Peak Oil and being single -- some ramblings

I've been doing some Googling on Peak Oil and being single. Most articles about Peak Oil (particularly those envisioning a more extreme state of affairs once oil runs out, where society as we know it alters significantly and desperation and chaos set in as food and transportation costs skyrocket) focus on the paramount need for a return to small communities. We're already seeing the impact that $130+ a barrel oil is having on food and transportation costs now; even conservative experts seem hard-pressed to predict anything other than that these costs will continue to soar. Smaller communities producing their own food in a sustainable manner can knock out the increasingly more and more expensive middle step of needing this or that item shipped across (or from out of) the country, thus significantly lowering the cost of food. With individuals learning the sorts of skills that were necessary before cheap fossil fuels enabled us to opt to replace things rather than repair them, and then coming together to share these skills with each other (or to share the products of their respective skills), these communities can be brought closer to a sort of self-sufficiency.

In larger urban centers, many people are coming together to talk about skills acquisition and about transition towns, or relocalization in general. In more rural areas, some folks already have a head start, growing kitchen gardens or living a more basic life where consumerism isn't necessarily as rampant. Then you have these grey areas, these smaller urban centers or larger towns, where ''rural'' means an hour or two's drive into the country, and where finding like-minded people in your own backyard who won't look absolutely incredulous when you mention that oil is running out is like trying to find a dolphin in a goldfish pond. Establishing a Peak Oil group when living in a not-so-populated area starts to feel like a hopeless endeavour and hopping on a farm to learn about growing things can turn into a time-consuming and expensive ordeal unless you have your own motorized vehicle. Books can only take you so far when it comes to learning, so what to do? And what on earth to do if while in the middle of trying to work around these obstacles, you also happen to be unsatisfactorily single? If it's well-nigh impossible to establish a Peak Oil group in a large town, can you imagine finding a Peak Oil aware partner?

I've read about the difficulty that people have impressing the impact of the developing economic crisis on their spouses and family members to try to get them involved. I have a hard enough time when my SUV driving friends affectionately call me a nut for spending most of my time reading about nutrition, herbs, foraging , alternative energy and low-tech skills; however, I can just imagine the small talk over coffee on a first date.

''So where do you see yourself in the next few years?''
''Well, I'm thinking about ditching my things and resettling into an intentional community.''
''Oh...''
''Yep.''
''So, ah... Hmm. Why?''
''We're running out of oil and the economy is going belly up. We've left our food supply in the hands of agri-bullies who've already brought us some of the most toxic man-made substances ever created yet claim their new mostly under-tested frankenfoods are safe, and we need to reclaim our right to control what we consume. Plus, who doesn't want to live a more meaningful life?''
''Er... sure.... Waitress? Cheque please?''

It seems that it would be a lot easier to be in a relationship and to transition into a less fossil-fuel reliant existence than to attempt to do so while head-butting one's way into the dating game. Instead of jumping as a single entity into a community of many, or stumbling about feeling a little lost sometimes, you'd have a cohort to share the challenges. Technology is such that you can reach out to connect with other like-minded individuals over the internet, but these sorts of exchanges are tricky. Also, almost anyone who's ever taken a go at internet dating will gladly share with you their horror stories, or at the very least, will share their tales of heartache and unwanted surprises. And besides, I surely don't remember the last time I saw ''biointensive gardening'' show up on any man's list of interests on a dating site.

Things to think about...

NB Conservation Council's solar water heater campaign

The NB Conservation Council is currently engaged in a letter writing campaign to encourage folks to contact NB Power to ask them to provide solar water heater rentals for its customers. According to the NB Conservation Council's website, NB Power could do this without entailing a cost increase for themselves or for their customers. Currently, NB Power lists guidelines on its website by which customers must comply if they want to take their existing electric rental heater and connect it to a solar (or other renewable) energy source. I'm assuming that the Conservation Council would like to see NB Power offer the whole package and installation to its customers, rather than have the customers take on the additional cost of extra components and the upgrade to solar themselves.

At 400 kWh per month, your average 40 gal hot water heater accounts for a significant chunk of your monthly energy consumption (and electricity bill!). According to the current rate info on the NB Power site, that's an average of just under $40 a month.

