“Unsustainable” isn’t just another buzzword. It means that things cannot continue as they are, even if we want them to.

For many thousands of years, under a billion of us lived on this planet. As of February 2010, the Earth’s population is estimated to be nearly seven times that amount. Between 2006 and 2008 average world prices for rice rose by 217%, wheat by 136%, corn by 125% and soybeans by 107%. In late April 2008 rice prices hit 24 cents per pound, more than doubling the price in just seven months. In more recent years, things have only gotten worse. So, if you can’t read the writing on the wall by now, maybe it’s for the best that your deficient genes won’t linger for too much longer on the planet.

Ouch. Well, perhaps the time for euphemisms has passed? There is overwhelming and undeniable evidence that the world food shortage will knock at our doors this year. When the scale of the problem is fully acknowledged (or when it can no longer be denied) the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the globe to dump their foreign reserves in order to appreciate their own currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.

Ah well …

This doesn’t have to be Doomsday. It’s springtime after all – and surely the most important spring of our lives. It’s time to sow seeds and focus on the important things – food, water, shelter and our relationships with our neighbors. We don’t have to look too far for inspiration either – if the pages of this magazine don’t spur you into action then check out the photographs of the Victory Gardens of Great Britain during World War II or the communal gardens of Cuba when the country found itself isolated after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The lesson is clear: we just need to work together.

If all this sounds like alarmist hippy talk then ponder on this: 5 billion of us are here because of one thing – OIL. And, as we are all tired of hearing, the rivers of black gold are starting to run seriously dry. Meanwhile the vast majority of us continue to live in LaLa land; our consumption habits show no signs of abating voluntarily. We’ve cashed in on millions of years of accumulated solar energy to the extent where very soon it will take more energy to reach the remaining oil than the energy it would produce. The Post Carbon Institute equates the oil-based energy to the labor of 20 billion slaves, working for us 24/7. Does this analogy help to crystallize our predicament? Our oil slaves are all about to go AWOL.

However, before you rush down to your local Costco, empty the shelves of all their tinned food and head for your cabin in the woods, why not invest in some non-GM seeds and start a vegetable garden with your friends? Better still, with your so-called enemies!

Above all, remember – your growing skills are valuable, with or without a dollar sign prefix.

Peace, love and more love,

Everest

“The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse. If you go to Bosnia or Somalia or Peru or much of the third-world then it appears that the apocalypse has already arrived.”

- Terence McKenna, circa 1995.