How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Economic Crisis

I have become used to the expression of mild astonishment that flits across people’s faces when I explain to them that until recently I had been working for years in the mobile phone software industry in London.  Maybe it’s something to do with my ever-lengthening beard and hair that make me look more like a Viking marauder (albeit a bespectacled one) than an urban professional. Or perhaps it’s just that the world I now inhabit is such a long way from that of inner-city London, on most measures you can think of.

Conversation then usually turns to the reason why I quit my well-paid job and am now scrabbling around on my knees pulling up weeds in an isolated corner of Dorset for virtually no money at all. Good question!  

One answer is the search for happiness. Doing the job I had wasn’t making me happy and I found myself with a chance to make a clean break and figure out what next. I had no game plan, my marriage had just broken down, and I was living on my brother’s sofa.  Now I look forward to each day as I wake up, relishing both the rhythm of life here and the variety of tasks I can put my hands to.

Another reason is so that I can learn what it is to live in a more sustainable way. Over the last few years I have had a growing awareness of the impact my lifestyle was having on the planet. Despite never having owned a car, which London’s transport system makes possible, my carbon footprint has been blown out of the water by the number of flights I’ve taken over the years, both for work and to satisfy my own wanderlust. Not to mention all the consumer goods I’ve bought and the food sourced from other continents that I’ve recklessly chomped down. It was time to begin to make some atonement.

A third and a rather more controversial reply is to get prepared for what’s coming, and I’m not talking about the Olympics (although I am prepared for that too, with tickets for the table tennis). There seem to be an unprecedented number of crises on our horizon and coming closer.  There’s the global economic and banking system which now appears to be on the verge of bringing down whole countries and could tip the UK into a severe depression. Secondly the looming energy crisis, both globally (what happens when cheap oil runs out) and nationally (how do we keep the lights on whilst becoming ever more dependent on foreign gas). Thirdly manmade climate change; as civilisation continues to depend predominantly on energy supplied by coal, oil and gas, pumping out CO2 with gleeful abandon, we are slowly heating our planet up.  The full consequences are of course not precisely understood but will be almost certainly disastrous for millions, if not billions of people. 

How this will all play out here in the UK, and when, I have no idea but I’ve decided to err on the side of caution for the time being and try to get ready for a significant and sudden decline.  I am learning the basics of gardening and animal husbandry, which would help in a situation where supply chains to shops are disrupted.  I’m getting to know communities of people who are similarly seeking to become more resilient, sourcing their food, water and energy needs locally. And I have converted some of my savings into gold and cash in case the banks seize up.

This may all sound completely loony, or at least way over the top, and you might well be right. You might argue that if everyone did what I have done the economy would instantly collapse, which is of course true. These views are certainly not the reason Pilsdon exists, and are not the views of probably most that live here. But I would recommend a couple of sites which have in part led me to the conclusions above - the New Economics Foundation (http://www.neweconomics.org/), a UK based “think-and-do-tank” promoting alternative economic and environmental solutions, and the Oil Drum (http://www.theoildrum.com/special/mission), a discussion board on energy and its impacts on the future of humanity.

Next week : the day we chopped up our cow in the church.