Jay Hanson is best known as the Paul Revere of the Peak Oil Crisis, he began writing on the web in 1997, waring his fellow humans of a human dieoff unless they woke up and began living sustainably.

In this essay written in 1999, Jay challenges the reader to imagining a very different Future. … … Are you game? Will you take a few moments to imagine a different tomorrow?

Jay asks us to begin by agreeing to a few definitions for the purposes of our thought experiment, and then he sketches his view of a possible future:

Global Problematic:
(after The Club of Rome, 1972): Global tragedy of the commons because people
are genetically programmed to more-than-reproduce themselves and make the best
use of their environments.

Commons: A
commons is any resource treated as though it belongs to all. When anyone can
claim a resource simply on the grounds that he wants or needs to use it, one
has a commons.

Needs: Human “needs”
have a scientific basis which is defined by human biology. 35,000 years ago,
three million hunter-gatherers “needed” community, shelter, health care, clean
water, clean air, and about 3,000 calories a day of nutritious food. Today,
people still “need” the same things that hunter-gatherers “needed” then (except
fewer calories).

eMergy: eMergy
(with an “M”) is the solar energy used directly and indirectly to make a
service or product. In other words, eMergy is the “cost” of a service or a
product in units of solar energy.

Why eMergy? In reality, the economy is nothing but a
monstrous, energy-gulping Rube Goldberg machine to deliver “needs” to people.
But each of those three million hunter-gatherers was the energy-using
counterpart of a common dolphin, whereas each of today’s 280 million Americans
matches the energy use of a sperm whale. Obviously, the “economy” is incredibly
inefficient at delivering “needs” to people.

No doubt my statement will stick in the economist’s craw,
because after all, isn’t “efficiency” what economics is all about? The problem
with “economic efficiency” is that “money” is not a measure of anything in the
real world (like, say, BTUs). Money is power because money “empowers” people to
buy and do the things they want – including buying and doing other people
(politics). Thus, “economic efficiency” is properly seen as a “political”
concept that was designed to preserve political power for those who have it –
to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

For over a century, theorists have sought ways of
integrating economics and environmental accounting, often using energy as a
common measure. But these efforts met with limited success because different
kinds of available energy are not equivalent. The measure of “eMergy” allows us
to compare commodities, services and environmental work of different types. “Transformity”
– the eMergy per unit energy – allows us to compare different kinds of
available of energy.

So we need to totally junk the present economic system and
replace it with a new one that minimizes eMergy costs (not money costs ) and
delivers basic needs (not Cadillacs) to everyone in a sustainable way.

Jay defines three more terms:

Sustainable Development:
Sustainable development both improves quality of life and retains continuity
with physical conditions; it requires that social systems be equitable and
physical systems circular (industrial outputs become industrial inputs).

Authority: Goals
(or ideals) are not produced by a consensus of the governed, rather a qualified
authority determines goals. For example, physical goals for sustainable
development must come from “scientific” authority – because no one else knows
what they must be. All contemporary political systems are “authoritarian” with
the moneyed class ruling the pseudo democracies.

Coercion (politics):
To “coerce” is to compel one to act in a certain way – either by promise of
reward or threat of punishment. Two obvious examples of coercion are our system
of laws and paychecks.

THE ONE-AND-ONLY
HUMANE SOLUTION: Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon; a global system of
coercion – laws, police, punishments and rewards. In principle, the global
commons can only be managed at the global level by people who understand the
physical systems involved: scientists. Global coercion can be seen in the
worldwide reactions to ozone depletion and global warming. Besides laws and
paychecks, coercion can take many forms:

Step one would be to establish a global government of some
sort with the authority to protect the global commons – our life-support system
– as well as protecting universal human rights. This government would also
oversee the “clean” manufacturing of “repairable” and “reusable”
energy-efficient appliances and transportation systems. It would also insure
the sustainable production of staples like wheat, rice, oats, and fish.

Does this new global government sound repressive or
restrictive? Not at all!

A great deal of freedom is possible – in fact, far
more than we have now. (01/09/09)

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World Wide Fund for Nature – 2008’s Living Planet Report (LPR) again looks at the cause and effect relationships which determine the Earth’s health. Key to the report is the Living Planet Index, used to map out the state of the world’s ecosystems, and our Ecological Footprint.

This year the report also examines the impact of our consumption of the Earth’s water resources and our growing vulnerability to water scarcity, which now affects over 50 countries on this planet.

Also included for the first time is sophisticated data allowing species population trends to be analysed by biogeographic realm and taxonomic group as well as by biome. …

Identifying where the biggest problems lie allows LPR 2008 to present Climate Solutions Models assessing the effectiveness of the current solutions for change.

Using a wedge approach (as pioneered by Pacala and Socolow in 2004) the report illustrates how, for example, moving to clean, efficient energy generation based on current technologies could allow us to meet the projected 2050 demand for energy services with major reductions in associated carbon emissions. (01/10/09)
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CNN Money — The real estate market is so awful that buyers are now scooping up homes for as little as $1,000.

There are 18 listings in Flint, Mich., for under $3,000, according to Realtor.com. There are 22 in Indianapolis, 46 in Cleveland and a whopping 709 in Detroit. All of these communities have been hit hard by foreclosures, and most of these homes are being sold by the lenders that repossessed them.

“Foreclosures have turned banks into property management companies,” said Heather Fernandez, a spokeswoman for Trulia.com, the real estate Web site. “And it’s often cheaper for them to give these homes away rather than try to get market value for them.”

In Detroit for instance, Century 21 Villa owner Randy Eissa has a three-bedroom, one-bath bungalow of about 1,000 square feet listed at just $500. It’s a nice place with lots of light, but it needs a total rehabilitation inside, which Eissa estimates will cost between $15,000 and $20,000. But that’s not bad, considering that the home last sold for $72,000 in late 2007, according to Zillow.com.

With prices this low, lenders aren’t looking to make any money on these deals. They just want to get these houses off their books, so they don’t have to bear the cost of maintaining them and paying property taxes.

In fact, the $500, $1,000 or $3,000 that a buyer forks over often goes straight to the real estate brokers as a commission. And often the lenders have to kick in extra cash to make it worthwhile for a realtor even take the listings, according to Eissa.

“Usually these homes are bank repossessions that the lenders have already tried to sell on the market, perhaps then put up for auction without success and then re-listed,” he said. Fixer uppers

These houses are almost always small fixer-uppers. Wiring, plumbing and heating systems have to be replaced, walls and ceilings sheet-rocked, plumbing and light fixtures installed and new kitchen cabinets and counters put in. Few come with working appliances.

Often buyers are legally required to rehab these homes to bring them up to code. In Detroit, buyers are required to sign Affidavits of Compliance Responsibility, which obligates them to make repairs outlined in an inspection report. Only after that can a certificate of occupancy will be issued, which makes the house legal to live in.

But even factoring in these costs, they’re still bargains. (01/10/09)
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