THE LAND WHERE
PINOCCHIO IS KING
Journal of a Futurist - 20 July 2006

Visit - Mati Klarwein - 1996

Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears. Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.

The Australian media have lately been enthralled by a public spat between the country’s Treasurer, Peter Costello, and its Prime Minister, John Howard. The treasurer publicly stated that the PM promised to hand the top job over to him before the start of the next next year’s election but John Howard denies this. On Monday, a poll of 1416 voters showed that most Australians believed the Treasurer’s version of events, which is not all that surprising, given our PM’s forked tongue. The rest of the poll is illuminating. Despite their judgment that John Howard is a liar, Australian voters still prefer him to stay on as Prime Minister. Part of me understands this. In today’s explosive world, there is something reassuring about a grey suited leader in a regimental tie who has, for over a decade, been shrinking our minds on the TV news, while spooning out imperial inanities. Iraq is doing great. Afghanistan is off and running. Kyoto is biased. Since our forefathers took possession of Australia, the treatment of indigenes has been even handed. We can be a future energy superpower, riding clouds of yellow cake and soot. The Pentagon’s Military Commissions are just. Foreign footy referees are weird. Gays mustn’t marry gays. Israel has the right to inflict collective punishment. And so on, endlessly repeated until the brain snaps.

Sandra Stanton "YEMAYA" Yemaya, the Yoruba Mother of the Sea, Mother of all life

Howard works hard for his country. The economy is purring. His unconditional embrace of White House is derived from a belief it will guarantee future security. From the outside, Australia looks good; the Opera House, Nicole Kidman, the Barrier Reef, jocks in hotpants. Some of this is an illusion. The interior of the Opera House is a letdown and the Barrier reef is dying. Sport dominates the media-scape. Listening to political debate today is like being locked in the Alzheimer ward with the treasurer and a shock jock. After ten years of John Howard, the image that speaks to the inner self is Edvard Munch on the Harbour Bridge, screaming. But this is a minority view.

JOHN WAYNE PLAIN-SPOKENNESS
AND VIGOUR

Not only have most Australians fallen in love with our self applauding fantasies, but citizens from other nations are following suit. “God, I love Australia”, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, “an island of tranquility in a roiling region … Australia has no illusions about the ‘international community’ and its feckless institutions… For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigour”. (Actually, that sounds like America’s present). Most of all, according to Krauthammer, Aussies are “sympathetic to America’s predicament as reluctant hegemon”. True, our government couldn’t be more sympathetic if it tried.

José Roosevelt "Autumn Story"	Soundscape - Mati Klarwein – 1982

In his dubious role as deputy sheriff, our Prime Minister is assisted by powerful friends, especially global mogul Rupert Murdoch, a fervent supporter of George Bush and concocted invasions. VOTERS TELL PM TO STAY is a front page Murodchian headline and his commentators chorus it’s in everyone’s interest. Readers are being softened up for another term of amnesia. Oh, the Middle East Crisis? Turn to page 6, where we learn that valiant Israel is “resisting help” from an “international military force”, as it punishes the citizens of Lebanon. So far 254 people killed, over 500 wounded, “all but 13” civilians. Numerous tourists and Lebanese nationals are trapped, terrified and starving. Israel has denied the Australian government safe passage for its citizens. George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and the Murdoch media agree that Israel had been “obliged to strike back in self defence”, following the capture of its soldiers – one in Gaza, two in Lebanon. No mention that the number of Palestinian children currently in Israeli custody is 388. No comment on the unashamed sadism of Israel wanting “no one to sleep at night in Gaza.” No reference to the fateful 9 June explosion on a Gaza beach, which wiped out 8 Palestinians and injured another 30. Nor is the “valiant Israel” narrative clouded by mention of Palestinian casualties since September 2000, the killing of almost a thousand children and minors, the injuring “in various degrees” of another 18,800+.

