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Have Attitudes Changed?
Posted by aeldric on July 20, 2008 - 6:00pm in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: garden, peak oil, social behavior [list all tags]
I thought I would share a personal anecdote and see who else is experiencing this strange phenomenon.
Almost 3 years ago I started seriously preparing for Peak Oil. I installed water tanks, planted 30 fruit trees in our back yard, tore up a lot of lawn, planted a permaculture garden, installed two giant fish tanks, started breeding edible fish in an aquaponic set-up.... and, well, did everything else I could think of, regardless of cost.
I wanted to move quickly, so I didn’t economize, I spent whatever it took to get quick results. I spent more than $10,000 a year - sometimes a great deal more, I didn't stop to count the dollars.
My wife was a little disturbed by this, but did not complain - viewing it (I suspect) as a harmless hobby. I don’t smoke, I spend about $10 a week on alcohol, don’t gamble, don’t put anything on credit card, and earn a good salary - so she put up with this sudden, uncharacteristic interest in cultivating fruit, brewing, gardening, aquaponics, etc. because it really wasn't a hardship for us.
But her tolerance was under sufferance, and Peak Oil was not really something she wanted to talk about. Then, a few months ago, things changed.
My wife saw the price of petrol shoot up. She started reading disturbing stories in the news about food riots, fuel protests, airlines going out of business, trucking firms struggling, and so on. Pretty much exactly what I was talking about 3 years ago.
My first hint that things had changed occurred when we were looking at items that we should be budgeting for in the upcoming month. My wife’s proposals: - $400 for a significant stockpile of food - $690 for more secure gates
She also proposed that next month we earmark $1,000 for better fences and a few hundred dollars for seeds, fertilizer and some bare-rooted grapes.
We chatted until late about strategies for the years ahead, and even discussed Dmitri Orlov’s views about collapse in the Soviet Union. Not a conversation that I had expected, I must say. Nor was it our last conversation in this area.
Is anyone else finding that friends and family are suddenly more receptive to these conversations?
Are you finding differences at a larger scale? Are letters to the editor getting published that previously would not have been? Are meetings being scheduled where previously you would not have got an audience?
What are you doing in this newly-receptive environment? How do we take advantage of it?
I'm finding people more receptive to the idea that there is such a thing as peak fossil fuels, and it's quite persuasive in combination with issues of climate change, simply because the useful responses in each case are the same: more walkable and bikable cities, more mass transit, renewable energy, more localised production of food and other goods, and so on. "Sorry, no more burgers and SUVs."
This doesn't exactly galvanise people into action, but they do at least accept the ideas. Every problem in public affairs goes through five stages
1. "There is no problem."
2. "There is a problem, but The Market! and Science! will solve it, so it's not really a problem."
3. "Holy shit, there really is a problem with no easy solutions."
4. "I guess I better do something."
5. "Hey government! Get off your arse and help us!"
Climate change issues are in Australia between #3 and #4. GreenPower customers went from about 500,000 to 750,000 in 2007 alone. Peak fossil fuel issues are between #2 and #3.
Nice list of stages, though I've seen #5 occur up with #2, and usually "I guess I'd better do something" comes last.
Most of my family/friends who thought I was a raving nutcase a year ago are now much more approachable about PO, and some have done their own research & become peakniks.
There's still some though who don't want to listen, who blame high fuel/food prices on speculators & greedy oil companies and therefore somehow convince themselves that there isn't really a problem. I find that logic really hard to follow - I mean, if the truth is there's no oil shortage & the high prices are the result of some massive conspiracy, doesn't it mean the same thing as PO for the ordinary citizen & shouldn't we take the same remedial action?
Btw aeldric, I like your garden, looks like you're doing very well :) Wish my wife & I were half as organized, though we're getting there. Good intentions alone are a poor fertilizer. Still, we don't want to be the only folks in our neighbourhood with a decent veggie plot. A critical mass of people around you need to begin making the same preparations, else your garden will end up being overrun no matter how good the fences. Hence whenever I talk to someone who's new to the PO situation I always recommend they take up gardening as a first step.
