (the Salem Transition Initiative for Relocalization) has begun to meet to organize the necessary transition to a more local, low-energy, low-emissions future, as part of a global network of Transition Towns that is growing every day.

STIR is poised to become Transition Salem and to begin developing strategies for the transition and an energy descent action plan for our region. We are meeting every other Wednesday at Tea Party Bookshop (corner of Liberty and Ferry in downtown Salem) at 7 p.m. with the next meeting on July 1. If you would like to become an active participant in helping with the transition, you are invited to join us.

Celebrate Summer's Arrival!!

Wonderful! See you there!

To kick off the summer in positive fashion, we are planning a celebration this Saturday (6/20) from 1-4 pm at the Garden on 19th St. SE, between Oak & Bellevue streets. Please join us for music, food, and activities for all!

Sincerely,

Jordan Blake
Garden Project Manager
Marion Polk Food Share

Email: jblake@foodbanksalem.org
Work cell: (503)798-0457
Web: www.marionpolkfoodshare.org

Ruh-roh -- you mean we can't ignore natural resource limits? Who knew?!

Eola Hills. Image via Wikipedia

A member of Salem City Watch writes:

Note the lengthy article in today's Oregonian ( "Reliable water data running dry in Oregon," by Les Zaitz, page A1). Apparently, underfunding the Water Resources Department over the last several years has left us without the data, resources or manpower to intelligently plan for the next million people expected to be living here by 2030.

Here's a classic quote, "If we had known in the 1960s what we know now, the department would not have issued as many groundwater permits." Brenda Bateman, Senior Policy Advisor, Oregon Water Resources Department.

Of course this information is coming out just as the Legislature passed the Big Look bill which in all likelihood will increase rural development and Metolius Protection is fighting for its life.

In 2009, many believe we have already overcommitted our water resources and we're still behaving as if it were the 60s.

Yes Salem has an abundance of water, until we're asked to divert it to "create jobs" and "improve the economy" by developing Eola Hills.

Richard

Of course, there is reason for extreme skepticism about projected growth in population; those numbers are based on total obliviousness to the reality that we've hit Peak Oil and that the end of easy, cheap energy is going to permanently rewrite our economic rules, such as how much we move around (and how many jobs there will be to move for, etc.) But the underlying point is good: the first thing the developers and corporations want is for the public to be without good data on natural resource limits, because then they can sell "growth" and "jobs" much easier.

Excellent visual explanation: How big are the bailouts to the banks and insurance companies?

click on image to see whole thing; hat tip to "The Big Picture"

The Zombie Project: A third auto bridge over the Willamette in Salem

This guy is in Iraq because we use 25% of the world's daily oil consumption rather than building transit systems and providing options for people that don't involve driving. A third auto bridge in Salem would be a monument to our failure to recognize the end of the carburban way of life and our willingness to let others die overseas so that we can keep right on driving multi-thousand pound vehicles for our every trip here at home. Image via Wikipedia

Road miles traveled going down? Gas prices going up? Country bankrupting itself by printing money it doesn't have to fund projects it can't afford to maintain a car-centered way of life it can't sustain? Check, check, and check again!!

Here in Salem, the group organized to push through a $600+ million bridge project was finally shamed into remembering that they were not supposed to be locked into planning a bridge as order of business one and only.

Naturally, they have only grudgingly begin to begin thinking about pondering alternatives to more autosprawl (meanwhile, busily beavering away on their dream plan, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, massive construction, etc.), while totally ignoring the spate of recent reports that suggest that our precarious climate is destabilizing faster than even the most pessimistic scientists imagined it would five years ago.

Funny, the "alternate modes" study --- (you'd think that the cheapest ways of solving the problem would be the MAIN line of attack, rather than the grudging afterthought only tossed in because they feared a challenge to the validity of their environmental impact statement) --- has been going since April, but they're just now getting around to alerting the public.

As always, there will only be two modes responses for all public concerns about this boondoggle of a project:

"It's too soon to say" and
"It's too late to stop now."

DEIS Update and Alternate Modes Study

The Salem River Crossing project team is busy working on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). Soon we will begin sending email updates describing the document's progress and how you can get involved once the draft is complete.

In the mean time, we'd like to tell you about an important study being conducted in parallel with the DEIS, called the Salem Willamette River Crossing Alternate Modes study. This study, begun in April, will identify needs and opportunities for improving transit service across the river in Salem. It will also cover related needs and opportunities for carpool/vanpool users, bicyclists, and pedestrians. This study will help assure that any improvements identified will be coordinated with the Salem River Crossing project, as needed.

The first Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) meeting for the study will be held on Monday, June 22nd from 4:00-6:00 pm at the Mid-Willamette Valley Council of Governments office (105 High St. SE, Salem). At this meeting, the Alternate Modes study team will provide an overview of the study, discuss the current system, and outline potential improvements that will be considered. This meeting is open to the public and will include a brief period for public comments.

Another reason to love Truitt Bros.

They think about life-cycle energy use.

The pressure cooker: the secret to radically reducing the time and energy needed to cook dried beans and save all the life-cycle energy used to process canned beans. Image via Wikipedia

Salem's own Truitt Brothers, one of the last remaining canneries in a once-robust sector of Salem business, is cited in Slate in a story about whether canned or bulk dried beans consume less energy to prepare overall:

According to an analysis done at one Oregon processing facility (PDF), canning 10.5 ounces of green beans—the amount you'd find in a typical grocery store can, after draining out the water—requires roughly 1,500 British thermal units of natural gas. (That's about as much energy as it takes to drive a car one-quarter of a mile.) Since kidneys and pintos are tougher and take longer to cook—about 75 percent longer than green beans, according to Truitt Brothers, the cannery that commissioned the study—processing them would require more energy.

Not to diss Truitt Bros. but dried beans are actually hands-down winner, assuming you have access to a kitchen when you're making your meal, which lets you use a pressure cooker. This magical device makes cooking dried beans fast and easy, even if they have not soaked overnight, which also slashes the time and, thus, energy, needed to make dishes with beans.

But the article does get the big picture right: whether canned by Truitt Brothers or bought in bulk from someone like LifeSource, cutting down on meat and increasing the amount of beans you eat is a huge win for the environment and significantly reduces your energy/greenhouse gas footprint.

(For some inexplicable reason, the Sightline Institute left the Pressure Cooker off its list of Seven Sustainable Wonders, while including microchips, which we know are actually much more problematic than pressure cookers from a sustainability perspective.)

Urban Agriculture as a career (recession-proof at that)

Image by xmascarol via Flickr

Energy Bulletin links to a great piece on making a life (and a living) in urban ag. The wave of the future, you heard it hear first (after I lifted it from somewhere else, that is).

Digital not necessarily greener

Image by jpockele via Flickr

Digital devices take a lot of energy, even if they only consume a little bit during operation. Tremendously important that we understand this as we head into the Long Emergency.

Great idea: refer the Gas Tax/Highway Porkfest to Voters

Who's destabilizing the climate -- that's right, we are! Graphic is 2000 per-capita greenhouse gas emissions with red highest, natch. Image via Wikipedia

Environmental group pushing Legislature to combat emissions

SALEM — An environmental group is threatening to refer the Legislature’s gas tax to the ballot unless lawmakers do more to combat greenhouse gas emissions in the Eugene-Springfield area specifically, and elsewhere in Oregon. . . .

Another Salem Cinema gem

We are so lucky to have Salem Cinema.