Artist's
Statement
This cartoon is based on two letters I
recently received from two friends at opposite poles of
my personal friend planet, Rob
(co-author of several of my film essays) and Jim (often
depicted in my cartoons). Rob, mentioned in last week’s
artist’s
statement, is deeply concerned about the phneomenon of
Peak Oil and
its likely
implications
for our way of life. (For
those interested in learning more about this,
Rob recommends the link
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php .)
He and his wife have uprooted their pleasant
lives in the Washington D.C. area and relocated
to an energy-independent community in Ohio, where they are
hunkering down and laying in provisions for the imminent
collapse of our society’s petroleum-based infrastructure.
A few weeks ago Rob sent a dispatch detailing his progress
in implementing
his plan:
… the plans for an edible food
forest here in SW Ohio are developing rapidly. Nutritious
perennial vegetables and berries take
two or three years to mature, so should be in good
production by the time the last-gasp 2009-10 global
oil production
increase ends. Same with dwarf fruit trees, and revival
(via pruning)
of some now non-producing old apples and pears. And
the annual vegetable gardens will get well under way
this
year, with
poultry to follow. It' not hard to be optimistic here,
looking out over the dozens of over-wintering songbirds
(cardinals,
nuthatches, mourning doves, jays, house wrens, and
assorted woodpeckers) that spend their days visiting
our feeders
and sheltering in the bushes and shrubs. Of course
I'm typing
with gloves on, and Jenny's darning wool socks, but
we've kept our winter propane bill under half of what
the previous
owners spent, and I'm using the warmer days to build
up our log pile for next winter by which time we plan
to
have in
an efficient wood-burning stove.
I'm working part-time
here with the local peak oil activism non-profit
Community Solutions. I'm the Program Manager
for their planned low-energy use farm-integrated
residential building project, so I'm learning a lot
about passive
house construction, site planning, and the norms
of co-housing,
as well as how to work with the Village Council,
Planning Commission, and City Manager.
Tonight we're going to look
at a 1990 Toyota pickup with 70K miles on offer for
$1900 through Craigslist. We spend
an average of a day a week at the local thrifts stores,
flea markets, and discount outlets building up our
tool and garden
supplies. Last weekend we went to an Organic Farming
conference, and focused on "biological farming" workshops
that taught how to rebuild damaged soil, and test
plant tissues
to check on the results (basically the field science
side of the permaculture approach we're taking to edible
forestry).
We're looking forward to spring for
the explosion of flowering trees on the property, much
more time
outside
in the barn
and gardening sheds, and especially getting back
on our bikes.
After I referred to Rob and
his plans in my rather doomy artist’s
statement last week, I received the following letter
from Big Jim:
Dear Timmy Kreiderkrudd,
Not this again. Tim, you know how this kinda' talk enrages
me. Fuck energy independent Ohio. Didn't more than
half of the flatheads in that state vote for Bush in
the last
election?
Mohammedfucker, nothing bad is going to happen. This
country has weathered worse shit than this. Christ
I am nearly
as lazy as people get and I am fine, if I can come
out somewhere
in the middle than we are going to be OK.
Allah of a bitch, the government is giving poor people
money. You think a failing government gives out cash?
Ok don't answer
that maybe they do. Malthusian catastrophe is something
Europeans do, not Americans. I think this temporary
collapse of the
dollar is Mohammed sent. With the dollar so weak who
wants to travel outside the U.S.? It's safer here within
the
walls of the city. You think the people of the city
of Rome suffered
as much as the rest of the empire during the collapse?
Hells no!
My advice for Pain readers is buy a gun, because
when someone kills the dark man that is currently
running
for king dipshit
you are gonna' wanna' defend your Cheez-crunch
stash from looters. So readers go buy a gun, it's allowed,
you may
own a gun it is OK, you won't go to hell for
it,
it is your right
to keep and bear them*, only dipshits that think
it’s
wrong and politically incorrect will whine about
it. Do you dismiss your other rights so easily? No?
Hopefully at least
some of your heros have been gun-toting Americans.
If they have why not do like your heroes.
Also, there is still plenty of oil. If I am wrong
and we suffer, so we suffer, we suffer anyway,
you suffer,
they
suffer; we suffer through this tiresome bullshit
all day every day. Speaking as a guy who did
not eat for
more than
a month once, I have to say that starving is
no worse than heartbreak. You have been nearly
murdered, I have
had a
heart attack, and some poor bastard somewhere
in this world was
just cheated on by the love of his life. We suffer
regardless.
