Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Officials Waking Up to Peak Oil?
A series of news items from the previous month suggest growing awareness of the peak oil problem by business leaders, scientists, and governments. So says Chris Nelder of the web site Energy & Capital:
Forecasts grew increasingly pessimistic as it became apparent that regular conventional crude supply had peaked at the end of 2004. Even as the biggest oil price spike in history ensued from 2005-2008, crude production remained flat and unresponsive.
OPEC scaled back some of its development plans as costs soared. Non-OPEC production not only failed to deliver any actual increase, but began to decline. Forecasts were revised lower.
Corn ethanol boomed and busted, as it was revealed to be the net energy non-starter that serious analysts always knew it was. It also was suspected of adding pressure to food prices at a most inopportune time.
Unconventional production from oil shale and tar sands failed to grow as expected, as producers shied away from high-cost, low-production projects.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) finally included the depletion of mature fields in its analysis, and became increasingly shrill in its warnings about future supply.
A few current and former oil industry executives began making public statements about the diminishing prospects for new supply, and a few even acknowledged that it would be hard to increase production much beyond current levels.
Then high oil prices proved intolerable to an economy stretched thin by the bursting of the bubbles in the real estate and financial sectors.
Yet official recognition of the peak oil threat remained muted, couched in warnings about "adequate investment" and blithe assertions that demand would soon peak, averting any supply shortage.
All that seems to have changed in the last month. A sudden deluge of reports and summit meetings suggest that the oil industry and energy officials are now taking peak oil very seriously indeed.
Check out the full scoop here.
Labels: Ruins of Empire
Thursday, March 25, 2010
A spring update
Friday, March 12, 2010
American Revolution...Conflated and Marbleized
The "Spirit of '76" is being invoked a lot lately. In the past year we have seen the "Tea Party" movement consciously adopt the symbols and rhetoric of the American Revolution as needed and applicable instruments of protest in the current political climate. Protesters show up to rallies waving Revolutionary-era flags, holding up signs proclaiming their continuity with the principles of the founders, and even wearing replica costumes of statesmen and soldiers.
I've been entering another kick of reading about the American Revolution and the early American experience and just the other day I decided to enter "american revolution" as a search term on the Youtube home page. The majority of videos that were listed on the opening page were not documentary pieces about history but political videos promoting the need for a "Second American Revolution."
The idea of a second revolution has been invoked before, of course. The label has been affixed to the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Some of the founders may have even envisioned a regular reoccurrence of "little revolutions" every couple of decades in the calling of constitutional conventions to address new reforms.
Unlike the liberal critics of the Tea Party movement that I have read, I have some sympathy for the protesters. They are not simply racist, ignorant wingnuts but concerned individuals and families reacting to uncertain times. However, I do agree with the liberal critics that the Partiers are generally incoherent. There is no need further to belabor the point that they were not out in force as a white president loaded the country with debt to fight two wars and engineer the bank bailout.
But beyond that fact the real incoherence I see is the adoption of the American Revolution as exemplary model for current political protest. I understand that mass rallies aren't places of critical nuance, but nevertheless I see a lot of confusion about what the Revolution was and was not. As many working-class Americans and women lionize the Founders they whitewash their biographies to invoke them as guiding spirits. But in truth the landed gentry and rising businessmen who make up the American pantheon would likely not be pleased with the Tea Party rallies. Many, if not most, of the participants in the movement would be denied the vote or the chance to hold office by the founders. These men generally supported the property qualifications set by the states for political participation, resisting the idea of full suffrage for white men - let alone blacks or women. They believed in the purportedly wise rule of the deserving, the "better" or at least "middling" sort that possessed land and education. They were terrified of any action on the part of the "mob" and resisted public demonstrations by a crowd of Average Joes (unless, of course, said crowds were managed by them). If a Hancock or a Morris were to hear the ignorant declaration to "keep your government hands off my Medicare" they would immediately call up the militia to disperse the "rabble."