Click here to add your voice to those asking for this simple step the utility could take to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels.

South Knowlesville Community Land Trust

I slipped into a little piece of comfort this past weekend, in the middle of the bustle of finding myself offering up my home to a friend from out of town who's become closer to me than family in some ways. We took a road trip into north-western New Brunswick -- country that's so familiar to me that although its absolute gorgeousness always leaves me a little in awe, returning to it always leaves me all too well aware of the transitoriness of the current backdrop or context of my small city. We visited Leland and Tegan Dougherty-Wong at Artful Acre, hoping to get a good peek at (and understanding of) their recent project, which is the setting up of a community land trust in South Knowlesville to establish a small sustainable community of individuals with an emphasis on community, ecology and economic self-sufficiency. They plan to establish a common food growing area, with fields of grains and vegetable crops, as well as orchards and herbs.

When we arrived, Leland was engaged in sharing some of his timberframe and straw-bale construction knowledge and skills with a small workshop group. (I should note before I forget that he'll be part of a more extensive three day Natural Building Theory, Design & Practice workshop at the nearby Falls Brook Centre from June 26 to 29.) So after having taken a few wrong turns, we arrived late and were only able to hear a bit of the presentation before everyone was welcomed into the Dougherty-Wong home for a potluck. After discussing the economic reality of the rural area with Leland, we ended up learning more about their vision of the South Knowlesville Community Land Trust and of the steps they've taken towards getting it going. Tegan mentioned that they were still ironing some things out, but that their biggest need right now is for more folks to jump in, both to settle on some guiding principles and to do the hands-on work that will be involved in building some of the homes and of preparing the actual land on which food will be grown. For more information, visit their site. Here are some ways in which you can get involved.

About the company of others

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it
extendeth.
For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery
of pictures,
and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

- Francis Bacon

Canada's Bill C-517 killed, Canadians denied mandatory labelling of GM foods

Well, after receiving no attention whatsoever in the mainstream media, it looks as if the private member's bill, Bill C-517, An Act to Amend the Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods) was kicked to the curb before even getting to the second reading stage to determine whether it should be passed on to a committee. Those who voted it down include Convervative MPs Preston Manning and Peter MacKay, as well as Liberal MPs Michael Ignatieff and Paul Zed (from Saint John, NB) and if you click on the link above, you'll get a complete list of which MP thinks you shouldn't have a right to know what goes into your food. There were 101 ''yays'', 156 ''nays'' and 18 paired votes. That's close enough that all it would have taken was a bit of reporting on this to get people's attention so that they'd pressure their MPs to vote to push it forward. Greenpeace Canada has more about it here.

Taylor Clark's ''Meatless Like Me'' and some ramblings on it

Tricia Woolfendon from The Grand Rapids Press' MLive.com wrote a short opinion piece about vegetarianism in response to Taylor Clark's recent piece for Slate called ''Meatless Like Me''. (Actually, if you do a line count, around a third of her piece is actually just a quote from Clark's.)

Woolfendon agrees with Clark's point that vegetarians don't really judge meat-eaters for eating meat. I agree with this to a limited extent. I mean, I don't see how most vegetarians or vegans could walk around in the world, otherwise. All of us are parts of social networks -- friends, family, coworkers, et al. -- that consist mostly of people who consume an omnivorous diet, and regardless of this, we love and like them for the sum of the individuals they are. We deal with it every single day and it's the status quo; that being said, it doesn't mean that we have to like that it's the status quo, or that we should even resign ourselves to it. And it shouldn't have to mean that not liking it or not resigning ourselves to it makes us ''bad'' vegetarians and vegans. It's especially disheartening to me to see vegetarians judging and shaming other vegetarians for having ethical convictions and for not pretending that they don't process and filter life around them (to a certain extent) according to what they value.

