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30 December 2009 – 10 January 2010

The After Kill Of Narayanpatna

—Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 51, Dated December 26, 2009

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main43.asp?filename=Ne211209the_after.asp

Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees, And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!

—Muria adivasi song in Bastar

The bloodshed may have halted, but violence, fear and the possibility of starvation still haunt. SANJANA reports from the remote Orissa town where police killed two Adivasis last month

THE VOICE at the other end of the line is weak and tired. It’s past 8 pm. “We are on our way to the village,” he says. “We walk six hours every day – three hours at daybreak from our village into the forest and three hours at sundown back to the village. We hide in the jungles during the day and come to the village at night. We don’t want to be arrested by the police who come to our villages during the day,” says the 24-year-old. A few minutes of conversation later, he asks if his name and village can be kept anonymous. “If the police read the report, they may come to our village and hunt us down,” he says. Nothing you say can dislodge the fear.

Three weeks after a police firing, Narayanpatna in Orissa continues to resemble a war zone – with near-empty villages. The 24-year-old Adivasi that TEHELKA spoke with is only one of several hundred families who live in constant fear.

On 20 November 2009, two Adivasis died in the paramilitary forces’ firing at the Narayanpatna police station. Both the Adivasis were part of Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh – an Adivasi organisation in the region that is fighting for the last 15 years for the Adivasis’ right over land – and were part of a 150 strong group that had gathered at the police station to protest over continued police harassment. Last week, in the story ‘A zone of twisted law’ (issue 50 dated 19 December, 2009) TEHELKA had detailed attempts by the state to derail the CMAS and other Adivasi organizations working in the area by equating them directly with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) active in the region.

The Special Operations Group unit of the police and paramilitary forces, such as the Indian Reserve Battalion and the COBRA force stationed at Narayanpatna, continue with their search-and-combing operations in their attempts to arrest absconding leaders of CMAS. Arrests from the villages continue – unconfirmed reports talk of three more Adivasis being arrested on 14 December 2009 – even as the security forces seek to arrest key CMAS leader Nachika Linga.

Currently, 70 people have been arrested and lodged in the Koraput district jail. Though all the arrests have taken place after 20 November, not all of them are related to the protest on the day. Says Gupteswar Panigrahy, a Koraput based advocate who has stepped forward to represent the arrested CMAS members: “Of the 70 people arrested, only 20 have been charged with cases related to the protest on 20 November 2009. The charges range from voluntarily causing hurt to rioting armed with deadly weapons to criminal conspiracy. The police have also leveled charges under the Indian Arms Act. As for the rest of the people, they have been arrested for cases that are several months old. By arresting all of them now, we believe that the police are unnecessarily attempting to create a climate of fear in the villages.”

Panigrahy is one of three advocates who has been allowed access to the undertrial prisoners. He categorically details the injuries sustained by those arrested while in custody. On 14 December 2009, when the jail authorities brought some of the undertrial prisoners before the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) at Lakshmipur, 4 Adivasis – Mahua Champa, Champiya Jama, Prasanna Maleka and Mandangi Subbarao – complained of injuries and asked the magistrate for medical treatment. Ask Panigrahy how many of those arrested have been injured and he speaks of the pathetic condition that he found some of them in. “Visible body injuries aside, I have heard that some of the Adivasi women have been raped in custody. I have not been able to confirm these reports yet. I also found one minor amongst those arrested. A school student, aged around 14 years, has been lodged in the same jail since the police authorities have recorded his age as 18 years. There is a lot the police have to answer for,” he says quietly.

Yet another question Panigrahy and his team lay out is the presentation of arms at a press conference held by the Superintendent of Police, Deepak Kumar, in Koraput on 29 November 2009. The arms had been seized, the police claimed, during raids a day earlier. The place of weapons seizure falls under the Lakshimpur JMFC jurisdiction and according to procedure should have been deposited with the court. Moving it out of the court for presentation at a press conference would then require the authorization of the court. “Even at the time of hearing on 14 December, the police had not even provided the court with a list of the seized weapons, leave alone the question of depositing them,” points out Panigrahy. It was only after Panigrahy pointed this out that the court directed the police to provide them with the list. “Procedures have been laid out to ensure there is no manipulation by the police. What is to stop them from adding weapons to the seized list now?” asks Panigrahy. When TEHELKA contacted SP Deepak Kumar to speak about the heavy police deployment and reports of police high handedness, he refused to answer questions, only offering the comment that “the police were doing their duty” and that there was no further discussion necessary.

THE HIGH-HANDEDNESS of the security forces in Narayanpatna is not limited to what appears as indiscriminate arrests of Adivasis or their subsequent treatment. In the villages that TEHELKA visited in Narayanpatna block, including Palaput and Bhaliaput, the few Adivasis who had remained behind talked uneasily of the threats issued by the security forces if they harvested the crops from the lands they had been cultivating. Consider the context in which threats against crop harvesting have been issued and the high-handedness of the security forces becomes apparent. Across Narayanpatna block, over the years, reclamation of land grabbed from the Adivasis was one of the central rallying points for the CMAS. Gananath Patra, or GP as he is called, a key CMAS leader, told TEHELKA that before the struggle for land reclamation was launched a year ago, Adivasi land possession had dropped to less than 5 percent in the block. “In an area where Adivasi population is around 90 percent (the 2001 census confirms these figures), this meant serious land-grabbing by non-tribals who had migrated to the region less than 15 years ago. Over the years, before CMAS gained ground, Adivasis were dispossessed of their land using liquor as an incentive. Most of the people who took away Adivasi land were liquor vendors and traders,” says GP. The veteran leader talks of how the first struggle that CMAS launched was to stop manufacture and sale of liquour in the villages followed by attempts to establish Adivasi claims over their land.

Nachika Linga, the now absconding CMAS leader, in a previously published interview talked of the effort and the patience the Adivasis exhibited while attempting to recover the land through legal procedures. “For years we followed legal procedures, filed application after application since the law, The Orissa Scheduled Areas Transfer of Immovable Property Regulation, recognizes Adivasis’ right over paternal land. We would file and wait. For Adivasis who are mostly illiterate and have no knowledge of the laws, this was a huge exercise in itself,” Linga is reported to have said. When filing applications yielded no result, CMAS launched a forceful takeover of land from the non-tribal liquor vendors and the traders. In the clashes that erupted in May 2009 between the non-tribals and the CMAS, one person died and several non-tribal families fled – leaving their lands and houses. Since May 2009, Adivasis have cultivated the fields, growing their staple crops of paddy and millets – crops that are now ready for harvesting.

Following the firing on 20 November, security forces – accompanied often by non-tribals – have issued warnings to Adivasis to desist from harvesting crops from these lands. In Palaput village, Adivasis told TEHELKA that the non-tribal families who had fled the village had returned a week after the firing to warn the Adivasis of arrests if crops were harvested. “They told us that they would be back with the police to make us harvest the crops and hand them over. If we went into the fields before that, we were told that we would be beaten up and arrested,” says Hiko Kalati, an Adivasi resident of Palaput. “We cultivated the land, it is our sweat and blood that has tended the crops,” asks Kalati. “If our leaders were around, we would have gone ahead and cut the crops before they came. But now what can we do but watch?” he says before looking away. In village after village, voices subdued by fear ask the same question. In Bhaliaput, as part of the search-and-combing operations, the security forces had destroyed the foodgrains, Adivasis had stored from a previous harvest. With destruction of stored foodgrains and a warning to not harvest crops, what would be the source of food in the months to come? The Adivasis of Bhaliaput had only blank faces to offer as answers.

Outside the villages, pose the question to the non-tribals who are eagerly awaiting police protection to proceed with crop harvesting and there are ready answers available. Anand Kirsani, a trader who has emerged as the voice of the non-tribals opposing the CMAS in Narayanpatna, is very vocal about the issue. “Why didn’t they think of this before they took away our lands? First, they threatened us, forcibly took over our lands and when we turned to the police for protection, turned on the police and attacked them. They only have themselves to blame for their present situation,” says Kirsani. He goes on to explain how they (the non-tribals) have gone on to organize themselves – an organization called Koraput District Nagarik Surakhya and Shanti Committee has been floated. In the past three months the committee has held several protests condemning the CMAS and the land reclamation process it has started in the region. A minute of conversation with Kirsani and the vehemence in obvious – the CMAS are Maoists and deserve stringent punishment – a fact that the police have thankfully woken up to, he says. Are the police helping them to harvest the crops? There is not a moment of hesitation as he answers in the affirmative.

Officially, Koraput Sub-Collector Rajesh Patil has announced that the harvests will be monitored by the district administration and that there will be a 50-50 share accorded to the Adivasis and the original land owners. While questions remain about the monitoring and implementation of this arrangement, there are several advocates who point to the illegality of such an announcement by the district administration. Nihar Ranjan Patnaik, a special advocate under the state government’s Orissa Tribal Empowerment and Livelihood Programme, says it is a clear violation of the settled principle of law. “The law recognizes the rights of a trespasser if he has a settled possession of the property – in this case, the Adivasis’ rights as trespassers is established since they have been cultivating the land. If the crops are not handed over to the Adivasis, there is danger of starvation in the area in addition to the existing lawlessness,” says Koraput-based Patnaik. A few weeks is all there is to determine the possession of the harvests – before the crops rot and become useless for both the Adivasis and the non-tribals.

IN THE ordinary course of events, both the issues of possible starvation and continued repression of Adivasis in the villages of Narayanpatna would warrant an independent assessment. But in the war zone that is Narayanpatna, this is a remote possibility. When a team of nine women from various civil rights organizations attempted to travel to the region on 9 December 2009, they were severely abused and assaulted by the police and armed youth. A press statement issued by the team a day later provided a detailed account of how the team members were strangled, beaten up and assaulted repeatedly – even right outside the Narayanpatna police station. They were ultimately forced to return – without having traveled to the villages.

In a democracy, citizens are allowed to travel freely across the country. War zones are, of course, excluded. Has Narayanpatna in Orissa then become a war zone?