This is not to suggest that the founders were simply evil elites. Elites they were, yes, but perhaps guided more by a paternalistic mindset and the blindness of their social position rather than any conspiratorial bent to oppress others. Some, like Jefferson, may have viewed the masses more favorably. But, in general, they supported what was truthfully a system of minority rule. Pennsylvania was the only Revolutionary-era state to adopt universal male suffrage, and New Jersey adopted women's suffrage in 1776 only to repeal it within a couple of decades.
But there is more to the Revolution than the visible white men on pedestals. It has become commonplace among scholars to speak of multiple revolutionary visions that were imagined and argued in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Instead of a unified, homogenous revolutionary movement there were competing factions and shifting alliances. The language of liberty was disseminated and shared across the social spectrum but it received multiple interpretations as it played in the minds of aristocrats, yeoman farmers, laborers, women and slaves. Some of the happenings of the Revolution were beyond the control or the wishes of the astounded founders as many took opportunity into their own hands.
The Tea Party is incoherent in that it wants to establish continuity with all these competing elements. Simultaneously, the protesters connect with Madison and Paine, the Constitution and Common Sense. In one video I saw one protester holding a sign that says "I believe in the Constitution." I doubt she is aware that the Constitution was a retrenchment by the elite founders against democratizing forces, as demonstrated in such works as Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution and as acknowledged even by Gordon Wood, a scholar with a more positive view of the founders who argued for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. I also doubt many Tea Party participants are aware that Thomas Paine, upon returning to America in 1802 after a fifteen-year absence, believed that the ideals of the Revolution had been betrayed.
But such is the fate of history when it is made to serve current political needs and when its many shades are whitewashed in the name of idolatrous American exceptionalism. The American Revolution, a confused, tumultuous, violent spectacle, part triumph and part tragedy, has become a conflated unity and marbelized as the monumental backdrop to make any and every protest today noble because it is said to share a supposed common spirit.
I've been entering another kick of reading about the American Revolution and the early American experience and just the other day I decided to enter "american revolution" as a search term on the Youtube home page. The majority of videos that were listed on the opening page were not documentary pieces about history but political videos promoting the need for a "Second American Revolution."
The idea of a second revolution has been invoked before, of course. The label has been affixed to the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Some of the founders may have even envisioned a regular reoccurrence of "little revolutions" every couple of decades in the calling of constitutional conventions to address new reforms.
Unlike the liberal critics of the Tea Party movement that I have read, I have some sympathy for the protesters. They are not simply racist, ignorant wingnuts but concerned individuals and families reacting to uncertain times. However, I do agree with the liberal critics that the Partiers are generally incoherent. There is no need further to belabor the point that they were not out in force as a white president loaded the country with debt to fight two wars and engineer the bank bailout.
But beyond that fact the real incoherence I see is the adoption of the American Revolution as exemplary model for current political protest. I understand that mass rallies aren't places of critical nuance, but nevertheless I see a lot of confusion about what the Revolution was and was not. As many working-class Americans and women lionize the Founders they whitewash their biographies to invoke them as guiding spirits. But in truth the landed gentry and rising businessmen who make up the American pantheon would likely not be pleased with the Tea Party rallies. Many, if not most, of the participants in the movement would be denied the vote or the chance to hold office by the founders. These men generally supported the property qualifications set by the states for political participation, resisting the idea of full suffrage for white men - let alone blacks or women. They believed in the purportedly wise rule of the deserving, the "better" or at least "middling" sort that possessed land and education. They were terrified of any action on the part of the "mob" and resisted public demonstrations by a crowd of Average Joes (unless, of course, said crowds were managed by them). If a Hancock or a Morris were to hear the ignorant declaration to "keep your government hands off my Medicare" they would immediately call up the militia to disperse the "rabble."
This is not to suggest that the founders were simply evil elites. Elites they were, yes, but perhaps guided more by a paternalistic mindset and the blindness of their social position rather than any conspiratorial bent to oppress others. Some, like Jefferson, may have viewed the masses more favorably. But, in general, they supported what was truthfully a system of minority rule. Pennsylvania was the only Revolutionary-era state to adopt universal male suffrage, and New Jersey adopted women's suffrage in 1776 only to repeal it within a couple of decades.
