Vermontwww.vtcommons.org CommonsNumber 2 | May 2005 VOICES OF INDEPENDENCE A Brief Welcome to the Long Emergency Vermont Commons is a print and online forum By James Howard Kunstler for exploring the idea of Vermont independ- ence—political, economic, social, and spiritual. Look for us the fourth week of every month in he world—and of course the United States final-blowout of cheap oil. Like all economic distor- the Vermont Guardian, and join our ongoing Tand Vermont—faces an epochal predicament: tions, it produced economic perversions. It allowed blog at www.vtcommons.org. We are unaffili- the global oil production peak and the arc of gigantic, predatory organisms like Wal-Mart to ated with any other organization or media, and depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this spawn and reproduce at the expense of more cellu- interested in all points of view. We welcome crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalk- lar fine-grained economic communities. your letters, thoughts, and participation. ing into the future. The peak oil production event The end of globalism will be hastened by inter- will change everything about how we live. It will national competition over the world’s richest oil- IN THIS ISSUE challenge all of our assumptions. It will compel us producing regions. We are already seeing the first to do things differently—whether we like it or not. military adventures over oil as the U.S. attempts to 1 A Brief Welcome to the Long Emer- We need to integrate these new realities into our pacify the Middle East in order to assure future gency, by James Howard Kunstler collective worldview, in order to start making the supplies. This is by no means a project we can feel 2 The Proud American Tradition of changes our nation will have to make if we want confident about. The Iraq war has only been the Secession, by Rob Williams to carry on the project of civilization. overture to more desperate contests ahead. Bear in 3 Letters Nobody knows when the absolute peak year of mind that the most rapidly industrializing nation in 6 Nonviolent Vermont Independence, global oil production will occur. Some believe we the world, China, is geographically closer to the by Thomas Naylor are already at peak and the behavior of the global Caspian region and the Middle East than we are. 7 How Did Vermont Get To Be? markets proves it. Saudi Arabia seems to have lost The Chinese can walk into these regions, and by Daniel Gade the ability to function as “swing producer.” The someday they just might. In any case, and apart 10 News and Upcoming Events good news is that OPEC can no longer set the price from the likelihood of military mischief, as the 11 The Middlebury Declaration, of oil. The bad news is that nobody can. When world passes the petroleum peak the global oil by Kirkpatrick Sale there is no production surplus in the world, that’s markets will destabilize and the industrial nations a pretty good sign that the world is at peak. Prince- will have enormous problems with both price and NEW ON THE BLOG ton Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes says that peak pro- supply. The effect on currencies and international duction will occur this year. Others, like Colin finance will, of course, be equally severe. • Vermont National Guard/Iraq War Campbell, former chief geologist for Shell Oil, put Some of you may be aware that the U.S. faces an • 9/11 Truth Musing it more conservatively as between now and 2007. imminent crisis with natural gas, perhaps more • Vermont’s Health Care Debate But by any measure of rational planning or policy- immediately threatening than the reckoning we • Legislative Update making, these differences are insignificant. face over oil. Over the past two decades—in • Peak Oil Realities The meaning of the oil peak and its enormous response to the OPEC embargoes of the 70s and • Wal-Mart in Vermont implications are generally misunderstood even by the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island emergencies those who have heard about it—and this includes of the 80s—we have so excessively shifted our elec- Join the Conversation the mainstream corporate media and the Ameri- tric power generation to dependence on natural gas www.vtcommons.org cans who make plans or policy. The world does that no amount of drilling can keep up with current not have to run out of oil or natural gas for severe demand. The situation is very ominous now. instabilities, network breakdowns, and systems Right here I am compelled to inform you that we will have to change the way we live in this failures to occur. All that is necessary is for world the prospects for alternative fuels are poor. We suf- country. The implications are clear: we will have to production capacity to reach its absolute limit—a fer from a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome in this downscale and rescale virtually everything we do. point at which no increased production is possible country. We seem to believe that if you wish hard The downscaling of America is a tremendous and the long arc of depletion commences, with oil enough for something, it will come true. Right and inescapable project. It is the master ecological production then falling by a few percentages now a lot of people—including people who ought project of our time. We will have to do it whether steadily every year thereafter. That’s the global oil to know better—are wishing for some miracle we like it or not. We are not prepared. peak: the end of absolute increased production technology to save our collective ass. The hydro- Downscaling America doesn’t mean we become and beginning of absolute declining production. gen economy is a fantasy. It is not going to happen. a lesser people. It means that the scale at which we One huge implication of the oil peak is that We may be able to run a very few things on hydro- conduct the work of American daily life will have industrial societies will never again enjoy the 2 to 7 gen, but we are not going to replace the entire U.S. to be adjusted to fit the requirements of a post- percent annual economic growth that has been automobile fleet with hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Nor globalist, post-cheap-oil age. We are going to have considered healthy for over 100 years. This will we do it with electric cars or natural-gas cars. to live a lot more locally and a lot more intensively amounts to the industrialized nations of the world Wind power and solar electric will not produce sig- on that local level. Industrial agriculture, as repre- finding themselves in a permanent depression. nificant amounts of power within the context of sented by the Archer Daniels Midland / soda pop Long before the oil actually depletes we will endure the way we live now. No combination of alterna- and Cheez Doodle model of doing things, will not world-shaking political disturbances and economic tive fuel systems currently known will allow us to survive the end of the cheap-oil economy. disruptions. We will see globalism-in-reverse. Glob- run what we are running, the way we’re running The implications of this are enormous. Success- alism was never an “ism,” by the way. It was not a it, or even a significant fraction of it. ful human ecologies in the near future will have to belief system. It was a manifestation of the 20-year- The future is therefore telling us very loudly that continued on page 4 2 VERMONT COMMONS MAY 2005 The Proud American Tradition of Secession et’s begin with the “shout heard ‘round the among men, deriving their just powers from Lworld.” The words of Thomas Jefferson and the consent of the governed. That whenever the first Continental Congress in 1776. The open- any form of government becomes destructive ing moments in what has become one of the most to these ends, it is the right of the people to important documents about “freedom” and alter or to abolish it, and to institute new gov- “democracy” in modern world history. The Decla- ernment, laying its foundation on such princi- ration of Independence. ples and organizing its powers in such form, as A document that is, at the core, about secession. to them shall seem most likely to effect their Why peacefully secede from the United States? safety and happiness. Why create an independent Vermont Republic Prudence, indeed, will dictate that govern- (again), interested in a free and unfettered ments long established should not be changed exchange of ideas, goods, services, and good will for light and transient causes; and accordingly with the rest of the globe? How would we actually all experience hath shown that mankind are go about doing such a thing? more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffer- That’s why Vermont Commons is here. To explore able, than to right themselves by abolishing these questions. the forms to which they are accustomed. Here are the words of Thomas Jefferson’s “Dec- But when a long train of abuses and usurpa- laration” in 1776. As citizens of the richest and tions, pursuing invariably the same object most powerful empire in the world, Jefferson and evinces a design to reduce them under the members of the Continental Congress chal- absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their lenged the legitimacy of the British imperial gov- duty, to throw off such government, and to ernment’s tyrannical rule over the frontiers of provide new guards for their future security.