By Jim Kunstler
March 17, 2008
SourceNote: This is the official publication week of my new 'post-oil' novel, "World Made By Hand," a vivid depiction of life in The Long Emergency. Visit the book's website:Things are getting very weird very fast -- and will probably get even weirder, faster, as the train wreck of bad debt meets the Saint Paddy's Day Parade of bacchanalian excess at the grade-crossing of destiny. The train is carrying America's financial system, but the engine driving it is peak oil, because declining energy resources necessarily means declining capital wealth -- and declining value of all the institutions, instruments, and markers that denote that wealth or hope to profit by trading in it. The fiasco leads straight to the necessary reinvention of American life on other terms and by other means.
I've maintained for a long time that, even among those who recognize we have a big problem, there are many impediments to imagining a credible outcome. One thing I've noticed is that in any given public meeting (or lecture hall) you can divide participants into two groups: those who believe we will 'high-tech' our way out of this predicament; and those who believe we'll organize our way out.
I don't subscribe to either point of view, strictly speaking. Both POV's assume that there will be an orderly transition between where we're at now and where we're headed. They're tainted by the kindergarten ethos of entitled happy endings and outcomes, which has been the chief operating system for the Baby Boomers, a therapeutic bias for placing 'good feelings' ahead of reality -- which also has obliterated the tragic sense of life that acts as the only brake on humanity's inherent hubris.
Ultimately, in my view, the issue of what happens next will be settled not by the fantasies of the algae-biodiesel geeks or the wishful thinking of the sustainable futures organizers, but by the natural, self-organizing properties of a society responding 'emergently' to new circumstances. One of the implications of destiny-as-emergence is the probability that we will try any damn fool thing besides the right things to keep the old game going for a while -- even in the face of obvious failure.
I'm sure our political leaders will mount a campaign to rescue the futureless infrastructure of suburbia. It will necessarily be an exercise in futility. But it has already started. That's what the swindle of ethanol has been all about. And the touting of hybrid cars, and the flimflam of "energy independence." Even the "environmental" crowd" squanders most of its attention these days on how to keep all the cars running on something other than gasoline. They don't question the assumption that we will remain a car-dependent society.
As much as I loathe the suburbs in their grotesque late-stage efflorescence, I can understand why those stuck in them would wish to defend their misinvestments. I just hate to think of the political consequences when their disappointment catches up to the reality that the suburbs will not be rescued. And by that I mean not just the houses but the way-of-life associated with them and all its accessories, furnishings, and activities. Bewilderment will soon turn to rage out in the highway-strip-and-cul-de-sac empire.
Now, apparently, we'll also opt for a bail-out of all those who tried to become rich by getting something for nothing at both ends of the Ponzi scheme called the housing bubble -- the "little guys" who signed mortgage contracts they could never hope to pay off, and the Wall Street playerz who bundled these hopeless contracts into fraudulent securities (and their enablers in the ratings agencies, plus the hedge fund smoothies who tried to cash in by using recondite algorithms to dissolve the risk associated with imprudent lending.) The bail-out is likely to accomplish nothing except the more rapid bankruptcy of government at all levels and a second Great Depression at ground level (worse than the first one).
Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve engineered a $30-billion dollar Saint Paddy's day present for the JP Morgan bank by handing them the corpse of Bear Stearns. The object of the game is to prevent the "assets" of Bear Stearns from going to the auction block, on which they would be discovered to be nearly worthless, which would instantly render all similar assets held by the other big banks to be similarly worthless, and would result in a universal margin call that would pretty much unwind the hallucinated "wealth" acquired the past ten years.
Despite the heroics around the fate of Bear Stearns, it looks like the financial system is tottering anyway. Perhaps the last trick left in the rescue bag will be the 100-basis-point drop in the Fed rate rumored to be announced tomorrow. It won't help any of the big banks, since their problem is holding liabilities in excess of assets. Almost certainly it would crater the US Dollar.
The next thing in store for America, in my opinion, will be a rather new surprise: oil-and-gasoline shortages. While frightened money pours into the oil futures markets, driving the price up, strange behavior will start brewing in the actual physical allocation process. Imports of oil and gas to the US may not be as reliable as it had been when America seemed to be a solvent nation. The exporters may be changing their terms of doing business with us -- and that's nearly two-thirds of all the oil we need. The public would probably suck up oil price increases indefinitely, but shortages are going to be something else. A real freak out.
