I’ve been reading eaarth, by Bill McKibben, and it’s a very scary read for the first 3/4 of the book, which is why I avoided reading it for the last year or so since it came out.  It took some regular and vigorous urging from Jeanne Mayell, the intuitive counselor who helped guide me safely through the wild and crazy last 4 years (see my memoir Beyond the Great Abyss), to get me to read it.  I knew it would be upsetting and depressing because it’s about global warming and you’d have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand not to have noticed that our weather is going crazy.  Epic rains and floods, droughts and fires, millennial hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, snowstorms, etc., and then the resulting crop failures and  food shortages, refugees, disease, environmental disasters, trauma and loss of life.   Exactly what has been predicted for years by the scientists who study global warming’s effects.

And at the same time, we will be running out of the fossil fuels on which we depend so heavily, which will be both a blessing and a further challenge.  It will force us to stop burning those fossil fuels, a primary cause of the rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere that are the cause of global warming, but it also makes it much harder for us to respond to disaster and to maintain our historically unprecedented energy-rich lifestyles.  This is McKibben’s main point: we will not be able to continue to live the way currently do.

In a passage that shocked me, McKibben points out that, “one barrel of oil yields as much energy as twenty-five thousand hours of human labor – more than a decade of human labor per barrel.  The average American uses twenty-five barrels each year, which is like finding three hundred years of free labor annually.”   We are running out of oil and for complicated reasons there are no other viable options for producing that amount of energy.  (Nuclear could do it, but the cost of converting safely is overwhelming).

So what do we do??!!  That is the last 1/4 of the book.  We must move to self-sufficiency in energy and food production and McKibben believes, as does Jeanne, that the only way to do that will be to diversify and localize.  We will need to live in smaller groups, grow our own food organically and locally, and use the natural features of where we live to produce energy, i.e., wind power in windy areas, electricity from running water in wet areas….  This will drop transportation costs, protect diversity (important for long-term survival) and increases food production.

It is a future that will require sacrifice and change and that will be hard, but that also will have rewards.  There will be greater connection within communities and families, a closer connection to the land, even perhaps greater spiritual and emotional satisfaction.  And though we will not be able to physically travel as we are accustomed to, the internet will still link us and allow communication and the accumulation and transmission of knowledge.

Along with energy conservation and activism (visit Bill McKibben’s website), I suggest preparing your body and mind now for the tough times to come.   We cannot afford to be weak, soft and ill.  Explore the possibilities of natural health to strengthen you and to help you reach your highest potential.  You will help yourself and everyone who depends on you.