Diesel Powerd Murikan Roadkill

 

I took this picture with my iphone at a truck stop in Utah

It's 2 in the morning and a shape appears on the northern Indiana road in front of me. At 65 mph there are only a couple of seconds to decipher the image and react. It's quickly realized that there are two raccoon on the road, they are moving around, probably picking at some type of food. It's a mystery what they are doing, but in the next second there is a thud thud as the 80,000 pound semi tractor trailer continues on at 65 mph. It seems that racoon should be more intelligent than this. The next several minutes are followed by a lingering melancholy. I've just taken one, maybe two, lives, and senselessly with no premeditation. I've killed directly before, with a 30/30, but I killed intentionally from a tree stand 20 feet up in a tree. I also ate the meat.

As I drive on through the night and contemplate the death of those raccoon, I'm reminded of some things. I begin to ruminate on America, and why I have also unintentionally killed thousands of people.

17 years ago I was on a U.S. Aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, and planes crashed into the World Trade Centers in N.Y. City. That day changed this country. It changed all of the citizens. It changed me in irrevocable ways, and for different reasons than it changed most. The first Murikan bombs dropped on Afghanistan were from my ship, and I spent a lot of effort directly helping that reality, and I consequently spent even more effort trying to understand why. At the time I was a 21 year old idealist. I should have never enlisted in the military, but I was lost, and wandering, and searching for my own way in the world. I had grown up mostly fatherless, the product of a single mother. That too has gone a long way towards defining who I am now and why I was on that carrier in the first place. Constantly on a quest, searching for something that I defined as the truth. What was the world, and what was I supposed to do with it? I was not interested in money, but money is necessary in society.

I smelled a rat. I smelled a stinkin', no good, putrid, walking dead rat. At the time I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew that it had something to do with my country, and my navy, and my conscience. Cognitive dissonance grew to lighting and thunder in my own mind. It shook me to insanity, and I ran away from any contribution to those bombs. Consequences be damned! I was 21. That decision has also continued to define me. Shortly after the terrorists attacked we were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction as the military moved in. There were no WMD's, that was a lie, as was the effort in Afghanistan. A lot of evidence points towards the U.S. , at a bare minimum, being complicit towards the demise of the towers. The government at least allowed it to happen, and then used that tragedy they allowed to happen to accomplish a goal. Why is our military still in Afghanistan and Iraq? Nobody in Murika talks about the fact that Murika is still at war, and has been since 9/11 of 2001. If forced to think about it “keeping Murika safe from terrorism” will likely be regurgitated all patriotic and programmed meme like.  Well...it's really not correct to call what Murika is doing "war."  It's actually occupation, domination, and usurpation of formerly independent and autonomous nations at drone, bomb, missile, and gunpoint.   

Petroleum is the reason we have been at war for 17 years. More specifically gasoline and diesel is the reason. Petroleum is a limited resource, and that is an irrefutable fact of geology. It's an irrefutable scientific fact. Read that again, slowly, and for comprehension, and try to have a clue about what it means. Murikans are professional delusionists. I knew that we are completely dependent on petroleum before I took a job as a long haul flatbed trucker. Now I KNOW it. Everyday I burn somewhere between 50 and 100 gallons of diesel. Do you know how many truck drivers there are in Murika doing the same? It's somewhere around 4 million. It is just about impossible to buy anything with money that has not been on a truck at a minimum of once. It's more likely that the finished product you buy has been on 4 or 5 or 10 trucks (in many cases thousands..this would be your average car) and probably a ship and a train before you spend your money on it. In order to buy something that has not been on a truck it just about has to be made by human hands, locally, and from raw materials that have been harvested locally from nature.

Just before I took this job as a trucker I was busy learning how to do just that with bamboo. In fact you could have bought a basket from me, made by me, out of bamboo that I grew, harvested, cured, treated, split, and wove all by hand. You'd have to pay around 2 to 300 dollars for it because said item would have represented a minimum of 25 hours in direct artisan labor on my part. That's not counting the time it took to care for the groves, to harvest the cane, to process it, and then to cure it. That's just counting the time it took me to treat the cane with fire, and then to split the cane with a traditional Japanese bamboo splitting blade, and then to weave it. Next to nobody will pay 300 dollars for an artisan bamboo basket grown and crafted by artisan hands locally when they can go buy a plastic (petroleum) bucket from Lowes for $5. I also spent a number of years training in permaculture design. I made money with bamboo and permaculture, but not enough money to support myself in this world, much less a wife and two children.

Split bamboo next to whole canes.

A bamboo fence for my wife's garden spot

I was involved in Permaculture and bamboo, and both because I was following my bliss. That bliss was to live a natural life. That bliss was to use my hands to create beauty, and to be a good steward to the natural landscapes that sustain us as biological creatures. That bliss was to pay homage to the actual reality that is the natural processes that occur in nature to make things such as the air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil we grow our food in. That bliss was to treat the Earth as a living entity that, along with the sun, imbues and blesses us all with life. That bliss was an idealistic lie in this world. Alas, idealism does not pay any bills.

