The following essay, by Thomas Moore of the Southern National
Congress Committee, is the start of a mission statement for a new
organization that will explore and develop the ideas, processes, and
tools for the kinds of sustainability that we all will need to know as
and when the empire collapses. The full document can be read at
www.sislinc.org. Kirkpatrick Sale.

The Southern Institute for Sustainable Living, Inc.

The Southern Institute for Sustainable Living (SISL) is a nonprofit
educational foundation organized as a Virginia non-stock
corporation. The business office is in Alexandria, Virginia, with
our principal permaculture∗ site in southwest Virginia.
Additional facilities are in Clemson, South Carolina. Our purpose
is to promote sustainable living by cultivating and passing on to
others the practical arts and skills necessary for self-sufficiency in
food, shelter, health, and renewable, non-polluting energy.

Why “Sustainable”? What’s Wrong With the Way We Live Now?

Those who make their living from the land are charter members of the
“reality-based community.” This post-modern term was intended to
be derisive, yet it captures a truth its purveyors didn’t intend.
The farmer and stockman know from experience the reality of nature’s
inexorable laws. All their planning and hard work can be
nullified in an instant by hail or rain, or over time by blight or
drought. No amount of self-delusion or wishful thinking will halt
the winds or bring the rains. As the great Southerner Robert E.
Lee once observed, “Nature will always assert her rights.”

In today’s America reality is catching up with us all – rich or poor,
wise or foolish, prudent or improvident. The evidence on every
hand is indisputable: we are facing multiple, converging challenges –
environmental, social, and economic. Our way of life has changed,
is changing, or is likely to change dramatically; and for the worse, if
present trends continue unabated. It is simply not sustainable.

We are not climatologists, but it appears to us that the globe is
undergoing a warming spell. One data point among many to
illustrate: almost one quarter of the Artic icecap has disappeared in
the past two years. Even if you disregard the claims of the more
alarmist environmental scientists, this is a measurable event and
rebuts those who claim there is no climate change.

Whatever the cause - greenhouse gases, a spike in solar activity, or other –
global warming will dramatically change the way we live. Converging with climate change is the rapid depletion of the earth’s
natural resources. We are not oil geologists nor qualified to
assess the validity of the “peak oil” theory. However, you don’t
have to be a scientist to observe the price of crude oil increasing
almost geometrically, up about 50 percent over 2006. Since our
economy – indeed, our whole way of life – is based on cheap, abundant
oil, the squeeze in petroleum reserves and steep rise in costs will
dramatically change the way we live.

The world’s water supply is also shrinking, at least in relation to the
demands of a growing population. Estimates are that by 2010, half
the world’s people will face severe shortages, leading to massive
struggles over this indispensable resource. The Southeast, where
we are located, generally has had ample water. Yet today it suffers
from a drought of historic magnitude that, though it had been confined
mostly to the lower and central South, is making its way north and
east, toward the mid-Atlantic region.

Thanks to climate change and shortages of fuel and water, food supplies
are falling and prices are spiraling. According to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA), global grain reserves have reached
their lowest level in three decades for which reporting data exist, and
possibly their lowest in a century. There is only about a 45-day
global grain reserve, and the National Farmers’ Union of Canada warns
that according to USDA data “…the world is consistently failing to
produce as much grain as it uses. We are in the opening phase of
an intensifying food shortage.” That is, a worldwide shortage.

Many Americans, already reduced to living from paycheck to paycheck,
are increasingly unable to stretch their dollars to the next payday as
they juggle rising food and energy bills. “Too much month left at the
end of the money” is beginning to affect middle-income working families
as well as the poor. Food pantries, which distribute foodstuffs
to the needy, are reporting severe shortages and reduced government
funding at the very time they are encountering a surge of new people
seeking their help.

And what about the quality of the food we purchase? News accounts
of polluted and sometimes deadly food imported from China and other
foreign countries are a daily occurrence. And frankly, a lot of
the food produced in the U.S. by the huge industrial “confined feeding
operations” isn’t much better. Much of the animal protein we
consume is laden with toxins, chemical additives, and powerful hormones
which wreak havoc over the long term with the human organism.

Since much of what we consume has been emptied of nutrients and filled
with toxins, it’s no wonder we have an epidemic of diabetes, obesity,
and chronic degenerative disease, which in turn heavily impacts a
burdened health care system. Medical treatment is now one of the
greatest expenses Americans face, potential or actual; and consequently
one of the most divisive political issues in the country.

More news from the real world

Sorry, but there’s more bad news from the reality-based
community. The average retail price of electricity shot up 10
percent last year, the largest jump in 25 years. The growing cost
of electric power highlights how dependent we are on this indispensable
source of energy. It hardly needs stating that the national power grids
are the lynchpins of our society’s infrastructure. Any
interruption for more than a week or two could precipitate a societal
collapse; too much of our daily life support depends on electricity
from the grid. Even the supply of piped natural gas is dependent
on grid power, since it is used to run the compressors that pressurize
gas pipelines. Yet the three national grids are cumbersome and
antiquated, with too many complex interdependent parts for the system
to right itself when something goes wrong, even in normal
circumstances, as we have already seen in major regional
blackouts. But the electricity system is now facing increasing
threats from computer hackers and cyber-terrorists that could cause
major disruptions and economic chaos, according to the Government
Accountability Office.

These problems are largely beyond our individual control. But
partial remedies, at least, are within our grasp. Our individual
futures need not be utterly bleak; they can once again be full of
promise and fulfillment, but only if we re-orient ourselves away from
dependence on remote systems that require huge amounts of diminishing
resources to maintain. We can take responsibility for our own
necessities. We can learn and practice skills that will meet some
if not all our most pressing physical needs -- food, water, and energy.

We must first recognize that the systems we rely on for our very
survival are highly centralized and industrial in nature. The
electric power generation and distribution system is the classic
example. Food production, mostly via big corporate agriculture’s
“factories in the field” concentrated in the hands of a tiny few, is
another. Banking, credit, and the international system of
payments also fit the paradigm. But we need not rely on distant,
unaccountable corporate monoliths for all our basic needs. Once
we realize this we can begin to transition from living according to the
industrial economic model, toward a household economy model.

‘Bankrupt’

Again, we’re sorry, but there’s more. The industrialized West is
facing a meltdown in credit and equity markets. The response of
the Federal Reserve is to pour even more liquidity – more “fiat” money
– into the system, which weakens the dollar globally, while the U.S.
government continues to spend money we don’t have with reckless
abandon. The trouble is, fiat currencies backed by nothing except
public confidence are losing value, and they buy less and less.
The once-mighty U.S. dollar has fallen to a record low against the
euro. "The gap between future U.S. receipts and future U.S.
government obligations now totals $65.9 trillion, a sum that is
impossible for the U.S. to reconcile, which means the U.S. is now
technically bankrupt," said the St. Louis Federal Reserve Review
(July/August 2006).

In sum, it’s not just peak oil we face, but peak food, peak water, peak
climate, peak resources, peak energy, peak money, peak wisdom.
Our urban and suburban, corporate-governed, cheap-oil-dependent,
“Just-In-Time”-delivered, consumer-oriented, money-driven lifestyle can
no longer sustain itself. Our abundance has peaked. Our
prosperity has peaked. We have exceeded America’s capacity to
support our population at our current mode of living.

Therefore sustainability.