  | ||
| | |
Gaian Rants | Earth Action: The Peace Movement and Oil by Jan Lundberg Jan Lundberg is a former oil industry insider turned activist. His father’s business, Lundberg Survey, Inc., collected statistics for the oil industry and in 1973, Jan and his father, who died in the mid 1980s, began publishing the Lundberg Letter, which became the number one trade journal for the oil industry. In 1988, Jan founded the Fossil Fuels Policy Action Institute (now the Sustainable Energy Institute) and the Alliance for a Paving Moratorium. For ten years SEI published the journal, Auto-Free Times, now refocused and renamed Culture Change. Other projects include Pedal Power Produce, where local growers use bike carts to bring food to market, and the Sail Transport Network that “links land and sea, using wind-powered vessels to move goods, people, and information from community to community in Puget Sound”. Jan’s insider background and commitment to “halting car-culture expansion” are a powerful combination. He was featured in the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of Orion (“The Power of One”). He’s a father and plays in an eco-rock band called The Depavers. And he hasn’t owned a car in 14 years. The bombing of Iraq has started, but outside my window the cars drive by relentlessly. Society is capable of non-oil transportation and a peaceful economy but has done next to nothing to institute it. We are at a crossroads in world history: The downturn of Petroleum Civilization is upon us. The fact that we have almost reached peak oil production cannot have escaped the notice of this particular administration. Unfortunately, their “solution” is to control oil for the U.S. and its corporate friends. But what’s the point if the global economic downturn from peak oil hits Japan, Europe and other areas just a month perhaps before it hits the U.S.? The Iraq oil war is a different kind of war than Vietnam, although that war was over resources and domination too. Huge U.S. casualties turned the tide against that misadventure of racist mur-der. Iraq is a racist war too, but it is blatantly about oil (and about using the military for profit). The peace movement today enjoys more worldwide support than 30-36 years ago, but as I see it, succes-sfully opposing this war means more than marching in the streets. It seems our main freedom these days is the ability to buy things. Some of us are extremely disturbed by this, but the majority of oil consumers appear happy to spend their hard-earned and often in-adequate wages on a little happiness and relief from the daily grind. Even the peace movement is lacking resolve on oil issues. Ideas have popped up around the U.S. to put action into gripes about war for oil, such as non-driving days. But more drastic measures, such as boycotting oil for an extended period of time in the U.S., are needed to really change things. Of course such a boycott would undermine the economy to the point of causing a strong recession or depression. If this sounds subversive, irresponsible, and frightening, let me ask: Does it make sense to continue on our present course, putting off the inevitable day of reckoning on oil gluttony? But a boycott-oil peace movement seems unlikely because most people are unwilling or afraid to change their way of living. They fear loss — of job or family or home, and they fear the unknown. Therefore, to effectively protest the war and change U.S. policy, stronger methods are being contemplated including disruption of business-as-usual. One idea circulating among the most hardened veterans of the protest movement, a total economic boycott, expressed globally, of U.S. products, could have a significant impact. The challenge is to act today to first reduce and then eliminate our dependence on petroleum. Sustainable living has many components, such as building homes from sustainable, local materials, switching to composting toilets, creating renewable energy systems, organic gardening, and hauling goods with bike carts, to name a few. These and other methods of maintaining a local — not global — economy will assure survival for many provided the loss of petroleum supplies does not cause so much destruction though famine that nuclear weapons and radioactive waste are unleashed. Just as vital to sustainable living is altering human relations from hierarchical and exploitative to cooperative, mutually supportive social organization. The anti-war movement must become the pro-living, pro-sharing and pro-nature movement. If not, marching and carrying signs will be of little lasting value — especially if we drive to and from the protests. | |||
| | | | |