Prologue
When I first conceived the idea for this blog late in 2010 the idea of an underground movement of different age groups, economic levels, and idealists finding a new way of living in North America and Europe, it was before the “Occupy Wall Street” and “We are the Ninety-Nine Percent”. We have all been aware of subtle changes taking place; green roofs, urban/community gardens where unused city lands are being reinvented. We are all aware of the need to preserve our agricultural lands, find better ways to use our resources, develop the community spirit and rely less on consumption. We are all moving away from the “me” attitude to what can we do collectively. Come with me as I find solutions for a better way of living, show you what other people based organizations and industries are doing.
The Beginning
It was a one of those cold west coast winter Sundays, where it is better to find a cosy spot indoors than be outside in the blustery wet climate, that I found myself searching the Internet for ideas about gardening on an acre. What I found is an Irish site, at the All Hollows College in Druncondra Dublin, and videos of a conference held June 10-12, 2009, “The Emergency Conference: Managing Risk and Building Resilience in a Resource Constrained World.” I watched the half dozen lectures that afternoon and over the coming weeks went in search of more people speaking out on the changes that our society needed to make about the impact of climate change and the coming disaster of energy consumption. This type of research corresponded well with the industry research that I was doing for one of the major accounting firm.
That’s how I got to where I am today, well let’s just say where I was a few months ago, when the idea for this blog had taken shape. On September 17th the idea became old news with the Occupy Wall Street movement. What was once an underground movement, with subtle changes taking place in industry, buildings becoming LEED certified, and people writing a plethora of books on peak oil and energy consumption and how to survive the financial crisis of 2007, I needed to stop focusing on what was wrong and more on the survival techniques.
So what is this blog “The Long Day’s Journey Into Reality” really about? I’m not going to focus on the debacle that is taking place in Europe and the United States, forgive me if I digress in the future. I am going to tell you that history is repeating itself and has repeated itself several times. First though I want to give you some hope. There is a way to survive this change in your new economic reality, but it won’t be easy. The first question you will want to know the answer to is this; will it ever be financially secure? The answer is complex, if you want what your parents, of the baby boomer generation had, it’s simple – No. In John Sharry’s, who is a family and child psychotherapist, presentation at the Emergency Conference, talked about the stages that we through when facing a traumatic experience. On his website he talks about not only what the Irish people are facing today, but the world.
“The whole world has been pursuing an unsustainable path of economic growth and consumption which has led to overwhelming debt, resource depletion and environmental degradation, not to mention future dangerous climate change as well as social inequality. Though we have been warned for decades, we are now reaching the limits of this expansion and a resultant worldwide bubble is at the point of collapsing. Though not widely reported, the current international financial crisis coincided with a peaking of oil production, meaning that worldwide future economic growth will be limited by dwindling oil supplies, which could result in economic contraction in the long term. This has huge implications for civilisation and our way of life.
Though the situation is grim, it is not hopeless. Just as the pivotal point of psychological change is a moving from denial to an acceptance of reality, so we are at point where we can collectively make a choice to face what is ahead so we can take hopeful and courageous action.
There are many organisations talking about the differences that are being developed, from TED talks, Ideal City (Canadian) to conferences being held. Individuals are coming together to show how we can develop new products for a better way of living, talks about closed local economies along the lines of New Transition Towns.
