earth: full, pantry: empty

Like a lot of folks, I’ve read and watched some scary stuff about our economy and the environment in recent years. We face a warming climate, overpopulation, crippling trade deficits, a seemingly insurmountable national debt, peaking oil and water supplies, and a food production and distribution system that depends on all of these other at-risk factors to keep our rumbling bellies full. It’s too much to think about, really.

And so we don’t.

Deer in the headlights? Ostriches with our heads in the sand? Or perhaps a creative double-jeopardy-kind-of-combination never before seen in the history of denial: we have our heads in the sand and our asses to the headlights: doomed, paralysed, and willfully ignorant.

Before I crush you with negativity, grab yourself a beer, a coffee, or perhaps a tub of ice cream, and watch Paul Gilding’s fairly optimistic TED talk The Earth is Full. Or if you prefer, you can read an interview with him about his book The Great Disruption. Or, egad, read the book itself! (I haven’t yet).

Gilding is a genius. Not for his science, not for his research or business acuity, not for his synthesis of information.

For his attitude.

He somehow argues that when the poor abused fan we call earth spins into the imminent shit storm of ecologic and economic calamity he predicts, we will have our finest hour. 

Gilding contends that not only is the earth warming, it is full. He cites the Global Footprint Network to argue that it takes 1.5 Earths to maintain our global economy in its current state.  Add that we expect the population to quadruple by 2050 and things look dire indeed.

If that's not enough, there's a catch-22.  While we need to reduce our rates of water consumption, CO2 emissions, and soil degradation to sustain the earth, we need to increase these things to sustain the economy.

With our present methods, we cannot do both.

Don't worry.  That wasn't the positive part.  This is:  Gilding argues against despair.  From a position of hope he claims humans are good in a crisis.  We are innovative, possess an incredible capacity for change, and when pressed, repeatedly come together to achieve "whatever it takes" with speed and efficiency.

Reading this, I feel like a child getting a pep talk from my mom.  Yes we can!

He admits that there will be pain and suffering in our lifetime, possibly even a collapse of our civilization, but ultimately, Gilding argues, we will come through it for the better ("it won't hurt" says mom at the doctor's office, "you'll just feel a little pressure").

I appreciate the positive angle, and I see how Gilding’s attitude makes his rather devastating news more digestible.

But I can also read between the very wide lines. System collapse means empty shelves at the grocery store, no gas at the pump, water scarcity, heat, and cold.

In the worst case, we’re using dollar bills for toilet paper (now that’s going green!) and defending our meager vegetable plots with stolen guns that we don’t know how to use.

Sitting alone at my computer in the dark of night, bleary eyed in my Twitter Haze, I got a little scared. Shouldn’t we prepare for this coming-apart-at-the-seams? I mean, what will it take to be one of those upbeat innovators who comes through the “pain and suffering” part to enjoy the new sustainable world? When the Care Bears flit around on wind turbines, bounce carelessly from solar panel to solar panel, and slide giggling over the arches of renewable rainbows, I want to be there.

And who can I talk to about this desire, these fears?

Even though the naysayers repeatedly discredit themselves with faulty research and ad homonym attacks on credible scientists, their noise creates uncertainty for lay people like me who are unschooled in the details we need to fully understand what's going on.

Let’s face it. Nobody wants to be called Chicken Little, and anyone who talks about societal collapse and catastrophic climate change in the mainstream takes that risk.

I checked Gilding’s credentials and those of the sources he cites. Very solid. And to be truthful, a lot of this wasn’t new to me. I read Storms of My Grandchildren by NASA scientist James Hansen. I read The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. And besides, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, or a climate scientist for that matter, to understand that we cannot create infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Period.

I decided I'd rather be safe than sorry. I would collect necessities, but secretly. No one would have to know.

Why secretly?

Because I'd rather be a big chicken in private than Chicken Little in public.

Pathetic, I know.

So surreptitiously, I set out for the grocery store with a mission: save myself, save the kids, live to see the future! Then I got overwhelmed. How do I store months’ worth of water for four in a “small house” without anyone knowing about it? Where would I put all those canned goods? Will we have to eat them before they spoil if the sky doesn’t fall? Blech! How often do I replenish? (that’s expensive!).What about other necessities like tampons, band aids, BAKING SODA?!  The list started to explode.

In the end, I came home with an extra bag of rice and three bars of soap.

It’s true. I don’t shop well in a crisis.

So bring it on: resource wars, floods, starvation, dehydration, gun fights in the potato patch:

We'll be lathered and ready.

How about you?