Yup. I hope that Australia never descends to the point where there is real need, but even a moderate degree of desperation can be tough on your veggie patch. The fruit trees and veggie garden are not visible from any public area, and our fences are extensive (and we are getting a backing 2.3 m high chainlink fence soon).... but ultimately the best protection is to give everybody around you seeds and cuttings.
Related to this concern over new attention, security, and being the only one on the block...
July 1st a TV crew from South Korea spent a day with me. They were from KBS, a public broadcasting network. July 2nd a TV crew from South Korea spent a day with me. They were from SBS, a private broadcasting network.
So yes, this is something new: I have never had two TV crews come to my home from South Korea in the same week.
I'd also like to add that my home is "decked out" like aeldric's. The only difference seems to be that my wife pays for all of it since I am not "employed." This was absolutely fascinating to my new Korean friends who filmed all sorts of interesting details like where I hang onions and how grains are ground and my bees and garden, etc. But then came "The BIG question," that went something like this:
Korean reporter (camera rolling): "Jason, you have done a lot of work here preparing for peak oil. So, what if, tomorrow, no more oil comes to Willits. Is your family going to be okay?"
My response (big eyes): "Oh, no. We would be in a desperate state if that happened. We are totally dependent on oil still."
Korean reporter (squinting, confused): "But Jason, I don't understand, look at all you have done?"
My response (sage like and calm): "People are social creatures. We depend on each other. My family is not alone. We live in a neighborhood. Our neighborhood is in a town. Is my family really going to be fine if my neighbors have not made similar preparations? Is my neighborhood going to be alright if the the town is not ready? Trucks deliver food every day to Willits. Does the whole town look like it can feed itself now?"
It was like a light bulb went off in their heads. "Ahhh, that was good answer!"
Jason--
I have a significant garden going (Mill Valley), and very rarely buy a vegetable these days, and still have jars of dried asian pears (from a friends land up in your neighborhood, Wilits)--
But you are right- until the whole community is on board, we are all dependent on the conditions that we live in.
I work with many social justice organizations, and it is hard for even these people to face reality and get beyond denial.
Picked several quarts of huckleberries yesterday in West Marin, and the flavor is intense.
Thank you for all the good work you are doing.
Let me give a plug for a book I just finished, Plain Secrets - An Outsider among the Amish by Joe Mackall, ISBN 978-0-8070-1065-5. It is about a real Amish family in Ashland Ohio. The family is Swartzentruber Amish, perhaps, the most conservative sect. One of the points made is the individual must subsume himself/herself for the good of the community.
This is something we seldom see today. And, I have to admit, I'm as guilty as everyone else lots of times.
Todd
Hightrekker,
I'm of the same mind and have a large garden/orchard in southern Marin. Have become a de-facto teacher for lots of people who want knowledge Right Now! It's odd, from quirky hobbyist to being pleasantly pestered by people who suddenly are very interested in all this and are asking the oddest questions, want plant i.d, "give me advice where to plant" etc.
Maybe we can do a plant exchange?
Send me an e-mail.
Chris
permanent_agriculture at initials for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle"
Thanks hightrekker. Sounds like you are doing a lot of good work yourself. Marin County is such a pleasant place to grow things too.
Reports from local nurserymen/women are that they had the biggest year ever for vegetable starts, and many gardening neophytes are asking questions. Some people saying they can't afford to buy as much fresh food as they'd like so feel the "need" to garden. I have overheard conversations in coffee shops to the effect that life is going to get hard, better plant a garden, etc.
Still so much to learn I feel barely ready to be a teacher.
hightrekker - I'm also in Mill Valley, would love to connect some time and check out your garden, and learn where to pick huckleberries! I canned 12 quarts of jam two weeks ago from my native/wild cherry plum tree. Drop me a line, email in my profile.
