Anyway, as I said in my previous post, the first component of the Bioneers praxis is relocalization. But what does that mean? Well, it is generally used to refer to economic activity, but it actually involves a great deal more than that. The Capitalist scare-mongers will tell you that it means isolation, insularity and parochialism, but they would be very wrong indeed! There is no good reason why, even in a relocalized world, there cannot be communication and exchange between regions. But what it does involve is a drastically different way of going about that connection, exchange and communication, and, indeed, a vastly different mind-set than the current paradigm.

Right now, the current regime has international trade drive local economic activity. Trade between nation-states in resources and commodities generates “spin-off” activity which drives exchange and creates jobs at the local level (of regions, cities, townships etc,). But this is highly problematic for a number of reasons, some ethical and spiritual, but some very practical. For one thing, this system is entirely dependent on fossil-fuels to maintain very long-distance exchange, so fossil-fuel depletion could, nay, will seriously impair it’s ability to provide. And of course, it contributes hugely to climate-change! But also, it puts elites – governments, CEOs, owners of multinational corporations, bankers, etc, – in the “driver’s seat” of the economy. Individual communities, especially the ordinary citizens thereof, have little to no say in what kind of industries they want in their community, how they want resources to be used, how they want money to be generated, and what they want it used for. And for these reasons, the money that is generated tends to drain out of local communities into the pockets of distant corporate owners.

Relocalization, then, means reversing this set-up. It means making local economic activity the driver, and inter-regional trade the “icing on the cake”, especially in the case of necessities such as food-production and building, but also in secondary industries such as entertainment in order to get away from global monoculture. And it means shrinking business down to local scale, so that companies stay rooted and engaged in the communities where they started and do not become juggernoughts. This, then, empowers communities to use local democracy to control their own economies in order to meet their own needs and goals, rather than having the needs and goals of global Capitalism imposed on them undemocratically.

But this is not just an economic strategy. As the above might suggest, it is nothing less than a radically different way of thinking about economics. Indeed, it is a marriage between economics and local democracy. First of all, it requires a radical turn-about in the way we conceptualize business, from being about making money, i.e. profit, to being about producing a good-quality good or service for the use and joy of one’s community. And it requires the rethinking of money itself as a tool in the service of this, and of serving the common good, rather than as one of private, personal power and gain.

Most of all, however, relocalization requires a ditching of the idea, trained into us for hundreds of years now, perhaps thousands, that bigger and more global is necessarily and inevitably better than smaller and local. It means moving away from a hierarchical, competitive model, in which there is only room for one, big, huge guy at the top dominating a global scene, to a model in which there is room, both within local communities and inter-regionally, for diversity even within the same industry/field. It means being willing to share ideas and resources rather than hoarding and thinking of our fellows as rivals. And it means not taking our sense of worth and prestige from how much international/inter-regional trade, investment and “star power” we can attract, but rather from how healthy, diverse and vibrant our local economy and scene is.

The exciting part is that this change is already starting to happen. All over the world, as global Capitalism fails people – fails to provide jobs an livelihoods, fails to protect people’s food and water, fails to offer a decent future for kids growing up now, etc, – people are starting to experiment with relocalization. They’re building local food-production systems. They’re building networks of local co-operative businesses that support each other. They’re (re)building local democracy. And it’s starting to provide good jobs and incomes for them! But just as importantly, it’s starting to allow people to use their economies to clean up their environment and to create a sustainable future as they gain control over land, money and resources. And that’s the most hopeful thing I’ve heard in a long time!

Why, though, is this relevant to and important for Pagans? Well, I think because it can help us ground our spirituality. It can help us literally root our beliefs and practices in the life, both human and otherwise, of the particular place where we actually live here and now. And, of course, it can help us to live respectfully on the Earth, minimizing the harm we do to each other and to our fellow creatures. Thus, I think relocalization is something engaged Pagans should consider seriously!

I say that praxis might be a better descriptor than philosophy because what emerges in the Bioneers radio show is not merely a set of ideas, but a way of life – a theory, yes, but also its strong application in action. That praxis, then, consists of four main axioms: re-animation (for lack of a better word, and it is not the term they use) of the world in our understanding, relocalization, biomimicry, and truly long-term thinking. And implicit, or often explicit, in all of these is a deep commitment to social and ecological justice and to not only sustainability but regeneration.