WRITER’S EMAIL sanjana@tehelka.com

Jai Narayan Mishra Memorial Lecture: Social Implications of "Reforms" in China and India

Department of political Science, Patna College and Daanish Books have organised a talk on "Social Implications of current economic reforms in China and India" as part of Prof. Jai Narayan Mishra Memorial Lectures on the occasion of 25th death anniversary of Prof. Jai Narayan Mishra.
Invitation is pasted below:

You are cordially invited to

Prof. Jai Narayan Mishra Memorial Lecture

on

Social Implications of "Reforms" in China and India

to be delivered by

Prof. Robert Weil, USA

Prof. Imtiaz Ahmad, New Delhi

on

19 December 2009, 1 p.m.

Seminar Hall, Patna College, Patna

Dr. Haridwar Shukla

Head, Department of Plolitical Science

Patna College

Social Boycott of Dalits in MP: Uncivil Society, Apathetic Administration

Subhash Gatade who has circulated this article has received a threat mail from Hindutva forces, which says:

From: xyz abc <xyz_abc501@yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 9:53 PM
Subject: feed back
To: subhash.gatade@gmail.com

u r nothing but a fucking ass hole..bastard...you r the enemy of Hindu.....you will be punished....definitely...

 

(A Fact Finding Report issued by Nagrik Adhikar Manch and Yuva Samvad.)

(The situation in the Gadarwara Sub Division of District. Narsinghpur (MP) has been in a state of constant flux since last 3-4 months. The Dalits living in the villages adjoining Gadarwara have been condemned to a life of fear and intimidation. Their human rights and dignity are being at stake.

Obviously there is a concrete reason behind this sudden spurt in violence against them. They have refused to remain subservient to the interests of the upper/dominant castes and have decided to speak up.

Instead of taking concrete steps to guarantee the human rights of dalits granted to them under constituion, the administration has preferred to remain silent or at best supportive of the interests of the dominant castes only. One can easily see why Madhya Pradesh happens to be the state which tops the list of atrocities on tribals and stands second when it comes to cases of atrocities against dalits.)

Dist: Narsinghpur(Madhya Pradesh)

Tehsil: Gadarwara

Affected Area: Dalits (Ahirwar community) in Gadarwara and adjoining villages.
Villages visited by the Fact Finding Team: Nander, Madgula, Devri and Tekapar

Date: 7th and 9th November 2009

Members of Fact Finding Team

Jai Bhim, Moolchand Ahirwar, Javed, Skand Shukla, Manoj, Satyam, Shivkumar, Nishant Kaushik

Brief Introduction to Narsinghpur District.

District Narsinghpur falls under the Nagpur Commissionorate. It is situated half-way between the capital Bhopal and Jabalpur. The economic mainstay of Narsinghpur is cultivation of sugarcane and pulses(dals). The population predominantly consists of Rajputs, Lodhi , Patels, Kirar and Ahirwar. Gadarwara is the main Tehsil of Narsinghpur.

Gadarwara

The Ahirwars make almost half (38,000-40,000 ) of the total population (70,000-80,000) of Gadarwara. Around 80-85 percent of the people in this tehsil are engaged in agriculture or related work. Agricultural labourers and landless peasants comprise a majority among them. Most of the agricultural labourers belong to the Dalit communities and among them the Ahirwars (Chamars) predominate. This caste falls under Scheduled Caste in the Constitution. They (Ahirwars) also form a major portion of the Scheduled Castes in the country and more so in the Hindi speaking area (where Chamar is used as a derogatory term). There are over 700 surnames in this caste.

The Ahirwars are spread over Gadarwara and nearly in all the adjoining villages. They play a very prominant role in the socio-economic activities of this area.

The Ahirwars Resolution giving rise to the present oppression.

Ahirwar Samaj Mahaparishad had been trying to evolve a general consensus since last one year about abandoning the obnoxious practice of carrying of the carcasses of dead beasts; to rid them of the centuries old practice of being looked down upon by the varna (upper) castes as carriers of the carcasses and consequently untouchables. Ahirwars in many villages actually discontinued this practice from July-August onwards. The Ahirwar Samaj Mahaparishad resolved in October 2009 to abandon this practice by the community en masse at the state level.

The social history of the oppression.

It becomes clear from the social history of India that a sort of gradation based on discrimination and untouchability has been established here. This practice has been fed and confirmed by other social constructions.

In spite of the forceful pleading of social justice in the Constitution, social inequality has persisted and is a sine qua non of our society This division based on differences rooted in inequalities has insulted the self-respect of people and compounded their human rights.

The roots of the exploitation and oppression of the Dalits in Gadarwara are in this practice. The burden of lifting carcasses of the dead animals had been imposed upon the Ahirwars in the course of the division of social labour. For centuries the inhuman work has been done by them. The surprise is that despite the imperative necessity of getting this work done a view of looking down on this work as lowly and insulting work has also been simultaneously developed by the society. This has remained the mainstay of the untouchability and oppression practised vis-a-vis the Ahirwar community. This despite the fact that the Constitutional provision under the ‘Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989′, carrying of carasses has been classified as a form of practising untouchability and nobody can be forced to do this work. However, the reality of Gadarwara is quite the opposite. It need be underlined at this juncture the said act which recently completed 20 years of enactment, carries important provisions to prevent atrocities against the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes, which largely remain unimplemented.

A Detailed Report of the Fact Finding Team and Its observations.

Despite repeated complaints against the oppression faced by the dalits at the hands of the dominant castes and demands for action against them the attitude of the administration has remained apathetic. This despite the fact that Dalits in 5-6 villages have filed complaints of physical harassment and oppression.

Even at present the position is that not only had there been no let up in the collective harassment faced by the dalits but it has become more severe. We were receiving reports of the plight of the dalits and their attempts to resist the inhuman treatment meted out to them since last few months. Under the circumstances it was considered necessary that the position may be ascertained and verified by a Fact Finding team.

A detailed report of the visits to four villages in the area is given below :
Village: Deori

The Ahirwar Community at Deori is in a serious predicament. The Upper Castes/Non-Dalit castes have resorted to cruel tactics for harassing them. Since the issue of removing carcasses of dead animal has been raised by them they have declared a virtual blockade of the community.Taking advantage of the confused laying of public road No. 128, the dominant castes have created such a situation that the Ahirwars are not able to come out of their houses. The community has been ‘imprisoned’ in its own native village.

The following facts were revealed before the Fact Finding Team

I- Denial of access to daily utilities

1. There is ban on them on making any purchases from the only provision shop in the village.

2. They are not allowed to get water from a public tap.

3. Ban on travel by public transport

4. Stopping vegetable and food vendors, newspaper boys including dhobis (washermen), nais(barbers) from entering Dalit localities

5. Stopping access to flour mills for grinding corn

6. Ban on entering the Village Panchayat Bhavan

II- Atrocities on children and women.

Bablu, Jagdi and Pappu belonging to Upper castes injured Devaki ,an Ahirwar girl, on the head .

Bimla Bai was threatened by non-Dalit Devendra Kumar warning her not to step in their fields failing which they would strip her naked and parade her through the village.

Yogesh Ahirwar studying in the local school told that they are served mid-day meals in separate plates and they had to wash the plates used by them.

III- Intimidation by armed persons and threatening to kill

Hari Singh and Omkar, both Ahirwars told the Fact Finding Team that they are being constantly threatened by Arjun, Nipal and Ghanshyam, all Gurjars (non-Dalit caste) to kill them. They blamed them for always complaint-mongering.

In a meeting organised by the Village head (Sarpanch) in October 2009 to resolve the issue, more than hundred people belonging to non-dalit castes who were carrying different arms, literally pounced upon the Ahirwars and tried to intimidate them. The Ahirwars who had gathered there hoping for a peaceful and respectable solution, literally had to flee the place to save their lives.

IV- Creating obstacles and obstructing schemes meant for the Dalits and other needy rural people.

Attempts are being made to deprive the Ahirwar community from the benefits of the welfare schemes — schems run jointly by center and state governments — such as NREGS, Nirashrit Pension Yojana (Pension for the Shelterless), Indira Awas Yojna, labour welfare schemes and distribution of land for the landless.

We learnt that job cards under NREGS of Vanshilal , Prakash, Vinod, Vishal, Malkham (all Ahirwars) and even of some other Ahirwars have been kept by the Sarpanch with him. The pension of Harkishan Singh Ahirwar aged 70 years has not been paid for the last four months. Similarly, Besides this the amount sanctioned under the Indira Awas Yojna has not been paid to Vanshilal, Karodi Prasad and other 12 persons.

V- On the brink of starvation

The landless Ahirwar peasants cultivate the land of the upper caste people on lease on expense sharing basis (batai). Under it all expenses right from bowing to harvesting is done by the person taking the land on lease and he is given ¼ to 1/10 portion of the harvest by the landlord. However, when the crops bowed in June reached the harvesting stage some influential landlords refused to allot any share to the cultivators and in fact harvested the crop with Harvester Combines and took it away. The Ahirwar community which faced drought last season is on the brink of starvation.If the same state of affairs continues, it is feared that there would be starvation deaths in the area.

VI- Economic sanctions

Almost all the Ahirwar families in Deori are landless. They eke out their living working as sharecroppers or labourers. When their resolve not to lift the carcasses of dead animals was declared virtual economic sanctions have been imposed on them. The locals told the Fact Finding Team that this time not a single crop-sharer has been given his share. Many others have not been paid even their wages. They told us in details about non-giving the shares of the crop. Some of the names are listed below. In some of these cases the harvest has been cut and in other cases the cultivator has been probibited from even entering the field.

Details of persons from Deori not receiving their share in the harvest.

List of Sharecroppers from Landlord/non-Dalit Area of land cultivated Harvest

Ahirwar Community:

1. Vanshilal Ahirwar Purushotam Agarwal 5 acres Soyabean and corn (dhan)

2. Vanshilal Ahirwar Devi Singh Patel 3 acres Corn

3. Vishal Ahirwar Dhansingh Kadkoul 4 acres Soyabin and corn

4. Purushottam Ahirwar Ramkumar Thapar 2 acres Corn

5. Purushottam Ahirwar Aman Patel 2 acres Corn

6. Ajaysingh Ahirwar Ekamsimngh Gujar 6 acres Soyabin and corn

7. Prakash Ahirwar Chander Gurjar 2 acres Corn

8. Gopal Ahirwar Zummak Gurjar 3 acresss Corn

9. Pancham Ahirwar Indrapal Gurjar 5 acres Soyabin,sugarcane,corn

10. Potai Ahirwar Potai Karat 10 acres Soyabin ,Corn

11. Nepal Ahirwar Nepal Gurjar 6 acres Corn

12. Malkham Ahirwar Madan Patel 3 acres Corn

VII- Dumping dead cattle in Ahirwar locality

Munna Gurjar forcibly dumped the dead animal in front of the house of Malkham Singh Ahirwar. Similarly dead animals are being dumped in the pokharee (small pond) in front of Vishal Ahirwar’s the house.