Weaving a door for the garden spot fence

Delusional bliss in action

A bamboo door

So what does roadkill have to do with Murika and petroleum and war and an idealistic hippie playing with bamboo and digging permaculture holes? I realized that America is this truck that I now drive for money, and those raccoon are the rest of the world. That is exactly how Murika treats the rest of the world, as well as the natural environment. It's just “collateral damage” (a term coined by the Murikan Military Industrial Complex to describe innocent civilian deaths in war) that is unfortunately necessary to keep us all up in the manner we have become accustomed. Just about nothing, with the exception of nature (and air brakes combined with engine compression brakes), can stop an 80,0000 pound truck at 65 mph. Anything that's in the way becomes roadkill...thud thud. Worse than that actually, because at least the scavenger birds can pick at the roadkill, and occasionally some crazy ass re-wilder may come along and take the roadkill home to eat it. 

Those raccoon may as well be the old me sitting in the road weaving my bamboo basket from bamboo grown in my yard, planting trees, and attempting to make my way in this world as a permaculturists specializing in bamboo. Now I'm at the wheel as well. I'm now a willing participant finally made complicit to the Murikan semi that's making a thud thud out of the rest of the planet...kickin' your brown ass and takin' your brown gas! If only the 21 year old me, getting himself kicked out of the navy on account of his idealism, could see me now! If he could see me he would disown me, or kill me before I could get out of control with complacency, apathy, and what he would see as cowardice while kneeling down before the puppet masters of the system for some pellets of comfortably numb conformity.

Ironically I love this job! I wasn't entirely a product of a single mother. My father was in my life, but minimally. I saw him a couple of times a year when I was a little boy. He was a trucker, but that wasn't why I didn't see him, that's ironically what enabled me to see him. I didn't see him because his second wife hated my mother, and she hated me because I was my mother's son. For a number of years he was under her spell (something he now recognizes), and so I rarely saw him. When I did see him it was to go with him over the road in his semi (and his wife had no idea, hence the afore mentioned irony). Such power fathers have over their children!  It's enough power to make them into truck drivers 30 years later on account of a couple of preteen memories!  Well, that, and a large helping of genetics.  

Deep down I love semi trucks and trailers. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the need I have to be a man, and a father, due to a wife and two of my own boys. My father was a trucker.  He was the only template on being a father I've ever had.  When I finally spent time with him it was to the sound of a diesel engine, and to the smell of diesel, and with the allure of the passing road. I love driving a semi, I love the power, and I love the mechanical accomplishment they represent. But if I'm completely honest, some part of me feels that I have finally grown to a man, and I am now providing money for my family. Men are supposed to provide, and in our society that means money. Yet the plague of cognitive dissonance continues to haunt me with it's furious sound of hypocrisy.

To be constantly going somewhere new, and to have everything I need with me, and to mostly be left alone...these are all things that I love about being a trucker. It's very peaceful to be left alone while listening to music, and my thoughts, as the landscape changes in front of me, as I fulfill my husbandly and fatherly requirement to get money. I never know where I will end up for the night to catch a shower and some sleep. Mostly I stay at truck stops, which are the places our society have created for the trucks to stop so that their human pilots may shower, do laundry, eat, and get coffee and cigarettes. There's also rest areas, company terminals, and occasionally a Walmart parking lot or the parking lot of a shipper or consignee. I imagine that I'm sailing a ship on the black bitumen sea, and I'm the captain. I'm also making twice as much money as I've ever made in my life doing this. I'm making twice as much as I made working as a medic on an ambulance after 8 years of service.

You see, permaculture and bamboo were not paying any bills. They were not presenting the promise of any type of stability for my wife and children. As much as I wanted to live in a world that did not exist...a world morally superior to the one we all inhabit, and a world that aught to exist, it was all just delusional thinking. Idealism made pernicious by business as usual. 

If Murika is the truck that splattered the racoon, than the Corporatocracy is at the wheel, and we're all just unique and individual diesel atoms. Murika is also a delusion, at least as it exist in the minds of most Murikans. The truth is that there are no lines on the map of the world any longer. At least not any lines that matter to the Corporatocracy. All of the inhabitants of this planet, both human and non-human, have no value to the corporate machine beyond the value of their contribution to the continuance of BAU. Business As Usual is business as it always has been. Since the rise of the first civilization the world has been dominated by the hierarchy of man. Man has taken by force using both his mind and his body. For a long time there were proper kingdoms which were ruled by kings. The king ruled by controlling the politics and the military of his kingdom. There were many different kingdoms that existed throughout the world of time and place.

One of my conventional landscape business clients had this pesky weed food growing, so I harvested it

Took it home and fed it to my family.  Bamboo shoots have more protein than any other vegetable

Now, for the first time in the known history of man, there is one kingdom that controls the entirety of the planet, and that is the Corporatocracy which has a capitol in Murika (not to be confused with capital...wait). It has control of the technology we use everyday. It controls the global military as well as the politics that control the global military. It controls all of the people of this world, and those that it does not control it kills wantonly and with no conscience. No one can stop this final rule of the Corporatocracy. The only things that have the potential to stop it are natural disaster and petroleum depletion. This is the reality that greed has formulated. The Corporatocracy's primary objective is profit for the share holders. All of the decisions that are made are made to keep those at the top at the top. They are at the top of a system that works for them, and they will continue perpetuating that system so long as they can because they are greedy and psychopathic.