I was originally going to discuss each of these four axioms here. But it strikes me that that would make this post extremely long, as there’s just so much to say about each one! So I think instead that I’ll discuss each one in a separate post, starting with the first axiom of re-animation. So watch for that in the days and weeks to come! And of course, I can’t urge you strongly enough to go over to www.bioneers.org and check them out for yourself. You’ll be inspired!

Particularly amazing were three episodes: one on a woman leading the struggle to save Earth’s last forests, another on how construction/demolition materials recycling and worker-owned co-operatives are creating sustainable jobs and fighting the polluting of poor neighborhooods, and another on veterans who’ve become active for peace and reconciliation as part of their own healing. Then last week, they ran episodes on a woman using hip–hop to empower young women of color, programs teaching Inddigenous people how to use new media to preserve the stories of their cultures, a company building green low-income housing, and on the local food revolution. it’s been totally inspiring listening to them! They have a great blend of the practical and the deeply spiritual, and they show what people are actually doing about the problems we face that’s actually working. So they’re wonderfully hopeful and uplifting! Which is great, as it’s all too easy to loose heart given how much awful stuff’s going on in the world, and how many attempts to resist are simply bulldozed over by governments and business. So it’s great to hear the success stories! Granted, the victories are small, indeed, tiny compared to what needs to be done. But you’ve got to start somewhere! And these people are. And every small victory, every new person educated, empowered and radicalized, will have ripple-effects out into the rest of society – especially the new generations of kids now being guided in community and eco-literacy. Small but mighty!

In fact, just in the past two days, they’ve run four more amazing episodes. Two on biomimicrry – looking at how problems like adhesion, lift, energy-production, etc, are solved in nature, and trying to, well, mimic those natural mechanisms to create truly non-toxic, non-polluting, sustainable technologies. And then they ran two episodes on projects working to help children and their communities become ecoliterate, able to relate in a healthy and holistic way to their local ecology.

Anyway, you can check them out and find their episodes at www.bioneers.org. And I highly recommend you do it! Their episodes are a great way to kick off your morning, with something totally inspiring, hopeful and uplifting! And moreover, like the film The Economics of Happiness, they offer great models of ways us Pagan-folk can further put our beliefs and values into practice, even in the heart of the city. So run do not walk, and check them out!

Essentially, it looks at how our current ecological crisis is rooted in our flawed economic system. That may seem like a repeat of what’s already been said hundreds of times, but the film really takes a revolutionary approach. Because it argues that the answer is not a great, vast, boarderless workers’ international, in the manner argued by traditional Marxist/Lenninist Communism, but rather pulling the economy back down to the human scale – re-organizing the economy so that it operates mainly at the local level of individual towns, cities and communities. It doesn’t argue for isolationism, or in any way for cutting local community’s economies off from the larger world. Rather, it argues that communities should network and share ideas and best practices, while being independent and self-determining instead of being tied into giant, external, centralized systems of power and distribution. It argues that this is particularly crucial for the food and energy sectors, but that the principle can also be used to revolutionize the rest of our economies as well – to rebuild communities in which producers are accountable to those who use what they produce, and where consumption isn’t the defining feature of one’s existence.

The film is based on the book Ancient Futures, which documents the struggles of the people of Ladakh – a community high in the Himalayas. Invaded, almost literally, by modern, industrial Capitalism, they have struggled to reclaim their culture and way of life. But in the process, they have begun to help Westerners re-learn the art of real community through the work of the woman who came, eventually, to write the book and make the film. And in the process, the struggle of the people of Ladakh is linked with the struggles of indigenous peoples around the world, as well as with those of non-indigenous people trying to find a way back from the very toxic place where globalization has lead them.

My favourite thing about the film was that, in addition to telling us all the evils of our economic system, it gave equal time to telling us what people around the world are doing to turn things around. And they didn’t just talk about lobbying governments either, though there was some reference to the need for that. But rather, the film showcased small, local groups – CSAs (Community Supported/Shared Agriculture), farmers’ market’s, urban farms, fair-trade collectives, workers’ collectives, who are all trying to create new modelsof what an economy can be. And that I found incredibly hopeful! The only thing I didn’t like about the film was that it had a strong anti-urban stance. It argued that, while urban living is certainly more resource and energy efficient than suburban living, it is far inferior to true rural life in those areas. It argued that what we need to do in order to create a truly sustainable economy is to “reruralize”, which was a difficult one for me as I love city life!