People hailing from influential families even dumped the dead carcass in front of the Community Hall. It is needless to say that othe Public works were affected.

Depriving of the Right to Work under NREGS

The NREGS work has been widely affected by this decision not to lift carcasses. The people from the Ahirwar community have been deprived of the works being done under NREGS. Their work is being got executed by employing other persons.

Action by Administration

People from Deori have complained twice to the Sub-Divisional Officer, (Anuvibhagiya Dandadhikari) Gadarwara but the SDM has merely consoled them and has not bothered to take any action against the perpetrators.The matter has been kept hanging till date.

Village: Tekapar

The condition of Tekapar is no different from other villages. Here also the Dalit Ahirwars have to face a virtual boycott and violence at the hands of the dominant castes/non-Dalit castes. Here the Dalit count for more than half the population of the village. Out of them a mere 13 have land in their name-a mere 3 acres in all. The rest all are farm labourers.

In the second week of October some people from the Ahirwars were summoned by the caste people and they were point-blank asked whether they will or will not lift the caracasses of dead animals. The Ahirwars conveyed to them the community decision. The next day a fiat was issued by the caste people warning the Ahirwars that if by any chance the Ahirwars pass through their fields they will have to pay a fine of Rs. 1000/-

The intimidation did not stop here. A strict ban was imposed on availing the village facilities of shop for things of daily use — use of public tap water system, flour mill and other public places. They used to take clay for building from public places but a total ban on such use was imposed. Netram Ahirwar infomed us that the work of digging for clay has always been a community effort but now they threaten us if we take clay.

Sahebsingh Ahirwar informed that he is a crop-sharer in the field of a caste man but he has not received his share of the harvest till this date. Swaraj Suria (upper caste) even prohibited Aman Ahirwar to walk on the concrete road and in case he resisted threatened to kill him. When Netram Ahirwar took his farm instruments to the the local blacksmith for repairs he was told that there was a ban on extending any service to the Ahirwars. Mohanlal Ahirwar is not receiving funds for a safe delivery under the state scheme meant for the poorer sections of society.

An oppressive condition for crop sharing

Thereafter for fear of violent response in the village and bowing before the pressure of the dominant castes 70 year old Fullu Ahirwar had to accept removing a dead animal. It was only then that he and other members of the Ahirwar community were granted a marginal share in the crops harvested by them.

The Community does not have the Antyodaya Yojana Card

There is a big scandal in the distribution of Antyodaya cards to the poor. This card intended for farm labourers and poor Dalits in the village has been distributed to upper/dominant caste people. A large number of the Ahirwars have been kept outside the purview of this scheme.

No work in NREGS

There pressure tactics also obtain in the field of the constitutional rights of 100 days employment. The Dalit Ahirwars receive hardly 10 to 15 days of work and that too with difficulty.

The Reaction of the Administration

The people of Tekapar have been kept under threat by the influential castes. They are threatened that should they dare to complain they will have to face the music. In spite of this the Ahirwar people had made representations against the injustice to them in writing to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate on 8th October 2009. Despite this, the status quo remains and no action has been taken to ameliorate the situation.

Village: Nander

People from the Dalit community of Nander told the Fact Finding Team that we decided to stick to the decision of the Ahirwar Community not to lift dead animals both in letter and spirit. The Ahirwar Community has conveyed this decision to all the villagers. However, the caste people in the village did not like this. On the 10th October 2009 the villagers carried a caracass of a dead animal in a bullock cart at the center of the Dalit Basti and threw it down in front of the house of Rameshsingh Ahirwar. Mukesh Upadhyay (a Upper case member) even got some earth sprinkled on the carcass through some people. Ramesh Singh Ahirwar requested them not to do so. On this Mukesh threatened to cut down the hands of anybody who dared to touch his dead animal. Ramesh Ahirwar told that the following day Pralhad Yadav dumped a dead calf at the same place. The caste people deliberately selected this place for dumping the carcasses to teach them a lesson . This was an exhibition of ‘dadagiri’ to break the minds of the community.

That there would be serious consequences of such dumping of carcasses was a foregone conclusion. A 70 year old woman — Birya Bai — who lived in an adjoining hut was pushed towards a serious breathing trouble due to the obnoxious malodour of putrefying flesh. She had to be removed to the Gadarwara Hospital. Ramesh Ahirwar’s mother Ayudhi Bai (Age 65 years) also suffered on the same count. Evidently this deed was more than sufficient to spread pestilence in the village.

In the second phase, to increase the pressure on the Ahirwar community the non-Dalit caste people imposed a total ban on the Ahirwars. That meant that no member of the Dalit community could use any facility, not even touch, the properties such as the farms and fields belonging to the Upper caste and non-Dalit caste people. Use of ingress and ingress paths, farm compounds and even use of land for relieving themselves was totally banned for them.

Pohapsingh Ahirwar told the Team that the caste people are subjecting them to abuse, beatings and social boycott in public places like common water taps, schools, panchayat and flour mills. Lalji Singh says that he is Assistant Teacher in the school but they were forcing even me to lift the carcasses. They threatened me not to divulge this fact to others and allege that I was causing much harassment to the student and they would see him for that.

75-year-old Nanhu said that the washermen and barbers have been discriminating against them for years. They have to attend to these works themselves or go to other places.

One more tale of the harassment of the atrocities of the influential castes is Pohapsingh Ahirwar. He had purchased a land from one Takat Singh Gurjar and also paid an advance of  50,000 rupees but now Vinod Rajauriya is refusing to get this sale deed registered.

From the time the group decision against lifting of carcasses has been implemented the extension of all welfare schemes such as NREGS, Nirashrit Pension Yojana (Pension scheme for the Deprived people) ,Indira Awas Yojna, Labour Safety Scheme etc; have been totally suspended.

NREGS Job Cards for all the eligible persons have been filled up but very few people get any work. After this incident giving any work to any member of the Ahirwar community has been totally banned.

Administrative Inaction

The villagers have represented to the SDM Gadarwara and demanded immediate cessation of these atrocities and a solution found for these problems. On this the Tehsildar just visited the Village Gram Panchayat and only advised the Sarpanch Vinod Tiwari (a caste man) that nobody could be forced to lift an animal carcass and advised to fix one place for dumping the dead animals. The Sarpanch did issue orders appointing one man from the opposition group for this purpose. However, the formalities of fixing one single place for dumping the carcasses has not been completed as yet. But since then no further action has been taken by the Administration in this regard. This despite the fact that there has been an increase in the atrocities committed against the community since then.

Village: Madgula

After the Ahirwar Community’s decision against lifting of animal carcasses and their social boycott by the caste people, the situation has worsened. Here the Dalit basti is situated beside the Main Road outside the village. The caste people have banned their entry to the village or the fields. Here most of the agricultural land is owned by the caste people. There is no community lavatory or public road in the place. This has resulted in a virtual ban on the Ahirwars to relieve themselves. Obviously, under these circumstances the Ahirwars have beem forced to use the roadside to relieve themselves. The atrocities of the caste people have forced the people from the Ahirwar community to abandoning the village or even commit suicide.

I. Reduction in wages

On 31st July 2009 it was declared by a public announcement that members of the Ahirwar Community who work as crop sharer on the lands of caste people would have to agree with the wage-structure approved by the landlords or else leave the village. The wages for other works were also reduced to half from the normal rate of Rs. 70-80. This is not even a living wage for the workers and is even against the provisions of law.

II. Ban against necessities of life

There is a stringent ban on the Dalit Community against access to public utilities like common water tap, provision shops, flour mill etc.

III. Maltreatment of women and Threats

As there is no public road in the village the people from Ahirwar Dalit Community are banned even from relieving themselves. Consequently the women from the community are compelled to use the roadsides for this purpose. Anant Ahirwar told that when they do not find men for harassment the caste people target the women. If they protest they are threatened that if they do not follow their orders some day they will all be hanged by trees on the roadside

Complaints against the Atrocities

Harrassed by such dealings of the caste people lodged complaints against Dileep Rajput, Rajkumar, Narendra, Inder, Gutpal and five others. On this the Police Officer from Saikheda visited the village and advise the people.to avoid conflicts.

The Conclusion and The Way Out

MP has always remained at the top in atrocities against the Dalits. Even sixty years after gaining Independence the roots of social atrocities have still remained deep. For centuries the inhuman work of removing carcasses of animals and separating the hides from them has been got done from the Dalit communities. Even after virulent defence of human rights in the Constitution of the Independent India this inhuman and unconstitutional work is being got done forcibly from the Dalit communities. The irony is that this year sees the completion of twenty years from the promulgation of the law (SC and ST [Prevention of Atrocities] Act 1989) against Dalit exploitation.

After meeting hundreds of people from the four villages in MP the Fact Finding Team has observed how the Collective Decision of the Ahirwar Community (Dalit) of not undertaking the inhuman and unconstitutional work has become a question of prestige. The caste people are endeavouring for the reversal of this decision through social, economic sanctions.The caste people desire that the Dalits should abandon their struggle for self-respect and continue to undergo the social and cultural slavery.

The Fact Finding Team observed the following phenomena during their observation of the Gadarwara Region:

- This decision of the Ahirwar Community to preserve their self respect is considered by the caste people as a challenge to the communal superiority.

- By displaying their social and economic superiority the caste/non-Dalit castes are trying to keep the Ahirwar under constant pressure.

- The roots of these atrocities lie in an attempt to seek approval of the socio-cultural dogma that this work is the duty of a specific community.

- The Administration instead of standing by the Dalit community in support of their constitutional right is acting as a silent partner of the caste people to maintain the status quo.

On the basis of its observations of the prevailing circumstances the Gadarwara Region the Fact Finding Team feels that the following steps need to be urgently taken:

1. Institute an independent and impartial judicial enquiry of the things happening in Gadarwara Tehsil

2. Appropriate action against the people who are forcing the lifting the carcasses by some people

3. Immediate action against the people on the basis of the Fact Finding Report and and names  mentioned in complaints received by government.