Woolfendon also takes it further by saying that she doesn't really care what meat-eaters consume. I think that anyone with real ethical concerns about animal consumption, whether willing to admit it or not, does indeed care about the big picture. We do wish that people would minimize their meat consumption. Less meat consumed means less animals spending lives of suffering until they're slaughtered; less meat consumed means less water and cropland wasted, and less havoc wreaked on our environment. And when it comes to family members, whose health and longevity we cherish, less meat consumed means lower cholesterol, lower rates of obesity and less cancer. You don't have to be preachy to care, and not being preachy doesn't mean that you don't care; not judging does not equate not caring. And although Woolfendon may think that bringing this out in the open (see her link to PETA's factsheets) means you're wagging a finger at others, it doesn't; it just means that you're stating facts. When PCRM publishes an article about the negative health effects of eating meat, they're not judging; they're reporting findings from scientific studies.

Woolfendon does take issue with Clark's assertion that vegetarians '''know' that meat tastes good''. I second Woolfendon's exception to that. I get this from one of my well-meaning omni friends all the time -- her voice takes on a complicit purr and she tries to elicit a confession out of me that surely I must have overpowering memories of the mesmerizing deliciousness of this or that piece of meat and that I just don't want to admit it. The thing is that I really don't. Many vegetarians or vegans find the very sight or smell of meat repulsive, just by virtue of having come to terms with the realization of what's done to animals to serve them up on a plate. It's called association. (And even Clark ends up touching upon this in his Slate article, mentioning how certain types of meat have become gross to him after years of vegetarianism; he only does so, however, after overstating his visceral attachment to the smell and taste of bacon.)

Clark brings up the existence of so many meat analogs on the market as some sort of proof that other vegetarians also crave the taste of meat. Sure, there are a lot of fake meat products on the market, but the thing is that there are actually a lot of non-vegetarians buying them, too. For instance, I have friends who feed their kids soy-dogs rather than meat-based hot-dogs, because of the sodium, preservatives and fat content of the meat-based ones. I try to avoid meat analogs, since although some of them are nicely fortified with vitamins and minerals (like B12), most seem to be high in sodium and are often made using GMO soy. I ate more of them while living with my omni spouse (who adored them).

Woolfendon ends her article echoing Clark's call to chefs everywhere to provide more inventive (i.e. vegetarian dishes in restaurants that are more than leafy greens on a plate). I have to say that over the past couple of years, I've found more and more places -- even a lot of the local pubs in my small city -- offering a wider diversity of vegetarian options. It's not uncommon to find grilled or raw vegetable wraps, pasta dishes, stir fries or veggie-burgers anymore. Interest in meat-free products is on the rise in the mainstream, and this is being reflected in restaurant options. Vegan options are still a dismally altogether different story, however...

With regards to Clark's article itself, I was glad to see him address the issue with folks who refer to themselves as vegetarians, although they still eat fish or chicken. He points out -- and rightly so -- that ''unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore''. On the other hand, I was disappointed that he chose to marginalize vegans, limiting what he says about them to: ''they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with 'tree men' These people are intense.'' It's funny how an article that seems to diminish perceived differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians would segregate one type of vegetarians in that manner.

The overall tone of the article seems almost apologetic. ''Hey guys, I'm just like you -- I even wear leather shoes! See?'' It's as if in purportedly attempting to demystify the relationship between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, Clark also attempts to portray an image of vegetarians as being indistinct from non-vegetarians, and although in most ways they are, I think that in some significant and more weighty ways -- the underlying reasons to what's on their respective plates -- they aren't. And although blurring that over may make dinner conversation a bit more light, it leaves me with a sense that the only good vegetarian is a closet vegetarian, or a vegetarian who shuts up and keeps his vegetarianism to himself, and I'm certain that won't benefit any cow or pig destined for the slaughterhouse in the long run and in a sense, I feel it's being a bit hypocritical in how one presents oneself to the world. As a lovely vegan friend once said to me when I'd mentioned my reluctance to out myself at work: ''There's no shame in being a vegetarian!'' I'm pretty well sure that lecturing and proselytizing aren't the way to go, but I'm even more sure that pretending that one's reasons for becoming a vegetarian should be kept private under fear of social ostracism. I think there's important gray area that should be explored when it comes to how we walk around in the world as vegetarians or vegans, without shame or fear of reprisal and least of all, fear or reprisal from your fellow vegetarians. And I can't help but feel an underlying sense of that from both of these aforementioned articles. Just a whiff of it...