Anyway, I suspect I’m not doing the film justice. All I can say, though, is that I highly reccommend you see it! Apparently you can look it up at www.economicsofhappiness.org, and you may even be able to order copies there. You’ll be glad you did! This one gets an A+ for sheer inspiration and uplift!

Also, for us Pagans, I think it really points to some ways in which we can start living our stated beliefs and values. It suggests ways in which we can begin to put them into action by working to rebuild our local communities, reconnecting with the agricultural practices and cycles that produce our food and on which our sacred festivals are based, getting to know our local community and ecology – our sacred ground of being, and supporting producers of goods and services who treat that locale with the respect that sacred space deserves. So it’s a very important film for Pagans to see!

Essentially, the film looks at how rising sea-levels and increasingly extreme weather events are already displacing tens of thousands of people around the world, and at the responses which the UN and various national governments are making to this situation. It observes that, as climate-change becomes more severe, this trend of people to become displaced because their lands have become uninhabitable will increase, possibly to as much as 50-million or more ecological refugees. Meanwhile, present legal frameworks for refugee protection, whether they be national or at the UN level, are grossly insufficient. Indeed, people displaced by climate-change or other ecological disasters, including toxic spills and industrial polution, do not even qualify as refugees under current definitions. And efforts to widen those legal definitions to include them are proceeding slowly, and even meeting with resistance from those who fear that, if all these displaced people were able to claim refugee status, governments’ resources would be overwhelmed and they would simply refuse to help anyway. And meanwhile again, some nations, particularly the U.S., but also India because of its boarder with Bangladesh, are treating the issue as one of “national security”, with all the militarization that that entails.

The film was then followed by a panel-discussion by three wonderful speakers. The first was a legal scholar who elaborated on the issues with existing refugee-protection frameworks, particularly at the UN level. Unfortunately, she was a bit of a pessimist! The second speaker was a professor from York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies who spoke on his work with Inuit people in the Canadian North. And the third and final speaker, a refugee himself, has long worked with the World Council of Churches on migration issues. I’ll dig out their names and post them later.

But what came most strongly out of the evening were two things. Firstly, an urgent need to mobilize people to make the societal changes that need to be made in order to stop run-away climate-change. There was a lot of concern expressed that the film seemed to frame what people should do purely in individual terms – buying green, using energy-efficient light-bulbs, etc,. And secondly, a great concern about the militarization, and about the framing of the issue as one of too many people competing for increasingly scarce resources. Because, while that is in part true, it is also heavily complicated by systems of power which make it far from an even playing field. And, is an “us vs them”, “get me and my own in the life-boat and too bad for everyone else” attitude really the best and most appropriate response to this crisis? The general feeling was that it’s not.

It really crystalized something that I’d begun thinking about since last week at the People’s Assembly, when some one pointed out that, unless you’re a Martian, you’re indigenous somewhere on Earth. It really brought home to me that, since we’re all Earthlings, we’re all in this together and our fate must be shared. No, we probably wo’t be able to save everybody, and Nature may not even want us to. But by Gods and Goddesses, do we not have a moral obligation to try to save as many as we can – not so that they won’t die ever, because that’s impossible, but so that, when they must cross over to the great whatever, they can do it with dignity and in peace rather than suffering and terror? And an “us vs them”, competition for resources attitude won’t help us do that! In fact, it’ll make the situation much worse than it needs to be! So seeing the film really helped to strengthen my resolve once again to do what I can, and especially to speak out against the militarization and competition.

The day began with a water ceremony performed by three First Nations women, and it was really powerful and moving! And they also told us all about the genesis and progress of the Water Walkers, which was totally inspiring! Basically it started with six Ojibwa Grandmothers who decided to begin walking all around the Great Lakes and their associated water-systems, both to do healing and to raise awareness of the importance of water. I’ll post a link to the website later. What they’ve done is incredibly inspiring!

Then, after briefly introducing the questions we would be thinking about, we broke off into smaller working groups. We considered what first made us aware of the need for climate justice, and then tried to imagine what a climate-just world might look like and how we get there. I think many of us had trouble seeing beyond the problems and obstacles to imagine that world. We could do it in the abstract, but it seemed hard to concretize.

The afternoon followed a similar format, although without the ceremony. We started out all together, and then broke off into working groups. There was one on thinking about climate-justice and spirituality as interconnected, another on opposing Ontario’s plans for nuclear power (which I attended). There was a workshop on thinking about how to mobilize more people, and another on how to build your own bike-wagon (which Mom attended). There was a group working on a climate-justice manifesto, and a group planning the next People’s Assembly (if I remember correctly). And another workshop got thrown in on the spot by a chap who wanted to address the dangers of false green technologies.

