transitions

Hallucinated wealth and capitalism have brought us to a way of life that's not sustainable, and it's killing the planet. Fortunately, it's now reached the suicidal, terminal stage.

Boise, Idaho is not sustainable. It's a dying dinosaur.

I spent a couple hours driving around lost in Boise a few days ago, and it's an astonishing and repulsive epidermal cancer spreading on the skin of our mother, the planet.

Fifty years from now, tens of millions of Americans will be living in mud houses, and food production will again take center stage in our daily lives. Cities will have shrunk, and people will be mostly living in small towns again.

The much smaller houses of the future will be heated with wood pellets and solar panels. In most places, their green, living roofs will have the additional advantage of being put to use for berry cultivation.

Instead of one motorized vehicle for each person of driving age, the village will have a couple of cars and a couple of trucks that run on propane or kerosene, and once a month or so a small crew will travel to a warehouse to buy staples such as rice, flour, and oil. American society will be communal and cooperative rather than atomized and competitive.

There won't even be any traces left of Burger King, Midas Muffler, Bank of America, PetSmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, Office Max, Wal Mart, Motel 6, etc., except their concrete slab foundations. Some of these will have been recycled and incorporated into the new architecture.

Debt and revolving credit will have gone the way of high-button shoes. Expenditures will be strictly limited to cash-and-carry.

We won't adopt this new way of life because we want to. We'll adopt it because we have to.

It's not enough to think about the future, or imagine the future, or wish for the future. The time has come when it's necessary for us to be the future now, in this present, and there's no time to waste.