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Organic Transitions: Beyond the Gloom & Doom of Economic Depression,
Climate Change, & Peak Oil
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15140.cfm
    * By Ronnie Cummins
      Organic Consumers Association, October 14, 2008
      Straight to the Source

OCA is happy to announce a new grassroots-powered campaign called Organic
Transitions, inspired in part by the UK's fast-growing Transition Towns
movement. Organic Transitions is designed to mobilize organic consumers and
local communities to start planning and implementing “transition”
strategies so as to survive and thrive in the turbulent times ahead, with
organic food and farming providing the healthy cornerstone for a new, more
localized and sustainable green economy.

First the bad, or shall we say the really bad, news. Not since the Great
Depression have Americans been challenged by anything comparable to the
current unfolding disaster: economic meltdown, global warming, climate
chaos, escalating energy and resource costs, looming shortages, endless
war, biodiversity erosion, and deteriorating public health—metastasized
and abetted by a corporate elite and indentured federal government that
apparently doesn’t know what to do, or, worse, doesn’t care. Even with
likely regime change on November 4, we are in very deep trouble, according
to leading scientists, economists, agronomists, and public health experts.

Fortunately a critical mass of people are waking up to the fact that we
must get organized and find holistic solutions, not mere band-aids, for our
crisis. Millions of us are heartened by the indisputable fact that organic,
green, commonsense solutions for all of our life-or-death problems are at
hand, including appropriate technology and innovative public policy and
legislation. We don’t have to wait for Washington bureaucrats or
corporate marketers to tell us what to do. We can join together with our
fellow citizens and begin the absolutely essential process of organizing
Organic Transitions committees and campaigns in our local areas, starting
with local organic food buying clubs, house parties, and study and action
circles.

Times are indeed grim and frightening, but certainly not hopeless. We still
have a strategic window of opportunity to take back control over our
political, cultural, and economic institutions; to create millions of urban
and rural green jobs; to transform our educational systems; and to make a
smooth transition from fossil fuels, climate chaos, and resource wars to a
renewable, peaceful, solar-based agriculture and economy. But time is of
the essence.

There is no longer any doubt that we must quickly move away from fossil
fuels and greenhouse gas pollution if we are to avoid climate catastrophe.
Likewise there is no doubt that we are quickly running out of cheap oil,
and other essential resources such as water, forests, wetlands, and plant
and animal biodiversity. You are likely familiar with the term “Peak
Oil”, the notion that global oil production has peaked and will now
become inexorably more expensive and scarce, even as global demand
continues to rise. What you may not realize is that we stand on the cusp of
Peak Everything, where nearly all of our essential natural resources are
reaching their limits.

We obviously can no longer afford trillion-dollar bailouts for Wall Street
speculators, nor trillion-dollar wars for oil and empire in Iraq and
Afghanistan. There is temporarily enough food, fiber, and fuel on the
planet to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone (that is, if these necessities
are distributed equitably), but the days of fossil fuel-intensive,
chemical-intensive agriculture, transportation, utilities, and housing are
drawing to an end. Natural gas-derived chemical fertilizers and
petroleum-based pesticides, transportation, and processing are absolutely
essential to supercharge America’s current system of industrialized and
globalized food and farming, but as economists point out, these inputs will
be literally unaffordable within a decade. Chemical fertilizer and diesel
costs alone have gone up 80% in the last two years, with global food costs
rising comparably. Gasoline in the U.S. now costs about $3 dollars a gallon
(over $10 a gallon in some EU nations), while natural gas for heating is
$2.50. Multiply these costs by two over the next couple of years, by four
over the next five years, and by ten or so over the next decade and you get
the picture.

There’s a silver lining in the collapse of our energy-intensive,
chemical-intensive, hyper-consumerist society. We’re likely to be a lot
happier and healthier after we make the Organic Transitions we need. Most
of us will not be making as much money as we once did, or buying as many
consumer products, but as we green and relocalize our economy and our
politics, we’re likely to be a lot healthier, less alienated, and
stressed-out. We’ll certainly be driving and flying less, and millions
more of us will be involved in organic gardening and farming and other
green jobs, but OCA’s belief is that we’ll likely be happier and more
at peace with ourselves, our local communities, and the Earth. Please join
up with the OCA as active participants in our Organic Transitions campaign.
And please support us financially as we move beyond the gloom and doom of
the present crisis.