Amy Goodman and Vanity Fair's James Steel on Democracy Now!

A month ago, I'd written about Vanity Fair's recent weighty exposé on the monstrously huge biotech bully Monsanto. Tuesday's episode of Democracy Now! featured Amy Goodman's interview with James Steele, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who co-authored the Vanity Fair piece. You can listen to (or watch) the interview here, or read the transcript here.

Democracy Now! also provides a link to the five page letter written by a Monsanto PR rep to Steele in response to his original article. In the letter, Monsanto attempts to disassociate itself from its previous incarnations, referring to the companies it was as if it's completely unrelated to them, instead of having evolved from them. The rep absolves the ''new'' Monsanto of any sort of ethical accountability and beats it all down to so much legal mumbo-jumbo, as if changing a company's name cleans the slate.

The rep refuses to discuss anything having to do with their bullying and harassment of farmers in what the rep refers to as ''patent infringement cases'', except to describe the manner they go about investigating claims as this almost genteel process. Then, as if to make the whole thing smell even more benevolent, he adds that funds gained by blackmailing and intimidating farmers go towards agricultural education and scholarships. Nice.

The letter response is well worth reading, just to get a sense of the time and energy that this company puts into manipulating its image. And the interview is a must-see.

Ask, and Google News Provides: More Vegan Recipes in the New

The Canadian Press is circulating an Asian-inspired recipe for Sesame Sugar Snap Peas from The Whole Foods Market Cookbook by Steve Petusevsky. It's also circulating a recipe for Bean and Mushroom Burgers from The Vegetarian Cookbook published by Reader's Digest Canada.

The Guardian had a really scrumptious sounding recipe for Garlic Soup and Harissa a little over a week ago. The butter called for can be replaced with Earth Balance or another vegan butter substitute.

Another article I think I missed was in Vancouver's goold old Georgia Straight on April 24. The article is about the benefits of a well-planned vegan diet and features a recipe for Shiitake-Miso Gravy adapted from Nava Atlas' Vegan Express, a bookbook I'd really like to try out soon.

(I just discovered the hard way that blogging about recipes when you're on the second day of a juice fast is akin to watching running water when you really, really have to pee.)

Vitamin D2 vs. Vitamin D3

This is just a quick update to my previous post about Dr. Andrew Weil's article on becoming vegan, where he recomends taking Vitamin D3, which is almost always derived from animals (which, of course, means it's generally not vegan). In his article, he didn't mention Vitamin D2, which is usually derived from non-animal ingredients and is the form that tends to be used in vegan vitamins.

According to this recent study, although it was once thought that Vitamin D2 was less effective than D3, both forms are equally effective. So, there's no need for an animal-derived supplement.

Skills, sustainability and self-reliance links

I'll be adding these links to the left of the page over the next few days, but thought I'd share them here first.

Here's a new foraging link -- a free e-book about acorns, a wild edible found readily across North America.

You'll find out almost everything you want to know about preserving food here at the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This was by far one of the most intriguing (and potentially dangerous) things I've come across in a while. I've only glanced through it. It's a .pdf guide about practicing medicine in austere conditions where appropriate technology and professional assistance are unavailable. (I'm no medical expert, so I'm certainly not recommending any of the info in that guide, which is full of disclaimers itself.)

Then there's Howtopedia -- the Wikipedia of practical skills, where users are invited to write articles to contribute to this self-described practical knowledge library.

Finally, here's a simple guide on how to make homemade cider vinegar.

Peak Oil, The Disposable Society and Exchanging Skills

I was speaking to a friend a few weeks ago about wanting to start up a local group to trade off skills -- the kinds of practical abilities these last few generations have more or less lost, thanks to plentiful and cheap energy having enabled (and accelerated) our consumerism. We're a disposable society, and I mean that in every sense of the expression. On one hand, long after we wipe ourselves out, life on this planet will keep on going on. On the other hand, we're also disposable in the sense that cheap oil has allowed us to evolve into wasteful creatures, to the point where we no longer even know where the hell to put all of our garbage.