But there is more to the Revolution than the visible white men on pedestals. It has become commonplace among scholars to speak of multiple revolutionary visions that were imagined and argued in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Instead of a unified, homogenous revolutionary movement there were competing factions and shifting alliances. The language of liberty was disseminated and shared across the social spectrum but it received multiple interpretations as it played in the minds of aristocrats, yeoman farmers, laborers, women and slaves. Some of the happenings of the Revolution were beyond the control or the wishes of the astounded founders as many took opportunity into their own hands.
The Tea Party is incoherent in that it wants to establish continuity with all these competing elements. Simultaneously, the protesters connect with Madison and Paine, the Constitution and Common Sense. In one video I saw one protester holding a sign that says "I believe in the Constitution." I doubt she is aware that the Constitution was a retrenchment by the elite founders against democratizing forces, as demonstrated in such works as Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution and as acknowledged even by Gordon Wood, a scholar with a more positive view of the founders who argued for The Radicalism of the American Revolution. I also doubt many Tea Party participants are aware that Thomas Paine, upon returning to America in 1802 after a fifteen-year absence, believed that the ideals of the Revolution had been betrayed.
But such is the fate of history when it is made to serve current political needs and when its many shades are whitewashed in the name of idolatrous American exceptionalism. The American Revolution, a confused, tumultuous, violent spectacle, part triumph and part tragedy, has become a conflated unity and marbelized as the monumental backdrop to make any and every protest today noble because it is said to share a supposed common spirit.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
1 Thessalonians versus Empire...Who Knew?
At least, that's the question that has come to mind as I've re-engaged Paul's earliest extant letter.
For some time I have not paid particular attention to the Thessalonian correspondence. Part of the avoidance may be the sour taste of overdone eschatological speculation that has drawn from these letters. 1 Thess supposedly teaches the "rapture" and 2 Thess explains the "coming world leader Antichrist blah blah blah." In other words, these two brief letters have been scripted into the otherwordly and spiritualized narrative of contemporary First World apocalypticism. Just give us that pie in the sky, Jesus, we're waiting to go home!
But what if there's more going on in this correspondence than meets the eye? I've recently come across some interesting work on these letters, most particularly 1 Thessalonians, as anti-imperial rhetoric. Paul writes to a community that is suffering difficult ostracism and persecution. The archaeological and historical record indicates that the elites of Thessalonica strongly cultivated Roman beneficence. Alongside the state-sponsored cult of Cabirus the imperial cult was established and promoted early. The small community of Christians thus encountered opposition not from "Judaizers" but from their "own countrymen" (2:14). Nevertheless, Paul reminds the believers, Jesus Christ is truly "Lord" (and, it is implied, not Caesar) and he is the one who brings salvation (again, not the guy in Rome).
These believers belong to an alternative brotherhood (1:6-8) that operates independently of Roman patronage system and in separation from Caesar's claim of the empire as household and family. Looking forward to their future vindication, Paul tells the Thessalonians that those who live to see the Lord Jesus return will "meet" (apantesis) him in the air. This term was used to describe the ceremonial reception of a visiting emperor or other such official who is met outside the city gates and then escorted on the final leg of his journey. The point, then, is not that Christians get to escape this world but that they have the honor of receiving the true Sovereign just before he arrives. Further still in 5:3 Paul criticizes the claim of "peace and security," which was something of an imperial slogan from the days of Augustus.
What we have in 1 Thessalonians, argues Abraham Smith, is a document of moral formation "designed to support the shared values of a network of ekklesiai in the face of competing values in the larger society." ("1 and 2 Thessalonians," A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings, 312).
For some time I have not paid particular attention to the Thessalonian correspondence. Part of the avoidance may be the sour taste of overdone eschatological speculation that has drawn from these letters. 1 Thess supposedly teaches the "rapture" and 2 Thess explains the "coming world leader Antichrist blah blah blah." In other words, these two brief letters have been scripted into the otherwordly and spiritualized narrative of contemporary First World apocalypticism. Just give us that pie in the sky, Jesus, we're waiting to go home!