What about the rest of us? Are we complicit in this unnatural disaster? We all contribute because we all need money to survive. We need money to buy food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare, safety, stability, comfort, security, entertainment, convenience, and the electronic gadgets we need to participate in SwampBook, KnitTwitter, and all of the rest of the anti-social narcissism that currently defines the majority of the sleep walking wake walkers. There is no escaping the global matrix that controls the planet. At least there is no escape where you succeed and are still left breathing and above ground. To escape in reality, and to do so without contributing to BAU, would have to mean doing so without money. How many people do you know that are living without money? If you spend money then you are spending it on goods and services that are only possible due to this diesel powered Murika. This diesel powered Murika is only possible due to our military and the petroleum our military protects and enables. If you aren't contributing than you'll likely be turned roadkill by the semi trucks that make the American way of life possible.

The last bamboo basket I made before becoming a Trucker

Plutocracy

I don't understand how they get away with it.  That is the mystery to me.  All of the power should be with the people as we have the numbers, but it's not, and seemingly it never has been, as the documentary Plutocracy (the film at the bottom of this blog post) attests to. I highly recommend that you find the time to watch this film.  There is a second part, but unfortunately the audio has been removed due to a copyright infringement.  How convenient is that!  

The people give the power to the church by going to it and believing in it, and that's the level just below the 1%.  Below that is the military which is formed from the proletariat class, so the force that protects and ensures the whole system is kept safe by the sons and daughters of the people. 

The rentier class doesn't do anything but profit off of the backs of the people as this depiction shows.  It seems they could easily be overtaken by the people.  I guess that happens by striking, which I never really understood until watching Plutocracy.  Striking and boycotting are really the only meaningful actions the proletariat can take.  Protesting has no effect any longer.  It used to raise awareness back before Facebook cast it's narcissistic net over the masses.  TPTB could give two farts whether we protest or not as is obvious by OWS and Standing Rock.

Organizing a massive strike is a Herculean task to be sure.  The only security the people have are their wages, so it has to be bad enough for the fear of no wages to be less than the quality of life that the wages provide.  Over the years the 1% have perfected the means by which they control the masses.  Control of the food via industrial agriculture with terminator seeds and GMO's is probably the most important step by which they control.  They made food easy.  They made it where the people did not have to concern themselves with getting enough food, or where the food comes from.  It's not good healthy food, but it's cheap and it taste good. 

Next is private property which is what makes money so necessary.  You have to have a place to live...a place to lay your head and stay warm and sheltered.  If all of the land is private property where you have to have permission to be there, than there is nowhere for you to live your life without money.  That's ultimately where they get control of the whole thing, money!  This allows the Rentier class to profit off of the peoples backs. 

With control of the food and the money what are the people to do?  Now the people have no idea about food.  To the majority it's something that comes wrapped in petroleum at the big box store, or it's something that they drive their cars through a fast food fry pit line to acquire.  Where do the big box stores get the food?  It comes from the trucks of course.  Where do the trucks get the food?  From the food factory of course.  Where does the food factory get the food?  What do you mean?  They get the food from the food gettin' place...and that's if the fools even think that far about it, which they mostly don't.  The food just comes from the grocery store and that is all the thinking that is done about it. 

What is it that keeps us enslaved to the system they have put into place?  Is it really the ignorance and gullibility of the masses?  If you can get past the ignorance and gullibility somehow, by educating, then I suppose the next edifice is fear itself.  Or maybe a lack of imagination combined with a sense of powerlessness.  The more stupid the people become the easier it is for them to control us, and nothing is more representative of this process than Trumpty Dumpty as POTUS.  This is straight out of the film Idiocracy.   

The truth is that the people have been dumbed down to the point where they think Trump has their back.  At least a sizeable portion of the people.  The people are satiated by food chemicals, corn syrup, alcohol, nicotine, netflix, iphones, and finally fukitol. 

In the end, and there is an end to this, the 1% have built a house of cards.  We have a global 1% now, and they can all keep the people in check via the system they have built.  The huge global Corporate system that is the true plutocracy has a weakness.  Fossil fuels are that weakness!  The Corporatocracy is dependent on fossil fuels to keep the house of cards propped up.  At some point, on the back side of Hubbert's curve, there will be enough austerity for the masses that a critical mass will be reached.  There will be a tipping point, and I think that's when we will know that the game is over. 

It will be OWS times 10, only it will not be peaceful.  When there is enough austerity in America there will be nothing that can stop the anger of the proletariat.  Unfortunately they do not understand that fossil fuels are the ultimate reason why their lives have changed.  What will the 1% do when the system begins breaking under the weight of low EROEI energy?  By all measures we are at that point now, but as I have mentioned they are keeping it's dead lifeless body propped up with endless digibit subsidies.  That trick has a shelf life. 

