The Crash Course
The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment
Chris Martenson, PhD; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2011
The Crash Course is soon to be published, but in advance of that event the author is presenting much of this material in a full day workshop at the upcoming NESEA Building Energy conference in Boston on March 8 (www.nesea.org/be11). The next day, he and the conference keynote speaker David Orr have agreed to engage in a discussion in the opening of the Whole Systems in Action “track” of sessions, immediately following Orr’s speech to the conference on Wednesday morning March 9.
Let me say up front that I recommend you read this book as soon as you can get your hands on it. The book’s subtitle The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment seems to signal that this might be yet another “gloom and doom” book intended to scare and intimidate. But this time it’s different: Chris Martenson is clearly a whole systems thinker. He gets at the root causes of the predicaments we face with our energy, environmental and economic endeavors, and offers a positive vision for how we might become more balanced and resilient as the future emerges.
One definition of crash course is “a rapid and intense course of training or research (usually undertaken in an emergency) – like cramming for a test. And that’s part of Martenson’s intended meaning here. The other part is that our complex and intertwined economic, energy, and environmental systems are set on a course to fail, and we must devise strategies to deal with this huge predicament. Martenson asserts that it is clear that we can’t expect technology, “experts”, or political leaders to set things right again.
It is a cinematic cliché for “action” moviemakers to celebrate the violence of multiple car crashes in slow motion, probably so we viewers won’t miss any exciting, schadenfreudlich detail of the death and destruction unfolding before us. Students of pop culture tell me that the 2003 movie Final Destination 2 has such a scene that ranks at the top of their lists for such things.
By analogy we intuitively sense that our systems have been on a seemingly slow motion collision course for quite some time. Early warning signs that the earth’s natural resources were becoming scarce and/or spoiled began to appear in the 1950s. “Peak coal” happened around 1960. “Peak oil” is happening today. With the first Earth Day in 1970, widespread environmental awareness began to seep into the mainstream. NASA’s photographs of our planet as viewed from the moon wordlessly drove the point home. And in our corner of the world, NESEA was begun in 1974.
NESEA members are a unique bunch of practicing professionals, concerned with the workable and measurable aspects of renewable resources and improving the quality of the built environment. But rather than being only a collection of experts and specialists, NESEA people are uniquely interdisciplinary, thereby synthesizing innovative ideas. It’s not enough to know how to install the best ground-source heat pumps available; one needs to understand how GSHPs and their limitations fit into the larger picture of climate control, energy efficiency, climate change, etc. Some NESEA members are collaborating to better understand how aesthetics is deeply connected to what we do. It is appropriate then for NESEA people to be part-time generalists; mindful of and understanding of the world outside one’s everyday circle. The Crash Course is appropriate reading for this reason alone.
Martenson’s forte is his deep understanding of the true economic factors that impact our wealth and standard of living. What I find treated lightly in the book is a discussion of how our collective social structures will need to adapt for the future. Restoring communities, local economies, and enhancing our connectedness to nature are all part of his book. However there is little mention of how the labor force will need to be reconstituted. My observation is that a much larger presence for worker-owned cooperatives is needed to restore the dignity, resilience, and value we place on human labor.
The Crash Course is a significant book. In articulating the need to (and a strategy to) deal with the present and face the future, it deserves to stand alongside The Limits to Growth (Donella and Dennis Meadows et alia, 1972) and Natural Capitalism (Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1999). The Crash Course is to be published in April. We have the chance now to connect with Chris Martenson directly at his workshop, a feature of the Building Energy 2011 conference. Try to take advantage of this opportunity.
——-William L. Stillinger February 8, 2011
