Ve rNumber mo 25 | Fall 2008 n t CommonsVisit us online at www.vtcommons.org VOICES OF I NDEPENDENCE “A Gem — Vermont’s literate, thought- only statewide provoking, radical.” news journal Leave Peeping Orion magazine Exponential Money in a Finite World (Part 1) Vermont Commons is a print and online forum for exploring the idea of Vermont independence—political, economic, Chris Martenson social, and spiritual. We are unaffiliated with any other organization or media, and interested in all points of view. The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our We welcome your letters, thoughts, and participation. inability to understand the exponential function. ~Dr. Albert Bartlett I N THIS I SSUE ithin the next 20 years the most profound 1 Exponential Money in a Finite World Wchanges in all of economic history will Chris Martenson sweep the globe. The economic chaos and turbu- 2 Editorial: On Becoming Sovereign – lence we are now experiencing are merely the Not ‘More’ Sovereign Ian Baldwin opening salvos in what will prove to be a long, disruptive period of adjustment. Our choices are 3 Letters to the Editor to either evolve a new economic model that is 4 Vermont Vox Populi: Our Environment compatible with limited physical resources or risk and Our Food – Excerpts from the a catastrophic failure of our monetary system – Funny Money: Will a dollar be worth much in the 21st century? Summer 2008 Gubernatorial Debate and with it, the basis for civilization as we know THE INTERNET: PLEASE CONTACT US WITH AUTHORSHIP INFORMATION. 8 Notes from the Middlebury Institute: it today. Why Secession Is A Tough Sell In In order to understand why, we must start at the it was only in 1960 that the world first passed 3 Vermont And Beyond Thomas Naylor beginning. billion in total population, the same amount that is 9 The Vermont Sustainable Heating While it was operating well, our monetary projected to be added over the next 42 years. Each Initiative Ron Miller system was a great system, one that fostered incred- new person places additional demands on food, ible technological innovation and advances in stan- water, energy and other finite resources. 11 The Case for Local Wheat and Bread dards of living, two characteristics I fervently wish in Vermont Erik Andrus to continue. But every system has its pros and its 13 LocalVore Living: How to Isolate cons, and our monetary system has a doozy of a Vermont from Skyrocketing Food Costs flaw. Robin McDermott It is this: our monetary system must continually 14 Free Vermont Media: Transition Towns: expand, forever. Using Our Heads, Hearts, and Hands in The U.S./world monetary system was designed a Post-Peak Oil Vermont George Lisi and implemented at a time when the earth’s 17 The Greenneck: Splitting Firewood: resources seemed limitless, and so few gave much Musings on Survival in a 21st Century critical thought to the implications that every Vermont single dollar in circulation was to be loaned into existence by a bank with interest. In fact most 24 Dispersions: Sixty-Eight Million thought it a terribly “modern” concept, and most Americans Can’t Be Wrong Kirkpatrick probably still do. Sale Anything that is continually expanding by some In parallel with exponential population growth, percentage amount, no matter how minuscule, is our monetary system is also exhibiting exponen- FALL ON T HE W EB said to be growing geometrically, or exponentially. tial behavior. Consider this evidence: Geometric growth can be seen in this sequence of • Podcast/read a transcript of Vermont’s numbers (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64) while an arithme- 1) Money supply growth (see first chart, first 2008 Gubernatorial Debate tic growth sequence is (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). In 1798 page 6). It took us from 1620 until 1973 • Why I Will Not Vote for a U.S. President Thomas Malthus postulated that human popula- to create the first $1 trillion of U.S money in 2008 (Analysis by Carolyn Baker) tion’s geometric growth would, at some point, stock (measured by adding up every bank • Free Vermont Radio on WDEV – exceed the arithmetic returns of the earth, prin- account, CD, money market fund, etc). download weekly podcasts (Radio / cipally in the arena of food. To paraphrase, he The sum of all the roads, factories, bridges, Podcast) recognized that the exponential growth of human schools, and houses built, together with • Your cards and letters numbers would meet with the constraints imposed every war fought and every other economic by a finite world. transaction that ever took place over those Join the Conversation: www.vtcommons.org As seen in the following chart, human popula- first 350 years, resulted in the creation of $1 tion