I'm certain the 1% has a plan for the breaking point.  I don't buy that they have no idea about the weakness that's built into their system.  I can buy that the politicians mostly might not know due to ignorance, but the upper echelons are informed.  Why they aren't trying to curtail the whole thing with renewables is a mystery to me, but I'm sure there is a reason for it.  It's likely because they know that there is no way that renewables can be anything more than a band-aid.  That's why I'm starting to believe that their plan is for a massive reduction in population.  Reduce the world population by 5 billion and there's enough fossil fuels to keep this whole shootin' match going until Nibiriu comes or the Sun burns out. 

Reveries of Collapse

Lady Gaga's meat suit

Energy deflation and dollar preference are large forces beyond the control of politicians, generals or central bankers. They are driving countries and events toward involuntary conservation. America’s new president is the product of economic failure; the inability of the economists to make correct analysis, a long grinding recession disguised as recovery; media falsehoods and the unwillingness of Americans and others to face reality, government policy failures and the headwinds of resource depletion. Trump and his cretinous gang of thieves represents the last gasp of a defunct industrial system that is sinking under the weight of its own costs.


Keep in mind, oil producing states like the US tend to be autocratic. The US, Canada, Mexico and others are on their way to becoming single-party police states like Saudi Arabia or Iran. Because of autocrats promise of access to energy, they gain ascendancy with their populations’ eager consent. What is at stake for Americans and the West is democracy itself: a choice between the right to have a say in our own affairs versus the false-promises of energy-driven ‘prosperity’ offered by autocrats … the choice between the (vague) promise of convenience or having a functioning republic.

King Trump the Irrelevant

I think these two paragraphs sum up our reality nicely.  They capture what is true about our situation.  I'm in agreement with everything quoted above. 

I've long said that the power of money is nothing more than the power of the energy we have at our disposal.  They can create as many digibits as they want to create, and with no consequence since digibits are digital and not really subject to any physical laws.  The banking insolvency is really just a ruse.  Like politics, like arguing about who would be the better president, like watching football, it's just something to talk about that applies to our reality only in a fictional way.  Our talking about it gives it it's strength and relevance.  The great reality behind it is the primary economy of energy and other natural resources.  However, those natural resources cannot support a global economy without the energy to make use of them.  Trees, food produced by the monolith of industrial agriculture,  our collapsing fisheries, fresh water, minerals, ores, all of those things require energy to harvest them, and then to fashion them into consumer items.  Money is simply the means by which we are able to claim our portion of that energy.  The more money you have, the more energy you can lay claim to by way of goods and services.

In the face of a finite world it's really all just an illusion of cohesion.  The great reset should have happened in 2008, but it did not happen.  Instead, the failing energy sector was propped up by the creation of more digibits.  It's not the banks that were too big to fail but our way of life.  If they had not exercised the ability to create digibits ad infinitum, and to put those digibits in service of bringing energy to market, than we would have been forced to engage with the reality of our diminishing resources.  The trillions of digibits that have been created by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Goobermint have amounted to nothing more than the largest financial subsidy in the history of the world.  Just like our industrial agriculture is made possible only by it's subsidization, our energy is now only made possible by subsidy.  It's not a direct subsidy though.  It's a subsidy of money creation loaned into existence for free.  The 3.8 billion dollar DAPL pipeline had to be financed by this money that the banks create by turning the digibit knob.  It could have just as easily been 3.8 trillion dollars, and had it been that price the banks would have created that money and loaned it into existence.  The truth is that without that energy our civilization will become transparent, and we will all be forced to wake up and see the house of cards that we have built. 

The simple truth is that everything we do is only made possible by fossil energy.  Our food, transportation, electricity, buildings, cultural methods of inhabiting our world, clothing, medicine, everything all hinges on the energy being present to create them in the first place.  It's not that we can't create those things using the power of our own bodies and that of our beasts of burden.  It's that we no longer have a human scaled way of inhabiting our planet.  That is why robotics have become so important, and it's why NAFTA had to happen.  NAFTA simply made slavery legal again for the first world, buy it was hidden in third world countries.  We took their resources, and the energy of their people, and exploited it to feed the 1st world empire.  We sold a lie that their people were joining ours by becoming "developed" countries, as if to have a culture made by hand, a culture that is actually a culture made of people and their skills and engagement with the natural world, was not a real culture. 

Now we have what amounts to what I like to call a "global anti-culture."  Now science has enabled us to live a culture free life where we are kept busy by free entertainment glistening on flat screens, the flat lands that are devoid of virtue.  Now robots are set to do all of the work that must be done to continue inhabiting our world the way that we inhabit it.  Every year more and more people must scrap by with mailbox money that must be meagerly portioned out to overcome the cultural atrophy that has descended down upon us all.  Our bodies are becoming nothing more than energy sinks without a purpose.  What jobs there are, that are not part of the service economy, are jobs where we sit and do what amounts to nothing.  Driving around, staring at computer screens in inefficient climate controlled box buildings made of glass, engaging with fictional digibits.  Our bodies are no longer required and so they atrophy along with our brains.

