Peak Oil in the Library

I had to see it to believe it. The cover story of Library Journal was "After Oil". The story was even more incredible. It was an accurate representation of peak oil and various scenarios that could play out in American libraries. Take a look for yourself at: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6539360.html

It's all there. Except that the issue of an economic downturn and the fate of libraries isn't resolved enough for me. If things get really bad, will libraries be staffed and open anyway. There's an assumption here that they will be. I wouldn't assume that. Nevertheless, the author, a library school professor in Florida, is on target enough to suggest that people will be in the library asking about permaculture and ecovillages. Bring em on!

Of course, there's always a nay-sayer and sure enough the first commenter online to this story found it one-sided and unrealistic and too "gloom and doom". What I find funny is that he disagrees that things will get so bad that people will be making soap and growing gardens. Hello!
People are doing this already and you don't even know it! This is the type of ignorance that I fear. An ignorance that is undermined by complacency. As a result I sent my own comment to Library Journal thanking them for bringing peak oil to the attention of librarians and cautioning that despite the fact that we don't know the depth of impact peak oil will have on libraries, librarians (and anyone else, for that matter) should follow the developments and be prepared. Just because something has always been doesn't mean it will always be.

2008 NYCPDC Class, March 1-2, 2008

We started the 2008 NYC Permaculture Design Certificate Course
on the first weekend of March. There are 23 very diverse and
interested (and interesting) students. Here's some photos of day
two when Rafter Sass taught everyone about Liberation Ecology.
There are several pictures of Rafter because he told us he has
not pictures of himself teaching so we indulged him.

Blaming Bush

It's fairly often that we hear people blame Bush for where we're at. He gets blamed for the fiasco in Iraq, he gets blamed for oil prices, he gets blamed for the failing economy. Poor George. He gets blamed for everything. And now, heading into the twilight of his presidency, he's thinking of his legacy and looking to Africa to battle AIDS while also defending torturous interrogation tactics like waterboarding. He's a classic American, paradoxical. Why? Because the ability to hold two contradictory views at once seems to be uniquely American. Or maybe not, I don't know enough about people in other places. What I'm driving at though is that Americans really are quite clueless about reality despite our penchant for reality television.

The reality about our reality is not that it's George Bush's fault. He's too easy of a scapegoat now that he's so out of favor. Really it's our fault, every one of us. It's our fault the economy is failing. We continue to put faith in bankers whose bottom line is what's best for the shareholder and not what's best for the little people. It's our fault that oil prices are what they are. What the hell did you buy that SUV for? To buy more gas? It's our own fault that we're in a war quagmire in Iraq, in part because a majority of us voted for Bush and we were too stupid to ask questions about the invisible link between Saddam Hussein and 911.

So next time you hear someone pushing blame on Bush, correct them. They can feel whatever they like about Bush, but their just casting blame in the easiest place possible when they should be thinking about blame when they look in the mirror. Time to wake up!