Peak Oil

I REALLY do not want to have a political blog. I've tried to keep all my posts about my error filled journey into and through motherhood, but I can no longer resist the urge to post about something that has been eating away at me for a long time.

As soon as I started my summer vacation from school, I decided I would do some light summer reading. Something casual, lofty, and light-hearted.

I went to the library and picked out a few things from various genres:

- A book about parenting (I usually don't read these, but, to my dismay, I actually like the Supernanny!)

- A cookbook (I think I got one on one-pot meals and one for making your own babyfood)

- The Best American Short Stories from 2004

- Crossing the Rubicon

The only one I kept beyond the due date was Crossing the Rubicon. I mean, it is almost 1,000 pages, but that's not the only reason I kept it so long. I would say it was eye-opening, but a better term might be pants-soiling. I had originally attempted to get a book by Richard Clarke, but none were available. So I grabbed this one instead.

I don't know how to convey to you how scary of a book this is. I'll just pretend to be a bad movie reviewer and say...if you only read one book this year, this should be it.

This book, by the way, did not fit the "lighthearted" requirement. It was just something I felt compelled to read after seeing an interview with Mike Ruppert on The Daily Show a long time ago. Rubicon is a non-fiction account of how and why the government was involved in the attacks of 9/11. However, the most enlightening concept within the book is the subject of Peak Oil - how it rules our lives and how it is fueling (pardon the pun) the current wars in the middle east.

Go now, and follow the link to the book. In case you don't feel like scanning my preceeding paragraphs, here it is again. I doubt that many of you feel like reading all 1,000 pages of the book, so instead, I have compiled a list of great links that will provide an overview of what Ruppert discusses in his tome.

I implore you to read as many of these as possible and to familiarize yourself with peak oil and to decide what behaviors of yours you are going to change so that you contribute less to the problem.

Wiki explainer of Peak Oil

Peak Oil Primer by the Energy Bulletin

Peak Oil News

The most terrifying "Project for the New American Century" and more importantly, an anti-PNAC site

You may disagree with the prophecies Peak Oilers are predicting. Many of their predictions are quite grim. And since having the veil ripped off my eyes, I have had a bowling ball in my stomach thinking about how it is going to affect us. One thing is clear, we are on the verge of WWIII now. So, unable to control world events, I am changing my behavior as best I can.

We'll be trading in our gas guzzler SUV for a Toyota Hybrid. I plant as much of my own food as I can and am learning to be a decent gardener (still, at this rate, if we ate only what I grew, we'd get about 2 beets every 9 months, but we'd sure be up to our ears in tomatoes during August). I am going to put in a compost bin because I feel so wasteful throwing out scraps of food that can be used for something. I'm trying to be less of a consumer and more of a make-do'er; relearning the lessons of thriftyness that our parents' parents knew and lived so well. We have a long way to go but I feel better trying to be more self-sufficient.

One thing that does make me feel better is trying to support the effort of relocalization, which is the antithesis of globalization. While I do support knowing about other cultures as much as one can, globalization enslaves citizens to huge mega-corporations in favor of economies of scale, which only benefit the heads of the economies (CEO's, our government), localization gives the power back to the people. Unfortunately for me, living in Minnesota, it also means that if you only shop at the farmer's market for you food, the only vegetables you eat are rhubarb, tomatoes, and corn. I'll sure miss my Kiwi's from California and my grapes from Peru.