Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: peak oil preparations?

[S. Kashdan (skashdan]

I strongly believe that in the near future, a lot about the way things are
made and the way they are
used are going to need discussing and rethinking. The current wastefulness
of private transportation and public power production are important, but
they are only part of the problem.
On the positive side,  I think that people living in
neighborhoods where human interaction takes place, including cohousing and
other intentional communities, are in a good starting place to work on these
problems and possibly find some new solutions.

Here, below,  are links to two articles that are relevant to widening the
discussion.
The first one "Life on Tired Earth" deals with some of the currently known
facts of resource depletion, and the second one "Litterbug World" deals with
the inadequacy of individual voluntary solutions and just more recycling.
Maybe we can come up with ways of dealing with these things that don't
involve more government regulation of our lives. It's up to all of us to
figure out better ways to live together that respect everyone on earth.

"Life on Tired Earth"
By Mark Clayton
Christian Science Monitor Posted on April 1, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/21645/

For hundreds of years, cod swarmed in waters off Newfoundland's rugged
coast. But by 1992, rampant overfishing had crushed the cod. Price tag to
people: tens of thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars spent in job
retraining.
Last year, a weather satellite spotted a monster dust cloud over Africa -- 
hard to miss at 5,000 miles wide. Tree-cutting in northern Africa helps
nourish such clouds, which cross the Atlantic, settle into U.S. coastal
waters, and possibly contribute to toxic algae blooms. Price tag to people:
breathing problems for U.S. coastal residents.
Cod depletion and dust clouds seem like pretty different problems. But they
each play a role in the overall environmental degradation of the planet -- a
condition that a new global study says has escalated so quickly over the
past 50 years that it outpaces anything experienced by ecosystems in human
history. Demands for water, food, fuel, timber, and fiber -- all part of
global economic expansion -have driven the change. The result: a big
increase in short-term human benefits, less hunger, and more wealth. But
this progress has been counterbalanced by a massive loss of diversity of
life on Earth.

"Litterbug World"
By Ariane Conrad Hyde
LiP Magazine Posted on April 1, 2005

http://www.alternet.org/story/21651/

Heather Rogers' film, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, explores
the "sinister success" of capitalism by looking at the life cycle of our
waste. In the span of 20 minutes, the film examines the realities of
planned-in obsolescence and waste-by-design in our market economy, asking
deep questions from a fresh perspective. In the film, Rogers contends that
recycling is far from an actual solution, and is at best a Band-Aid
approach--a much harder look, she argues, needs to be taken at our addiction
to waste. She recently spoke to us about her film, her forthcoming book of
the same name (to be published in Fall 2005 by New Press), and the limits of
"green capitalism."

Sylvie Kashdan
skashdan [at] scn.org
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org