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*** The Ukrainian Carpathians"
After three years on horseback with my three mounts and dog Tigon from Mongolia to Hungary, I had finally arrived in the Carpathians among the hardy mountain people known as the Hutsuls.
Arcing from Yugoslavia to Poland, the Carpathian Mountains hold some of the last vestiges of wilderness and traditional communities in Europe. They are home to diverse tracts of boreal and deciduous forests and lofty alpine environments where dwarf rhododendrons bloom in early summer and mountain lynx track prey through virgin snow in winter.
Bear and wolf sightings are not uncommon, and in the shadow of the Chorna Gora ridge in Ukraine there are timeless hamlets reachable only by horse and foot.
The Hutsuls who claim that their ancestors have lived in the Carpathians for thousands of years, are renowned for their independence, grit, and creativity."
-- Adventurer Tim Cope (
Ukrainian Carpathians)
Mountain PrideSydney Morning Herald
March 17, 2008
SourceSYDNEY, Australia -- Adventurer Tim Cope makes an unforgettable journey through the Ukrainian Carpathians on horseback.
There came a scraping of hoof on rock then the clapping of stones tumbling down the gully behind me. I dismounted, the horses regained balance and my surroundings rushed into clarity. The slope above angled into curling mist that poured over unseen mountain tops and decapitated thick forest of pine and spruce.
Below, the mountainside fell away into space hovering over the village from where we had risen. As if painted on a vertical canvas there were colourful wooden cottages perched on the opposing side of the valley bordered by greying timber fences, haystacks and glistening spring pastures.
After three years on horseback with my three mounts and dog Tigon from Mongolia to Hungary, I had finally arrived in the Carpathians among the hardy mountain people known as the Hutsuls.
Arcing from Yugoslavia to Poland, the Carpathian Mountains hold some of the last vestiges of wilderness and traditional communities in Europe. They are home to diverse tracts of boreal and deciduous forests and lofty alpine environments where dwarf rhododendrons bloom in early summer and mountain lynx track prey through virgin snow in winter.
Bear and wolf sightings are not uncommon, and in the shadow of the Chorna Gora ridge in Ukraine there are timeless hamlets reachable only by horse and foot.
The Hutsuls who claim that their ancestors have lived in the Carpathians for thousands of years, are renowned for their independence, grit, and creativity.
They survived the many empires that washed over their land from Ghengis Khan and the Mongols, to the world wars of the 20th century when they fought both the Nazis and the Russians.
The bitterness and soul-destroyed feeling that one gets from much of the former Soviet Union is absent, and what's more commercialism hasn't affected the heart and integrity of society either.
The Hutsuls are ardently proud of their skills and traditions and, even now as Ukraine opens more to tourism, show few signs of straying in the face of a changing modern world.
The exposure and raw beauty of the high slopes had been electrifying, but one has to be immersed in the culture to really sense the heart of the Hutsuls. I descended to the village of Krivorivnya which is spread along the narrow winding valley of the Chornyi Cheremosh river.
Waiting for me in a long black robe with a striking beard and youthful face was Ivan Rebruk, the local mountaineer turned priest. He explained that during winter he used his mountaineering skills to bless every river, stream, well and house in the parish. Wearing traditional dress it took him two weeks of trekking to visit around 600 family homes. "This is important work because I can also gauge the community very well, who is in need and who is not. Among Hutsuls the church is still the heart of village life," he says.
Ivan would accommodate me for a week, and his unending energy to share his culture and home spoke volumes of the Hutsuls's pride.
There is a local legend that when God was giving out land, he forgot about the Hutsuls. All that was left were the inhospitable Carpathians, so to compensate he blessed the people with extraordinary creativity and a hardworking soul.
With Ivan it was easy to be convinced that this was true. We hiked up to the mountain hamlet of Berezhnitsa where he was due to direct a special celebratory church service. Young and old came streaming down from mountain abodes, many of whom were on walking sticks and well into their eighties.
