About:
Sustainable19320 attempts to discover, distill and present some of the best practices developed around the world in the area of sustainability. Particularly subjects that lead to personal or group action. We acknowledge the challenges that face the human population and we want to be part of building a better world.
The Inspiration: By 19320 resident, Tony Buck.
Most content on this website written by Tony Buck unless otherwise stated.
Mid-winter 2008 into 2009, financial crises, I was worried, I almost never worry.
I said to my friends through 2008, “When we stop selling houses to each other, I don’t know what else is going on.” Now I’m just a handyman, so what do I know? Well almost overnight we went to the brink of a depression. We now realize that many economic games have been played in the last twenty years, on a personal and societal level, to keep the hyper-consumer world running.
I heard Toynbee, author of Civilization on Trial from the 1940s, saying: 'the West hasn’t learnt it’s fall lesson yet. And that lesson is that it too can fall.' All the other civilizations did. And he also suggests that all other civilizations failed because their politics couldn’t respond to the particular challenge that was happening at the time.
I never considered that Wall Street could affect my life so much. My antenna went up, I was agitated and whenever that happens I know there’s something I don’t know.
The phone didn’t ring for jobs so much the winter of 2008. One of my really wealthy customers even said, “Although there’s plenty more on the list, I want to wait until the stock market goes up.” She saw my look of surprise, “We don't know what’s going to happen, you know.” That was March, 2009. The stock market was below 7,000. I came home thinking: Wow! even the well-off don’t know what’s going on. A voice deep inside me said, “This is different, something has changed.”
And it wasn’t just the financial stuff. Something was different about the whole world. It was like you’d been hearing for ages about an iceberg floating south from the Arctic, and suddenly the morning news said it had run aground on the New Jersey shore, and you had no idea it was so close. How could that happen? Were they just not reporting as it passed New York? Like how come the economists didn’t know that once we stopped selling houses there was virtually no other commerce engine big enough to keep the American consumer economy humming? Where was history? Where were the college educated financial wizards? How come they weren’t telling us we’re post-industrial, even post-consumer? What has happened to us?
Now I heard myself saying other things to friends. A new script was getting repeated. The main gist was we’ve got to prepare ourselves, even insulate ourselves from the financial knuckleheads who have shown they’re prepared to take down the whole world for their short-term profits; they don’t appear to care about fair play or the rest of us.
I’d bought a smaller truck four years before in 2004 because I knew gas prices had to rise. I went from 12 miles a gallon to 21 overnight for four years before the gas price hit $4.60 a gallon in the summer of 2008. I should be the head of the Treasury! I knew gas had reached the point where it would only increase in price for the rest of my life due to world demand. Even though I’d heard energy execs saying it would become cheap again, like it always did. I thought, they’ve got to know better than that. They’re just trying to head off alternative energy initiatives and efficiency efforts to protect their market share.
So I hit the internet. And just like ants don’t know where the sugar is in your kitchen, they just spread out, knowing they’ll bump into it eventually. And bump, I hit it, or at least a friend did saying, “This sounds like the things you’ve been saying for the past six months!” And she was right. Only they were ahead of me, they were preparing. They had the list, better than mine. They’d put it all together, the last twenty years neglect. All the icebergs that had been drifting south and north, east and west, there they were spelled out. And not just the negatives, also a positive vision of how we might take the icebergs and make lemonade, while trying to prevent the next set of icebergs from breaking off.
They were talking about the triple challenge of Peak Oil, Climate Change and a Frozen Economy for the foreseeable future. Peak Oil? Production has peaked and we’re using more than is being discovered or produced - just as India, China and Brazil want to live like us. So cheap energy is over for the long run. Food gets more expensive because currently our food system relies heavily on pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer which come from fossil fuels. And some say we can't even use the known stores of fossil fuels without frying the planet. Why aren’t the politicians talking about this?
Oh stop worrying, say some of my friends, who I think are actually frightened to consider what I and others are saying, which I understand. I found this phrase for them – “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark!” This is scary stuff and we’re all in it together. But it boils down to this: Do you want to have a hand in designing your future, or do you want to get kicked around by chaos and muddle through? I’m busy designing.
Now this is world-wide. I call it the Sustain-Age since 2008 (although it began long before that). Modern Western human society has been atomized, which means we are all living in our little cells and not interacting enough. I think that is over. All the so-called rugged individualists, who are totally dependent on the modern world, might not like this, but there is going to have to be more community interaction, more working together. There will probably be less money around. I know, I know, who needs that? But how can there be a recovery, a recovery to what? The 1990s? - all borrowed money. The 2000s? - all borrowed money. Do the math. It's not 1950 when we were about to make new cars for everyone - we're post-industrial, meaning people who live on and get paid so much less than us are now making most of the stuff.
So here is some of the big stuff that I think is real and we can affect in our lives:
Locally I've met others who feel uneasy about these times and we have agreed it's time to share the future. I don't know about you but I would like to have some control over my life. That is the reason for this website and the future efforts I hope we can all get involved in. I think the path of Sustainability, a much over-used word I know, though I can't think of a better one, is the way forward. Hopefully, individually and together, we can educate ourselves and our region about the Sustain-Age and figure out how to be the best Citizens of it. We can draw from many positive efforts that are already underway around the world. Great adventures, insights, changes, and opportunities lie ahead. Let's join in.
Sustainable19320 attempts to discover, distill and present some of the best practices developed around the world in the area of sustainability. Particularly subjects that lead to personal or group action. We acknowledge the challenges that face the human population and we want to be part of building a better world.
The Inspiration: By 19320 resident, Tony Buck.