My husband and I bought 13 acres of "black dirt," i.e. really great soil, 65 miles from NYC and are growing vegetables organically. We were going to have a CSA and a friend of mine was going to run the CSA. Because of a serious illness in our immediate family, my "friend" took over the CSA and then decided to buy vegetables from a conventional grower whose prices were much cheaper than what I and other organic growers were charging. And so, we have tons of vegetables coming in with no outlet. Of course, we could sell them ourselves but have decided instead to donate the produce to homeless shelters and food banks (there is a "gleaners" program run by Cornell Cooperative Extension who will pick up the vegetables and distribute).
A local reporter heard about what we are doing and I reluctantly agreed to being interviewed with the hope of getting a core group of volunteers to help plant, weed, spray and harvest the vegetables (the volunteers will also be able to take vegetables for themselves). Right now, it's just me and my husband and I'm exhausted trying to keep up with the zucchini coming in! But as crops are being harvested, with a little help we could be planting so much more. I'm hoping that with some community involvement, we will be able to grow this farm organically and organically it will grow us.
Having been raised in this society to be "independent" and "self-sufficient" and "private" it is really difficult to change, to work cooperatively with other people and allow any sort of attention via the press being drawn to us. Also, I find that people are not very trusting and suspicious of our "generosity" even though I tell them we're not being altruistic, we just want to make sure we have a good supply of really healthy food!
Hi,
This is what I'm looking to do. I found some good land in Oswego, but too much of it. I'm having a hard time getting any of my family or friends on board. Frustrating. If you are still considering making a go of this, please contact me. A land trust and a real CSA is exactly what I'd like to do.
As for your friend, what is she/he gonna do as food prices keep rising? Also, if your friend is buying elsewhere and reselling, it's not a CSA, it's retail. People will buy from you if it's set up right and once they realize that what they are eating is not healthy and will disappear when the economics of fertilizer, etc., get worse.
Cheers
Hi there,
My husband and I (and our 2-year-old) are looking for just that kind of work. We decided that instead of taking a vacation and flying somewhere and paying for a hotel room, we would rather help out on a farm nearby. So we signed up for the WWOOFing thing (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, you can google it). It's a great way to get volunteers, if you still need them.
And we actually haven't been able to find a local place that will take us yet. Most places don't want to deal with a young kid, no matter how much I assure them that he's well-behaved. Need any help? We could do a week or two in August...
"ultimately the best protection is to give everybody around you seeds and cuttings"
I like how you think. :-)
He needs better friends as much or more than better fences.
Sure decent fences are a fine thing... but they can't compare with being surrounded by neighbors who are looking out for you, and you for them.
These are the five stages of reaction to catastrophe, not necessarily experienced in the same order, and subject to intermittent recurrence, but given time, experienced by all sufferers, and usually beginning with:
denial
anger
negotiation
depression
acceptance.
Most people need to go through all of these stages in order to be able to respond efficiently to a catastrophe. We need to go through the whole emotional roller-coaster ride to grasp the full extent of the problem, before we can see ways to mitigate its effects.
We are creatures whose motivation is largely emotional, but look at the list and look at how remarkably efficiently this series of emotions is organized for the fastest bestest possible resolution :
if the problem is no biggie, denial is the most efficient response
If the problem persists, anger can chase the danger away, while making you aware of the size of the problem.
Trying to negotiate, trying to deal with it, is smart, and can be successful.
Depression comes when you know your problem is too big to handle, the only thing that can save you now is to hide in a dark corner and stay out of harm's way.
Acceptance is when you finally understand what happened. You now know what you have to do to alleviate the nastiness your problem caused.
You may not be able to eliminate the problem, but as long as you can live, you can live with it.
We'll be going through hard times, and whoever survives this mess will have to live with whatever is left of our great global industrial culture.
I appreciate your comments, lukitas.
My concern is that our culture is biased to stop at anger and find scapegoats and then to develop narratives that justify resource war.