We are entering into the last act now.  This last act is symbolized by the election of Donald Trump to lead the first world "democracy" that we supposedly have.  How perfect is that?  This is a man of no substance beyond that of ego gratification.  A man who has done nothing of any real value, but a man that is filthy rich for it.  Trump is like a mirror of our national consciousness.  He is only reflecting back to us what we have become.  It doesn't matter who the president of the United states is, because the system of business as usual has so much momentum that only it's own weight has the power to destroy it .  The momentum is built up by what social critic, James Howard Kunstler, has aptly titled "the psychology of previous investment."  It's the way we inhabit our landscape that has become to big to fail.  But like the psychology that created it in the first place, it is fundamentally flawed and wrongheaded.  It is based on an infantile wanting with no regards to limits and consequences.  It is a hallucination that continues to exist because we give to it our energy.  We infuse it with our psyches and it is failing us.  It is failing to produce anything of any substance.  It has choked the very life out of our bodies and made us powerless and useless. 

Now all that is left is for this pointless business as usual to slam into an immovable wall that is corporeal limitations.  Just like cancer cells that kill their host and thereby commit suicide.  Our way of life is failing, and like all civilizations that have come before us, it will collapse.  It has been collapsing during my entire life.  The cancer has become a global entity, and it has already metastasized and gone systemic, and all that is left is the awareness that we are dying.   I suppose the silver lining is that this has always been the case.  Just like individual beings who are born, mature, and then die, our civilizations are no different.  All civilizations overshoot their resource bases and end up in collapse.  This collapse won't be on the nightly news (as if anybody under 60 years old even watches MSM now).  It won't be televised any differently than it has been already.  It's not something that will be talked about, but that in no way diminishes the reality of it.

Or maybe I'm just deluded and living in a fictional world made up of the laws of physics.  Time will reveal the truth of my words. 

Fossill Fuel Dissonance

 

DAPL route

It appears that the Army Corp of Engineers has denied the easement that was to allow Energy Transfer Partners to drill under Lake Oahe.  Lake Oahe being a lake that’s in existence due to the damning of the Missouri river by the Army Corp of Engineers.  The Dakota Access Pipeline is a 3.7 billion dollar project that was to cover 1172 miles of which something like 80-90% of the work has already been completed.  This pipeline will be moving 470,000 barrels of fracked Bakken oil per day.  To give you some idea of what 470,000 barrels of oil per day means consider this:  the world produces about 97 million barrels per day (MMb/d) of oi which comes out to about 35 billion barrels per year.  Of that the U.S. uses about 19 MMb/d of which 9.4 MMb/d are imported.  The U.S. uses 7 billion barrels per year which equals out to about 20% of the total world production.  It’s estimated that the Bakken oil region has 4.3 billion barrels of oil which is slightly more than half of what we use here in the U.S. in one year.  The Bakken oil field is considered the largest oil find in U.S. history.  Of course just because it is estimated that 4.3 billion barrels exist under the ground locked up in shale does not mean that there actually is that much.  Even if there is there’s nothing that says that all of that oil is actually recoverable and able to be brought to market.  However, as of 2014 the Bakken has been producing 1 mmb/d of oil. 

             

U.S. Pipelines 

470,000 barrels of oil per day is a lot of oil, all of which will be used in the South East of the U.S. which is where I reside.  Without a pipeline, all of that oil must be transported via rail and truck which costs more, and according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, is not as safe as a pipeline.  Using the rails for the transfer of this energy means less rail cars left for transport of agricultural products.  I’m not sure how it is that using pipelines are safer than rail and truck transport considering that since 2010 there have been 3,300 incidents of leak and rupture on crude and natural gas pipelines in the U.S.  Those leaks released 7 million gallons of crude into the environment and represent a cost of 2.8 billion dollars in clean up.  Given all of that it’s still more cost efficient to transport via pipeline which equates to lower cost for gasoline at the pump for consumers.  How much can you afford to pay for gasoline? 

           

Pipeline ruptures

 The Lakota tribe, in consolidarity with many other tribes from all over the U.S., was able to stop the DAPL pipeline from crossing the Missouri river...at least temporarily.  According to an ancient Native American prophecy, the crossing of the “Black Snake” would have signaled the end of the world.  In this case the “Black Snake” being the DAPL pipeline.  I have been on the side of the Natives during this entire protest.  At one point, about a month ago, I decided that I would go to North Dakota and stand at Standing Rock to help stop the “Black Snake.”  I did not go because of my family and cognizant dissonance, which is the reason I’m writing this essay now.  I say that this is a temporary victory for the Natives because of what the Assistant Secretary for Civil Works at the Army Corp of Engineers, Jo-Ellen Darcy, said about her decision to halt the DAPL from crossing the Missouri at this time.  She said that they need to “explore alternate routes” for the crossing, and that she could not rule out a crossing under Lake Oahe or even potentially North of Bismark.  Originally the crossing was to happen in Bismark ND, but it was rerouted through the Native land after Bismark protested the crossing in their back yard. 

