You Know Your Old When...

1. Tina Yothers has had her first child and you haven't.

2. It's a real stretch to stay out past 11 PM.

3. You remember babysiting your little sisters during your mother's 30th b-day party...and she stayed out WAY past 11PM.

4. You get excited in the fertility doctor's office, when you momentarily loose track of how old you are, thinking that maybe you are, in fact, only turning 35, and don't yet qualify for the 'mature pregnancy' information packet.

5. When your teeth really do seem to be getting a little longer.

Dismantled Smoke Alarm

As President George Bush arrives in San Diego today for photo-ops with the fire survivors, I sit in my living room where I have dismantled the smoke detector because I can't take the intermittent beeping warning me of the poor air quality (we're not in actual fire danger here in Carlsbad), and I am on-line getting the beegezus scared out of me as I read deeper and deeper into the various peak oil websites and reports. Nothing like a local disaster to shake me out of my complacency and help me re-focus on the larger problems at hand.

First is was acid rain (my high school report), then it was corporate environmentalism (my honors thesis in college), recently it has been 'environmental sustainability' issues in general, and now it's peak oil that I'm most concerned about. All the issues are interrelated of course, but peak oil is such an immediate problem. The idea that we are running out of cheap oil- the very thing relied upon by our entire existence as we know it- is scary. Is it an exaggeration that there will be major (ongoing) recessions and a possible collapse of the global monetary system within a 10 year time frame? I believe our lives will need to change in very substantial ways- from where we live (not in the suburbs) to where we produce our food (locally)- there's even talk about developing local currency. If you've got the time to read my blog, then you've got the time to become familiarized with the unprecedented issues that will be changing our lives in the very near term. The upshot of what is otherwise just gloom & doom is that that we could be headed towards a new type of community-based life wherein we are more closely bonded to our families and neighbors. Here's my quick-list of good links:

• The Energy Bulletin Primer on Peak Oil
• Our World is Finite: The implications of resource limitations - a good overview of potential impacts by the very fine publication The Oil Drum.
• A 10-minute video clip from Local Future Network which is a good overview, but doesn't go into solutions too much.

While there may very well be some great technological solutions (alternative fuels etc.), technology alone will not be enough. We will have to consume less, conserve more and focus on localization as a immediate and long-term solution. Here's my pick-list for solution-based organizations:

• The Post Carbon Institute
• The Relocalization Network
• The Community Solution
• The Local Future Network

All of these sites will have more references to books, articles and reports that are important to read. Thank god for links!

Happy Reading-

Big Fires

This is not a sunset.

This morning was the longest afternoon I've ever experienced. Since 9 AM it has looked like one of those mid-summer late-afternoons when golden-red light streams into the windows casting long shadows and making you thirsty for a cold beer. This weird time-warp continued all day as the smoke from the wildfires obscured the sun's light rays. Along with the smell of distant smoke, reminiscent of campfires (or in my case, the romanticized memory of Vietnam, where they still burn agricultural waste) and a distinct dryness in the air- a condition that always sooths my desert soul, I was feeling downright groovy. If only it wasn't for all that destruction going on out there.

It's strange being in a secure area where everything around you is combusting. Just down the road at the mall, there's evacuees sprawled throughout the parking lot, living out of their RV's for an unspecified amount of time. Anyway, you've all seen everything there is to see on TV. I've never been so popular. I get all kinds of calls and e-mails now. I noticed especially high spikes of concern after CNN runs their San Diego Firestorm stories- the calls really start flooding in after those CNN dramatizations.

Our hygrometer is off the charts. Carlsbad has 3% humidity.

The only real visible effect to our property was the ash falling all over.