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  • From: Misha Gale-Sinex <mgs2369@attbi.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fossil fuel addiction
  • Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 16:36:12 -0800

Howdy, all--

Mark wrote:

This is a good analisys of the problem, but I think we can still aggressively pursue sequestering of C in soils (and oceanic carbon sinks). we know it's good for the soil, we know how to do it, and we know people will still be burning fossil fuels for the forseable future. Why not take what we can from a bad situation and move things in the right direction.
M

Sequestration?

That's like a 690-pound food addict deciding they'll shit in the woods, and bury it, because that's better than using the toilet. Meanwhile, they're stuffing their mouths while squatting, then rolling back to the house to stuff themselves gaggy again.

Regarding human induced climate change, the problem is mining fossil carbon out of the earth's crust. Period. It has to stop.

It'll only stop if each of us slashes our fossil fuel use immediately. Cold turkey would be good, but if not that, then cutting use by 5-25 percent or more per year. Starting now. Not later, not someday, not maybe, not when chickens learn to fart folk songs in the key of C and science can document it. Now.

This kind of thinking ("Why not just do whatever keeps us complacent and busy and on top?") contributes to the problem. It *doesn't* "move things in the right direction."

The problem isn't a Sequestration Technology Deficit.

The problem isn't that "We know PEOPLE will still be burning fossil fuels."

The problem is, what are YOU doing about burning fossil fuels, Mark?

Have you set goals for how YOU are going to slash your fossil fuel use over the next year, five years, ten years?

What are your goals? What are your fears? What are you willing to change? What, when push comes to pop, are you NOT willing to change?

Let's be honest about this stuff--like the fact that most of us are perfectly willing to see thousands and millions of people we don't know and don't care about, devoured, ground up, by the fossil fuel energy system, so we can continue to live like the hogs we have been. (And don't even sling horse-dukey at me on that one, because I grew up in the refineries, my family worked for and was owned by Sun Oil, and we all worked for them, including me. I speak from experience.)

Enough of this vague abstractionalizing about "people" and what they do or not. Fossil fuel use is individual and personal. Focusing on abstractions and the dream of a technical fix is part of Fly-boy Culture. There's always another abstraction to chirp. Another technical fix to prosper from dreaming about and promoting. Somewhere else to drive or fly. Something else to buy. Another set of feel-good things to say. All kinds of ways to avoid dealing with the blunt facts of the matter.

That's what happens when you get skygods on the brain. Way too easy to zoom up there and lose track of life here on earth. That's what happens when you live in the culture/nation that is causing the problem by setting the standard for gluttony and engineering others to aspire to it. Live in that culture long enough, and it becomes second nature to retreat into the plate of cream, and let others worry about milking themselves to keep the saucer full.


peace
misha





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