4. Take stringent steps to dispel the fear psychosis prevailing in the minds of the Ahirwars

5. The reestablishment of the participation of the Ahirwar community in the social welfare schemes from which it has been kept awat,

6. Restoration of the crop share to the Ahirwar crop-sharers deprived of theie legitimate dues and also paymentg of adequate compensation for the deprival.

7. Restoration of claims of those falling Below Poverty Line but have been deprived of the benefits .

8. Take abiding steps for an abiding solution of the problems.

(Fact Finding Report issued by Nagrik Adhikar Manch and Yuva Samvad,Madhya Pradesh)

Contact Person:
Jay Bhim
Nagrik Adhikar Manch,

H.No.900, Durganagar, Near WaterTank No.2,

Bhopal
E-mail id: nambhopal@gmail.com

Book Release — Targeting Iran at The Attic, CP on 1 December 2009

 Daanish Books

and The Attic

cordially invite you to release of book

Targeting Iran
by David Barsamian with Noam Chomsky, Edvand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozaffari

The book will be released by Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty

followed by a lecture by David Barsamian

on

Obama's Expanding Wars: Afghanistan and Pakistan

Time: 6:30 pm

Date: 1 December 2009, Tuesday

Venue: The Attic, 36 Regal Building, CP, New Delhi
Tel : 2374 6050, 5150 3436

Manoranjan Mohanty is former Professor of Political Science and Director, Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi, currently Co-Chair, Institute of Chinese Studies and Durgabai Deshmukh Professor of Social Development, Council for Social Development, New Delhi.

David Barsamian is a radio broadcaster and writer and director of Alternative Radio, a syndicated weekly talk program heard on some 125 radio stations in various countries. His interviews and articles also appear regularly in The Progressive, The Nation, and Z Magazine. He is best known for his series of interviews with Noam Chomsky, which have been published in book form and translated into many languages. His other books include Confronting Empire (2000) (interviews with Eqbal Ahmad), Culture and Resistance (1994) (interviews with Edward Said), The Future of History (1999) (interviews with Howard Zinn), The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting (2001), The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (2003) (interviews with Arundhati Roy), Speaking of Empire and Resistance (2006) (interviews with Tariq Ali). His latest books are Targeting Iran and What We Say Goes with Chomsky.

Click to enlarge

Targeting Iran

Author(s): David Barsamian with Noam Chomsky, Edvand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozaffari
Price:INR200.00

ISBN:978-81-89654-84-9 (Pb)

Year: November 2009

Pages: 212pp.

---

About the Book

Iran and the United States are on a collision course. Washington’s sabre rattling in response to Iran’s hardline government eerily evokes U.S. rhetoric prior to the invasion of Iraq.

In Targeting Iran David Barsamian presents the perspectives of three experts on Iran who discuss the 1953 CIA coup and the rise of the Islamic regime; Iran’s internal dynamics and competing forces; relations with Iraq and Afghanistan; and the consequences of U.S. policy.

In a new introduction to the Indian edition Barsamian discusses in depth the emerging scenario in Iran after June 2009 elections, and U.S. preoccupation with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

 

Reviews

"This slim book is heavy with historical and cultural background that doesn't often find its way into news accounts; it's a great primer on a simmering conflict."

– Publishers Weekly

"Insightful, timely, and laced with rich historical perspective, Targeting Iran presents a bracing exploration of Iran's current place in the world, and its tangled relationship with the West. These fascinating interviews capture Iran’s complexity and illuminate the morning’s headlines."

– Azadeh Moaveni, author of Lipstick Jihad:
A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran

Report on “LIFE IN STRUGGLE CELEBRATION Honoring Hari Sharma at 75”

Chinmoy Banerjee

The “Life in Struggle Celebration” in honour of Hari Sharma was held successfully in Surrey, BC over the weekend of November 14-15.

On Saturday, November 14 four scholars and activists from Michigan, North Carolina, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia presented papers at a well-attended conference on “Imperialism, Socialism and Peoples’ Struggles Today” at the Newton Community Recreation Centre in Surrey.

Dr. Dongping Han spoke of his experiences growing up during the Cultural Revolution in China and emphasized the need to challenge the misinformation about it that has been established as truth by the Western media. For himself and millions of peasants and workers in China the Cultural Revolution was enormously empowering, giving them a voice and opportunities they never had and creating a sense of community and solidarity by breaking down the divides of urban/rural, educated/uneducated, and elite/lowly. By following the course of capitalist development and discarding the gains of the Cultural Revolution China was building up a great force of dissatisfaction against its growing inequality and social injustice that would become explosive. The riots in Xinjiang in 2009 were a symptom of this phenomenon.

Dr. Robert Weil also spoke on the Cultural Revolution but focused on the need to reclaim it for the future of socialism in the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the turn to capitalism in China. Mao had initiated the Cultural Revolution to take the Chinese revolution forward at a moment when its future was jeopardized by the forces of capitalism within the Communist Party of China. But despite its many achievements the Cultural Revolution failed because the lack of organization, failure of institution building, infighting, and excesses made it possible for the very forces it was supposed to counter to emerge as the savior of Chinese society. Mao’s project is alive today in the Philippines, Nepal, and India, where it has been adapted to include new perspectives and concerns and leftists should learn from the Cultural Revolution to unite in solidarity to achieve a socialist world since it was no longer possible to think of creating socialism in one country.

Dr. Pao-yu Ching argued that the world was facing an unprecedented crisis in agriculture. This was brought about by the colonial arrangement by which lands were subjected to ecological damage by plantations for the production of cash crops for the metropolis. The separation of agricultural production from the food needs of the producer created an unnatural state by breaking the natural connection between agricultural labour and the need for food. This break with the natural was reinforced by the capitalist development that made food into a commodity, merely a product for sale in the market. In the last few decades Imperialist forces have led this unnatural and destructive separation to a crisis: weak bourgeoisies in the newly independent countries have become sharers of Imperialist robbery of their lands and peasants have been increasing deprived of their lands, livelihood, and food. The current regime of agricultural production devastates the environment, produces in the interest of metropolitan and elite consumption and corporate profit, creates crippling dependency, and leads to large scale suicide among farmers and massive hunger and malnutrition. For peasantry in the developing world the struggle against Imperialism and the struggle for socialism are the same.

Dr. Mordecai Briemberg offered a history of Canada’s participation in Imperialist ventures as a junior partner from its contribution to the British Imperial efforts to its service to US engagements in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and its assistance in the coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. This is the context within which any struggle against Imperialism has to be conducted in Canada.

The presentations were followed by a vigorous exchange of ideas.

The celebration concluded with a party at the Grand Taj Banquet Hall in Surrey on Sunday, November 15 at which many people from the community, including Charan Gill, Raj Chouhan, Sarabjit Hundal, Harinder Mahil, Sunil Sharma, Chelliah Premrajah, Sadhu Binning, Ajmer Rode, Promod Puri, and Dr. H. Fox, Hari Sharma’s physician, paid respect to Hari Sharma’s contributions to the community.

Paul Binning contributed a bhangra dance by his students. Amrit Mann presented a gidda dance by her students and a dance about male-female relationship she had choreographed. The cultural presentations were greatly appreciated.

Kinda Garcha, lawyer for Hari Sharma, announced the creation of Hari Sharma Foundation.

The book commemorating this occasion, Celebrating Life in Struggle: A Tribute to Hari Sharma, has been published by Daanish Books and is available from http://www.daanishbooks.com/ or from the organizing committee.

November 22, 2009

Should We Prop Up A Dying Economy? By Richard Heinberg

Postcarbon.org

Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed.

(Download pdf version of this article.)

But why are both the U.S. economy and the larger global economy ailing? Among the mainstream media, world leaders, and America's economists-in-chief (Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke) there is near-unanimity of opinion: these recent troubles are primarily due to a combination of bad real estate loans and poor regulation of financial derivatives.

This is the Conventional Diagnosis. If it is correct, then the treatment for our economic malady might logically include heavy doses of bailout money for beleaguered financial institutions, mortgage lenders, and car companies; better regulation of derivatives and futures markets; and stimulus programs to jumpstart consumer spending.

But what if this diagnosis is fundamentally flawed? The metaphor needs no belaboring: we all know that tragedy can result from a doctor's misreading of symptoms, mistaking one disease for another.

Something similar holds for our national and global economic infirmity. If we don't understand why the world's industrial and financial metabolism is seizing up, we are unlikely to apply the right medicine and could end up making matters much worse than they would otherwise be.

To be sure: the Conventional Diagnosis is clearly at least partly right. The causal connections between subprime mortgage loans and the crises at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers have been thoroughly explored and are well known. Clearly, over the past few years, speculative bubbles in real estate and the financial industry were blown up to colossal dimensions, and their bursting was inevitable. It is hard to disagree with the words of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in his July 25 essay in the Sydney Morning Herald: "The roots of the crisis lie in the preceding decade of excess. In it the world enjoyed an extraordinary boom...However, as we later learnt, the global boom was built in large part...on a house of cards. First, in many Western countries the boom was created on a pile of debt held by consumers, corporations and some governments. As the global financier George Soros put it: 'For 25 years [the West] has been consuming more than we have been producing...living beyond our means.'" (1)

But is this as far as we need look to get to the root of the continuing global economic meltdown?

A case can be made that dire events having to do with real estate, the derivatives markets, and the auto and airline industries were themselves merely symptoms of an even deeper, systemic dysfunction that spells the end of economic growth as we have known it.

In short, I am suggesting an Alternative Diagnosis. This explanation for the economic crisis is not for the faint of heart because, if correct, it implies that the patient is far sicker than even the most pessimistic economists are telling us. But if it is correct, then by ignoring it we risk even greater peril.

Economic Growth, The Financial Crisis, and Peak Oil

For several years, a swelling subculture of commentators (which includes the present author) has been forecasting a financial crash, basing this prognosis on the assessment that global oil production was about to peak. (2) Our reasoning went like this:

Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet. This is an axiomatic observation with which everyone familiar with the mathematics of compounded arithmetic growth must agree, even if they hedge their agreement with vague references to "substitutability" and "demographic transitions." (3)

This axiomatic limit to growth means that the rapid expansion in both population and per-capita consumption of resources that has occurred over the past century or two must cease at some particular time. But when is this likely to occur?