STILL BLOWING HIS BUGLES

Such data cuts no ice with Bush, Blair or Howard, three leaders who put the match to Iraq, the ones who are loaded with moral responsibility for every innocent death and mutilation triggered by that squalid invasion, since descended into pack rape, pillage, torture and terror. More than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the first half of this year.

Yesterday, 50 corpses, 100 wounded. Maybe the three leaders barracked for Israel’s right to commit war crimes to divert attention from their own. They trashed Geneva, let Ehud Olmert trash Geneva. Murdoch’s still blowing his bugles, eager for cheap oil. His paper’s editorialist glanced at the flames of Beirut from his Sydney office and concluded, “Israel is doing Lebanon a favour….”

Meanwhile, on the ground, Robert Fisk reports on the massacre of Marwaheen, “All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children”. In Haaretz, Gideon Levy puts it like this: "In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years with or without a trial - but only we're allowed to do that. And only we're allowed to bomb civilian population centers." There are bastards and angels on both sides, but noble leadership on neither. Israel has the right to defend its citizens, but not to annihilate neighbours.

All this carnage on the 70th anniversary of the fascist bombing of Guernica, which prophesised calamity. Four Islamic lands now under aerial bombardment, more in the firing line. For all the bright lights, witty musicals and executive jets, the world is reeling. Polluted heavens, clouded judgments, melting glaciers, declining oil, burning forests, rising seas and … that sinking feeling. At the dawn of the 21st Century, we are stuck with leaders whose mindset is medieval.

Annunciation - Abdul
Mati Klarwein - 1961

Info about Mati

Lush Life: Mati Klarwein (The Wire / 1998) - An extensive article on Mati by Rob Young, for The Wire in 1998.

A Thousand Windows - An interview with Mati by David Jay Brown in 1992 while Mati was visiting Santa Monica, California.

In Memory of Abdul Mati Klarwein 1932- 2002 by Alex Grey

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Adam Cvijanovic

POWER DOWN, PECKER UP
Journal of a Futurist - 3 July 2006

Beware the old duffer who warns that the end is nigh. While bright young things throng the bars and the beaches, trailing clouds of credit in the aromatic spa baths, jetting off to base camp for sunsets irresistible, the duffer’s next stop is the nursing home. No wonder he’s cranky. For the fit, the smart and the moderately well heeled, there’s oodles of fun to be had at Global Mall, until – all too soon – the wells run dry. Supplies of oil and groundwater are in decline, and neither resource can be swiftly substituted. Oil is the universal elixir, used for petrol, pesticides, fertilizers, factory farmed food, transportation, refrigeration, heating, lighting, medicines, cement, much of the stuff in shops, in the office, in the factory, in the sky, in the home, in the hospitals, in computers, in our every day life. Peak oil heralds the end of the party, like when the grog runs out. Only worse.

No ride home, except on a bike; no morning Jacuzzi, unless you’ve got plentiful water tanks and solar panels; no breakfast without an edible garden or a local food co-op. Perhaps malls will morph into farmers’ markets. Fast companies will slow down. Tomorrow’s hot jobs will be those now considered uncool, as in organic agriculturalists, water diviners, orchardists, recyclers, compost lavatorians, geologists, petrol siphoners, builders of bamboo bikes, renewable energy boffins… Numerous voices are urging people to powerdown, to adapt to a post carbon future.

It’s an issue that remains below the media radar. It will not attract advertising. The life-after-oil scenario embraces a web of perils, such as the depletion of phosphates, topsoil, species; climate chaos, endless war and population overshoot. It foresees the collapse of the consumer society, the end of suburbia, the return of localization, now re-branded as re-localization. It is not a re-run of hippie druggie free love communes, despite the whiff of lentils and dandelion. The powerdown project is practical, community-engaged and globally aware. It rests on the assumption that cheap fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern civilization, and that their imminent decline invites catastrophe. So chop wood, carry water, put a windmill on the roof, re-skill and get to know your neighbours.