           

Native American Boarding School

 It was decided that the crossing would happen at Lake Oahe, where it would disrupt sacred native sites including burial grounds.  According to some sources, I have read that the Army Corp of Engineers attempted to talk with the Lakota elders and leaders hundreds of times, and that they did not show up to the talks.  I can’t say that I blame them for not showing up if this is true.  A casual glance at the history of the abuses that the Native Americans have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government is really all that is necessary to understand why they likely decided that they would be wasting their time to show up at such meetings.  Really, have we forgotten about the small pocks blankets and the Trail of Tears?  It is historical fact that for hundreds of years the Native Americans have suffered genocide due to the American Government.  Their children were taken from them by the thousands, had their hair cut, and were placed in boarding schools to learn how to be white.  Buffalo was hunted damn near to extinction to eviscerate Native American sovereignty and independence.  It is past time that we stop abusing what is left of the Native Americans.  Now imagine that the pipeline will actually cross north of Bismark.  Now when there is a rupture in the pipeline there will be even more people downstream, including the Lakota, who will suffer the environmental consequences of polluted water. 

             

Native American Land

There is a much larger problem at work here.  As horrible as the U.S. Government’s treatment of the Native Americans has been, and apparently continues to be, humanities treatment of our environment is of more concern.  What the Lakota “Water Protectors” have hopefully done is to bring more attention to the issue of how we are treating the natural world that sustains us.  What can be more important to humans than a human supporting biosphere?  If we continue destroying the biome that sustains us with noxious chemicals than how can we expect to have any type of future for our children?  What kind of future will they have if the biosphere is full of cancer causing chemicals?  The one thing that the pollution of our environment has in common is energy usage which is mostly fossil energy based.  Nuclear is even worse because it produces nuclear waste that we have no safe means of disposal for.  Nuclear generates waste that remains toxic to our DNA for millions of years. 

             

Pile of Buffalo heads 

What are we to do about this problem?  Is there any solution?  Our entire built environment, our entire way of inhabiting our landscapes, the methods by which we get what we need from our civilization to maintain ourselves is all 100% dependent on fossil energy.  The renewable energy that we have can only be a temporary measure at best, and will likely not be able to sustain all 7.2 billion of us in the manner we have become accustomed.  Granted, a large percentage of that 7.2 billion are not kept up anywhere near the manner even the poorest in the U.S. are accustomed to.  Solar panels require fossil energy to come into existence, as does all of the other renewable energy schemes.  How are the materials necessary for the creation of a solar panel or wind turbine acquired?  They are acquired via fossil energy powered machinery, and then they are shipped around and manufactured and packaged using fossil energy.  They are maintained using fossil energy.  Nuclear energy is no different…well aside from the DNA damaging waste that is generated that has filled the entire pacific ocean at this point thanks to Fukushima Daiichi. 

           

Historic World Population

 Aside from the pollution that is wrought on the environment via the extraction, transport, and refinement of fossil energy there is also the end result of burning that energy.  It adds carbon dioxide among other greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.  Considering that the world uses 35 billion barrels of oil per year we are creating a lot of greenhouse gas.  Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is not a conspiracy theory, nor is Peak Oil.  It is really quite simple, and I’m sure I couldget my 6 year old to understand how greenhouse gases work to raise the overall heat that is trapped in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of said gases.  Not only do we burn 35 billion barrels of oil per year, but we are also steadily cutting down all of the trees to make more room for yet more industrial monocultured agriculture in an attempt to make more food for more people.  More people are really only possible due to the fossil energy in the first place.  What makes industrial agriculture possible?  Fossil energy.  The herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and fertilizers that we spray onto the ever decreasing top soil of our gargantuan monocultured fields are all petroleum and natural gas derived chemicals.  These chemicals then make their way to the ocean where they create dead zones.  Industry creates more pollution that makes its way into our water tables and oceans.  Due to all of the added carbon, the oceans are acidifying and destroying fisheries and corals.  Our topsoil is being eroded and blown away.  Yet still the juggernaut of industrial agriculture continues removing the trees that breath a mammal, and therefore human, supporting biosphere out.  We have created a positive feedback loop that is resulting in devastation.  All of this is business as usual (BAU). 

             

What are we to do about it?  Should we get in our cars and drive to Standing Rock using the very petroleum energy that’s intended to travel along the DAPL that we should stop? What is the alternative to using fossil energy in our society?  How can I support my family in this society without using fossil energy?  Our cars, our houses, our food, and our jobs all require the use of fossil energy.  The best solutions that we have come up with are at best temporary and require fossil energy to begin with.  Is there any way out of this mess? 

I have a landscaping business for many reasons.  It’s one of the few businesses that one can still boot strap oneself into because it requires very little in terms of capital to get started.  My constitution is such that I am happiest working outside while self-employed.  People pay good money and a decent living can be made with landscaping.  However, like all other jobs in our society it requires fossil fuels.  It just happens to be more in your face and obvious in my case.  I need a large truck to pull around equipment on a trailer, and that means a large motor that uses a lot of gasoline.  All of the machinery I use uses gasoline, so I am all of the time filling up jerry cans and topping off gas tanks during the course of my work.  The truth is that I am no more, or less, dependent on petroleum than anyone else in our society…including someone who may make their living installing solar panels. 

             

Should we stop the Black Snake from crossing the Missouri river to bring us another half million barrels of petroleum per day for our gas tanks?  If we are to do that, than should we not have some type of plan in place to sustain ourselves?  What options do we have outside of the fossil fueled BAU?  I want clean water and healthy soil capable of producing healthy food for my children.  I want healthy oceans teaming with healthy fish to eat.  It stands to reason that I should stop contributing to the pollution that is removing those things.  How can I do that?  My children need a house to live in, and they need food to eat.  Our new President is a AGW and Peak Oil denier.  He’s not going to do anything in an attempt to fix any of this.  He’s invested with his money in DAPL.  