Then we all came back together just before the end of the day, and shared brief summations of what each group had done. Thus, if you were interested in a topic but hadn’t attended that group, you could still get in contact with people working on that area. And this was great, because all the workshops had been simultaneous and you really wished you could have been in four places at once!

There were several main themes that kept coming up throughout the day. The first, and probably biggest, was the need to put decision-making power back in the hands of local communities where it belongs, so that they have the final say on things that are going to impact their lives and well-being. The second, and very much related, was the need to at least severely restrict if not abolish market-systems. The third was the need to re-sacrilize the Earth. Or rather, to reacquaint ourselves with the inherent sacredness and aliveness of the biosphere. And the other was that the change has to come from us – that we can’t wait around for governments to save our asses, because they won’t and perhaps can’t, given the deep flaws in the current political system. So any change needs to come from the grass roots, not only for practical but for moral reasons.

So as you can tell, it was a really full but hugely inspiring day! I had a great time and met some amazing people, and I can’t wait till the next one!

Anyway, the first of these was the Green Living Show, held the week-end of April 15-17. And, though there was definitely a lot of fairly obvious green-washing represented, there was also a lot of genuinely awesome stuff! There was a whole section devoted to local organic food, which was absolutely heavenly! And there were also a lot of other genuinely green and fair-trade products as well, including several that I’d been hoping existed but hadn’t yet heard of. My personal favourites, just to give you a flavour of the event, were as follows (in no particular order):

First of all, though it wasn’t actually an exhibiter, the electronics recycling drive. You could bring your old cell-phones, computers, computer-components, speakers, remotes, TVs, etc, and Sam-Sung would collect them to be recycled. And better yet, those who brought stuff got free admission! That’s how Mom and I got our Saturday tickets! Some one from church gave us our Friday tickets, but we had to get back in the next day ourselves and that was how.

Elepoo. This is paper made from elephant dung. Yes, you did read that correctly. Basically, because the elephants eat a lot of very fibrous plants, people have found a way to process their dung into paper. And this helps people, A, have local, sustainible jobs, B, have an insentive to protect the elephants and their habitats rather than shooting them because they eat the crops, and C, produce something really charming!

Fair-trade jewelry. I’d been hoping there was such thing! The booth in question, I’ll dig their names out of all the flyers Mom and I picked up later, was offering mainly rings, which were made from gold and silver mined by co-operatives.

Furniture made from recycled cardboard. Again, yes, you did read that right. I didn’t try sitting in the chairs, but they looked surprisingly sturdy! Basically, it was cardboard pressed into sheets of something like thick plywood. The thing I liked about it, though, apart from the sheer charm, was that the chairs (I didn’t try lifting the table) were light as a feather!

Lots of organic, animal-friendly, etc,. cosmetics and beauty-products. Of course The Body Shop was there, as well as a company from Germany whose stuff was really expensive but really good. Some of the companies I suspected of green-washing, but not those two!

Two adorable adult-sized tricycles! Unfortunately, they actually weren’t for sale (not that I could have afforded them anyway). They were only there to showcase the tires, which were wider than the usual bike-tire. They were by Bridgestone. And while one trike had regular tires, the other had new eco-tires that they were showcasing. You could ride the two trikes to compare the tires, the latter kind of which roled a lot more smoothly and efficiently. But because both kinds were wider than normal bike tires, the trikes were absolutely solid as roks! No wobbling at all! And for some one with balance issues, that’s heaven!

A peddle-cab, which apparently actually does run in certain parts of my city. Yes, it really is a taxi run by peddling like a bicycle. Weird!

Lots of organic and fair-trade clothing. Most of it was too “Muggle” for my taste, but there were a few items, jackets, pants and a dress, that I really liked!

Pleather. Apparently, leather made from plant-material instead of cow-hide. And you know what? You couldn’t tell the difference! I saw it on a couch in one of the exhibits by a company that makes Vegan furniture. Yes, you did read that right. Really great!

Furniture made from recycled bike parts. Wonderfully creative! And it actually made some really striking furniture. The chairs were wonderfully comfortable too!