Some variation of "we are the good guys and are justified in ridding the world of those evil-doers and taking all of their good stuff ... oil, for example..." always seems to come up.
A bit of an aside for an example of how truth often fares in our culture....
Scott Nearing was an American academic who was marginalized for speaking the truth on these and other matters. He noted the role of resource acquisition in two world wars as well as others.
He also spoke out against child labor at a time when some of the big supporters of Penn State relied upon child labor to make themselves rich. He was fired without due cause -- an injustice that Penn State acknowledged only when Scott Nearing was much older and the damage had been done. Meanwhile, he was blackballed by academics who would not tolerate his critique of militaristic capitalism.
Not to be discouraged, Scott and Helen Nearing lived and wrote and spoke about "The Good Life" which involved radical ideas about tending to one's garden, treating the earth and others well, and living simply.
Back to my point: the cultural institutions and processes we have set up are still very much designed to marginalize and even to do violence to reasonable and reasoned critique. People may not need to be killed physically in order to exclude them. In more and more cases, they are simply excluded from public discourse, or used and co-opted by political or corporate players.
I do find positive change at the grass roots, but find even more people looking for scapegoats to blame and then kill ... so we can have "our" oil ... and anything else "we" might need ... or want ...
Those are the stages of grief. For reaction to a catastrophe, you forgot panic, scapegoating, suspension of ethics, hoarding, and a panoply of generally dangerous, antisocial behavior. I'm not worried about people being really bummed out. I'm worried about a secure food supply, and keeping hungry neighbors away from my tomatoes.
Thank you Ben, I'm very tired of the five stages of grief, which so far don't even adequately sum up my own reactions and emotions and actions into a neat little package.
Because I have a business that sells manual garden and digging tools, I hear from people almost daily that want to create or expand food gardens at their homes. More and more say they are doing it out of concern - primarily about the economy, but occasionally about energy. I think many people still mentally blend economy issues and energy issues together, and that is justifiable.
So yes, I am seeing more awareness and concern here, along with a desire to "do something" about it.
I'd put razor wire on the wooden fence when the trees start bearing fruit.
I think the people who will do best at self sufficiency started years ago. People who are just 'tuning in' now may have been in denial or postponement mode. Therefore they will not only make all the same mistakes but in their haste will make some shockers. For example inadequate soil preparation or insecure water supplies. Tomorrow I have to check on a stash of very poor quality waste vegetable oil for home brew diesel. The people who are trying to pinch it from me probably have no idea that it requires major pre-treatment. If they knew what they were doing they would already have done it by now.
So I wouldn't equate community awareness with readiness. I also believe there are people who cannot function outside the comforting environment of an office or military base. We live in interesting times.
Until recently, my avocado tree was just another tree in Southern California suburbia. Over the past couple of months a number of people have come up to my door asking if they could take some avocados. I was glad to share, but this behavior is very un-Los Angeles. We typically don't even say "hi" to our neighbors, let alone ask strangers for fruit from their trees. If the food situation gets bad, I think my trees and garden may be more of a liability than anything, attracting desperate and possibly dangerous people into my back yard. I sometimes wonder why our public areas couldn't be landscaped with food-bearing plants, rather than just decoratives. This could supply a great deal of free local food
When we converted our rental house landscaping to food production, the neighbors became VERY interested in it. I felt like vultures were circling around our food. I have come to the conclusion that any preps beyond stuff you can keep in your house are much more of a liability than a help. It's better to have someplace remote lined up.
This is a transitional phase.
When everybody who has space has a garden, the pressure will likely ease.
When kids are taught gardening in school, the pressure will ease.
When public parks and by-ways have vandal resistant cropping trees, the pressure will ease.
Feijoa 'break' into new growth easily from damaged/snapped 'old' wood, such as tree trunks. So does guava. So does macadamia. So does avocado.
It will take 6+ years from a standing start to get initial crops on most cutting grown or grafted trees, and it will be 'set back' by damage.