is growing exponentially and is on track to trillion in money stock [1]. The most recent to subscribe to our free monthly E-newsletter, contact [email protected] reach 9.5 billion by 2050. To put this in perspective, continued on page 6 VC 25.indd 1 8/20/08 12:21:54 PM 2 VERMONT COMMONS FA LL 2008 Editorial On Becoming Sovereign – Not ‘More’ Sovereign y wife and I have lived in Vermont for 26 viduals, much less by vast aggregated populations up Vermont agriculture, we’d turn not to political Myears, the last 14 in a locally timbered octagon spread out over millions of square miles of incred- theorists but to practitioners….” in South Stafford on 20 acres along the border of ibly varied homelands. He also warns that “political independence may Sharon. Robin McDermott’s “LocalVore” column I don’t live my life in Washington, D.C. Nor do I or may not be a good idea, and in any event it’s a and The Greenneck’s musings while splitting fire- live it in Wyoming, or Louisiana, or anywhere else long ways off.” wood, found in this issue, speak to our own expe- in this immense vastness called America. In this As it no doubt was for Poles, Hungarians, rience of growing and storing much of our own Czechs, Ukrainians, Kazaks, Turkmens, and scores food (all the while depending on CSAs, local farm- of other nationals, including the South African ers markets and food co-ops, as well as – I confess This journal has explicitly recognized blacks, way back in the late 1980s. – getting olive oil and wine from distant lands), McKibben seems to recognize, despite himself, splitting and stacking the five cords we must have that functional independence and that economics and politics are linked when he or freeze (no other source for “back-up”). I know provides a variety of examples to illustrate the that what my Vermont forebears did – live self- sovereignty are indissoluble. problems “functional independence” has on the reliant lives – can be done again, and maybe just ground – to wit, when the Douglas Administration as well or better by us. (In a small plastic-covered seems intent on destroying the Intervale and the 2x4-framed greenhouse I’ve harvested salad crops incomprehensible space, now filled with violent Vermont Compost Company, or when in “a major in December, and if I can do that, others can do it dreams bereft of human kindness, dreams that miscalculation” that same administration “let slip better.) hold us hostage and aimless in their thrall, where away” the opportunity for buying, town-by-town In the past I’d dreamed of going all the way – we Americans, now almost completely shorn or otherwise, the Connecticut River power dams, growing and putting up all our food for a full year’s of a free press, day-in-day-out are manipulated now happily owned by a Canadian corporation. cycle, relying on the 600-year-old state-of-the- by a greed- and war-obsessed elite shamelessly Further, he raises a host of almost purely politi- art technology of a masonry stove (invented by contemptuous of who we are. cal questions when he asks: “How do you run a Europeans to stave off resource shortages brought I live my life exclusively here in one small state, landlocked country?… Is it rational to even talk on by the pressures of a burgeoning continental Vermont. Far from Wall Street and the Beltway. about being able to defend our own turf ?… If you population at the dawn of the Little Ice Age) to In his welcome article on Vermont indepen- don’t have oil, how do you keep your roads paved?” heat our entire home using an easy one-to-two dence published in Seven Days on July 23, 2008 Among many other such political perplexities. cords. But now such dreams are dross for me. (www.7dvt.com), Bill McKibben calls for “func- This journal, part of a movement one presumes Why dross? In a word: community. The spirit, tional independence” as the “proper first step” for McKibben inadvertently mischaracterized as “the the zeitgeist of our times belongs to small, face- Vermonters to take to “withstand the tide of trou- movement for a more independent Vermont” to-face collectives, communities where we live bles coming our way.” By “functional” I understand rather than what it is, a movement for an indepen- our lives. Independence and the future itself is him to mean practical or economic independence. dent Vermont, has explicitly recognized that func- now a communal enterprise, no longer meaning- Turning to the example of agriculture, McKibben tional independence — sustainable self-reliance in fully done by isolated and sometimes heroic indi- warns, “If we were really committed to ramping all the necessary conditions for life — and sover- eignty are indissoluble. They go together like love Contributors and marriage, or they dissolve.