We don't need oil.

There’s a geyser in the gulf. Our unquenchable thirst for oil has lead to one the worst environmental disasters of all time. Everyday we see images of the oil spewing forth like the wrath of an angry God from the bowels of the earth into what were once unspoiled waters in the Gulf of Mexico. And every day we hope someone out there is smart enough, is able enough, that someone, that anyone, really, has the will, the means and the capability we need to stop this horrible, horrible crisis from continuing. We need a hero, a superman; we need someone who has all the answers and all the power. Well, allow me to introduce you to...you.

You can’t stop this disaster, I mean, eventually we will, someone will, but sadly, this time, it will only be after much more damage is done. But you do have the power, the will and the capability to stop it from ever happening again. You’ve known it for a while, it’s like the smoker who keeps seeing those warnings on the pack and continues to light up. You know better, it’s just so damn hard to stop. The warning signs are all here, you’ve seen them for years, not just on every other TV newscast, but in the weird storms, the too long winters, the too short winters, the too hot summers, the snows in July, all the little details that keep adding up in the backs of our minds. Gas prices keep going up, sure, they shift around too, but overall, it’s not really getting any cheaper any time soon. Oil is, and we’ve always known this, a finite resource. The nagging doubts, the understanding of the deeper truths, the facts are all there, and we’ve all known them for a long time. You don’t even have to accept the findings of the vast majority of climate scientists who agree on the concept of the greenhouse effect and its industrial origins to realize and accept that eventually cheap oil will be a memory, not a fact of the present, and that when that happens, unless we all make some serious changes, things are not going to be very pretty. The warning signs are all there, but it’s just so damn hard to quit.

I am not new to these worries and fears; I often pondered this peculiar state of the world in high school, even earlier. How was it that we could collectively ignore this obvious, glaring truth? Like many teens, my ignorant, youthful mind turned quickly to conspiracy theories—of course, it must be a plot by the state, which hates the planet and wants it to rot; it is the older generation that cares nothing for the future and is wallowing in its greed and using a gangster mentality of crushing all competition no matter what its intrinsic value to the planet, and to its, and to my future... I was right of course, and wrong. Yes, there are those who live a cynical self absorbed life of gangster-ism, but there are many more who are simply short-sighted, ignorant, non-philosophical, stuck-in-their-ways, childish, or doing harm by simply doing nothing, feeling that a problem on the scale of planetary health is simply too big to take on as an individual.

I eventually turned my fear into curiosity and made a point of educating myself on any number of environmental causes such as our consumption of meat and the impact of our industrialized food system on the environment, a fascinating, rich, possibly (in my opinion) singular set of facts at which crossroads I built my career. There was also a book by Buckminster Fuller that made me consider subjects like mass transit and off-grid housing. A science teacher opened my mind to ideas about alternative fuels and peak oil. A girlfriend’s copy of the Whole Earth Catalog sent my mind in a dozen directions considering our potential and even hopeful future. I read about ‘back-to-the-land’ experiments from the sixties like the Farm in Tennessee and Tassajara in California. And yet, it seemed that the more I learned, the less I understood—it seemed that the knowledge was ankle deep and rising all around me and yet no-one near me seemed to notice or even care.

I decided to take personal action. I became a vegetarian, eventually a vegan, and finally an organic and local foods consumer and advocate. I recycled, composted, used natural and biodegradable cleaners and bought secondhand when possible. I learned bits of knowledge about everything from foraging and organic farming to home-brewing with a long term goal of homesteading. After years of working for other folks in businesses that didn’t quite match my value system, I eventually joined with my wife and friends and opened a business of my own which is, in many ways, its own intentional community.

Over the years I have always kept ear to the ground of the larger environmental movement and have been thrilled to watch it move from the fringes into mainstream consciousness. Things like Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ and widely circulated ideas like the 100 mile diet, green energy, rising oil prices, climate change, ‘climate-gate’ and even security and international conflicts and wars, and most recently, even a disaster like the ongoing one in the Gulf, have all been important memes for opening discussions about environmental issues with broad cross-sections of people for whom the subject held no interest in those many years when I felt like a lonely soul on the vast and empty frontier. I welcome all discussion on the subject of environmental health, because I honestly believe that any discussion will, by the virtue of truth, eventually lead to a more sensible, sane and sustainable world and that even the naysayers do their part by keeping the subject open.

But I also, like many, fear that not enough is being done, fast enough, to change what needs to fixed before things really get worse. I wish, with all my heart that I could turn on a light switch and show the world what folks like me and the many wise souls who lit my path have seen clearly and for a very long time—that we are approaching a cliff, and that the fall will not be fun, the ride exciting, the time spent on the way down pleasant and that the sharp, sudden stop at the end will not be the comic pratfall for which we may hope, but rather a complete, utter and final end to the kind of life we have known, loved and enjoyed. I wish I could flip that switch, not because I want to take away hope, but rather, because I honestly, deeply and sincerely want to offer it. I believe that if we could all, if even just most of us could, like some comic book hero, see what absolutely needs to be done to nudge this Spaceship Earth back on to course then we could certainly do it. We could, and we certainly should.

I believe that the time has come for us to call on that hero, to call our hero back from his journey, from her quest for truth and knowledge; it is time for us to call on that hero within ourselves and say now, now we’re ready. We’re ready to do the small things that need to be done, but to do them together and on such a broad scale that they become the largest thing we’ve ever done on earth. There is a geyser in the gulf, and there is a blanket of gas on the earth, it is time for us to say “no more.” I know it’s so damn hard to quit, but just like a smoker knows he eventually must, it is time to and it is time to say I will do it for my health, for the health of everyone I love and care about, I will make changes because I want to live in a world where we don’t need mile deep offshore oil wells to support our way of life, we don’t even need twenty foot deep offshore oil wells. We don’t need oil. The fact is that we humans are simple, resilient creatures, if we have community food, and shelter, we really don’t need anything else.

You know the answers, you know the truth, and the little things become big things when lots of people do them. Change a light bulb from incandescent to fluorescent, turn up the ac, turn down the furnace, do something in town instead of travelling to the city. Walk more, watch less TV, buy local food, buy local art, garden, compost, learn to sew...You know what to do, and its easy, you’ve just been waiting for the right time to try it. Now is that time. It is time to say that we are ready to start living in a world where we all find our inner hero and for me; that world is the one where my daughter can someday be proud of herself and of all of us and say, “We saw it coming, and we did our part, we didn’t wait for anyone else to fix things. We lit our own path. We are the one we need.”

--Chef Bruce

If you are a Kemptville local, and this story resonates for you, come check out what’s up with Sustainable North Grenville ( www.sustainablenorthgrenville.ca ), a new citizen’s group that is looking for positive ways to transition our community to a more permanent, resilient and sensible future. If not, find a group like ours near you...or start one...

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
--Margaret Mead