Intentional Communities Ecovillages, by Jan Martin Bang (New Society, 2005).
Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, by Diana Leafe Christian (New Society, 2003).
The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for Community, by Chris ScottHanson and Kelly ScottHanson (New Society, 2004).
Communities magazine: Fellowship for Intentional Community, 138 Twin Oaks Road, Louisa, VA 23093, USA: Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living Fellowship for Intentional Community, 2000: Global Ecovillage Network: < www.gaia.org/=""> Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage: < www.dancingrabbit.org/=""> During the energy decline, life in an intentional community could offer many advantages. a.s.sociation with like-minded people in a context of mutual aid could help overcome many of the challenges that will arise as the larger society undergoes turmoil and reorganization. Moreover, new cooperative, low-energy ways of living can be implemented now, without having to wait for a majority of people in the larger society to awaken to the necessity for change.
However, these advantages do not come without a price: to live successfully in an intentional community requires work and commitment. Many communities fail and many members drop out, for a variety of reasons - often centering on the individuals" projection of unrealistic expectations onto the group. Nevertheless, some communities have managed to survive for decades, and few members of successful communities would willingly trade their way of life for that of the alienated urbanite.
Ecovillages are urban or rural communities that strive to integrate a supportive social environment with a low-impact way of life. They typically experiment with ecological design, permaculture, natural building materials, consensus decision-making, and alternative energy production. Ecovillages currently scattered around the world include the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland; EcoVillage at Ithaca, in Ithaca, New York; the Farm in Summertown, Tennessee; Earthaven in North Carolina; and Mitraniketan in Kerala, India. One that I have visited, the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in northeastern Missouri, was established in the early 1990s by a group of young West Coast recent college graduates. Today the community consists of about fifteen adults and children. The buildings were constructed by the residents from natural materials (straw bales and earth), their vehicles all run on vegetable oil, and the community has its own currency and grows most of its food on-site.
The Nation It is easiest to exert influence on the political process at the local community level. State and provincial politics are almost invariably subject to more compet.i.tion for access and power, and thus to more corruption. At the national level, the degrees of compet.i.tion and corruption are truly daunting.
However, many of the legal and economic structures that prevent industrial societies from more quickly and more easily adapting to the energy decline can only be altered or replaced nationally. Even small, incremental changes at this level of government can have important effects. Thus it is essential for citizens who are aware of energy-resource issues to direct at least some of their efforts toward encouraging change at the highest levels of political organization.
Alternative energies and conservation. As nonrenewable energy sources become depleted, it is crucial that renewable subst.i.tutes be developed and implemented to replace them - to the degree that replacement is possible. Individuals and local communities can help this happen, but a systematic national policy is badly needed. Policymakers cannot simply wait for the price of nonrenewable sources to rise and that of renewables to fall so that the market itself automatically effects the transition. It will take decades to rebuild the national energy infrastructure, and price signals from the dwindling of nonrenewables will appear far too late to be of any help. In fact, it is already too late to make the transition painlessly. An easy transition might have been possible if the nation had begun the project in the 1970s and continued it consistently and vigorously through to the present. Still, even at this late date, a truly heroic national effort toward developing renewables could succeed in substantially reducing social chaos and human suffering in the decades ahead.
Until recently, the US was spending more on renewable-energy technologies than any other nation, on both a per-capita and an absolute basis. However, Germany, j.a.pan, Spain, Iceland, and the Netherlands are now moving quickly ahead with renewables, while national efforts in the US are stalled.9 In view of the absolute dependence of industrial society on energy resources and the imminent decline in fossil fuel availability, one would think that the search for alternatives must be the nation"s first priority. Yet the 2004 budget gives its biggest priority instead to the military. The Bush administration"s proposed military budget increase from 2003 to 2004 is itself larger than the entire military budget of any other country in the world except Russia.10 One cannot help but wonder: Which would be more likely to provide security for us and the next generation - yet another expensive weapons system or a reliable, non-depletable source of energy?
The federal government could and should speed the transition to renewable energy sources by providing substantial tax breaks for individuals who invest in wind and solar, and subsidies for utilities that switch to renewables. Carbon taxes should be implemented and gradually raised - not only to discourage the use of nonrenewables, but also to provide funds for rebuilding the energy infrastructure.
