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what's going to happen

when the oil runs out...

- We've found energy resources

that have allowed us to escape

some of the kinds of

limits that previous cultures

have had to face much more quickly.

They used to collapse because

they ran out of resources,

easily accessible resources.

The limit being the distance that people

could travel with things like horses,

or other pack animals.

That ended with the beginning

of the fossil fuel age; now

they can go all over the planet

and take what they want.

So globalization has only

accelerated this tremendously

destructive process.

- We've poured our wealth into

building an infrastructure

for daily life

that has no future. I do think that

oil problem is going to accelerate

within the next three to

five years, maybe even sooner.

The numbers indicate that we've

probably peaked in global production.

- Where do you find

the break from that?

I mean, all of it is a giant machine or

ensemble that just moves forward.

Technology, for example,

never takes a step back.

This whole thing just

keeps going like a cancer.

- I don't know of any civilization

that's been sustainable,

I don't believe

there ever has been one.

Technology, at its essence,

is really our culture's...

...determination,

that comes from certain

philosophical and historical sources,

that we will be nothing else

but more relentlessly technological.

- There is no clean green path to

living in a lifestyle that

we're all used to in

industrialized nations.

This way of life is over.

- Civilizations are often

cutting their own throats,

very visibly, very obviously,

but they just keep on doing it.

- Every civilization is defined by hubris,

it's defined by its denial

to recognize that it

lives in a natural world.

As a matter of fact, every

civilization, in its founding lies,

elevates itself above nature,

and claims that it is the

controller of the whole world.

Figure 1

- The first written myth of this culture

is Gilgamesh deforesting the plains

and hillsides of Iraq.

When people think of Iraq,

what's the first thing they normally

think of? Cedar forests so thick

that sunlight never

touches the ground?

That's how it was, prior to the

arrival of this culture.

Clearcuts

So, as a longtime, grassroots,

environmental activist,

and as a creature living in

the thrashing endgame of civilization,

I am intimately acquainted

with the landscape of loss,

and have grown accustomed to

carrying the daily weight of despair.

I've walked clearcuts that

wrap around mountains and

drop into valleys and

climb ridges to fragment

watershed after watershed,

and I've sat, silent,

near empty streams that

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