The unfairly maligned Limits to Growth studies, published first in 1972 with periodic updates since, have attempted to answer the question with analysis of resource availability and depletion, and multiple scenarios for future population growth and consumption rates. The most pessimistic scenario in 1972 suggested an end of world economic growth around 2015. (4)

But there may be a simpler way of forecasting growth's demise.

Energy is the ultimate enabler of growth (again, this is axiomatic: physics and biology both tell us that without energy nothing happens). Industrial expansion throughout the past two centuries has in every instance been based on increased energy consumption.(5) More specifically, industrialism has been inextricably tied to the availability and consumption of cheap energy from coal and oil (and more recently, natural gas). However, fossil fuels are by their very nature depleting, non-renewable resources. Therefore (according to the Peak Oil thesis), the eventual inability to continue increasing supplies of cheap fossil energy will likely lead to a cessation of economic growth in general, unless alternative energy sources and efficiency of energy use can be deployed rapidly and to a sufficient degree. (6)

Of the three conventional fossil fuels, oil is arguably the most economically vital, since it supplies 95 percent of all transport energy. Further, petroleum is the fuel with which we are likely to encounter supply problems soonest, because global petroleum discoveries have been declining for decades, and most oil producing countries are already seeing production declines. (7)

So, by this logic, the end of economic growth (as conventionally defined) is inevitable, and Peak Oil is the likely trigger.

Why would Peak Oil lead not just to problems for the transport industry, but a more general economic and financial crisis? During the past century growth has become institutionalized in the very sinews of our economic system. Every city and business wants to grow. This is understandable merely in terms of human nature: nearly everyone wants a competitive advantage over someone else, and growth provides the opportunity to achieve it. But there is also a financial survival motive at work: without growth, businesses and governments are unable to service their debt. And debt has become endemic to the industrial system. During the past couple of decades, the financial services industry has grown faster than any other sector of the American economy, even outpacing the rise in health care expenditures, accounting for a third of all growth in the U.S. economy. From 1990 to the present, the ratio of debt-to-GDP expanded from 165 percent to over 350 percent. In essence, the present welfare of the economy rests on debt, and the collateral for that debt consists of a wager that next year's levels of production and consumption will be higher than this year's.

Given that growth cannot continue on a finite planet, this wager, and its embodiment in the institutions of finance, can be said to constitute history's greatest Ponzi scheme. We have justified present borrowing with the irrational belief that perpetual growth is possible, necessary, and inevitable. In effect we have borrowed from future generations so that we could gamble away their capital today.

Until recently, the Peak Oil argument has been framed as a forecast: the inevitable decline in world petroleum production, whenever it occurs, will kill growth. But here is where forecast becomes diagnosis: during the period from 2005 to 2008, energy stopped growing and oil prices rose to record levels. By July of 2008, the price of a barrel of oil was nudging close to $150—half again higher than any previous petroleum price in inflation-adjusted terms—and the global economy was beginning to topple. The auto and airline industries shuddered; ordinary consumers had trouble buying gasoline for their commute to work while still paying their mortgages. Consumer spending began to decline. By September the economic crisis was also a financial crisis, as banks trembled and imploded. (8)

Given how much is at stake, it is important to evaluate the two diagnoses on the basis of facts, not preconceptions.

It is unnecessary to examine evidence supporting or refuting the Conventional Diagnosis, because its validity is not in doubt—as a partial explanation for what is occurring. The question is whether it is a sufficient explanation, and hence an adequate basis for designing a successful response.

What's the evidence favoring the Alternative? A good place to begin is with a recent paper by economist James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, titled "Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007-08," which discusses oil prices and economic impacts with clarity, logic, and numbers, explaining how and why the economic crash is related to the oil price shock of 2008. (9)

Hamilton starts by citing previous studies showing a tight correlation between oil price spikes and recessions. On the basis of this correlation, every attentive economist should have forecast a steep recession for 2008. "Indeed," writes Hamilton, "the relation could account for the entire downturn of 2007-08...If one could have known in advance what happened to oil prices during 2007-08, and if one had used the historically estimated relation [between price rise and economic impact]...one would have been able to predict the level of real GDP for both of 2008:Q3 and 2008:Q4 quite accurately."

Again, this is not to ignore the role of the financial and real estate sectors in the ongoing global economic meltdown. But in the Alternative Diagnosis the collapse of the housing and derivatives markets is seen as amplifying a signal ultimately emanating from a failure to increase the rate of supply of depleting resources. Hamilton again: "At a minimum it is clear that something other than housing deteriorated to turn slow growth into a recession. That something, in my mind, includes the collapse in automobile purchases, slowdown in overall consumption spending, and deteriorating consumer sentiment, in which the oil shock was indisputably a contributing factor."

Moreover, Hamilton notes that there was "an interaction effect between the oil shock and the problems in housing." That is, in many metropolitan areas, house prices in 2007 were still rising in the zip codes closest to urban centers but already falling fast in zip codes where commutes were long. (10)

Why Did the Oil Price Spike?

Those who espouse the Conventional Diagnosis for our ongoing economic collapse might agree that there was some element of causal correlation between the oil price spike and the recession, but they would deny that the price spike itself had anything to do with resource limits, because (they say) it was caused mostly by speculation in the oil futures market, and had little to do with fundamentals of supply and demand.

In this, the Conventional Diagnosis once again has some basis in reality. Speculation in oil futures during the period in question almost certainly helped drive oil prices higher than was justified by fundamentals. But why were investors buying oil futures? Was the mania for oil contracts just another bubble, like the dot.com stock frenzy of the late '90s or the real estate boom of 2003 to 2006?

During the period from 2005 to mid-2008, demand for oil was growing, especially in China (which went from being self-sufficient in oil in 1995 to being the world's second-foremost importer, after the U.S., by 2006). But the global supply of oil was essentially stagnant: monthly production figures for crude oil bounced around within a fairly narrow band between 72 and 75 million barrels per day. As prices rose, production figures barely budged in response. There was every indication that all oil producers were pumping flat-out: even the Saudis appeared to be rushing to capitalize on the price bonanza.

Thus a good argument can be made that speculation in oil futures was merely magnifying price moves that were inevitable on the basis of the fundamentals of supply and demand. James Hamilton (in his publication previously cited) puts it this way: "With hindsight, it is hard to deny that the price rose too high in July 2008, and that this miscalculation was influenced in part by the flow of investment dollars into commodity futures contracts. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the two key ingredients needed to make such a story coherent—a low price elasticity of demand, and the failure of physical production to increase—are the same key elements of a fundamentals-based explanation of the same phenomenon. I therefore conclude that these two factors, rather than speculation per se, should be construed as the primary cause of the oil shock of 2007-08."

Aftermath of the Peak

There is also controversy over to what degree troubles in the automobile, trucking, and airline industries should be attributed to the oil price spike or the economic crash. Of course, if the Alternative Diagnosis is correct, the latter two events are causally related in any case. However, it may be helpful to review the situation.

Everyone knows that GM and Chrysler went bankrupt this year because U.S. car sales cratered. The current forecast is for sales of about 10.3 million vehicles in the U.S. for 2009, down from last year's 13.2 million and 16.1 million in 2007. U.S. car sales have not been this low since the 1970s. Sales of light trucks, the most profitable vehicles, took the biggest hit during 2008, as fuel prices soared and car buyers avoided gas-guzzlers. It was at this point that the auto companies really began feeling the pain.

The airline industry's ills are summarized in a recent GAO document: "After 2 years of profits, the U.S. passenger airline industry lost $4.3 billion in the first 3 quarters of 2008 [as jet fuel prices climbed]. Collectively, U.S. airlines reduced domestic capacity, as measured by the number of seats flown, by about 9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008...To reduce capacity, airlines reduced the overall number of active aircraft in their fleets by 18 percent...Airlines also collectively reduced their workforces by about 28,000, or nearly 7 percent, from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008...The contraction of the U.S. airline industry in 2008 reduced airport revenues, passengers' access to the national aviation system, and revenues for the Trust Fund."(11)

For the trucking industry, fuel accounts for nearly 40 percent of total operational costs. In 2007, as diesel prices rose, carriers began losing money and added fuel price surcharges; meanwhile the volume of freight began falling. After July 2008, as oil prices crashed, tonnage continued to decline. Overall, the cumulative decrease in loads for flatbed, tanker, and dry vans ranged between 15 percent and 20 percent just in the period from June to December 2008. (12)

This last set of statistics raises a couple of questions crucial to understanding the Alternative Diagnosis: Why, if global oil production had just peaked, did petroleum prices fall in the last five months of 2008? And, if oil prices were a major factor in the economic crisis, why didn't the economy begin to turn around after the prices softened?

Why Did Oil Prices Fall?

And Why Didn't Lower Oil Prices Lead to a Quick Recovery?

The Peak Oil thesis predicts that, as world oil production reaches its maximum level and begins to decline, the price of oil will rise dramatically. But it also forecasts a dramatic increase in the volatility of prices.

The argument goes as follows. As oil becomes scarce, its price will rise until it begins to undermine economic activity in general. Economic contraction will then result in substantially reduced demand for oil, which will in turn cause its price to fall temporarily. Then one of two things will happen: either (a) the economy will begin to recover, stoking renewed oil demand, leading again to high prices which will again undermine economic activity; or (b), if the economy does not quickly recover, petroleum production will gradually fall due to depletion until spare production capacity (created by lower demand) is wiped out, leading again to higher prices and even more economic contraction. In both cases, oil prices remain volatile and the economy contracts.

This scenario corresponds very closely with the reality that is unfolding, though it remains to be seen whether situation (a) or (b) will ensue.

Over the past three years, oil prices rose and fell more dramatically than would have been the case if it had not been for widespread speculation in oil futures. Nevertheless, the general direction of prices—way up, then way down, then part-way back up—is entirely consistent with the Peak Oil thesis and the Alternative Diagnosis.

Why has the economy not quickly recovered, given that oil prices are now only half what they were in July 2008? Again, Peak Oil is not the only cause of the current economic crisis. Enormous bubbles in the real estate and finance sectors constituted accidents waiting to happen, and the implosion of those bubbles has created a serious credit crisis (as well as solvency and looming currency crises) that will likely take several years to resolve even if energy supplies don't pose a problem.