Six years from now - mid 2014 - under a 6% decline rate and nominal new production in the intervening years of around 11 mbd, we could be down by 10 mbd nett crude + lease condensate. Add in tar, ethanol and oil rags to gain maybe 10 mbd oil equivalent (ish), and we could still be somewhere in the region of 74 mbd burnable liquids, not 84 ish as now.
By then, the communal mind will be well and truly intently focussed. Street side and back yard food production will be a major topic of conversation, and a major topic of communal action.
You are an early adopter, a beacon, an example. Many lessons will be learned, including unease at being the location of a 'patchy' resource.
Ride it out.
Lorenzo
72myz,
Then again, people may have switched to vehicles getting 50% better mileage like almost the rest of the world, drive a little less and still enjoy the unblemished supermarket vegetables, watch sport on TV and drink beer. If the Romans could enjoy bread and circuses as their empire slowly declined why not US?
all this may be true ... nobody can accurately predict the future. This ... or that ... might happen. Nevertheless, gardening is fun and rewarding. It's hard work and sometimes frustrating, but watching things grow and seeing that your input matters puts you in the center of nature's business.
Watching television and drinking beer don't quite do that.
Good food is a new trend. So, yes, people's attitudes are indeed changing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/dining/22local.html?ref=dining
Your point about public areas being planted with food bearing crops is something that I have said for years. If every street where I live in Sydney was planted with hardy trees such as olives instead of ornamentals there would be more fruit grown than in the biggest commercial groves.
Not sure about the veracity of the story, but my father told me that prior/during World War 2, Germany had a program of planting fruit trees in public spaces, like roadsides. They could be rented, just like in the old times when farmers rented an apple tree from a specialised apple-tree orchard farmer.
Some of those trees still survive along the roads in some places, but my dad warned against eating one. They're tiny and sour.
Of course the trees need reworking, or replacement by more cultured varieties.
Danno: Have you checked out the "Fallen Fruit" project in LA? You could put your avocado tree on their map of free-to-forage fruits.
Also, KCET put together a nice little web site that includes links to Fallen Fruit: Sustaining LA
I'll check that out, thanks. People might have to fight the opossums for their avocados, though.
Out here in suburbia I would say that 95% of the residents are still well and truly in the 'There's no problem' stage. The only problem they see is that it is costing them more to fill up their V8s and 4WDs and that it's all Kevin's fault and he should fix it.
I'm sure wise old Brendan and Malcom will introduce a fix in the very short term and we'll have fuel back down to 'normal' levels for ever.
My friends and family, even though I have been gently whispering in their ears about PO for the last two years, are possibly one step further along than everybody else.
Give me strength!
You know, I've got the same issue. People don't wanna listen. My friends call be "lizard-brained" coz I talked about Peak Oil. Hopefully, with time, their reality would change.
Home aquaculture sounds cool. Is it expensive/time consuming/take up a lot of space?
If you could point me to a primer on the topic that would be greatly appreciated.
I work in the Transport planning area of a State Transport Department and everyone seems well aware of 'peak oil'. I even borrowed 'End of Suburbia' from the library here a few years ago. There's a lot of people here quite passionate about bringing about a more sustainable city.
Most of my friends are lefty green types and so resource depletion is not exactly a novel concept, and they seem well aware of 'peak oil'. I don't talk about peak oil though. But I enjoy many topics that are part of the (sensible) responses.
I have about 12 sq metres of vegies, 5 chooks, bananas, pawpaws, pomegranate seedlings and an unhappy orange tree. But I grow vegies because it's fun esp. with kids. Fun is a good way to sell things. But if you want to grow vegies it does take a few years to get even half good at it.
Three years lurking and it takes home aquaculture to get me to respond!
hi mark
thanks for coming out of your lurker state :-)
hopefully aeldric will come back with some aquaculture links.
which city are you in? you can contact me here:
http://philhart.com/contact
cheers
phil.