Most content on this website written by Tony Buck unless otherwise stated.
Mid-winter 2008 into 2009, financial crises, I was worried, I almost never worry.
I said to my friends through 2008, “When we stop selling houses to each other, I don’t know what else is going on.” Now I’m just a handyman, so what do I know? Well almost overnight we went to the brink of a depression. We now realize that many economic games have been played in the last twenty years, on a personal and societal level, to keep the hyper-consumer world running.
I heard Toynbee, author of Civilization on Trial from the 1940s, saying: 'the West hasn’t learnt it’s fall lesson yet. And that lesson is that it too can fall.' All the other civilizations did. And he also suggests that all other civilizations failed because their politics couldn’t respond to the particular challenge that was happening at the time.
I never considered that Wall Street could affect my life so much. My antenna went up, I was agitated and whenever that happens I know there’s something I don’t know.
The phone didn’t ring for jobs so much the winter of 2008. One of my really wealthy customers even said, “Although there’s plenty more on the list, I want to wait until the stock market goes up.” She saw my look of surprise, “We don't know what’s going to happen, you know.” That was March, 2009. The stock market was below 7,000. I came home thinking: Wow! even the well-off don’t know what’s going on. A voice deep inside me said, “This is different, something has changed.”
And it wasn’t just the financial stuff. Something was different about the whole world. It was like you’d been hearing for ages about an iceberg floating south from the Arctic, and suddenly the morning news said it had run aground on the New Jersey shore, and you had no idea it was so close. How could that happen? Were they just not reporting as it passed New York? Like how come the economists didn’t know that once we stopped selling houses there was virtually no other commerce engine big enough to keep the American consumer economy humming? Where was history? Where were the college educated financial wizards? How come they weren’t telling us we’re post-industrial, even post-consumer? What has happened to us?
Now I heard myself saying other things to friends. A new script was getting repeated. The main gist was we’ve got to prepare ourselves, even insulate ourselves from the financial knuckleheads who have shown they’re prepared to take down the whole world for their short-term profits; they don’t appear to care about fair play or the rest of us.
I’d bought a smaller truck four years before in 2004 because I knew gas prices had to rise. I went from 12 miles a gallon to 21 overnight for four years before the gas price hit $4.60 a gallon in the summer of 2008. I should be the head of the Treasury! I knew gas had reached the point where it would only increase in price for the rest of my life due to world demand. Even though I’d heard energy execs saying it would become cheap again, like it always did. I thought, they’ve got to know better than that. They’re just trying to head off alternative energy initiatives and efficiency efforts to protect their market share.
So I hit the internet. And just like ants don’t know where the sugar is in your kitchen, they just spread out, knowing they’ll bump into it eventually. And bump, I hit it, or at least a friend did saying, “This sounds like the things you’ve been saying for the past six months!” And she was right. Only they were ahead of me, they were preparing. They had the list, better than mine. They’d put it all together, the last twenty years neglect. All the icebergs that had been drifting south and north, east and west, there they were spelled out. And not just the negatives, also a positive vision of how we might take the icebergs and make lemonade, while trying to prevent the next set of icebergs from breaking off.
They were talking about the triple challenge of Peak Oil, Climate Change and a Frozen Economy for the foreseeable future. Peak Oil? Production has peaked and we’re using more than is being discovered or produced - just as India, China and Brazil want to live like us. So cheap energy is over for the long run. Food gets more expensive because currently our food system relies heavily on pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer which come from fossil fuels. And some say we can't even use the known stores of fossil fuels without frying the planet. Why aren’t the politicians talking about this?
Oh stop worrying, say some of my friends, who I think are actually frightened to consider what I and others are saying, which I understand. I found this phrase for them – “It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark!” This is scary stuff and we’re all in it together. But it boils down to this: Do you want to have a hand in designing your future, or do you want to get kicked around by chaos and muddle through? I’m busy designing.
Now this is world-wide. I call it the Sustain-Age since 2008 (although it began long before that). Modern Western human society has been atomized, which means we are all living in our little cells and not interacting enough. I think that is over. All the so-called rugged individualists, who are totally dependent on the modern world, might not like this, but there is going to have to be more community interaction, more working together. There will probably be less money around. I know, I know, who needs that? But how can there be a recovery, a recovery to what? The 1990s? - all borrowed money. The 2000s? - all borrowed money. Do the math. It's not 1950 when we were about to make new cars for everyone - we're post-industrial, meaning people who live on and get paid so much less than us are now making most of the stuff.
So here is some of the big stuff that I think is real and we can affect in our lives:
- There is now so much pollution in the world it could backfire on us at any moment, it didn't go 'away'
- Climate change is real, whether you think we caused it or it's a natural cycle, either way, we're going to have to deal with it
- Fossil fuel use by everyone must be reduced by 80% (and we can do this)
- We are all at the mercy of the unseen hands of those who manipulate the world economy to their advantage
- The environment and our local ecology needs our attention more than ever in so many ways, and whether we like it or not, we need it, it doesn't need us
- Soil and food production must become a conscious subject in everyone's mind worldwide
Locally I've met others who feel uneasy about these times and we have agreed it's time to share the future. I don't know about you but I would like to have some control over my life. That is the reason for this website and the future efforts I hope we can all get involved in. I think the path of Sustainability, a much over-used word I know, though I can't think of a better one, is the way forward. Hopefully, individually and together, we can educate ourselves and our region about the Sustain-Age and figure out how to be the best Citizens of it. We can draw from many positive efforts that are already underway around the world. Great adventures, insights, changes, and opportunities lie ahead. Let's join in.
