The name of this piece came to me while I was sitting here on Waiheke staring out across the deck to the ocean beyond with the green of the ocean with the blue bands here and there, and taking notice of the absolute profusion of plants that surround and envelope me in all directions including overhead in the case of the trees. It’s interesting to look at what is here and to think of this paradox (perhaps self-fulfilling at that), that New Zealand has so much natural beauty in the sense of plants growing naturally because the sun shines and rain falls on them and they haven’t been obliterated on a huge scale by humans. Waiheke was deforested in actual fact and agriculture took hold a bit, but these days it’s not the business that it was because it became unprofitable to continue. That’s a beneficial example of market forces because what agriculture caused was that deforestation of the land that was abundant previously. I have been a little further down, south of Auckland about 150 miles or so, and there is quite a lot of agriculture land there, due to New Zealand’s exports being made up largely of agriculture products. I always used to use the example of going into supermarkets in Los Angeles when I lived there, where I’d see Fuji apples from New Zealand and think how strange that was, and the irony is that now that I go into stores even here on Waiheke, I see apples from the United States. I find this to be complete nonsense – it has no benefit to the consumer, only the people being paid to ship them across the world, which is extremely energy-intensive, sad considering how unnecessary it is.
I have a new name for the Industrial Revolution, including the agricultural movement that followed. I’ll rename it the Unnatural Revolution because everything about it is unnatural, taking everything that nature does ‘naturally’ and trying to mess around with it in some way or another, hence the ‘un.’ Sometimes it is relatively benign like shipping produce around, but sometimes it’s insidious, dangerous on a global scale, examples being Dow and Monsanto with their genetically modified crops. This whole thing is really an insight into Ireland, the European Union and the Euro and what role John Key, the current prime minister of New Zealand, had in it – there is a concern that he will do in New Zealand what he did in the
European economy whilst working for Merrill Lynch.
. I will be writing a blog post on that as well, so let’s get back to the natural revolution, which is what we are heading into.
We’re getting into the Natural Revolution now because we don’t have any choice. When wrenching change is about to take place, there’s always a complete seizure of the existing bankrupt structures that exist, because the owners/managers of them will always do what they can to hold on to what they have, even though what they have is figuratively disappearing underneath their feet, and unfortunately that sort of behavior brings with it an element of chaos, an example of which we can see in the United States with natural gas and oil drilling. It’s on a scale that is unprecedented really. The amount of work that’s going on is extreme, with corporations working on rupturing the ground and taking out of it these extremely hard to get to resources, because all the easy stuff is gone! We’re now in a situation where we have, according to the minds of many and for those that are addicted to fossil fuels (most of us), no other alternative.
If we talk about market forces again, they will eventually lead away from the mining of fossil fuels if we tuck away the incentive to expand agriculture and begin to reforest the land as is currently going on here on Waiheke. The cost of getting the fuels from the ground and oceans alone will become too expensive to be worth it. There will be a lot of anguish before then, and I highly recommend anyone who can get their mind around this, to join the natural revolution to leave the unnatural revolution behind.
For the first time in my own adult life, in fact since I was 18 years old, I don’t have a car, and you know the benefits of that are major, from my health, from having to walk most places, to not breathing in the direct fumes from my car or from those of the cars surrounding me in miles of traffic. I’m not saying that everyone right now should give up their cars completely, but eventually we will all have to, we will have no choice in the matter. There might be electrical vehicles, yes, but the resources require for those are dwindling as well – every resource that we can think of is dwindling, not just fossil and nuclear fuels.
One of the major parts of the natural revolution is permaculture, which is based on growing plants (most of which are edible or serve those that are) and reusing resources which is absolutely necessary to wind back from our mad usage of resources. We’re throwing away too many things into landfills, things that could be reused – granted they are not plastics or cardboard, but metals and other things can be reused in creative and constructive ways. There is no magic black hole that things disappear into. We should do every single thing we can to reduce what we are putting into landfills, even if what we are getting is packaged in recyclable packaging. We also need to check our local water quality to see if it is in fact fit for consumption so that we can stop drinking water from plastic bottles that are now filling up landfills and polluting oceans at an extremely high, and quickening, rate. If it is not ideal, research water filters to filter out the impurities.
In a place like Los Angeles, the amount of water that comes in every day from surrounding places like Colorado is mind-boggling. With the amount of rainwater that falls there, I highly doubt that it could sustain 10 million people, let alone the 19.7 million that currently reside there. Another part of the Natural Revolution consists of this: think about the input/output aspect of your life, your food, your waste, your work/career, time, transport etc. and do what you can to reduce both the input and output of these. If you are a manager with employees, I highly suggest that you have them telecommute so that they can be taken off of the roads and not contribute to the pollution and negativity of high traffic.
It is an absolute need to get people out of transportation vehicles when we can, or at least begin to plan for the massive movement that will come with this front and center, because obviously it is always better to plan and be prepared than to not have planned and not be prepared. Join us in the Natural Revolution – it’s here and it’s going to get more and more important. Join us in the aspect of your own life. Think of all of your input/outputs as I’ve said before – all of them, gas in your car, electricity, gas on your stove, water etc. If you’re living somewhere where the air is clean you are very lucky – if you are not, you can do something about it – don’t contribute to it. These things are more important than money making and career climbing – if you don’t have your health no amount of money or career in the world will make you happy again. Please join the Natural Revolution so that we can all help one another to thrive once again in spite of our coming difficulties as a species on earth.
