das loft

Well, I don't really know what to say. Lots of things have been happening. I'm working for George Brown. I'm making candles. I'm going to screenings of What a Way to Go. I'm knitting socks. Painting kitchens. Thinking about the future. Reconsidering whether I want to travel. Whether I feel safe travelling. Whether I feel safe with the idea of not having decided by next year where my long-term home base is going to be. Whether I'm ready to stake my picket-pin and prepare to weather the coming storms.

I feel a sense of urgency to settle down and start growing my own food. Should I go travelling first? Is that wise? My gut right now is saying no, find your land! Maybe right now my gut's just in a weird spot emotionally.

But if I don't go travelling first, will I ever? There is so much of the world I have yet to experience. Dare I be selfish and splurge on some peak oil to check out the farther reaches of the globe while I still have the chance? The Seven Wonders of the World? Hawaii and Japan and India and New Zealand? What will the Americas be like in 5 years if I wanted to bike down to Peru? Something tells me it's not going to be any easier in 5 years. I may not be able to leave what might have turned into Canamerica in 5 years. New Zealand is starting to sound appealing...

Labels: bike trip, civilization collapse, climate change, farm, peak oil

All of you probably know this already, but the Cowboy Mimes are going to be playing at the Press Club this Sunday, at 9:30pm. It sounds like we'll have a fairly decent turnout, but it is a tiny club. I haven't been able to dedicate much time to jamming or practicing, so I won't be playing the keyboard yet. But I will be playing shakers and other percussive toys, and singing harmonies.

And I just had a huge pile of compost dumped onto my backyard. I guess this means I'm serious about gardening here this summer! Well, I really am. I'll to do whatever it takes to fit vegetable gardening into my busy schedule. Seriously, I have to walk the talk. I feel very strongly about it. I think we should all begin taking our individual oil addictions into serious question, especially in light of the already underway effects of climate change and peak oil. Otherwise we're pretty fucked, friends, and we don't have to be.

Plus, freshly picked lettuce, basil and tomatoes are just unequaled.

Labels: climate change, cowboy mimes, gardening, music, peak oil, sustainability

Hey everyone, I went to the Climate Change Conference at Trent University yesterday, organized by the Trent Greens. Fun! Elizabeth May is an amazing speaker and person. If she's ever speaking in your area, I recommend going to see and meet her. Three random pictures from the event:
What also rocks are the people who organized this event (Moe, Tim, Danielle, and many others), whose party I went to after the conference, and the people of Peterborough in general. I like that town a lot. I could see myself living there for a while.

Labels: climate change, elizabeth may, green party, trent greens

I just read an excellent article called Climate Change, Sabre Tooth Tigers and Devaluing the Future, which describes the evolutionary reasons our society is unable to properly deal with the growing concerns of climate change and peak oil. It was posted to The Oil Drum, a blog with very well-researched articles about energy and our future. I read it every day.

Here are some snippets from that article:

The debate on the realities of both climate change and Peak Oil has moved from 'are they real?' to questions concerning timing, magnitude and impact. At the same time, expanding research in 'temporal discounting' in economics (called 'impulsivity' in psychology), is shedding light on how steeply we value the present over the future, a trait that has ancient origins. Knowing this tendency, how can we expect factual updates on peak oil and climate change to behaviorally compete with Starbucks, sex, slot machines, and ski trips?

...

Ultimately we are after impact. If we spend 99% of our efforts on educating people on the facts of peak oil, yet nothing happens, it would be better to spend 50% of our efforts on education and 50% by example. For example, researchers attempted to persuade young students not to litter – either by teaching them about ecology and pollution or by telling them they were neat and tidy compared to other students – only the latter had a positive effect.⁽⁴⁾ E.O Wilson suggests, "A stiffer dose of biological realism is in order... The only way to make a conservation ethic work is to ground it in ultimately selfish reasoning. An essential component of this formula is the principle that people will conserve land and species fiercely if they forsee a material gain for themselves their kin or their tribe." All of our past environmental successes (DDT, ozone depletion, unleaded gasoline, etc.) had some sort of smoking gun—an emotional trigger. The problem with climate change/peak oil is when we do get the emotional trigger, it may be a Gatling gun on full bore.

Labels: apocalypse, climate change, eye-opening, global warming, peak oil

I finally got around to watching An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary about global warming. It's another crucial eye-opener, as I expected it to be. I learned even more startling things about the consequences of global warming that I never knew. In general I found it showed our current predicament as pretty bleak, but then I have a tendency to see the future in a pretty dreary light anyway. So it didn't exactly lift my spirits, despite the positive action items mentioned at the end. But if there's to be any hope at all, then everyone should watch this film!

Labels: al gore, an inconvenient truth, climate change, global warming, movies