A friend of mine frequently points out how our city is constantly littered with disposable Tim Horton's coffee cups, for instance. We leave our homes in the morning, spend minutes idling at a drive-through for a cup of coffee in a paper cup with a plastic top, which inevitably ends up on the ground or in a garbage can. For someone with a mean caffeine habit, investing in a travel mug and brewing a pot at home in the morning would pay for itself in a month. You can even buy a container of Tim Horton's coffee to make yourself (I say this in response to some Tim's addicts who insist that they like the specific taste of their coffee). What's the fascination with having something to throw away?

The ridiculousness of it all struck me yesterday as I popped into the local supermarket to discover a new entry in the ''cheap plastics 'r' us'' book of wastefulness. In the produce section, I discovered small clear plastic containers, each holding smaller plastic bags with what looked like prewashed and cut fruit. For instance, one baggie contained 3-4 grapes in a smaller baggie, and then a couple of orange segments in a second baggie. Fruit -- something sold loose and with its own skin, wrapped in plastic baggies inside bigger plastic baggies inside a plastic container, undoubtedly carried home in a plastic bag. I don't get it. It's obviously not about convenience since I could peel an orange faster than it would take me to cut open all of that plastic.

When I was a kid, I remember reading old Little House on the Prairie books with wonder at the lengthy descriptions of how food was grown or gathered, and preserved. Things were dried, or salted, or pickled in those Tupperware-free days. I grew up in a home where pies were made from scratch -- from strawberries we picked ourselves, with a family that engaged in the annual fiddlehead picking ritual so popular in the Maritimes and Maine. Once a year, my mother and some of my older cousins would head out to a relative's farm or large garden and load up pillowcases with string beans and then bring them home, where she and my grandmother would spend an afternoon sorting through them and snapping off their ends to prepare them for canning.

Even with that, though, I still remember leaving home for my first year of university and not even knowing how to do anything but open a can or follow the simple instructions on the side of a box. I made Kraft Dinner and ate Mr. Noodles. I had frozen pizza and Campbell's Soup. I jumped into consumerism head-first because I could. It wasn't until years later, when I became a vegetarian and became mindful of the foods I ate, that I actually learned to cook whole foods; it wasn't until I had my first garden that I learned how to preserve herbs and vegetables. These were skills I should have and could have learned from my mother and grandmother, but at the time, there was no sense of a need for them to be passed on to me. After all, a strawberry pie could be bought frozen at the supermarket, where canned or frozen string beans were also plentiful.

So oil's running out. Cheap plastic and cheap energy are running out. Consumerism is convenient for us for now, but at the price of leaving us dependent on cheap plastic and cheap energy instead of learning hands on how to prepare and preserve things ourselves. And it's not just about food. Which brings me back to the original idea I mentioned in this post. Since consumerism has led to a breakdown in the traditional passing on of skills that enable a certain amount of self-sufficiency (and that certainly lead to a less disposable lifestyle), it seems to me that the best way to go about remedying this is to find others who have some sort of expertise in this or that area (composting, knitting, bicycle repair, foraging, wine making -- heck, even darning socks) and to trade off these skills with each other in some sort of informal but organized manner. Anyone in my area interested?

Carl Sagan on being challenged to engage in critical self-examination

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based -- or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug -- it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Andrew Weil and animal-derived supplements for vegans

So, I just read an article by Dr. Andrew Weil, the portly quasi-Santa-lookalike nutritional guru. It's called ''Becoming a Vegan''. In it, Weil perpetuates some iffy information that more or less amounts to saying that you cannot thrive on a completely vegan diet. He brings up two instances where, in his opinion, animal products are necessary. First, with regards to Vitamin D, he writes the following:

I recommend a daily supplement of 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 -- cholecalciferol -- for everyone (vegan or not).

He asserts that your body can produce enough Vitamin D from exposure to sunlight, but states that most people don't go outside enough, hence the need for a supplement. The thing is that cholecalciferol (D3) is generally derived from sheep's wool -- definitely not vegan. Oddly, he makes no mention at all of Vitamin D2, which isn't derived from animals and which is commonly used in vegan vitamins.