But now the potential for renewed high oil prices acts as a ceiling for economic recovery. Whenever the economy does appear to show renewed signs of life (as has happened in May-July this year, with stock values rebounding and the general pace of economic contraction slowing somewhat), oil prices will take off again as oil speculators anticipate a recovery of demand. Indeed, oil prices have rebounded from $30 in January to nearly $70 currently, provoking widespread concern that high energy prices could nip recovery in the bud.(14)

A barrel of oil from newly developed sources costs in the neighborhood of $60 to produce, now that all of the cheaper prospects have been exploited: finding new oilfields today usually means drilling under miles of ocean water, or in politically unstable nations where equipment and personnel are at high risk. (15) So as soon as consumers demand more oil, the price will have to stay noticeably above that figure in order to provide the incentive for producers to drill.

Volatile oil prices hurt on the upside, but they also hurt on the downside. The oil price collapse of August-December 2008, plus the worsening credit crisis, caused a dramatic contraction in oil industry investment, leading to the cancellation of about $150 billion worth of new oil production projects—whose potential productive capacity will be required to offset declines in existing oilfields if world oil production is to remain stable. (16) This means that even if demand remains low, production capacity will almost certainly decline to meet those demand levels, causing oil prices to rise again in real terms at some point, perhaps two or three years from now. Volatile petroleum prices also hurt the development of alternative energy, as was shown during the past few months when falling oil prices led to financial troubles for ethanol manufacturers. (17)

One way or another, growth will be highly problematic if not unachievable.

Big Picture Diagnosis: Continuing the Trail of Logic

At this point in the discussion many readers will be wondering why alternative energy sources and efficiency measures cannot be deployed to solve the Peak Oil crisis. After all, as petroleum becomes more expensive, ethanol, biodiesel, and electric cars all start to look more attractive both to producers and consumers. Won't the magic of the market intervene to render oil shortages irrelevant to future growth?

It is impossible in the context of this discussion to provide a detailed explanation of why the market probably cannot solve the Peak Oil problem. Such an explanation requires a discussion of energy evaluation criteria, and an analysis of many individual energy alternatives on the basis of those criteria. I have offered brief overviews of this subject previously and a much longer one is in press. (18)

My summary conclusions in this regard are as follows.

About 85 percent of our current energy is derived from three primary sources—oil, natural gas, and coal—that are non-renewable, whose price is likely to trend sharply higher over the next years and decades leading to severe shortages, and whose environmental impacts are unacceptable. While these sources historically have had very high economic value, we cannot rely on them in the future; indeed, the longer the transition to alternative energy sources is delayed, the more difficult that transition will be unless some practical mix of alternative energy systems can be identified that will have superior economic and environmental characteristics.

But identifying such a mix is harder than one might initially think. Each energy source has highly specific characteristics. In fact, it has been the characteristics of our present energy sources (principally oil, coal, and natural gas) that have enabled the building of an urbanized society with high mobility, large population, and high economic growth rates. Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society.

Moreover, national energy systems are expensive and slow to develop. Energy efficiency likewise requires investment, and further incremental investments in efficiency tend to yield diminishing returns over time, since it is impossible to perform work with zero energy input. Where is there the will or ability to muster sufficient investment capital for deployment of alternative energy sources and efficiency measures on the scale needed?

While there are many successful alternative energy production installations around the world (ranging from small home-scale photovoltaic systems to large "farms" of three-megawatt wind turbines), there are very few modern industrial nations that now get the bulk of their energy from sources other than oil, coal, and natural gas. One example is Sweden, which obtains most of its energy from nuclear and hydropower. Another is Iceland, which benefits from unusually large domestic geothermal resources not found in most other countries. Even for these two nations, the situation is complex: the construction of the infrastructure for their power plants mostly relied on fossil fuels for the mining of the ores and raw materials, for materials processing, for transportation, for the manufacturing of components, for the mining of uranium, for construction energy, and so on. Thus a meaningful energy transition away from fossil fuels is still a matter of theory and wishful thinking, not reality.

My conclusion from a careful survey of energy alternatives, then, is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of this century. (19)

But the problem extends beyond oil and other fossil fuels: the world's fresh water resources are strained to the point that billions of people may soon find themselves with only precarious access to water for drinking and irrigation. Biodiversity is declining rapidly. We are losing 24 billion tons of topsoil each year to erosion. And many economically significant minerals—from antimony to zinc—are depleting quickly, requiring the mining of ever lower-grade ores in ever more remote locations. Thus the Peak Oil crisis is really just the leading edge of a broader Peak Everything dilemma.

In essence, humanity faces an entirely predictable peril: our population has been growing dramatically for the past 200 years (expanding from under one billion to nearly seven billion), while our per-capita consumption of resources has also grown. For any species, this is virtually the definition of biological success. And yet all of this has taken place in the context of a finite planet with fixed stores of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels and minerals), a limited ability to regenerate renewable resources (forests, fish, fresh water, and topsoil), and a limited ability to absorb industrial wastes (including carbon dioxide). If we step back and look at the industrial period from a broad historical perspective that is informed by an appreciation of ecological limits, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are today living at the end of a relatively brief pulse—a 200-year rapid expansionary phase enabled by a temporary energy subsidy (in the form of cheap fossil fuels) that will inevitably be followed by an even more rapid and dramatic contraction as those fuels deplete.

The winding down of this historic growth-contraction pulse doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world, but it does mean the end of a certain kind of economy. One way or another, humanity must return to a more normal pattern of existence characterized by reliance on immediate solar income (via crops, wind, or the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity) rather than stored ancient sunlight.

This is not to say that the remainder of the 21st century must consist of a collapse of industrialism, a die-off of most of the human population, and a return by the survivors to a way of life essentially identical to that of 16th century peasants or indigenous hunter-gatherers. It is possible instead to imagine acceptable and even inviting ways in which humanity could adapt to ecological limits while further developing cultural richness, scientific understanding, and quality of life (more of this below).

But however it is negotiated, the transition will spell an end to economic growth in the conventional sense. And that transition appears to have begun.

How Do We Know Which Diagnosis Is Correct?

If the patient is an individual human and the cause of distress is uncertain, more diagnostic tests can be prescribed. But to what sorts of blood tests, x-rays, and CAT scans can we subject the national or global economy?

In a sense, the tests have already been done. During the past few decades thousands of scientific surveys of natural resources, biodiversity, and ecosystems have showed increasing rates of depletion and decline. (20) The continuing increase in human population, pollution, and consumption are likewise well documented. This information formed the basis for the Limits to Growth studies, previously mentioned, which use computer modeling to show how current trends are likely play out—and most resulting scenarios show them leading to an end of economic growth and a collapse of industrial output some time in the early 21st century.

Why are the results of such diagnostic tests not universally accepted as a challenge to expectations of continued growth? Primarily because their conclusion runs counter to the beliefs and proclamations of most economists, who maintain that there are no practical limits to growth. They deny that resource constraints provide an eventual cap on production and consumption. And so their diagnostic efforts tend to ignore environmental factors in favor of easily measured internal features of the human economy such as money supply, consumer confidence, interest rates, and price indices.

Ecologist Charles Hall, among many others, has argued that the discipline of economics, as currently practiced, does not constitute a science, since it proceeds primarily on the basis of correlative logic rather than through the building of knowledge by a continuous, rigorous process of proposing and testing hypotheses. (21) While economics uses complex terminology and mathematics, as science does, its basic assertions about the world—such as the principle of infinite substitutability, which holds that for any resource that becomes scarce, the market will find a substitute—are not subjected to careful experimental examination. (It is worth noting that Hall and others have made the effort to lay the conceptual foundations for a new economics based on scientific principles and methods, which they call "biophysical economics." (22)

Moreover, mainstream economists failed on the whole to foresee the current crash. There was no consistent or concerted effort on the part of Secretaries of the Treasury, Federal Reserve Chairmen, or "Nobel" prize-winning economists to warn policy makers or the general public that, sometime in the early 21st century, the global economy would begin to come apart at the seams. (23) One might think that this predictive failure—the inability to foresee so historically significant an event as the rapid contraction of nearly the entire global economy, entailing the failure of some of the world's largest banks and manufacturing companies—would cause mainstream economists to stop and re-examine their fundamental premises. But there is little evidence to suggest that this is occurring.

At the risk of repetition: physical scientists from several disciplines have indeed foreseen an end to economic growth in the early 21st century, and have warned policy makers and the general public on many occasions.

Whom should we believe?

The specifics of the Alternative Diagnosis are falsifiable. If economic activity were to rebound above 2007 levels, or if oil production were to rise above the July 2008 high-water mark, then the attribution of the current economic crisis to resource-tied limits to growth may be considered at least partly disproven. However, even if these things were to occur, the underlying reasoning behind the Alternative Diagnosis might still be correct. If the world oil production peak is delayed until, let us say, 2015 or 2020, and if another—this time bottomless—global economic crash results then, the ultimate outcome will be essentially the same. But if, meanwhile, the Alternative Diagnosis were to be taken seriously and acted upon, the consequences of doing so would be beneficial: a decade would have been spent preparing for the event.

Could the Alternative Diagnosis be altogether wrong? That is, might conventional economists be right in thinking that growth can continue forever? It is often said that anything is possible, but some things are clearly much more possible than others. The perpetual growth of human population and consumption within the confines of a finite planet seems like a very long shot indeed, especially since warning signs are everywhere apparent that ecological limits are already being reached and surpassed. (24)

What Not to Do: Prescribe Punishingly Expensive Placebos

If the physical scientists who warn about limits to growth are right, confronting the global economic meltdown implies far more than merely getting the banks and mortgage lenders back on their feet. Indeed, in that case we face a fundamental change in our economy as significant as the advent of the industrial revolution. We are at a historic inflection point—the ending of decades of expansion and the beginning of an inevitable period of contraction that will continue until humanity is once again living within the limits of Earth's regenerative systems.

But there are few signs that policy makers understand any of this. Their thinking appears to be shaped primarily by mainstream economists' assurances that growth can and must continue into the indefinite future, and that the economic contraction the world is currently experiencing is only temporary--a problem that can and must be solved.