Hi Mark31,
Regarding Aquaponics, I learned everything I needed to know from http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/
Your questions were:
Initial setup was expensive - very expensive in my case because I experimented a lot to find a robust, fault-tolerant system. However the payback is that it provides you with fish that are high in Omega 3 oils (a big selling point for me, as I have young children) and it also provides free nitrates for the garden.
Cost can range from $50 for a system that provides you with a lettuce per week and a small fish once a year to $2,000 for a system that would supply most of one person's vegetable and fruit needs (but not grains) and give you a fish and a yabbie each week.
Not for a modest system. Once set up you will need about 30-40 minutes a week.
Not when you consider the productivity. It is a form of polyculture. Effectively you use the square meters 3 times - once with bottom-dwelling critters such as yabbies and catfish (tandanus is one of the tastiest fish imaginable), then above that you have fish that don't bottom feed (perch fall in this category and are very high in omega oils), then above that you have vegetables (often lettuce) that soak up nitrates from the water (no fertilizer required, but some trace elements - notably iron - may need to be added once every few months).
However, most of the systems you will see at http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/ require constant, reliable electricity. I experimented for a few years and put together a simple system that requires little electricity, is tolerant of outages, and can function with no electricity at all in event of a long-term outage.
If you would like to talk further about aquaponics, drop me a line at aeldric [at] optusnet [dot] com [dot] au
It did not seem to make sense but I grew a huge crop of chillies, tomatoes and climbing beans just from my first try with aquaponics this year. Planted many crops as trial crops for aquaponics and the chillies were a real surprise, need any I got buckets full. Pumpkins and melons failed miserably however. Our fist barramundi was delicious but chopping off it's head was a bit of a post traumatic stress trigger, Catfish, now there's a great idea.
Thanks for the link aeldric. From a quick inspection the site looks very good.
I may take you up on your offer of assistance after I've done some background research.
Cheerful Regards
Mark31
Hi Aeldric,
If you have time, it would be great to see an article about your aquaponics setup and how you managed to put together a system with little electricity requirements.
I'm about to join the increasing group of folk making lots of mistakes for the next 3 years, when I quit my job in a couple of months :).
Hopefully I'm not starting too late, but if it's taken me this long to actually get off my backside, how long is it going to take for the rest of them?
Hi Aeldric,
I'd like to hear more about your system and how you minimized electricity requirements too. Maybe a small article on it would save some of us from trying to re-invent that wheel?
Thanks!
I'm awful late in getting to the party, but will add this even though it's been awhile since the article was posted.
I studied and experimented with several types of aquaculture off and on for 30+ years, and still raise a number of fish species. But for those of us in higher latitudes, the backyard aquaculture and fish portion of hydroponics is a quite lengthy and energy intensive effort. In short, it doesn't work. Not without energy and commercial food supplements for the species cultivated. Both the fish and the invertebrates cultured as fish feed, if one is trying to go without purchased feed, are poikiothermic, cold blooded, their metabolism determined by the environmental temperature. There have been many attempts to get around this-greenhouses, geothermal water(one that works if you have that resource) various methods of heating water, but all comes to it's inefficient in northerly latitudes. How far north? Well, you should be able to maintain 70 degree water year round for both your culture species and its food source-which if it is invertebrate is quite an operation in itself.
The most obvious solution is to stick with fish that aren't carnivorous-either to fish or inverts-and this led quickly to a wealth of interest in Tilapia, who grow quite well on algal based food sources. It also led to a bunch of broke investors or disappointed culturists. The industry thrived for a short while in Florida and southern CA, but was wiped out by Asian imports of 1/10 the cost of production.
For those northerners truly interested, I suggest doing some early research before trying to reinvent the wheel, or enriching a web site. A good starting point is the early work of William McLarney, who worked in part with bullheads in New England. Also John and Nancy Todd. Rodale put out quite a few notes, pamphlets, etc. also. Home Aquaculture is one I recall, but fails for several reasons. Some interesting ideas at least were tried.
An early excellent review of the field is Aquaculture, by Bardach, Ryther and others. Mc