Permaculture has all of the answers to fix all of these problems.  In fact, Permaculture was created to address the worldview that created all of these problems.  Permaculture is the answer to all of these problems.  I wonder if Trump will help create a Department of Permaculture?  What do you think?  

Cognizant Dissonance Disorder

Almost five years ago I quit my career as a medic for an EMS service to pursue Permaculture.  The evidence that our way of life is going to collapse became overwhelming to me, and I was left with an urgent need to do something meaningful about it.  To my estimation Permaculture was the only meaningful response (and still is).  I was presented with a home in which I could live rent free.  My wife's aunt offered up her home to us, and since she owned it outright she needed nothing from us financially.  This enabled me to get off of the hamster wheel of working to pay debt and constantly coming up short.  

For the next couple of years I spent all of my time digging in the Earth to grow food in a Permaculture manner.  I trained in Permaculture.  In fact, a week before tendering my resignation to the Matrix (which is what I called what I was doing with my life) I signed up for a program out of Asheville called "Permaculture In Action."  This was hands on Permaculture training where we implemented permaculture design for home owners.  I learned a lot about permaculture in that program.  Two years later I received a PDC (permaculture design course certificate) from Spiral Ridge.  In parting words of wisdom Cliff Davis rightly told us all that "you can't eat your PDC."  

During all of this I was bitten by the bamboo bug.  That resulted in Environmental Control being called to my residence (while I was away taking the intensive PDC training).  Apparently the horse weed that I let grow up in the chicken run sent up a red flag that I was growing marijuana (I was not).  While they were there they took the opportunity to tell my aunt-in-law that she needed to cut all of the bamboo down to 16 inches or be fined.  They said it was a grass and therefore could be no taller than 16 inches...which is a complete joke, and come to find out not even true.  That was the message I was presented with upon returning from the permaculture design course.  I pulled onto the property and was instantly greeted by my hysterical aunt-in-law who had been fear mongered by the local environmental authorities.  I was told I had to cut all of the bamboo down or she'd have to pay $500.  I complied with Environmental Control by digging up all of my bamboo and putting it in pots.  All but one of the varieites I had growing.  I left Phyllostacys Aureasulcata f. Spectabilis in the ground. It was in it's first year that year.  All of the bamboo I had planted was planted that year.  

I left Spectabilis in the ground so that I could confront Environmental Control when they came.  I was going to have my wife video record the event.  I was going to have her record them telling me that I had to cut all of the canes down to 16 inches or that they would fine my aunt-in-law. I never got the chance to confront them because they came by the house unannounced when I was not home.  However, they cleared us of any infractions and said "it's not illegal to have a garden but you have to keep it weeded."  I immediately put all of my bamboo back in the ground where it has been ever since.  This is the third year at "Kitsune Bamboo Nursery," which is the name I gave my bamboo operation here at "The Fox Den."  Kitsune is Japanese for "fox."

Permaculture and bamboo can sustain every single human need.  Bamboo itself can sustain humanity.  In fact, all bamboo wants is to be honored by man.  It bends itself to us and beckons us to eat it's shoots, or to let them grow and then use the poles for whatever needs we have.  A grove that is managed properly is actually much healthier than a grove that is left to natures devices.  The quality of the bamboo wood becomes much better in a managed grove.  It becomes harder and resists splitting better than it's wild counterpart.  The problem with bamboo is that we do not have the culture for it here in America.  Bamboo can provide for every human need, but if we don't know how to use it then it just becomes an invasive weed that monopolizes the landscape much like kudzu does.  Kudzu is a similar story because it too is infinitely useful to our species.  It's a food, a medicine, and a fiber for us to use, but since we do not use it it simply becomes a scourge in our landscapes.  

I am interning with Keiji Oshima of Haiku Bamboo Nursery to learn the culture of bamboo.  I have learned to split bamboo with a traditional Japanese blade, and I have learned to make and play Shakuhachi flute.  Soon I'm going to start learning to weave with bamboo.  Along with learning the culture I am also learning how to manage bamboo groves for all of the various purposes.  A bamboo grove is managed based on what the purpose of that grove is.  Will it be for shoots, for poles, for a nursery, or just for esthetics?  I'm still learning the differences in management.  Every week I go up the mountain to Hendersonville to apprentice with Keiji...to learn the culture of bamboo.  

Now for the cognizant dissonance part of this blog.  I have found the answers to address the future of energy scarcity that we are on the precipice of.  I fear gasoline will not remain cheap for very much longer because it costs the energy companies more money to extract it than they can get in return on the market.  They can't raise the prices to where they need to be because doing so crashes the economy, but they can't not raise prices because not doing so means losing money.  If it costs more to retrieve and render useful the petroleum than is received for that effort than eventually that game has to come to an end.  If it costs you a dollar to do something that you only get .50 cents for, and you are a business and not a government, than you are a losing business.  