Still, the problem is not a minor one in the eyes of economists and policy makers. Consider the gargantuan size of the Treasury and Federal Reserve bailouts and stimulus packages that have been deployed in the possibly futile attempt to end contraction and restart growth. According to the special inspector general of the U.S. government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), in remarks submitted to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on July 21, $23.7 trillion have been committed in "total potential federal government support." This is expensive medicine indeed. It takes a moment to even begin to comprehend the enormity of the figure. It represents about half of annual world GDP, and is over three times the total amount spent by the U.S. government, in inflation-adjusted dollars, on all wars combined, from 1776 to the present. It is nearly fifty times the cost of the New Deal.

Other nations, including Britain, China, and Germany have committed to paying for stimulus packages and bailouts that, while much smaller in absolute terms, represent an impressive (or should we say frightful?) share of national GDP.

If the Alternative Diagnosis is valid, none of this will work in the end, because existing financial institutions—with their basis in debt and interest and their requirements for constant expansion—cannot be made to function in a context where energy and resource constraints impose effective caps on manufacturing and transport.

Are the bailouts and stimulus packages working? Much evidence suggests that they are not, except in limited ways. In the U.S., unemployment continues to increase, while real estate values continue to fall. And most of the reputed "green shoots" in the economy so far sighted amount merely to an arguably temporary decline in the rate of contraction. For example, the home price index released July 28 of this year showed that in May, seasonally adjusted prices fell just 0.16 percent from the previous month. That represents an annual rate of decline of a little under 2 percent, which is a substantial improvement over the annualized rate of more than 20 percent that prevailed from September 2008 through March of 2009. Many commentators seized upon this news as a sign of an imminent turnaround. Nevertheless, new home sales are down from 1.4 million per year in 2005 to 350,000 per year today, and house prices are down 50 percent from the bubble peak and still declining in most places. Moreover, manufacturing is still shrinking, small businesses are in trouble, there are still significant danger signs on the horizon, including a new round of mortgage resets, a likely dive in commercial real estate values, and the looming reality that toxic assets at the center of the banking crisis have yet to be dealt with. (25)

President Obama has made the argument that bailouts are justified to stabilize the system long enough so that leaders can make fundamental changes to institutions and regulations, enabling the economy to then go forward healthier and more immune to similar crises in the future. But there is little to suggest that the kinds of systemic changes that are actually needed (ones that would enable the economy to function during a prolonged period of contraction) are under way or even contemplated. Meanwhile, as growth-based institutions are temporarily propped up, the ultimate scale of the damage is likely only to increase: when the inevitable collapse of those institutions does come, the consequences will likely be even worse because so much capital will have been squandered in attempting to salvage them.

In using up non-renewable resources like metals, minerals, and fossil fuels, we have stolen from future generations. Now in effect we are stealing from those generations the financial wherewithal that could have been used to build a bridge to a sustainable economy. The construction of a renewable energy infrastructure (including not only generating capacity, but distribution and storage infrastructure, as well as post-petroleum transport and agriculture systems) will require enormous investments and decades of work. Where will the investment capital come from if governments are already buried in debt? If we have committed nearly $24 trillion to propping up an old economy with no real survival prospects, what's left with which to finance the new one?

If the current prescription for our economic malady is wrong-headed, the same is true of many proposed cures for our energy problems. According to the Conventional Diagnosis, today's high oil prices are due to speculation; the cure must therefore lie in the tighter regulation of oil futures trading (which may be a good idea, though it doesn't get to the heart of the problem), while providing more opportunities to oil companies to explore for domestic oil (even though the likely production rates from currently off-limits reserves would be relatively paltry, and would have a negligible effect on oil prices). In fact, though, investing further in fossil fuel energy systems (including "clean coal" technology) will yield declining returns, given that the highest quality resources have already been used up; meanwhile, doing so takes investment capital away from the development of renewable energy, which we will have to rely on increasingly as fossil fuels deplete. (26)

What is required but is still utterly lacking is a fundamental recognition that circumstances have changed: what worked decades ago will not work now.

What To Do: Adapt to the New Reality

If the Alternative Diagnosis is correct, there will be no easy fix for the current economic breakdown. Some illnesses are not curable; they require that we simply adapt and make the best of our new situation.

If humanity has indeed embarked upon the contraction phase of the industrial pulse, we should assume that ahead of us lie much lower average income levels (for nearly everyone in the wealthy nations, and for high wage earners in poorer nations); different employment opportunities (fewer jobs in sales, marketing, and finance; more in basic production); and more costly energy, transport, and food. Further, we should assume that key aspects of our economic system that are inextricably tied to the need for future growth will cease to work in this new context.

Rather than attempting to prop up banks and insurance companies with trillions in bailouts, it would probably be better simply to let them fail, however nasty the short-term consequences, since they will fail anyway sooner or later. The sooner they are replaced with institutions that serve essential functions within a contracting economy, the better off we will all be.

Meanwhile the thought-leaders in society, especially the President, must begin breaking the news—in understandable and measured ways—that growth isn't returning and that the world has entered a new and unprecedented economic phase, but that we can all survive and thrive in this challenging transitional period if we apply ourselves and work together. At the heart of this general re-education must be a public and institutional acknowledgment of three basic rules of sustainability: growth in population cannot be sustained; the ongoing extraction of non-renewable resources cannot be sustained; and the use of renewable resources is sustainable only if it proceeds at rates below those of natural replenishment.

Without cheap energy, global trade cannot increase. This doesn't mean that trade will disappear, only that economic incentives will inexorably shift as transport costs rise, favoring local production for local consumption. But this may be a nice way of putting it: if and when fuel shortages arise, fragile globe-spanning systems of provisioning could be disrupted, with dire effects for consumers cut off from sources of necessary products. Thus a high priority must be placed on the building of community resilience through the preferential local sourcing of necessities and the maintenance of larger regional inventories—especially of food and fuel. (28)

It currently takes an average of 8.5 calories of energy from oil and natural gas to produce each calorie of food energy. Without cheap fuel for agriculture, farm production will plummet and farmers will go bankrupt—unless proactive efforts are undertaken to reform agriculture to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. (29)

Obviously, alternative energy sources and energy efficiency strategies must be high priorities, and must be subjects of intensive research using a carefully chosen spectrum of criteria. The best candidates will have to be funded robustly even while fossil fuels are still relatively cheap: the build-out time for the renewable energy infrastructure will inevitably be measured in decades and so we must begin the process now rather than waiting for market forces to lead the way.

In the face of credit and (potential) currency crises, new ways of financing such projects will be needed. Given that our current monetary and financial systems are founded on the need for growth, we will require new ways of creating money and new ways of issuing credit. Considerable thought has gone into finding solutions to this problem, and some communities are already experimenting with local capital co-ops, alternative currencies, and no-interest banks. (30)

With oil becoming increasingly expensive in real terms, we will need more efficient ways of getting people and goods around. Our first priority in this regard must be to reduce the need for transport with better urban planning and re-localized production systems. But where transport is needed, rail and light rail will probably be preferable to cars and trucks. (31)

We will also need a revolution in the built environment to minimize the need for heating, cooling, and artificial lighting in all our homes and public buildings. This revolution is already under way, but is currently moving far too slowly due to the inertia of established interests in the construction industry. (32)

These projects will need more than local credit and money; they will also require skilled workers. There will be a call not just for installers of solar panels and home insulation: millions of new food producers and builders of low-energy infrastructure will be needed as well. A broad range of new opportunities could open up to replace vanishing jobs in marketing and finance—if there is cheap training available at local community colleges.

It is worth noting that the $23.7 trillion recently committed for U.S. bailouts and loan guarantees represents about $80,000 for each man, woman, and child in America. A level of investment even a substantial fraction that size could pay for all needed job training while ensuring universal provision of basic necessities during the transition. What would we be getting for our money? A collective sense that, in a time of crisis, no one is being left behind. Without the feeling of cooperative buy-in that such a safety net would help engender, similar to what was achieved with the New Deal but on an even larger scale, economic contraction could devolve into a horrific fight over the scraps of the waning industrial period.

However contentious, the population question must be addressed. All problems that have to do with resources are harder to solve when there are more people needing those resources. The U.S. must encourage smaller families and must establish an immigration policy consistent with a no-growth population target. This has foreign policy implications: we must help other nations succeed with their own economic transitions so that their citizens do not need to emigrate to survive. (33)

If economic growth ceases to be an achievable goal, society will have to find better ways of measuring success. Economists must shift from assessing well-being with the blunt instrument of GDP, and begin paying more attention to indices of human and social capital in areas such as education, health, and cultural achievements. This redefinition of growth and progress has already begun in some quarters, but for the most part has yet to be taken up by governments. (34)

A case can be made that after all this is done the end result will be a more satisfying way of life for the vast majority of citizens—offering more of a sense of community, more of a connection with the natural world, more satisfying work, and a healthier environment. Studies have repeatedly shown that higher levels of consumption do not translate to elevated levels of satisfaction with life. (35) This means that if "progress" can be thought of in terms of happiness, rather than a constantly accelerating process of extracting raw materials and turning them into products that themselves quickly become waste, then progress can certainly continue. In any case, "selling" this enormous and unprecedented project to the general public will require emphasizing its benefits. Several organizations are already exploring the messaging and public relations aspects of the transition. (36) But those in charge need to understand that looking on the bright side doesn't mean promising what can't be delivered—such as a return to the days of growth and thoughtless consumption.

Can We? Will We?

It is important to state the implications of all this as plainly as possible. If the Alternative Diagnosis is correct, there will be no full economic "recovery"—not this year, or the next, or five or ten years from now. There may be temporary rebounds that take us back to some fraction of peak economic activity, but these will be only brief respites.

We have entered a new economic era in which the former rules no longer apply. Low interest rates and government spending no longer translate to incentives for borrowing and job production. Cheap energy won't appear just because there is demand for it. Substitutes for essential resources will in most cases not be found. Over all, the economy will continue to shrink in fits and starts until it can be maintained by the energy and material resources that Earth can supply on ongoing basis.

This is of course very difficult news. It is analogous to being told by your physician that you have contracted a systemic, potentially fatal disease that cannot be cured, but only managed; and managing it means you must make profound lifestyle changes.