But what if there's more going on in this correspondence than meets the eye? I've recently come across some interesting work on these letters, most particularly 1 Thessalonians, as anti-imperial rhetoric. Paul writes to a community that is suffering difficult ostracism and persecution. The archaeological and historical record indicates that the elites of Thessalonica strongly cultivated Roman beneficence. Alongside the state-sponsored cult of Cabirus the imperial cult was established and promoted early. The small community of Christians thus encountered opposition not from "Judaizers" but from their "own countrymen" (2:14). Nevertheless, Paul reminds the believers, Jesus Christ is truly "Lord" (and, it is implied, not Caesar) and he is the one who brings salvation (again, not the guy in Rome).
These believers belong to an alternative brotherhood (1:6-8) that operates independently of Roman patronage system and in separation from Caesar's claim of the empire as household and family. Looking forward to their future vindication, Paul tells the Thessalonians that those who live to see the Lord Jesus return will "meet" (apantesis) him in the air. This term was used to describe the ceremonial reception of a visiting emperor or other such official who is met outside the city gates and then escorted on the final leg of his journey. The point, then, is not that Christians get to escape this world but that they have the honor of receiving the true Sovereign just before he arrives. Further still in 5:3 Paul criticizes the claim of "peace and security," which was something of an imperial slogan from the days of Augustus.
What we have in 1 Thessalonians, argues Abraham Smith, is a document of moral formation "designed to support the shared values of a network of ekklesiai in the face of competing values in the larger society." ("1 and 2 Thessalonians," A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings, 312).
Labels: Bible and Empire
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Humble Tips for Fellow Garden Beginners
After having unusually cold and snowy weather for a while, we broke out into an unusually warm and sunny weekend! I understand that a recent Tom Friedman column in the New York Times spoke of "Global Weirding" and I think he's right!
Winter really does feel like a creeping, quiet hibernation time when one is both a) a southerner who looks at the first snowfall each year and thinks to himself, "Huh...I wonder just what is this stuff??" and b) a day-dreaming newbie gardener almost ready to rip up the whole lawn and homestead his heart out. So today I got out and made the most of this break before the temperatures drop down a bit again in the coming days. It was long and hard work, but by the late afternoon I could sit my tired self down and celebrate a new garden bed running down the gentle south slope from our largest oak tree. Part of this evening was spent in devotions with a nursery catalogue, selecting candidates for the latest mini-ecosystem at our house.
This is now my fifth straight season of gardening and the third in the current residence. I have no doubt that I am still quite the beginner in this experience. But this has been enough time of reading and practice for me to learn a few things along the way that may be worth sharing, especially for friends who have also started to take up gardening as practice or at least as hypothesis. Maybe you know all this already or maybe this will be helpful. Either way, I'm going to keep typing.
1. You will not achieve your miracle garden overflowing with luscious vegetables, all-season long, in the first season. In fact, I haven't achieved anything close to that yet. Developing a good garden takes time, especially if you make the effort to pursue ecological harmony instead of the "easy" way out of Miracle Gro, fertilizer and pesticide. Gardening is perhaps ultimately about reaching a genuine sense of place so that your little hamlet of the natural world becomes "home" in a very true sense. You get to the good garden because you know your soil, your climate, your critters, your sun and your shade. And you don't know all of these things your first season, or your second. Moreover, just when you think you know them, something new is added to the mix. Creation is always flowing in the flux that the good Lord intended, so you can't become complacent. Observation is critical, and I should know because I'm not good at it. But once you have good knowledge of your garden place, both empirical and intuitive, then you have the baseline that helps you adjust readily to ever-changing circumstances.
Plus, good gardens create communities of plants (not zombiefied monocultures like on agribusiness farms) and it takes time to know what communities work each year (for annuals) or to establish strong communities year-over-year (for perennials). Sometimes you really just have to grow into a good garden. Again, I'm not there yet!
2. With good planning and principles in hand, a lot of the hard work comes up front but tapers off after that. This at least is true if one is trying to garden according to the permaculture ideal. In other words, it's back-breaking labor first to build those garden beds, plant those fruit trees, and so on. But once a pretty good garden has been established then it's supposed to be a matter of letting nature doing most of the work and then cooperating with that. If good soil has been formed, plants have been placed well, birds and bees and butterflies are showing up, and there's no severe drought, then you can have less of the hard labor and more of the sheer enjoyment. But this means ignoring a lot of "conventional" gardening - i.e., organizing plants in rows and tilling the soil each year. You'll find out that not only is this way of doing things ecologically irresponsible, it's also very tiring.