And last but not least, eco-friendly printing services! Yes! Because again, I’d been hoping such a thing existed! There was a range, some being stricter in their greenness than others. Most used recycled paper to as great an extent as they could, and some used water-free printing processes. But what really got my attention was the one chap who’s service did print-on-demand! And not too expensive either! So that’s great news for when I (eventually) get some of my writing published, because, given that my writing is strongly justice-themed, it would seem to me only right that I produce it in as just a way as possible!

Anyway, there was a lot more. that was only a few of the things that were particular highlights for me! And I may be able to post some pictures I took there if I can figure out how? And I’ll also post links to the websites of some of my favourite exhibiters so you can check them out. I whish I’d been able to stay for all three days! Unfortunately, though, Mom and I could only go for part of the Friday and Saturday. But it was very awesome as you can hopefully tell, and we’ll definitely be back next time!

The authors look to this mode of thought because they see it as more humble (not the way they phrase it) than the modern Scientism (my term not theirs) which they see as hubristic. And indeed it is more humble in some ways. For it locates perfection, what it calls the “real”, in “eternity” out beyond the manifest world. It assumes that there is a “natural law”, which is separate from the physical laws of nature”, which gives order to the natural world, and within which humans have our place. It assumes, moreover, that the natural world, being, in fact, the manifest world rather than the realm of eternal perfection, is necessarily imperfect and that this cannot be fixed by any power that we possess. The only way we can achieve personal and collective happiness is, in this view, to seek to discern the “natural law” through reason, and then to conform ourselves to it through the cultivation of “virtue”.

As you may have guessed by now, this mode of thought originated in Greek philosophy, but was adopted heavily into Christianity and was influential throughout the Middle Ages. It was largely abandoned and overthrown during the “enlightenment”, although one can still find vestiges of it in some thinkers even of the Eighteenth century. It continued (and continues) to influence Modernity, however, though in ways which are not always readily apparent. In particular, we have inherited from it a desire to transcend the manifest world into some perfect state in which we are no longer bound by the laws of nature.

There are several reasons, then, why I find it problematic that the authors of the book reviewed in my previous post look to Transcendental Realism for a model of an ethical framework. The first is that, although they mention it in passing, the authors seem to me to gloss over the role which that mode of philosophy played in legitimating social practices which we today would consider less than ethical, in particular the maintanance of quite rigidly stratified class societies with little to no social mobility. And they fail to explain how, if we were to revert to such a mode of thought, it might be prevented from doing so again.

But the second thing that I find problematic about this mode of thought is that it locates the “real”, that is, the perfect, outside of nature. It locates the telos, the end toward which we are journeying, in the eternal outside of space and time rather than here in this world/universe. I find this problematic because, although, yes, it does have the potential to limit man’s hubris, it does so at the expense of devaluing manifest nature. It directs our mental and spiritual efforts into living for a telos which is out beyond physical reality, and discourages us from finding sacredness and fulfillment in the universe in which we live. But how can we truly respect and love the natural world, and therefore take its needs seriously enough to solve the ecological crisis we face, if we’re always looking beyond the manifest universe for our fulfillment?

Perhaps this is my bias as a Pagan talking, but it seems to me that, if we’re going to save ourselves from the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, we need to start thinking very differently. We need to stop wishing we weren’t part of nature, and start learning how to find spiritual as well as physical fulfillment in the manifest world, even with all its seeming imperfections. We need to learn to revere, or at least learn to love the manifest universe, and quit treating it as a tragedy we’re trying to escape.

And us Pagan-types can certainly take the lead in that, because that’s what’s really at the core of Pagan spirituality – finding sacredness in the world in which we live. Even our deities, for those who have them (and some Pagans don’t), are immanent within nature, rather than existing outside it in some eternal realm of perfection. The “Other Worlds” in which the Gods/Goddesses and ancestors/spirits dwell (again, for those who believe in them) are not realms outside of the universe, and outside of nature, but are part of it. They effect our plain of existence, but our plain of existence also effects them. And everything that is, whether conventionally understood as animate or not, is, in fact, alive, with a soul, spirit or in-dwelling deity. This ought, then, to lead to a very different ethic than those either of conventional Moderny or of Transcendental Realism – an ethic in which there are limits on our powers, but because all life has rights which we must respect, not because we live in a tragically imperfect universe and are tragically imperfect ourselves. This is not to say that everyone needs to become Pagan, but at least it offers an alternative to the traditional ethical frameworks which are struggling so to provide guidance amid the crises we face – one from which we can all learn and take inspiration.