Conservation should also be a high priority: the inability of Congress to pa.s.s laws mandating higher auto fuel-efficiency standards is an embarra.s.sment and a disgrace. However, stringent efficiency mandates should be pa.s.sed not only for automobiles but for a range of appliances and industrial processes. The nation should set goals of reducing the total energy usage by two percent per year, and of progressively altering the ratio of nonrenewable to renewable sources. There may be an economic price for such policies, but it will pale in comparison to the eventual costs of the present course of action.
Food systems. We need to redesign our national food system from the ground up. Currently, that system is centralized around giant agribusiness corporations that control seeds, chemicals, processing, and distribution. Most farmers are economically endangered. We need a national food policy that encourages regional self-sufficiency. This will require a 180-degree shift in how farm subsidies are designed and applied.
Resources for National Policy Change Alternative Energies Ron Swenson"s comprehensive website on renewable energies:
An excellent general site for news on renewable energies:
Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energies:
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory: The Rocky Mountain Inst.i.tute: < www.rmi.org=""> Food Systems Farming in Nature"s Image: An Ecological Approach to Agriculture, by D. D. Soule and Judy D. Soule, with Jon K. Piper (Island Press, 1992).Agroecology: Ecological Processes in Sustainable Agriculture, by Stephen R. Gliessman (Lewis, 1998).
Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, by Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield, and Steven Gorelick (Zed, 2002).
Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, by Jeremy Rifkin (Dutton, 1992).
Current farm subsidies encourage huge agribusiness corporations and energy dependence. As Philip Lee recently argued in an article in the Ottawa Citizen, Canada"s agricultural subsidies are similarly promoting centralized, fuel-fed agriculture over sustainable, diversified, local food production.11 A range of problems surrounding industrial agriculture could be solved simply by ending current farm subsidies - or, better yet, by inst.i.tuting an entirely different regime of subsidies that would benefit diversity rather than monocropping; small family farms rather than agribusiness cartels; and organic farming rather than biotech- and petrochemical-based farming.12 Financial and business systems. The changes needed in the national economic structure go far beyond efforts to improve accounting regulations so as to avoid more corporate bankruptcies on the scale of Enron or WorldCom. The entire system - designed for an environment of perpetual growth - requires a complete overhaul.
Giant corporations are engines of growth and have become primary power wielders in modern industrial societies. One way to rein them in would be to challenge important legal privileges they have acquired through dubious means. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Const.i.tution was adopted soon after the Civil War to grant freed slaves the rights of persons; but by the last decades of the 19th century, judges and corporate lawyers had twisted the Amendment"s interpretation to regard corporations as persons, thus granting them the same rights as flesh-and-blood human beings. Since then, the Fourteenth Amendment has been invoked to protect corporations" rights roughly 100 times more frequently than African Americans" rights.13 The legal fiction of corporate personhood gives corporations the right of free speech, under the First Amendment to the US Const.i.tution. In recent years, when communities or states have sought to restrict corporations" campaign donations to politicians, the courts have overruled such restrictions as a violation of corporate free-speech rights as persons. Corporations also are allowed const.i.tutional protection against illegal search and seizure so that decisions made in corporate boardrooms are protected from public scrutiny. However, corporate "persons" do not have the same limitations and liabilities as flesh-and-blood persons. A human person in California who commits three felonies will be jailed for 25 years to life under that state"s "three-strikes" law; but a California-chartered corporate "person" that racks up dozens of felony convictions for breaking environmental or other laws receives only a fine, which it can write off as the cost of doing business. Personhood almost always serves the interests of the largest and wealthiest corporations while small, local businesses that also have corporate legal status are systematically disadvantaged.
Americans should unite behind a national movement to rescind corporate personhood; until that goal is achieved, they should pet.i.tion state attorneys general to review or revoke the charters of corporations that repeatedly harm their communities or investors.
Our current monetary system, which is based on debt and interest and thereby entails endless economic growth and s...o...b..lling indebtedness, requires replacement. While some monetary theorists advocate a gold-based currency as a solution, others argue that a well-regulated, non-debt-based paper or computer-credit currency would have greater flexibility. There is at least one precedent in this regard: the Isle of Guernsey, a British protectorate, has had an interest-free paper currency since 1816, has no public debt, no unemployment, and a high standard of living.14 Tax reform is also essential. "Geonomic" tax theorists, who trace their lineage to 19th-century American economist Henry George, argue that society should tax land and other basic resources - the birthright of all - instead of income from labor. Geonomic tax reform, say advocates, could decrease wealth disparities while reducing pollution and discouraging land speculation. Similarly, taxing nonrenewable resources and pollution - instead of giving oil companies huge subsidies in the form of "depletion allowances" - would put the brakes on resource extraction while giving society the means with which to fund the development of renewables.