Tell that Ohio-energy-independent- idiot friend
of yours to shut the fuck up. Talk about cowardly
America-hating
liberal. Don't spread his nonsense to your readers.
That
is just fucking
reckless. We are talking about a guy who was
going to go and live in New Zealand; this is
a guy considering
an expat
lifestyle, not a loyal American. Why does he
want to survive this shit so bad anyway? Is he
planning on
finally
getting
laid after the crash? Repopulating the world?
What
is he planning on doing with his gold? Become
fucking king of America. All of his bullshit
is suspect to
me.
Love,
James the Large
Currently Ruling the Lands between West Rock
and the Shores of Long Island sound
*Federal law stipulates that gun buyers
wait three business days before receiving their weapons
so background
checks
can be conducted by the FBI. This may mean you,
please obtain your guns legally. We do not want
guns in
the hands of actual
felons, only potential ones.
I myself am somewhat torn between
these two positions. Intellectually, I'm closer to
Rob on this one. There may, as Jim suggests, be reasons
to suspect any apocalyptic certitude; there
is what Thomas Pynchon calls that "pose... of somber
glee at any
idea of mass destruction or decline." Most utopian science
fiction, from to Star
Trek to A
Brief History of the Future to the
peak-oil novel World
Made By Hand, is
contingent on the slate being wiped clean by some catastrophe,
which
seems
to me an admission of authorial inadequacy to
the challenge of finding some way through the impenetrable
mess of the present to a more perfect society. But peak
oil isn’t
some science-fictional conceit or crackpot conspiracy theory;
it’s
an uncontroversial geological/economic fact that sometime,
rather
sooner than later, the cost of extracting oil
is going
to
exceed the
potential profit, meaning that
the price will rise and rise and then finally
there just plain won’t be any more. What’s
not as clear is what the repercussions will be.
Possible scenarios span the spectrum
of optimism from
a somewhat hasty global adjustment to alternative
forms of energy and a more conservative
lifestyle to Mad Max:
Beyond Thunderdome, the really crappy one
with Tina Turner. Rob personally feels that our
civilization
is still deep
in denial about the exhaustibility of fossil
fuels
and has let too much time elapse without any
Plan B. He is cagey about the gruesome details,
but I know he fears the worst. Unlike some of
his
like-minded fellows
who are
just holing
up with canned goods and ammo,
Rob has expended
a lot of energy desperately entreating his
friends to
take
similar
actions before it's too late.
(Whether
Rob’s
tool purchases have included a firearm to ward
off
the marauding
Boyds of
the world I do not know.)
My feeling about Rob’s Cassandran crusade
on this issue echoes Dan Dreiberg’s
uneasy question about Adrian Veidt in Watchmen: “I
mean, this is the world's smartest man we're
talking about, so who's to say? How can anyone
tell if he's gone crazy?” Given
this conundrum, it'd probably be wiser to err
on the side of
caution.
Philosophically,
however, my heart inclines toward Jim.
Not because I think Jim is right but because
it's pleasanter to believe Jim. Of course
it's always comforting, in a head-in-the-sand way, to dismiss
all this doomsaying, tell ourselves, ahh, everyone's
always saying things are going to hell in a handbasket, and
assume that we'll eventually figure something out and
this shit'll blow over like it always does. But, as my
reading of Gibbon reminds me, sometimes the reason everyone's
always saying things are going to hell in a handbasket
is because in fact they are. The problem
is that, unlike Rob, I am a lazy and disorganized person
who
does
not
base my life decisions on
abstract ideas, and frankly I find it
easier to resign myself to a premature and
violent death than
to figure out how to
invest my money or repair tools or grow plants,
at which I have always sucked. My only real
vague plan in the event of some catastrophic
excremental/climate control interaction is to retreat to
my undisclosed
location on the
Chesapeake Bay,
where all but those visitors
who'll have a lot to offer in the post-apocalyptic
environment, if you know what I mean, will
be made to feel unwelcome.
Only
time, and not much of it, will tell which of these two
sages sees more truly. In a recent
email, Rob
offers a wager:
I wonder whether there might
also be a small and purely
symbolic stake, such as a mutual willingness to have
one of us
depicted naked and flagellated come Earth Day next year
(or a decade from now), whoever has been most vindicated
by interim developments?
He also graciously accepts that, as the
straight man in this debate, the humor must necessarily
be at his expense.
"Until," he adds, "it isn't."
Production note: These panels were drawn
on
the backs of my tax forms. |