April 2008 Archives

I was prompted by Paul Beard to give Neil Gaiman's piece American Gods a fair chance. I read Neverwhere some time ago, and while I found his story interesting, I did not feel the emotional tug that I expect out of good literature. It was a nice distraction, but not the experience I was looking for. Thankfully, my time with American Gods was different.

Gaimon begins by introducing us to the protagonist Shadow, who is serving the last day of his three year term in prison. While he does possess a corny name and has a record of assault, he is the kind of character that the reader immediately starts to like. Sadly, just before leaving the joint, he learns that his wife and best friend died in a car accident.

On his way to sort her things out, Shadow meets a self-styled rogue who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. He offers Shadow a job, and having nothing better, he accepts. Things change here, as our hero begins to see the world as it exists backstage.

Little did he realize that the old gods and various mythological creatures roam the American landscape. A storm was coming, as Americans tend to be fickle and flighty with their beliefs, and the gods of the old country were ready to depose our modern ones (television, Wall Street, etc).

If you're looking for something different, put this in your queue. I'm glad that I did.

The Macrocosm

As far as I can tell, the industrial world is in quite a bind. All industrialized countries use oil as their primary input. While more countries pull themselves out of the Third World and the demand for energy increases, the so-called oil production rate has not.

In 2007, the IEA changed its usual happy-go-lucky tune and issued a report declaring that an "energy crunch" is imminent. The Chinese and Indians have joined that oil thirsty Americans and Europeans at the trough, and their doesn't appear to be enough drink to go around at current levels of consumption. We are finally being called out and having to face that fact that oil is most certainly a limited natural resource.

Understandably, most people think of their automobiles when they think of oil. While that is probably the most visible and obvious use of the resource, we often forget (or do not ever consider) that the abundance of petrol is responsible for far more than personal transportation. It moves our goods through interstate commerce. It powers the factories that produce our products and provide jobs opportunities. Its various forms can help heat and cool our homes. Possibly more important that anything: it is what we rely on to feed our nation. Others have stated that we actually eat oil, and I propose that one should spend a little time in contemplation to see the truth in that.

The modern food system in America is industrialized. Our crops are planted and harvested on a massive scale with petrol-powered machinery. Our fertilizers are applied via the same mechanism. Even more noteworthy, our fertilizers and pesticides are produced in oil-powered factories, and both are transported on oil-consuming trucks. The same goes for the finished harvest - it takes considerable energy to move it from the centralized farm to your local supermarket.

Despite what many would hope for, I do not see any drop-in solution available. Oil is perhaps the best energy resource man will ever find. That may sound preposterous, but its value comes from its versatility, safety, and general ease of extraction.

While it may be able to replace our power plants, nuclear power is not going to move tractors nor produce fertilizer and pesticides. It will not transport the corn and wheat from one end of the country to the other. It certainly won't propel your car from your garage to the supermarket, nor will nuclear energy somehow pave the roads or be the stuff that we pave the roads with.

There are generally two schools of thought when it comes to the depletion of the oil supply, and I both rather naive:

• Science will give us an easy drop in replacement for oil, and we'll be saved
• Oil will run out, and mankind will die off or at least revert to caveman status

I think that we have a pretty painful struggle ahead of us, but we can hopefully make it a little easier if we start applying ourselves right now. I do expect our standard of living to decrease as the oil subsidy diminishes, but see no reason to believe that some sort of Mad Max-like apocalypse is near. The human being has proven itself to be quite good at adaptation, and we'll just have to keep on doing it.

One of the key remedies for the potential food shortage is the individual family reducing their dependence on industrial agriculture by taking the responsibility to grow their own food. We have come to take all of this for granted, and now it is time to repent by humbly toiling in the soil.

The Microcosm

For myself, I just wanna see something grow. I want to grasp the basics of the nutrient cycle. I do not have any practical experience, but do recall growing a Bachelor's Button in kindergarten. It obviously didn't stick with me, as I also recall mowing over my wife's basil thinking that it was a weed. I plan on making plenty of mistakes along the way.

To make it more interesting, we now live in a Brooklyn apartment without any 'real' land. I have a small patch of concrete behind my building that my landlord agreed to let me use, and a stoop that I'm weary of growing anything on. I don't want to attract the attention of any young hoodlums.

But come on - what a place to learn! This is true urban gardening, and I imagine that whatever I can figure out will easily transpose to a place with more space in the future.

I believe that hackers and other people of the DIY movement have a prominent role in working through this problem. There is no need for the problem solvers to only focus on flipping bits. You can expect more articles from myself detailing the layout, progress, and mishaps.