I have been watching the media cover “preparedness” for quite some time. Sure, I come from breakdown-prepared stock (my family had cases of freeze-dried survival rations in the 70s), so I’ve always been more in tune with the topic, but never before have I seen the mainstream media start to treat the subject with anything but scorn.
With regard to the unraveling, that is changing. The media seems to be waking up.
From the New York Times: Duck and Cover: It’s the New Survivalism – A non-judgemental (unless the fops at the Times are keeping their tongues firmly in their cheeks on this one. If so, it was lost on me.
The word is getting out and hitting the mainstream, or more accurately, the non-salacious mainstream. The Telegraph? The Journal? The NYT? To be real, these outlets aren’t reporting the whole story, nor are they reporting it with the alarm that’s due, but it is showing up on their radar, which I find at once, both interesting and very troubling. I’m starting to thing our problems are bearing down on us much faster than we thought.
What humans tend to understand very little about, is the cyclical nature of civilization, and more specifically, society. Apparently, evolution of our species has built into it the assumption that things will either a)stay the same pretty much forever, or failing that, b) improve a little or a lot (depending on just how grand your sense of optimism is).
But that’s sadly, a misreading of how it all works. Everything in our world and universe, for that matter, works through the machine of cycles. It’s built into the source code of our existence, and to deny it, is just self-delusion. We see it and teach it in our educational institutions, study it in our labs and think-tanks and even applaud it in our entertainment (Think The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’. But when it comes to life in the U.S. and the Western World, we think it can only get better, bigger and faster, forever and forever.
One of the things that always surprises me when we travel to the UK to visit family, is how we use so much more stuff in the U.S. than everywhere else. I first realized this years ago, when I first travelled there. A large portion of my family lives in the U.K. and when we go there, we live, not in hotels, but in our family home. Which means, for the most part, that we live like natives. In the particular town (a village on the West Coast of Scotland, actually) that means we transport our trash and garbage to the dump ourselves. At first, I was amazed at how little of that we generated while living natively.
The past week has been a difficult one for the MacLeods, but not as tough as it was for some.
My family was affected by the California Wildfires, my parents losing their home early Monday morning. The first reverse-911 call came in at about midnight, suggesting they prepare to evacuate. Two hours later, the call came – evacuate immediately. They did. Probably in the next couple hours, the home my father designed and built on a scenic hillside outside San Diego in a small gated community was consumed by fire so quickly nothing identifiable remained. Everything burned, melted and congealed into a pile of rubble. It was truly amazing.
But all are okay, the house and contents insured and life goes on. For them, at least. For those not insured or prepared (and there are many, as we will hear about in the coming weeks) life is difficult right now. Some overly optimistic watchers are actually excited, saying the disaster will create a huge demand for new housing, with new jobs, materials purchased and will result in a new California real estate boom. Their theory is that the excess supply of California housing just got burned down.
Sadly, that’s not true. The real estate inventory problem in California isn’t one of structures, it’s one of credit. The subprime meltdown is shutting off the financing for overpriced-underafforded housing. There aren’t too many houses on the market, there’s a shortage of buyers who though unable to truly afford them, were previously able to finance them. Big difference. I think a lot of burned down houses will stay down for the count. All won’t be rebuilt right away.
Rather than saving the California economy, I fear these wildfires will deal it a harsh blow.
Kunstler with the theory that the 2008 election cycle has started so early because we’re so lacking in confidence that our current leadership can do anything about the horrible situation we’re in. I think he’s absolutely right. He’s also spot-on when he opines that the current crop of candidates on both side may “exhaust, bankrupt, and even disgrace their campaigns as they desperately pirouette around these painful truths, and that none of them will survive the process with their political legitimacy intact.”
I believe that in that lies the reason Al Gore is being coy about entering the fray. He’ll let the others screw themselves and each others, as political candidates almost always do, then jump in at a more economical time. He’s no dummy, and probably the only person who can lead us out of this morass with some union and economy intact.
Paul Watson is NOT saying "exterminate 5.5 billion people." He’s saying that if our particular species is to survive, we must radically alter the way we live. Unfortunately, the change will not be made willingly, but only in response to the earth’s reaction to us (global warming) and our species’ own war-like habits. Calling Watson a "wacko" or would-be genocide is pointless, and quite frankly, a lie that distracts others from the truth – that we’re on a bad path in this world.
Will we heed the warning? No. We’re too way into our plasma TVs, SUVs, jet-set lifestyle to ever change enough to avoid eventual catastrophe.
According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world faces difficulties because of Global Warming in the next 50 years. Glacial melt and buildup of greenhouse gasses will mean many will go hungry because of drought while others will be flooded.
Global warming soon will "affect everyone’s life … it’s the poor sectors that will be most affected," Romero Lankao said.
And co-author Terry Root of Stanford University said: "We truly are standing at the edge of mass extinction" of species.
The report also says that because of climate change, at first, crop yields will benefit from the longer growing season, but the benefits will be short lived.
It’s interesting talking about Global Warming to people of conservative opinions who haven’t really thought the issue through, instead relying on the rhetoric of the leaders of their faith political party. It usually takes a few minutes of saying "let’s not talk about whose fault it is – that’s not important. Let’s talk about whether global warming is real." I’m amazed at how often they’ll then shrug and say "of course, the science shows it’s getting warmer and that’s bad." But getting over that initial hump of whether human activity is causing the problems attributed to global warming is very difficult. Who cares whose fault it is?
Talking to a couple of supporters of "President Bush, right or wrong," yesterday reminded me of this. Once I happily agreed that mankind didn’t cause global warming, probably just hastened the cycle we’re in, they were fine and interested in talking about it. If only our leaders were that easy.
It’s interesting talking about Global Warming to people of conservative opinions who haven’t really thought the issue through, instead relying on the rhetoric of the leaders of their