3. Don't get ambitious about feeding yourself and your family with your vegetable garden and expect to have other enjoyments or a job. Besides, self-sufficiency isn't a Christian virtue. Go the farmer's market or co-op grocery. Sign up for a share with a local CSA. I think a best practice is to look at your diet, look at what local farmers offer, and think about planting the missing ingredients, if possible. Don't think that your garden is the lifeline to survival if you lose your job, get slapped with heavy medical bills, or Western civilization collapses. A stable, sustainable garden will certainly help your resilience. But it won't keep you alive - especially if you don't have the space to grow the protein-rich stuff like grains or lots of potatoes. I should know - I have a lot that's nearly half an acre and, based on reading my copy of Small-Scale Grain Raising, we'd probably need to turn just about every inch of sunny lawn over to grain to have, in potential, enough survival bread for a good chunk of the year.
4. If you're serious about a resilient, sustainable vegetable garden, don't buy the super-cheap seed packets at the box stores. Suppose you wanted to save the seeds from your bell pepper you got at Lowe's and plant them next year? Good luck with that one. Almost all the seeds in the stores are hybrids and so their descendants will not return "true to type" but start deviating into unpredicable varieties from which they were bred, which will span the range of edibility (or lack thereof). If you want to save seeds, buy heirloom varieties from places like Seed Savers Exchange. You'll be promoting biodiversity and preserving all kinds of endangered tastes and colors that have been pushed aside by agribusiness uniformity. And you can do this at the same time as you save yourself money and enhance your resilience - who knew? Keep in mind, though, that you need to either plant a LOT of a variety to keep the gene pool broad and healthy, or get involved in the actual exchanging part of groups like SSE.
5. Compost, compost, compost. It's the miracle drug of gardening. Don't even think of skimping on this part. And upgrade to composting with worms! I haven't done this yet, but everything tells me I need to get on board soon so my plants can get a really super hit of the good stuff.
6. Don't make the garden just about you. As suggested above, the birds, bees and butterflies are your friends. Birds eat bugs, especially a lot of the ones you don't want around. Bees and butterflies make a lot of plant sex happen, which will be good if you're planting heirloom varieties and want to save seed. So be sure to build so-called "ornamental" beds, or beds that mix food crops and those with other purposes. Get plants that flower, bear fruit that you may care little about eating, or that are known for generating seed that birds love.
7. Go native! A lot of the plants that are even at your friendly, local garden center are exotic species that may look pretty but are not best suited for your region. They may be poisonous to certain animals or invasive species that destabilize natural habitats. Or they may just need more attention to grow well in places foreign to their evolved dispositions. Even non-native species that serve some useful purposes are out-done by the home team. For example, we bought a butterfly bush last year to do you can guess what. But the butterfly bush, while pretty and helpful in attracting butterflies to feed, has a distinct limitation. Butterflies here in the eastern US will not lay their eggs on the butterfly bush. But there are pretty, native plants that offer food and suitable circumstances for hatching and larval development. Why settle for less?
8. Don't ignore your garden in August because it's hot. This brings us full circle back to number one. Don't stop thinking about your garden in January either. It is a practice of constant observation, reflection and action. Make this a year-round commitment or just stick to growing a potted tomato plant on your porch each summer.
For what it's worthy, these are my thoughts on what fellow beginners should know as they set out. Feel free to share what you think are other important bits of advice.
Winter really does feel like a creeping, quiet hibernation time when one is both a) a southerner who looks at the first snowfall each year and thinks to himself, "Huh...I wonder just what is this stuff??" and b) a day-dreaming newbie gardener almost ready to rip up the whole lawn and homestead his heart out. So today I got out and made the most of this break before the temperatures drop down a bit again in the coming days. It was long and hard work, but by the late afternoon I could sit my tired self down and celebrate a new garden bed running down the gentle south slope from our largest oak tree. Part of this evening was spent in devotions with a nursery catalogue, selecting candidates for the latest mini-ecosystem at our house.