Every object in this picture is derived from oil

BEYOND PEAK OIL AND GAS ALREADY?

No other energy source comes near to replacing oil. The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), puts a “high probability” of global Peak Oil occurring before 2010 or 2015. In a presentation to the US Department of Defence on June 20, Matthew R Simmons, the founder and chairman of the world's largest energy investment bank, said the world was “probably beyond peak oil and gas”.

ASPO is scornful of attempts to create synthetic crude oil from coal, gas or tar-sands (costly and impractical). Bio fuels are limited by the lack of arable land not devoted to food. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source and has little likelihood of delaying the impact of peak oil. According to ASPO, Britain would need 100 nuclear power plants to produce enough hydrogen to replace its existing use of transport fuel. A Cornell University study has concluded that each unit of ethanol energy requires 117 percent of fossil fuel energy to produce. As for natural gas, Australia only has 1.4% of the world's known reserves and we’re selling it to China for a song. While an Oil Vulnerability Task Force is a matter of urgency for Australia, our leaders seem unaware of problem. As for the oil companies, only Chevron and Total have so far admitted the situation is dire. On June 19, an industry conference in Darwin was warned that exploration costs had lately jumped by over a third, to little effect, and that progress was further threatened by lack of equipment.

Let’s step back a bit. Keep in mind that our addiction is absolute. Oil fuels 90% of all transportation. It is involved in the production of 95% of all the goods in shops, including 95% of all food - produced as it is, mainly by industrialized means and carted across the world, sometimes in refrigerated planes. Current global consumption is 85 million barrels a day, rapidly rising, as China, India, and the rest of Asia gets hooked. Back in 2001, these issues surely plagued the minds of Dick Cheney and his colleagues from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America at their Energy Task Force summit, held at White House. Here, the most powerful people on Earth poured over maps of oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals in Iraq. The minutes of this meeting remain classified, but its significance is obvious. Saudi Arabia’s oilfields are less extensive than advertised and some are polluted, “brine stained with oil”. The oilfields of Iraq are known as the last of the ripe overhanging fruit. “Sagging so low”, notes Linda McQuaig “that it practically touches the ground under the weight of its ripeness”. No permafrost, no contamination. Vast pools of oil, yearning for exploitation. In 2001, Iraq was a sitting duck. Ruled by a hated dictator, its geography offered a platform for the US to control the Gulf.. The point of the invasion was to establish a garrison on top of an oil field. What’s next? Only last week, President Vladimir Putin's top political adviser put it bluntly: the US is seeking “international energy domination under the guise of promoting democracy”. No-one is allowed to mess with the consumer society. The White House credo is powerup; Venezuela beware, don’t mention the Greenhouse.

Art Speigelman

HAIRCUTTING, FRIED CHICKEN,
OPEN-HEART SURGERY

While demand for oil keeps accelerating, the current rate of decline is about 8% per annum, according to energy specialist, Mathew Simmons, so that by 2020, the total supply could have dropped from 85 to 25mb/d barrels a day. But by 2030, oil demand is expected be 115 million barrels a day. Could this be why Bush & Co have been acting like outlaws? Worldwide, a few billion addicts might be facing cold turkey, and right now, weapons are probably being stockpiled in suburbia. Enter the Powerdown scenario, the “path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing”. Small, self-sustaining communities that are touted as cultural lifeboats in times to come.

The only realistic alternative to endless resource wars, according to Richard Heinberg in his book, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, is a strategy that shrinks per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develops renewable power, and “humanely but systematically reduces the size of the human population over time. Powerdown would mean a species-wide effort toward self-limitation.” Heinberg believes that once the processes and implications of resource depletion are understood, the pro-growth argument will collapse.

