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By Root 509 0

of flying around the world to lecture people on sustainable living finally got to you. You learned to travel electronically while letting your body stay more still. From that you started to belong where you are and, as you’ll see, community is what the future is all about. I think now of the David Waggoner lines: “Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.” Here, though, is now everywhere as well. The web is humming on levels you can’t imagine. Think of the innovations in the last five years—YouTube, wikis, blogs, webcams. Consider Moore’s Law (computing power doubles every eighteen months). Add the intuitive capacities you’ve seen in young children—and yourself. And contemplate what “here” might mean. Thinking globally and loving locally seems very expansive and free. I am personally so moved to know that ancient cultures are finding their roots and rhythms again without busloads of tourists descending every day. It’s like watching the desert bloom in the spring. Planes to us seem like jalopies.

While staying home, you’d also do well to follow those impulses to make home more energy-efficient. Hint: don’t buy any more lamps for screw-in bulbs; more efficient lighting is coming soon. Hint: just drive your 50-mpg Honda Insight until it dies; you’ll be amazed what’s next in mob-tech (that’s mobility technology). Here I have to bite my tongue. I’ll just say that if someone we know invests in some wind farm venture on her island or in a solar installation business, she might be set for life. It used to be “location, location, location.” Now it’s “local, local, local.” By staying home you will see many opportunities to retrofit your home for a post-Peak-Oil future. You’ll also find yourself getting political, because shared solutions for energy are better than just putting solar hot water on your roof—as you will anyway.

Hint Two: Grow Food

We’ve now studied the behavior of our species in transition and have discovered that a spike in “lawns to lunch” (home garden acreage) is a leading indicator of impending resource constraints. The future casts its shadow in the present for those who pay attention, and when people hanker after land and gardening like they used to hanker after opera and travel, you know a shift is coming. Follow all your impulses to grow food, to organize local food systems, to sidle up to neighbors with lawns and suggest that you could find a young farmer who’d love to turn that useless mono-crop of grass into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Save seeds. Go ahead, if you want, and buy land to grow food, but frankly you have a talent for growing kale and zucchini—and not much else. Become involved with CSAs (community-supported agriculture). Partner with other singles to do a share. You’ve been thinking about raising chickens. All I’ll say is, “Not a bad idea.” Or join that goat coop, take that cheese-making class, and buy up all the used canning jars at the thrift store. Think food. Dream food. Do food. Eat food (but less).

Hint Three: Make Peace with Your Past—and Future

I’m not going to kid you. Some really hard knocks are coming. Some are just as you imagine, others are not. A way of life based on treating finite resources as infinite is ending, and we are still living with the shocks and aftershocks of it. We were slow to move on the mandate of 80 percent reduction of carbon by 2050 and are reaping the consequences. Yes, there have been environmental catastrophes, but there have also been “benestrophes”—unexpected accumulations of good fortune. Yes, many have died; some at their own hands, since living within the means of the planet didn’t seem like living at all. Be prepared to live through this, knowing that in the larger scheme of things—and nature—it’s quite natural for populations to overshoot and collapse. Death itself isn’t as tragic as living in fear of death and allowing suspicion and greed to flourish in your mind. Cultivate a calm and caring attitude, even while you rail inside against it all (I can guarantee you’ll rail, weep, get