This is now my fifth straight season of gardening and the third in the current residence. I have no doubt that I am still quite the beginner in this experience. But this has been enough time of reading and practice for me to learn a few things along the way that may be worth sharing, especially for friends who have also started to take up gardening as practice or at least as hypothesis. Maybe you know all this already or maybe this will be helpful. Either way, I'm going to keep typing.
1. You will not achieve your miracle garden overflowing with luscious vegetables, all-season long, in the first season. In fact, I haven't achieved anything close to that yet. Developing a good garden takes time, especially if you make the effort to pursue ecological harmony instead of the "easy" way out of Miracle Gro, fertilizer and pesticide. Gardening is perhaps ultimately about reaching a genuine sense of place so that your little hamlet of the natural world becomes "home" in a very true sense. You get to the good garden because you know your soil, your climate, your critters, your sun and your shade. And you don't know all of these things your first season, or your second. Moreover, just when you think you know them, something new is added to the mix. Creation is always flowing in the flux that the good Lord intended, so you can't become complacent. Observation is critical, and I should know because I'm not good at it. But once you have good knowledge of your garden place, both empirical and intuitive, then you have the baseline that helps you adjust readily to ever-changing circumstances.
Plus, good gardens create communities of plants (not zombiefied monocultures like on agribusiness farms) and it takes time to know what communities work each year (for annuals) or to establish strong communities year-over-year (for perennials). Sometimes you really just have to grow into a good garden. Again, I'm not there yet!
2. With good planning and principles in hand, a lot of the hard work comes up front but tapers off after that. This at least is true if one is trying to garden according to the permaculture ideal. In other words, it's back-breaking labor first to build those garden beds, plant those fruit trees, and so on. But once a pretty good garden has been established then it's supposed to be a matter of letting nature doing most of the work and then cooperating with that. If good soil has been formed, plants have been placed well, birds and bees and butterflies are showing up, and there's no severe drought, then you can have less of the hard labor and more of the sheer enjoyment. But this means ignoring a lot of "conventional" gardening - i.e., organizing plants in rows and tilling the soil each year. You'll find out that not only is this way of doing things ecologically irresponsible, it's also very tiring.
3. Don't get ambitious about feeding yourself and your family with your vegetable garden and expect to have other enjoyments or a job. Besides, self-sufficiency isn't a Christian virtue. Go the farmer's market or co-op grocery. Sign up for a share with a local CSA. I think a best practice is to look at your diet, look at what local farmers offer, and think about planting the missing ingredients, if possible. Don't think that your garden is the lifeline to survival if you lose your job, get slapped with heavy medical bills, or Western civilization collapses. A stable, sustainable garden will certainly help your resilience. But it won't keep you alive - especially if you don't have the space to grow the protein-rich stuff like grains or lots of potatoes. I should know - I have a lot that's nearly half an acre and, based on reading my copy of Small-Scale Grain Raising, we'd probably need to turn just about every inch of sunny lawn over to grain to have, in potential, enough survival bread for a good chunk of the year.
4. If you're serious about a resilient, sustainable vegetable garden, don't buy the super-cheap seed packets at the box stores. Suppose you wanted to save the seeds from your bell pepper you got at Lowe's and plant them next year? Good luck with that one. Almost all the seeds in the stores are hybrids and so their descendants will not return "true to type" but start deviating into unpredicable varieties from which they were bred, which will span the range of edibility (or lack thereof). If you want to save seeds, buy heirloom varieties from places like Seed Savers Exchange. You'll be promoting biodiversity and preserving all kinds of endangered tastes and colors that have been pushed aside by agribusiness uniformity. And you can do this at the same time as you save yourself money and enhance your resilience - who knew? Keep in mind, though, that you need to either plant a LOT of a variety to keep the gene pool broad and healthy, or get involved in the actual exchanging part of groups like SSE.
5. Compost, compost, compost. It's the miracle drug of gardening. Don't even think of skimping on this part. And upgrade to composting with worms! I haven't done this yet, but everything tells me I need to get on board soon so my plants can get a really super hit of the good stuff.
