Read Online Blessing the Hands that Feed Us by Vicki Robin - Free Book Online

college, my itch for “something else, I know not what” latched onto a year of study abroad. I made it happen—got professors to sign off on all the courses—even though Brown had no such program.
    Fast forward and I’m on the road. Then living in extreme circumstances learning to survive on the land in an intentional community. Then writing an international best seller and promoting “enoughness” around the world. Then starting the Conversation Cafés. The Center for a New American Dream. Sustainable Seattle.
    I don’t take no for an answer when that bugle of purpose calls. At least I didn’t until cancer pulled the rug out from under it all, and I sat for half a year facing the fears that drove me.
    In that quiet I learned to let go rather than just get going to change the world. In this emptying I began to fill myself with a modest but authentic sense that even though the gathering eco-storm had not abated, my job was simpler than righting the whole ship of state. I found my intuitive heart and intuitive feet, an assurance that love is sufficient and I need to go only where I am led and love who is right there in front of me—without having any idea why. The cancer abated, my energy returned, and I once more went to a conference on the “big picture,” where another “While You Were Out” slip got delivered. Peak Oil.
    Peak Oil
    â€œPeak Oil” is engineering-speak for the rising certainty that we have now burned half the available reserves of oil on the planet. The next quarter—like the Canadian tar sands—will be more difficult, risky, and expensive to extract. The last quarter we may never get to, as burning the prior quarter will surely send us into irreversible climate destabilization. Imagine our economy is a car. Even though we can still gas it up, running it drives us further toward environmental disaster. But not running it isn’t an option either—our livelihoods depend on the engine’s continuing to turn. To put it simply: if we step on the gas, we run out of planet. If we step on the brakes, people lose their jobs. Now what?
    You will recognize this dynamic by now. Overshoot and collapse. This time for the very lifeblood of our industrial system. Oil. Stalled.
    The global predicament was once more right in my face. Like a racehorse at the gate, like a bloodhound who catches a scent, everything in me wanted to race into the fray, inform and arm myself, and not take this news lying down. Yet I now knew that I had limits and that “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” were not going to change what was already done. We were in the era of consequences, of adaptation. I did not know what to do. I could refrain from frantics (frightened antics) but I could not settle within. Surely something with integrity and wisdom could be done beyond mere acceptance.
    Relocalization—preparing communities to thrive during the long transition from oil dependency to diverse, regional food, energy, and business systems—was the only big idea that made a little sense. But how? How to remake a ferry-dependent way of life designed around cheap oil and endless growth for its lifeblood? I could not imagine all our ferry commuters going to jobs at Boeing—one per car—squeezing back into a more rural way of life.
    Partners in Caring
    In 2007, I met a young couple, Britt and Eric, who also understood the gravity of the situation, the need for relocalization. They wanted to start a center where people could learn those necessary rural skills of growing food, cooking with the sun, building with mud, pacing life by the seasons. Just my kind of people, and right in time to partner on forming Transition Whidbey. In the box, you’ll learn more about this approach.
    Eric had inhaled with every baby breath his father’s fierce desire for self-sufficiency and survivalist skills, so his young dreams were of being