More Books and Community

So are you feeling secure in the current economy? I'm guessing most people are pretty worried right now but other than generalities don't talk about it too much. While I'll never underestimate the abilities of the "powers that be" to keep this house of cards standing, continuing on as we have just isn't possible for much longer. I cringe when politicians proclaim that we much save "our American way of life". As far as I'm concerned the goal of our way of life is to keep us busy, buying and ignorant. The goal cannot be to keep our economy "growing" as this is simply not sustainable.



A couple books I've been reading address this as well as how we will need to depend on our local community in the (probably very near) future. One, A Reasonable Life by Ferenc Mate http://www.ecobooks.com/books/reasonablelife.htm, was written in 1993 and the other, Depletion and Abundance by Sharon Astyk, has only recently been published. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46908 - see review here. Sharon's book focuses more on why peak energy and climate change will force these changes on us than Mate's book. Of course the present drop in energy usage due to the economy will push forward the date of peak oil/energy as the late 70's recession pushed forward the date of peak oil in the U.S. (Hubbard's Peak).



At any rate I found both of these books informative and even uplifting in the sense that we can have a very satisfying, if not better, life with less.



Check out Sharon Astys's blog http://sharonastyk.com/ and

Allison Arieff's http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/