Their colourfully woven vests, embroidered shirts and hats sparkled under a blue sky, and as the chapel filled and overflowed, many sat around talking, singing and drinking beer that was delivered by horse and cart.
A stiff 20-minute walk up the hillside Ivan introduced me to Vasil Yusipchuk, an 84-year-old who had been living in the mountains all his life and making traditional hats since the age of 16.
In his rickety top attic he hand-wove all the decorations with wool, and explained that for the Hutsuls, traditional dress carries the soul and spirit of their ancestors. In another corner of the attic was his coffin. "It is even older than you are!" he joked.
Most Hutsuls handcraft their own coffins, and are sure to do so with a light wood to make the job of carrying them down the mountainside easier.
Inside the coffin lay a complete outfit and pre-made inscription plates for the headstone. "We reserve our very best clothes for the most important meeting of our lives when we die and meet with God," he said.
Back in Krivorivnya, even the everyday was laced with the Hutsul love of art. Paintings, wood carvings, ornate well covers and countless roadside chapels abounded, and firewood was stacked in pretty haystack-like mounds.
Misha, a rough-looking, work-hardened man forged my horseshoes in his blacksmith workshop before shoeing all three of my horses, and then also turned his hands to playing the violin over dinner.
His wife proudly showed how she spun wool by hand and made traditional blankets called lizhniki on her loom. Ivan pointed out that they were not alone with their range of skills in the village.
Throughout my time in the Carpathians, babushkas would commonly greet me with clenched hands in the air and shout: "So you are off to the polonino? You are brave! May God be with you!"
It took me some time to realise that they were mistaking me for a local herder who had begun the annual migration up to high mountains. "Polonino" refers to the alpine pastures where Hutsuls live in the summer with their cattle, sheep, horses and goats.
In a meadow not far from Krivorivnya, Ivan took me to Poloninske Lito, the festival celebrating those who are about to brave the hostile slopes. There was a dazzling array of musicians in traditional dress carrying instruments from big double bass violins to the duda which is a local variety of the bagpipes, and the three-metre pipes called the trembita.
One could wander from stall to stall sampling local meals, watching live performances and of course trying a diverse array of locally made gorilka - homemade vodka. At one end hundreds suddenly gathered when young men in underpants began climbing up a 15-metre-high pole to claim prizes that were hanging from the top.
With a slightly sore and sorry head, I later began my own ascent to the high pastures of the Chorna Gora, a ridge that runs 30 kilometres, averaging heights of around 2000 metres. Along the way I passed herders struggling with overloaded carts up impossibly steep tracks pulled by hardy little horses.
The Hutsul horse is believed to be the descendant of the tough mounts left behind from the Mongolians in the Carpathians when they retreated from Europe.
A hard day of riding took us up onto a rocky ridge where snowdrifts were still scattered on the northern faces. With local mountaineers Grisha and Yuri leading the way, we camped by an alpine lake in which ice floes still drifted in the breeze.
The real attraction, however, could be found a little lower where families had already set up their summer homes. Long before you could see these grey, weathered grazing stations, you could hear the jingle of sheep, horse and cow bells drifting across the mountains.
At one station alone three young men were responsible for 400 sheep. Apart from protecting them from wolves and grazing, their job was to milk them three times a day for the making of brinza.
Brinza is a highly prized matured sheep cheese which is often eaten with the Hutsul maize meal dish of banush. When the sun set on a still night, I felt that life on the polonino had the freedom and enchantment of the stars.
Saying goodbye to the Hutsuls was the hardest of all my experiences in the Ukrainian Carpathians. I felt spoilt by a people who go to creative extremes to highlight the beauty of life in an environment where just surviving is hard enough.
Of course in the main valleys well-engineered roads make these places less isolated than they once were, and downhill ski resorts and mineral health spas can seem at times incongruent with Hutsul life.
However, at a closer glance, the Hutsuls have always co-existed and survived with the changing face of the world. As Ivan assured me "Hutsuls don't wear their costumes and save their traditions for the sake of tourism and profit.
They do so primarily for themselves, but are also more than happy to share their culture proudly with foreigners."
Tim Cope recently finished travelling by horse, foot and camel from Mongolia to Hungary on the trail of Ghengis Khan.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald