Many
foolish myths are woven through the popular culture that saturates our
every waking hour: The future will be richer than the present. This
ever-growing wealth will trickle down to uplift the poor. The things we
buy will make us as happy as the people in television commercials seem
to be, and if they don't, there must be something wrong with us. Our
rugged individualism makes cooperating with neighbors and resolving our
conflicts unnecessary.

Yet our own history reveals these myths
to be lies that serve the consumption-driven economy that has produced
our deepening national distress. My parents suffered during the Great
Depression. They knew that things are not always better for the next
generation.

Contradicting the myth of individualism, older
Somervillians speak wistfully about times when people took the
streetcar to local, family-supporting jobs; times when neighbors
intervened swiftly to help those devastated by tragedy, rather than
sending them to three different agencies for three different
"services;" when they sat on their front stoops, visited with each
other, and made their own entertainment rather than buying video games.

Contradicting
the myth of individualism, older Somervillians speak wistfully about
times when neighbors intervened swiftly to help those devastated by
tragedy rather than sending them to three different agencies for three
different "services;" about times when people took the streetcar to
local, family-supporting jobs; about when they sat on their front
stoops, visited with each other, and made their own entertainment
rather than buying video games

The pervasiveness of today's
myths causes many of us to view those who extol yesterday's modes of
living as sentimentalists who romanticize practices to which we cannot
realistically return and wouldn't want to.

Such a view makes us brittle. It undermines our ability to recognize forces for change and respond flexibly to them.

We
get a sense of these forces when we pay four dollars for a gallon of
gasoline. Or when our city faces a potential loss of $9-to-10 million
in state aid, is forced to lay off scores of workers, and reduces
municipal services.

But these are the merest hints. The
coincidence of peak oil and climate change will dramatically transform
the way that we live. Many of us don't yet believe this, and none of us
is prepared for it.

Peak oil comes when half of the world's oil
reserves are used up. At that point, demand continues to increase from
nations with growing economies, while supply declines and prices rise
suddenly and sharply. When the peak comes, we will be unable to pay for
much of what we now take for granted.

In 2005, the Bush
administration's Department of Energy published a document commonly
known as the Hirsch Report. It stated that, "The peaking of world oil
production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk
management problem….Without timely mitigation, the economic, social,
and political costs will be unprecedented."

Reasonable energy
experts disagree about when the peak will occur. Some, like Abdullah
Jum'ah, president of Saudi Aramco, believe there are sufficient world
reserves to last another century. But a majority of experts believes
that the peak will come in less than a decade. And the Hirsch report
states that "Viable mitigation options exist…but to have substantial
impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of
peaking." We are not now initiating them.

I have written in the
past about the consequences of peak oil's evil twin, climate change
(http://www.thesomervillenews.com/print.asp?ArticleID=272&SectionID=3&SubSectionID=3
and
http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2007/12/climate-change.html).
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completed a
scientific review that was ordered in a two-year-old Supreme Court
decision. It concluded that greenhouse gases' impact on the climate is
endangering our health and welfare. The same week, scientists at the
National Centre for Atmospheric Research concluded that cuts in CO2 of
at least 70% are necessary to avert catastrophic consequences. It's
hard to fully imagine the impacts of such a reduction on how we live.

While
governments dither, citizens are preparing for the profound and
inevitable changes that these dual phenomena will bring. Among their
efforts is the Transition Movement, which began in Kinsale, Ireland
five years ago and is spreading through Western Europe and the U.S.
Among its key concepts is the idea of resilience. Resilience is the
ability of a system-economic, familial, environmental, political-to
hold together and keep functioning in response to abrupt change. A
second key concept is self reliance.

Transitionists work at the
municipal level. Their practices are as varied as getting people to
support local businesses, repairing equipment rather than tossing it,
implementing energy conservation policies, and growing food within
cities.

In the context of Somerville, the urban farming part
seemed bizarre when I learned of it. Then I remembered a dear old
neighbor, since passed on, who grew his own grapes and made his own
wine. And another neighbor who grew so many tomatoes that with a large
hammer, he could have produced a lifetime supply of catsup from one
season's harvest. And the Somerville Garden Club's annual tours.

Much
of the environmental movement has worked to make us feel guilty for
wanting comfort, or self-righteous for giving it up.
Transition-Movement activists believe that life beyond peak oil can be
richer and more fulfilling than it is now. They aim to inspire hope,
enthusiasm, and delighted participation.

Three Somerville
women-Vanessa Rule, Emily Hardt, and Jennifer Mazer-are exploring the
possibility of making Somerville a transition town. They will conduct
an informational session this evening, 7:00 PM, at the Visiting Nurses
Association's community room, 259 Lowell Street.

More
information on the Transition Movement can be found at Transition
United States (http://transitionus.ning.com/) and Transition Culture
(www.transitionculture.org).