Note: for further exploration of this topic, see http://immanentialdevotions.wordpress.com/

At the time I last posted on those questions, Mom and I hadn’t yet finished reading the book. And once we did, I found it both thought-provoking and disappointing. Thought-provoking because I felt, somewhat in spite of myself, that the authors, Lawrence E. Schmidt and Scott Marrato, asked many of the right questions. But disappointing because I felt, ultimately, that they came up with the wrong answers. Or rather, that the answers they came up with are not workable ones.

The authors’ essential thesis was that the momentum of technological development, what they call the “technological imperative”, has taken on a life of its own under liberal modernism to such an extent that we no longer feel that we can say “no” to it. That is, not only have we come to feel that, because we can do something we therefore should, but that we therefore must. They argue that we have become enslaved to this technological imperative, and that we got there by transferring all of our hopes for ultimate perfection from the Second Coming/Kingdom of God to our own self-perfection through scientific progress. Thus, we have come to no longer believe that we can or should submit to any limitation of our mastery over nature, because to do so would be to hinder our project of collective self-perfection.

Having outlined this historical development, then, the authors confront each of the major moral issues facing contemporary society – the ecological crisis, high-tech weaponry, nuclear energy and its uses, reproductive technologies, human rights and civil liberties – and show how, in each case, our commitment to technological progress has caused us to race ahead with the development of the things which have brought about these crises, without stopping to consider whether the consequences of these developments ought to be risked. We have, in all these cases, tried to limit risk after the fact, but we have not stopped ahead of time to ask whether or not a development should be undertaken in the first place. And we have “poopooed” those who would have asked us to do so as anti-progress, whether that was their actual motivation or not.

As a remedy, the authors argue for a return to an ethical framework which acknowledges that there are, and that there ought to be, limitations on our “progress” – which acknowledges that progress for its own sake is not necessarily good. They argue that we need an ethical framework which contains within it some definition of the “good”, beyond mere utilitarian calculus, so that, when we are faced with the question of whether to undertake a development, we can assess in advance whether its possible consequences will be for the good or not. They argue, moreover, that a starting point for such a framework ought to be our ignorance – we do not, and often cannot, know all the possible consequences of a development.

Where I found the book problematic, and therefore disappointing, however, was that, in looking for a model for such an ethical framework, the authors look exclusively to the Greco-Christian tradition of ethical philosophy, in particular to the philosophical mode known as transcendental realism. But they utterly fail to acknowledge the continuities between that tradition and the modernity that emerged from it, and therefore the role which that same tradition itself has played in bringing us to the crises which we currently face (more on that next post). In addition, they seriously underestimate, or ignore, the role and influence of Capitalism, assuming that this technological imperative developed simply out of our thought-patterns and attitudes. They fail, in my view, to sufficiently recognize the powerful vested interests which pushed the development of modernity in a particular direction. In otherwords, they fail to sufficiently acknowledge the role played by, as one film put it, good, old-fashioned material greed. They seem to be arguing that a return to a different ethical framework would curtail that greed, but fail to acknowledge the failure of such premodern ethical frameworks to do so in their own time. So why should they do so now?

Anyway, I think the book is definitely worth reading for the questions it raises, although I’ll warn you now that it’s an extremely depressing read! But ultimately, whether we’ve read this book or have come to the same questions in other ways, we really need to start looking for other answers if we want to find ones that can work.

Anyway, as I referenced in a much earlier post describing the Climate Conference I attended back in the Summer, one of Dyer’s chapters describes, especially when put together with some of the data presented at the conference, what will happen if we allow the acidification of the oceans to continue unabated. In that post, I stated that this would, eventually, cause the oceans to go anoxic, because of the disruption of the currents and the dying off of the plankton which oxygenate them, and that this would cause an explosion of bacteria which produce hostile gas. At the time, I stated that that gas was sulfur-dioxide, which would be bad enough but might still allow oxygen to be extracted for us to breath. But that was incorrect! The gas those bacteria produce is actually, according to Dyer and his sources, hydrogen-sulfide, which is deadly to most forms of life on this planet and in which no oxygen is present to extract.

This is why we need to get our act together now. Dyer puts this horrific event at about the year 2175, although he admits that there can be no sure prediction of such a date as we simply don’t know enough about the processes involved. But even so, the time-frame is terrifying! Climate-change could lead to this if we don’t do something about it within the next thirty years. So we’d better get off our butts and get to work, and we’d better do it now! Read Dyer’s book if you think I’m nuts. It’ll scare the you know what out of you, but hopefully it will also galvanize you.