Secondly, all of this petroleum is going a long way to explain the rise in global CO2.  Combine all of the emissions of noxious chemicals into our atmosphere with the removal of our forests and you've got a global disaster in the making.  We are poisoning the biosphere that sustains us while at the same time cutting out it's organs.  Basically we are commiting suicide as a species.  Anthropogenic Global Warming is a real phenomenon.  It's not some global conspiracy perpetuated by the hands of the global climate scientists.  The fact of the matter is that effectively immediately we need to stop burning petroleum and begin addressing our climate problems.  Bamboo is more than ready to address those problems.  Bamboo takes up more CO2 than trees do.  Bamboo grows more biomass at a faster rate than trees do.  If taken seriously I believe that bamboo can save us and fix our climate problems.  

We need to be the change we want to see in our world.  I believe that to be true.  But what I've learned over the last few years is that you have to afford to be the change, and nobody can afford it.  Which is why I have ended up as an entrepreneur with my own landscaping business, Ancient Earth Landscaping.  Ancient Earth started off as Ancient Earth Design which was a permaculture business that a friend of mine and I started after Permaculture In Action.  For a while it seemed that we were going to be a success and then for some reason clients didn't have the money, and new clients stopped showing up.  My business parnter got tired of the struggle and went back to teaching.  I changed the name to Ancient Earth Landscaping (AEL) and kept chugging along.  

The point of business is to make money.  I did manage to find a couple of clients here in the Upstate of SC, and I made some money with permaculture design as AEL.  However, what was paying the bills for me was conventional landscape maintenance.  People don't pay for permaculture, but they pay lots of money to have their grass and shrubbery cut.  They pay even more money when nature gets out of hand and needs to be put back in a box.  AEL has becomes a phenomenal success.  I am at a place where I can no longer take on new clients because I can barely keep up with the clients I have.  I'm looking to hire help, but I can't because I need every dollar I can get.  In the South, when winter arrives, my business tanks.  That means I have to save for a three to four month period where I will not be making much money at all.  It is possible to make money in landscaping during the winter, but there is no guarantee.  Cutting grass is what sustains the landscape maintenance business because it relentlessly grows and therefore must be maintained.  If you don't cut your grass Environmental Control will show up and fine you $500.  My business is basically mandated by local ordinance.  

There are a lot of problems with what I have become.  I drive around using a 5.7 L hemi to pull a trailer full of engines and gasoline.  I use the power in that gasoline to violently control nature six days a week.  I try to not work on the weekends but lately I've had to in order to keep my clients satisfied with the services I provide.  I use weed eaters, hedge trimmers, back pack blowers, lawn mowers, a wood chipper, a chain saw, and other small engines to do my job.  I am contributing to all of the problems that I sought to address when I resigned from the Matrix.  I pollute the atmosphere more now than I ever have. 

The question I have asked myself over and over again is "why would a Druid ride a lawn mower?"  A Druid is the last person who should be riding a lawn mower for an entire army of reasons.  On the one hand I have the belief that nature is sacred, and that belief defines my spiritual practice and identity.  On the other I pollute and destroy nature everyday.  Why?  The answer is very simple.  The world of man requires me to make money.  Money is the problem.  I have a wife and children, and even without having to pay rent or a mortgage I still need money.  

Our civilization, the one that is teetering on the verge of collapse, requires me to make money.  That is what plugs us all into the Matrix.  I would love to spend all of my time farming bamboo, crafting with bamboo, and sustaining my needs with bamboo (and permaculture).  In order to do that I need land to do it on, and unfortunately the world of man constantly requires that I be making money.  Money doesn't care about the environment.  Money doesn't care about anything.  It's a bit like our ego is.  It's self perpetuating for the purposes of self perpetuation.  

And so I persist in this state of cognizant disonance.  I'm constantly yearning to awaken from this contradictory state of existence that is my daily life.  I am forced into hypocrisy to sustain myself and my family.  If I put all of the engines down and stop polluting and destroying that which is sacred than I lose my ability to make money.  If I hold onto those engines and continue successfully making a lot of money than I continue contributing to all of our real problems.  

It seems there is no way to win.  We are hopelessly left twisting in the winds of the imploding world of man that we all create everyday.  We are all guilty.  I'm sure of one thing.  Petroleum is a limited resource that will not be replaced by anything on Earth, or in outer space.  Petroleum is the fuel that enables our current global civilization.  We literally eat petroleum.  We chose the wrong substance to depend on, and now we are hopelessly addicted and in denial.  This losing game that we are all playing is bound to come to an end.  Until then...I guess we just keep playing.  It's a dog eat dog world.  I intend to win, and I've gotten just old enough to shed the majority of the idealism that has always lurked in my mind.  In the words of Cage The Elephant "I've got bills to pay and mouths to feed and ain't nothin' in this world for free."    

I suppose our saving grace is that there is a lot of beauty in the world.  The best we can do is to revel in that beauty.  Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.  Maybe Jesus will come back and save us from ourselves.  In the meantime the Buddha is hear to point the way to salvation here and now.  He's pointing at a bamboo grove...at least when I look at him that's what he's pointing at.  I seek refuge in the bamboo that resides in nature.  After Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed everything on the surface, bamboo was the first life form to return.  There is much hope in bamboo.