There are some things that perhaps need to be said about what's behind the work we're attempting with relocalization, things that might make some people feel a bit uncomfortable. But for the record, just to be as clear as possible:
This work arises from a deep calling in response to an urgent need. Relocalization is not based on some simple idealistic urge to create a better world or a better way of life. Instead, relocalization is a carefully considered strategic response to converging global crises—including runaway global warming, the global demand for oil outstripping supply, and impending economic chaos—which together are producing rapid and profound changes in our world, changes which are seriously damaging our biosphere, undermining human freedom, and making life unsustainable on this planet. We must recognize this situation for what it is: a planetary emergency (aka The LONG Emergency). Our decisive response is urgently needed.
It’s now undeniable that we must quickly learn to reweave the fabric of fundamental connections and relationships that have been at the heart of human civilization from the beginning. We must learn to reconnect with the earth, with the seasons, with our biosphere, with each other. We must rebuild our relationships with those who live in our neighborhoods, with those who grow our food, with those who produce and sell the goods we need, with those who supply the services we require. And we must do it all locally as much as possible, rebuilding local living economies, regenerating community. Only through profoundly local living can we curtail our profligate consumption, end our contribution to global warming, and restore balance and sanity to our planet.
The most valuable and most essential resource on this planet is community. Through the process of economic globalization, and the advent of a culture of profligate consumption, community has now become our scarcest and most threatened resource. Peggy Holman once said, “The opposite of war is not peace, it is community.”
A fossil-fuel based culture of consumption—and the economic globalization that it spawns—destroys community. Only by building community self-sufficiency in energy, food and economy can we preserve what's most important about the human species and ensure the future of human freedom.
Our only viable alternative is to learn how to provision our essential needs locally. This means developing community self-sufficiency in energy, food and economy, strengthening our local economies so as to not be so vulnerable to national and global economic volatility.
We are not creating a community here. Instead, we are restoring community in Boulder County. That's what this work is all about: we are rebuilding the most basic foundation of human civilization, even as human civilization as we know it is on the brink of collapse. This is our charter.
We are regenerating or rebuilding community right where we already are. This is a process of transformation, not of building from scratch. We're remodeling the house, not bulldozing it flat and starting over. We're not moving to the country to begin again. And we're not heading off to another planet because this one is beyond hope.
It's a long process, which begins with understanding our strengths and our vulnerabilities here in Boulder County. It requires strategic planning like our lives depend on it—planning for the challenges and opportunities of rapidly-converging global crises, planning to gracefully and ethically ride down the long curve of an energy-constrained future.
A handful of us have already begun, but the biggest challenge will be to engage the entire population of our communities in this process—along with existing infrastructures of government, economy and industry—so that the goals and plans of relocalization are actually adopted, implemented and achieved.
Your comments are invited and welcome...
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1 comment:
Michael,
In Sharon Astyks's blog that you refer to in an earlier post she writes:
"There's so very much work that needs to be done that it can get overwhelming. How do we narrow things down? None of us can do it all, so how do we know what to do, when to step up? How do we put ourselves forward into places we weren't fully prepared to go, into roles we aren't wholly ready for?"
And later:
"Sometimes I still wonder if I'm the right person, often consent does not illuminate me, sometimes I'd just as soon do something else. But the truth is this - the work must be done by someone, and why not me?
And why not you?"
This reminds me of what Tim and I call “the choice to step into a big story." When we choose to step into a big story it is usually hard and scary and in the end may not turn out the way we envisioned, maybe not by a long shot. But we have to risk that. Regardless of the final outcome of people's efforts, what we’ve seen is that everyone who chooses to step into a big story immediately finds a sense of purpose and meaning that is sorely lacking so long as people remain locked into this very constrained cultural story of helpless consumerism.
You and your people have stepped into a big story, the story that people are smarter, more loving, more willing, more powerful than we might believe if we accept as accurate the labels we’ve been handed by the culture of empire.
The story you’ve stepped into says that “a small group of committed citizens can change the world.” The small group of committed world financiers have certainly stepped into that story. And they've managed to change the world radically, for the worse. How good it will be for visionaries and activists and grandmothers and teenagers and bank tellers and pastors and elementary school teachers and small scale farmers in small and mid-sized towns and cities, how good it will be when all kinds of regular people, with ethics and heart step into that same story!
When we began writing and production of What A Way To Go we had no idea what we were getting into. If we had, we would not have attempted it. In fact we’d been avoiding it. But a year into very sporadic work on the project, Tim was in a serious head-on car accident. He was left for three months in a wheel chair. All of a sudden he had nothing to do but sit in front of the computer and do research and write and begin to edit archival footage. That, and go to physical therapy a couple of times a week.
For us, the question “Why not you?” was answered when the universe threw a little blue Ford at Tim’s car and said “Hey you! It’s time! No more screwing around installing broken-tile mosaics for high-end homeowners. It’s time to get serious.”
None of us knows right now the course of climate change or the rapidity of energy descent. None of us knows precisely the profoundly serious consequences of those, or of the eventual collapse of the incredibly fragile economy and financial institutions that regular people depend on. It may all unravel relatively slowly over years. Or it may hit us head on like the little blue Ford did Tim.
However it happens, and I have to say the little blue Ford is looking more and more likely, the sooner people come to terms with the inevitability of the radical change ahead, the more people follow the lead of this growing edge of committed citizenry, the more likely the future will unfold with some measure of grace, with some mitigation of shock and pain.
And the more people understand why all of these changes are happening the more likely they too will step into a bigger and more noble story of what human beings came here for.
Thanks for your vision. Thanks for your willingness to attempt the impossible. It speaks volumes of your belief in your fellow human beings
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