6. Don't make the garden just about you. As suggested above, the birds, bees and butterflies are your friends. Birds eat bugs, especially a lot of the ones you don't want around. Bees and butterflies make a lot of plant sex happen, which will be good if you're planting heirloom varieties and want to save seed. So be sure to build so-called "ornamental" beds, or beds that mix food crops and those with other purposes. Get plants that flower, bear fruit that you may care little about eating, or that are known for generating seed that birds love.
7. Go native! A lot of the plants that are even at your friendly, local garden center are exotic species that may look pretty but are not best suited for your region. They may be poisonous to certain animals or invasive species that destabilize natural habitats. Or they may just need more attention to grow well in places foreign to their evolved dispositions. Even non-native species that serve some useful purposes are out-done by the home team. For example, we bought a butterfly bush last year to do you can guess what. But the butterfly bush, while pretty and helpful in attracting butterflies to feed, has a distinct limitation. Butterflies here in the eastern US will not lay their eggs on the butterfly bush. But there are pretty, native plants that offer food and suitable circumstances for hatching and larval development. Why settle for less?
8. Don't ignore your garden in August because it's hot. This brings us full circle back to number one. Don't stop thinking about your garden in January either. It is a practice of constant observation, reflection and action. Make this a year-round commitment or just stick to growing a potted tomato plant on your porch each summer.
For what it's worthy, these are my thoughts on what fellow beginners should know as they set out. Feel free to share what you think are other important bits of advice.
Labels: Discipleship, The Pleasures of Life
Friday, February 12, 2010
Decline Going Mainstream?
At the beginning of December I commented on the Newsweek cover story, "How Great Powers Fall," in which economic historian Niall Ferguson openly entertained the idea that America's huge load of debt may herald the end of her superpower status. At the time it appeared, to my eyes at least, as a lonely statement of historical inevitability. It has been surrounded by assurances, or at least hopeful assumptions, that our unequivocally bad times, however severe, are still just bumps on the road to renewed prosperity and might. Perhaps most Americans are still pessimistic about the current state of affairs and the near-term future, but I wager that few conceive that dramatic changes in their way of life, or the global order writ large, are plausible.
The latest issue of Newsweek, however, mentioned the prospect of imminent decline multiple times. In a column on Chinese-US relations, Fareed Zakaria writes about a
great fear that the U.S. economy is in deep structural decline. If American politicians cannot muster up the courage to make the U.S. economy competitive again, and Beijing perceives that it is dealing with a superpower in inexorable decline, relations between China and America will change fundamentally. [emphasis mine]
Turning the page, the next column by Jacob Weisberg comments on the nation's current political paralysis, turning blame from the politicians to the "biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large." In aggregate, he says, the American people live "in Candyland" by simultaneously holding desires for government both to tackle big problems and "get out of the way." This is his concluding paragraph:
Our inability to address long-term challenges makes a strong case that the United States now faces an era of historical decline. To change this storyline, we need to stop blaming the rascals we elect to office, and look instead to ourselves. [emphasis mine]
Turn the page yet again and Robert Samuelson's column warns that delay in addressing the budget deficits will eventually compel odious tax increases and painful spending cuts. Turn the page yet again and Evan Thomas' article on Obama's "candor deficit" stresses that the public's trust in a better future for their children is in jeopardy and the time has long since come for politicians to drop slogans and speak honestly about the challenges and sacrifices necessary to forge a better future. One wonders how successful such honesty will be since, as Thomas writes, "liberal democracies are notoriously unable to demand sacrifice from their citizens, outside of time of war."
Elsewhere in the mainstream media, decline is openly discussed or otherwise implied. Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman recently wrote about Obama's "cluelessness" in a New York Times column. Responding to the president's recent pro-business and pro-banker comments, including a statement about the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies, Krugman ends his column with these words:
We're doomed.
Canuck commentator Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun wrote a column last week about America's black hole of military spending, stating that the U.S. has reached "imperial overreach." Meanwhile, Paul Farrell of MarketWatch, part of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, lists 20 "made-in-America" time bombs of debt that threaten the global economy and can "destroy your retirement."
Signs and portents, perhaps.
Labels: Ruins of Empire