Population and immigration. Overpopulation is currently one of humanity"s greatest problems, and it will become a far greater one with the gradual disappearance of fossil energy resources. But of all the conundrums that beset our species, overpopulation is the most difficult to address from a political standpoint. Both the Left and the Right tend to avoid the issue of continued population growth, or treat it as if it were a benefit. As Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel have written, [s]ome people believe that for humans to limit their numbers would infringe on their freedom to reproduce. This may be true, but a continued increase in human numbers will infringe on our freedoms from malnutrition, hunger, disease, poverty, and pollution, and on our freedom to enjoy nature and a quality environment.15 Currently, the regulation of population is probably best dealt with at a national - as opposed to an individual, community, or global - level because only nations have the ability to offer the incentives and impose the restrictions that will be necessary in order to reverse population growth. The first order of business will be for each nation to gain some sense of its human carrying capacity. Quite simply, if in order to maintain itself a nation is drawing down either nonrenewable resources (such as fossil fuels) or renewables at a faster rate than that at which they can be replaced, then that nation is already overpopulated. A cursory scanning of population/resource data would suggest that virtually every nation on Earth has overshot its carrying capacity. This being the case, what should be the target size of national populations? The answer obviously varies from country to country. Globally, according to Hopfenberg and Pimentel, [i]f all people are to be fed adequately and equitably, we must have a gradual transition to a global population of 2 billion. A population policy ensuring that each couple produces an average of only 1.5 children would be necessary. If this were implemented, more than 100 years would be required to make the adjustment.16 However, this global target needs to be translated into national goals and policies. Again, this is no small challenge.
A frequent tactic in this regard is to appeal to "demographic transition" as an ultimate solution to population problems. In the wealthiest countries, population growth has tended to slow. Germany and Italy, for example, currently have birth rates that are slightly lower than their death rates, which means that their populations are beginning to shrink. This suggests a painless solution to population problems: simply increase economic growth in other countries so that they undergo a similar demographic transition to zero or negative population growth. However, as should be clear by now, this is not a realistic option. Industrial growth cannot be maintained much longer even in Europe or North America; much less can we envision fully industrializing all of Africa, South America, and Asia. Another approach must be found.
The empowerment of women within societies also seems to result in reduced population growth. It is women, after all, who give birth and who traditionally provide primary care for young children; given the choice, most women would prefer to bear only a few children and see them grow up healthy and well-fed rather than have many children living in deprivation. Experience also shows that the ready availability of birth control methods and devices is, for obvious reasons, a significant factor in reducing population growth. These strategies, if expanded, will certainly help; however, they probably cannot be counted on to produce the reductions of population size that are actually required in order to avoid famine and public health crises in the coming century.
During the past two decades, China engaged in a unique experiment at population reduction, attempting to limit families to having only one child. Describing this experiment, Garret Hardin writes: In some of the major cities the program seemed to be carried forward along the following lines. Decision making was decentralized. Almost every able-bodied woman in a Chinese city was a member of a "production group," which was charged with making its own decisions. Each group was told by the central government what their allotment of rice would be for the year. This allotment would not be readjusted in accordance with the Marxist ideal of "to each according to their need." Rather, it was a flat allotment that made no allowance for increased fertility. It was up to the members of a production group to decide among themselves which women would be allowed to become pregnant during the coming year.17 If a member of a production group became pregnant without having obtained permission to do so, she was told to have an abortion.
The results of the Chinese experiment remain unclear since reports reaching the West have been vague and incomplete. There was no doubt a great deal of cheating involved, and farmers and many tribal groups were systematically exempted from the program.
A secondary effect of the Chinese effort occurred in the US, where reports of compulsory abortions in China incited rightist politicians to deny aid to Planned Parenthood and other organizations working to reduce population growth. Many international population programs were consequently seriously undermined by the withdrawal of US partic.i.p.ation.
Clearly, the Chinese model - even if it can be said to have been successful in China itself, which is doubtful - will not work everywhere. What other methods are possible?