The 21st century is not going to be about mobility, writes John Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency. “It’s going to be much more about staying where you are, not about being in constant motion. It's going to be about being in a place that you care about and you have to care for and that is going to change the basis of how we live”. Does this seem far fetched? Not to the esteemed Trends Research Institute, which is tracking the “rapidly growing desire of more people to be self-empowered, non-reliant, and ‘off the grid’”.

Allora & Calzadilla's video, Under Discussion.

Kunstler’s depiction of sprawl as the “dirty secret of the American economy” has relevance to Australia, with its bottom line also stoked by spreading McMansions, and their endless accessorizing, furnishing, servicing and renovating. Once this is activity is subtracted from the GDP, there isn't much left, according to Kunstler “except for haircutting, fried chicken, and open-heart surgery”.

BUY NOW, SETTLE IN 2010

What are the possible stages in the collapse of civilization? Richard Heinberg says energy shortages will start to bite in about five more years, leading to economic turmoil, frequent and lengthening power blackouts, and chaos. Over several years, food production plummets, resulting in widespread famine, even in formerly wealthy countries. Wars – including civil wars – rage intermittently. Meanwhile ecological crisis also tears at the social fabric, with water shortage, rising sea levels, and severe storms … One after another, central governments collapse. Empires devolve into nations; nations into smaller regional or tribal states. But each lower stage reaches its own moment of unsustainability and further collapse ensues. Between 2020 and 2100, the global population declines steeply, because of climate chaos and crop failure.

It’s a grim picture, which perhaps under-estimates human ingenuity, though its warning is timely. Over a 100 post carbon local groups have already joined the network.

http://relocalize.net

While some believe that humans are facing the greatest challenge in their history, other are still striding the last beach fronts with charts, publicists and compliant architects. Australia’s Gold Coast developers are offering “sculptured residential skyscrapers of unrivalled luxury living with uninterrupted views of the (rising) ocean from every stunning apartment”. One 77 floor tower is called Soul. Another tower phallus is called Oracle, though designed for a future of non Greenhouse skies and gushing wells. You can buy an apartment now, and settle at the end of the decade.

The Oracle offers three outdoor swimming pools/lagoons, water features; indoor lap pool, spa, steam room, sauna, state of the art gym, executive lounge and private wine lockers, plus in house cinema, surround sound, a vast screen, perhaps for watching The Day After Tomorrow. Should that day come, residents can retreat to the zen gardens and tai chi lawn, to stay focused and fit, in case the lift fails. Seventy seven floors is a long hike home, but at least your head will be back in the clouds. ends

Promoted as the “new vision” for Australia’s Gold Coast

RESOURCES: Courtesy of Communities magazine -

The Party’s Over and Powerdown, Richard Heinberg. Two of the most popular books that present this information in a readable way to lay people. New Society Publishers, 2003 and 2004, respectively.

The End of Suburbia. This 78-minute video (on VHS or DVD), describes, with humor and fact, the energy crisis and how it happened, with testimony by leading petroleum engineers and Peak Oil researchers, including Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, James Howard Kunstler, and others. www.EndOfSuburbia.com

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, Meagan Quinn and The Community Solution. Inspiring, hopeful 60-minute documentary of Cuba’s crisis and recovery when they ran out of oil 12 years ago, from permaculture design and solar energy, to city gardening on rooftops and balconies, to organic farming with oxen.

High Noon for Natural Gas, Julian Darley. A hard-hitting look at an energy source that rapidly went from nuisance to crutch, and the implications of our increased dependence on a resource that will soon be in rapid decline. Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004.

Relocalize Now!: Getting Ready for Climate Change and the End of Cheap Oil, Julian Darley.. New Society Publishers, 2006.

The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler’s view of what life in the near future will be like, post Peak Oil. Grove Press, 2006.

The Oil Age is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil: 2005-2050, Matt Savinar. With a question and answer format, one of the easiest resources to understand what’s happening and why; also one of the least optimistic (some would say “most realistic”) perspectives of what’s going to happen. Available mail-order or paid download from the author’s website: www.LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net.

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