Some readers may note that climate change has not figured prominently in this discussion. It is clearly, after all, the worst environmental catastrophe in human history. Indeed, its consequences could be far worse than the mere destruction of national economies: hundreds of millions of people and millions of other species could be imperiled. The reason for the relatively limited discussion of climate here is that (assuming the Alternative Diagnosis is correct) it is not climate change that has proven to be the most immediate limit to economic growth, but resource depletion. However, while there is not as yet general agreement on the point, climate change itself and the needed steps to minimize it both constitute limits to growth, just as resource depletion does. Moreover, if we fail to successfully manage the inevitable process of economic contraction that will characterize the coming decades, there will be no hope of mounting an organized and coherent response to climate change—a response consisting of efforts both to reduce climate impacts and to adapt to them. It is important to note, though, that the measures advocated here (including the development of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, a rapid reduction of reliance on fossil fuels in transport and agriculture, and the stabilization of population levels) are among the steps that will help most to reduce carbon emissions.

Is this essay likely to change the thinking and actions of policy makers? Unfortunately, that is unlikely. Their belief in the possibility and necessity of continued growth is pervasive, and the notion that growth may no longer be possible is unthinkable. But the Alternative Diagnosis must be a matter of record. This essay, composed by a mere journalist, in many ways represents the thinking of thousands of physical scientists working over the past several decades on issues having to do with population, resources, pollution, and biodiversity. Ignoring the diagnosis itself—whether as articulated here or as implied in tens of thousands of scientific papers—may waste our last chance to avert a complete collapse, not just of the economy, but of civility and organized human existence. It may risk a historic discontinuity with qualitative antecedents in the fall of the Roman and Mayan civilizations. (37) But there is no true precedent for what may be in store, because those earlier examples of collapse affected geographically bounded societies whose influence on their environments was also bounded. Today's civilization is global, and its fate, Earth's fate, and humanity's fate are inextricably tied.

But even if policy makers continue to ignore warnings such as this, individuals and communities can take heed and begin the process of building resilience, and of detaching themselves from reliance on fossil fuels and institutions that are inextricably tied to the perpetual growth machine. We cannot sit passively by as world leaders squander opportunites to awaken and adapt to growth limits. We can make changes in our own lives, and we can join with our neighbors. And we can let policy makers know we disapprove of their allegiance to the status quo, but that there are other options.

Is it too late to begin a managed transition to a post-fossil fuel society? Perhaps. But we will not know unless we try. And if we are to make that effort, we must begin by acknowledging one simple, stark reality: growth as we have known it can no longer be our goal.

Notes

1. "Pain on the Road to Recovery".
(http://www.smh.com.au/national/pain-on-the-road-to-recovery-20090724-dw6q.html?page=-1).

2. Here, for example, are a few relevant excerpts from the present author's book The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2003): "Our current financial system was designed during a period of consistent growth in available energy, with its designers operating under the assumption that continued economic growth was both inevitable and desirable. This ideology of growth has become embodied in systemic financial structures requiring growth...Until now, this loose linkage between a financial system predicated upon the perpetual growth of the money supply, and an economy growing year by year because of an increasing availability of energy and other resources, has worked reasonably well—with a few notable exceptions, such as the Great Depression... However, [when global oil production peaks] the financial system may not respond so rationally...This might predictably trigger a financial crisis..."

3. See Albert Bartlett, "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" (lecture transcript).
(http//www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/645).

4. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972); Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers, Beyond the Limits (Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green, 1992); Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, and Jorgen Randers, Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2003). See also the recent CSIRO study, "A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality" (2009) (http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf).

5. See, for example, Robert U. Ayers and Benjamin Warr, The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity (Cambridge, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2005); and Robert Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Economic Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003) (http://www.bookrags.com/research/economic-growth-and-energy-consumpt-mee-01/).

6. See Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003, 2005); Powerdown: Options and Actions for a PostCarbon World (2004); and The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism, and Economic Collapse (2006); as well as books by Kenneth Deffeyes, Colin Campbell, and Matthew Simmons; and websites www.theoildrum.com and www.energybulletin.net. The Association for the Study of Peak Oil organizes international conferences to study issues related to oil and gas depletion (www.peakoil.net and www.aspo-usa.com), and the U.S. chapter of ASPO publishes a weekly survey of relevant news, "Peak Oil Review," compiled by former CIA analyst Tom Whipple. At the annual Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Cork, Ireland, in September 2007, former U.S. Energy Secretary, James Schlesinger, said: "Conceptually the battle is over. The peakists have won. We're all peakists now." See also Steve Connor, "Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast," The Independent, August 3, 2009
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warning-oil-supplies-are-running-out-fast-1766585.html).

7. The declining rate of discovery of new oilfields, and the list of past-peak oil producing countries, are widely documented; e.g.: Roger D. Blanchard, The Future of Global Oil Production: Facts, Figures, Trends and Projections by Region (Jefferson, NC: McFarlane and Co., 2005).

8. A May 4, 2009 report from Raymond James Associates ("Stat of the Week") argued that world oil production peaked in July 2008 (http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/04/peak-oil-global-oil-productions-peaked-analyst-says/). In a subsequent interview, Marshall Adkins, author of the report, suggested that most knowledgeable players within the petroleum industry now accept the Peak Oil thesis in some form, whether or not they acknowledge it publicly (http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2009/07/interview-with-marshall-adkins/).

9. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, March 2009 http://eepurl.com/cSPu.

10. See Joe Cortright, "Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs," Discussion paper, CEOs for Cities, 2008 (http://www.ceosforcities.org/).

11. U.S. Government Accountability Office, "Commercial Aviation: Airline Industry Contraction Due to Volatile Fuel Prices and Falling Demand Affects Airports, Passengers, and Federal Government Revenues," April 21, 2009 (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-393). For a detailed discussion of the likely future impacts of high oil prices and oil shortages on the airline industry, see Charles Schlumberger, "The Oil Price Spike of 2008: The Result of Speculation or an Early Indicator of a Major and Growing Future Challenge to the Airline Industry?" Annals of Air and Space Law, Vol. XXXIV, [2009], McGill University
(http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/the_oil_price_spike_of_2008).

12. American Trucking Association
(http://www.truckline.com/Pages/Home.aspx).

13. This scenario is implied in Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling, "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management" (U.S. Department of Energy: 2005): "As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically..." (http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf).

14. See, for example, "Troubling Signs That Oil Prices Could Hamper Recovery," Wall Street 24/7, May 8, 2009 (http://247wallst.com/2009/05/08/troubling-signs-that-oil-prices-could-hamper-recovery/)

15. See, for example, James Herron, "Low Oil Prices, Credit Woes Could Spell Trouble for UK North Sea," Rigzone, November 14, 2008 (http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=69507).

16. Jad Mouawad, "Big Oil Projects Put in Jeopardy by Fall in Prices," New York Times, December 15, 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/business/16oil.html).

17. See David R. Baker, "Low oil prices take wind out of renewable fuels," San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 2008
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/26/MNSK13NNK4.DTL).

18. See The Party's Over, Chapter 4; Powerdown, Chapter 4; The Oil Depletion Protocol, pages 23-31. A longer treatment of the subject, tentatively titled Energy Limits to Growth, will be published by International Forum on Globalization and Post Carbon Institute in September.

19. This conclusion is echoed in, for example, Ted Trainer, Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2007); and (with some reservations), David J. C. McKay, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air (Cambridge, UK: UIK Cambridge, 2008), (www.withouthotair.com).

20. Just one example, from a press release April 20, 1998 describing the results of a poll commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History: "The American Museum of Natural History announced today results of a nationwide survey titled Biodiversity in the Next Millennium, developed by the Museum in conjunction with Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. The survey reveals that seven out of ten biologists believe that we are in the midst of a mass extinction of living things, and that this loss of species will pose a major threat to human existence in the next century."

21. Charles A. S. Hall and Kent A. Klitgaard, International Journal of Transdisciplinary Research, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006) (http://www.peakoil.net/files/the%20need%20for%20a%20new%20biophysical-based%20paradigm%20in%20economics%20....pdf) "The Need for a New, Biophysical-Based Paradigm in Economics for the Second Half of the Age of Oil,", Charles A. S. Hall, D. Lindenberger, R. Kummell, T. Kroeger and W. Eichorn, "The Need to Reintegrate the Natural Sciences with Economics." Bioscience 51:663-673, 2001 (http://web.mac.com/biophysicalecon/iWeb/Site/Downloads_files/Hall_2001_NeedtoReintegrate.pdf).

22. Cutler J. Cleveland, "Biophysical Economics," The Encyclopedia of Earth (http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics). See also the related field of Ecological Economics, especially the books of Herman Daly, including Toward a Steady State Economy (New York: Freeman, 1973); and, with Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications (Washington: Island Press, 2004).

23. The quotation marks around the Nobel name are justified because the Nobel family has never acknowledged economics as a science: the so-called "Nobel prize in economics" is awarded by a Swedish Bank.

24. See The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx).

25. See, for example, J. S. Kim, "Irrational Exuberance of the Green Shoots," July 24, 2009
(http://seekingalpha.com/article/151101-irrational-exuberance-of-the-green-shoots).

26. See Richard Heinberg, Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2009), pages 137-143, 145-168.

27. The opinion that banks and insurance companies should be allowed to fail rather than being bailed out was voiced by many knowledgeable observers throughout late 2008 and early 2009. See for example Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, "Let banks fail, says Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz," London Daily Telegraph, Feb. 2, 2009 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4424418/Let-banks-fail-says-Nobel-economist-Joseph-Stiglitz.html).

28. See Jeff Rubin, Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization. (New York: Random House, 2009).

29. See Richard Heinberg and Michael Bomford, "The Food and Farming Transition" (Sebastopol, CA: Post Carbon Institute, 2009) (http://postcarbon.org/food).

30. See Bernard Lietaer, "White Paper on All the Options for Managing a Systemic Bank Crisis" (http://www.lietaer.com/images/White_Paper_on_Systemic_Banking_Crises_final.pdf). JAK in Sweden is a cooperative, member-owned bank that operates without interest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAK_members_bank).

31. See Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, Transpo

Richard Heinberg is the author of nine books including: Blackout: Coal, Climate, and the Last Energy Crisis (2009), Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, (2007), The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (2006), Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (2004) The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003) He is Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. He has authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as The Ecologist, The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, Z Magazine, Resurgence, The Futurist, European Business Review, Earth Island Journal, Yes!, Pacific Ecologist, and The Sun; and on web sites such as Alternet.org, EnergyBulletin.net, TheOilDrum.com, ProjectCensored.com, and Counterpunch.com. He has appeared in many film and television documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour, and is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education. More information about Richard can be found on his website.