Then, with reference to omega-3s, he writes:

Be aware that the vegetarian sources of omega-3s are not as good as oily fish. Consider taking a fish oil supplement or, at least, an algae-derived supplement of DHA.

Why would someone write an article about becoming a vegan and recommend taking an animal-based supplement as an option? The article seems mistitled. It would be more accurate for it to maybe refer to issues Weil finds inherent in a vegan diet; it's not about how to adopt a vegan diet if he suggests -- twice -- consuming animal products as necessary? I mean, is the definition of veganism now purportedly open to tweaking. too? (OK, my crankiness is showing, I'll admit...)

According to the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), fish-derived sources of omega-3 are at the very least unnecessary, and on top of that, that

omega-3s in fish oils are highly unstable molecules that tend to decompose and, in the process, unleash dangerous free radicals. Research has shown that omega-3s are found in a more stable form in vegetables, fruits, and beans. (See referenced text here.)

With regards to Vitamin D, the Vegan Society has information on animal-free ways to meet your daily requirement. The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) has a blurb on the differences between Vitamin D2 and D3. Both are used to fortify milk and other dairy products and Vitamin D3 isn't always animal-derived (but usually is). I haven't seen anything to indicate that one form is superior to the other, really. I'll see if I can dig up some more information about this in my copy of Joanne Stepaniak's Vegan Sourcebook, but it seems to me that Dr. Weil's opinion left some pretty serious blanks to fill and that since he writes as an authority on nutrition, most reading his article wouldn't even think to second-guess what he says. Thankfully, groups like PCRM and VRG exist to set the record straight.

Dan Piraro (creator of Bizarro)'s Veganism Video

I love Dan Piraro's sense of humour. In this animated video he makes use of it to discuss the human diet.

Vegan.com's Top 10 Vegan Recipes of 2008

Vegan.com recently featured on their site what their collective taste-buds have assessed as being the top 10 recipes of 2008 (and it's only May!). The Top 10 include:

- Moroccan Phyllo Rolls from Dreena Burton's Eat, Drink & Be Vegan.
- Baked Ziti from Beverly Lynn Bennett's Vegan Bites.
- Italian Stuffed Crepes from Bryanna Clark Grogan's Nonna's Italian Kitchen.

For the rest of the recipes, check out Vegan.com's article here.

(Listening to: Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia)

Even more flood pics from May 1

I had to sneak in a pic of my beloved trusty bike. This was taken by Officer's Pond, formerly known as Officer's Square before the Saint John River spilled into it.




Just a few feet away, a couple of kids were indulging themselves in -- uh -- water sports with their own bikes.



Someone over at the Crowne Plaza must have had a chuckle leaving this up.

More flood pics from May 1

Here's a scene along the south side bike trail (which is well underwater -- that second line of trees is where the river's edge usually lies).



And another:



And another:

More flood shots from yesterday

Here's the Carleton and Brunswick intersection yesterday as seen from the Old Burial Ground.



While over by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, a couple of folks were checking out the Robbie Burns statue.

My city's bath

This is a view from this evening of the flooding at the Brunswick and Carleton intersection, as seen from the Old Burial Ground. Things got a little more complicated, it seems.



Here's that intersection at the foot of the train bridge today.



The fact that the road was blocked at that intersection didn't stop some attention-seekers from having some fun. I missed him coming in, but got him riding out.

More flood shots from yesterday

This is a shot of the intersection at Brunswick and Carleton, just in front of the Old Burial Ground. I'm fairly sure the water was coming out of a manhole, since there was some bubbling up at another intersection just a couple of blocks east. Again, this was taken yesterday evening, probably close to 8:30 pm.

This is at the intersection at the southern foot of the old train bridge yesterday evening. The water here was coming from the river's overflow. There were so many people gathered above and on all sides of it, snapping photos whenever the lights changed and cars splashed through. I suspect that this has since been blocked off by police. This was taken at around 7:45 pm.




Here's a view of the train bridge, itself in the dusk. That second line of trees in the background is where the river's edge usually is.



A couple of downtown employees found themselves having to deal with quickly rising water when retrieving their parked cars. This guy was amscraying out of a parking lot behind buildings on the north side of Queen St.