What used to be “normal” is now something new;

The world is a much different place.

What used to be false is now known to be true,

While the old truth fell flat on its face.

What this country needs is a good revolution, and by golly, we just might be getting one.

You don’t have to read in-depth news stories to see why and how: just scan the headlines. To grab a few from the past few days: “New Jobless Claims Near Six-Month High” (more people are out of work now than during the 1930s Depression, with many running out of unemployment benefits and savings); “Bank Repossessions Drive Up July Foreclosures” (and bankruptcies are still high too);  “The Shrinking Second home: Affordable Housing for the Affluent” (ooh, those poor billionaires, having to rough it in a second home that only costs $1.25 million instead of $2.5 million, according to The Wall Street Journal); “Fed Sees Recovery Slowing.” Just yesterday it was “Markets Swoon on Fears” (and then they went down even further). More than a few financial experts see a double-dip recession, meaning we haven’t hit bottom yet… and some even expect deflation. As a matter of fact, almost 2/3 of Americans think we haven’t hit bottom yet. And for the first time in American history, most people do not think their children will be better off than they are.

On the brighter side, Americans are saving more than they have in years; “cocooning” and “staycation” have become common terms; and local, fresh, organic food sales are booming, leading to an increase in such activities as vegetable gardening, cooking from scratch, and raising backyard chickens.

Best of all, “Happiness is a side effect of the new frugality,” according to a New York Times headline. Imagine that: people are discovering that they don’t really need all that “stuff” to be happier. Acquiring goods keeps the economy going, but it doesn’t improve their lives all that much… so maybe they don’t need the economy as much as everyone thought?

Everyone but homesteaders, that is. We knew it all along. In fact, most serious homesteaders ache for major readjustments in the established social and economic structure, which would constitute a revolution in our society on a par with the revolution brought about by the Internet. A sea change in the way people think and live. After all, if you don’t mind what life has become in our times, why attempt to avoid any of it by becoming self-sufficient? Why not just join the crowd and enjoy the insanity?

[A word from our sponsor: I examined this in the very beginning of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, concluding on page 6 that “We’ve just expanded the definition of self-sufficient living from ‘providing for one’s own needs’, to ‘saving the world’.” And saving the world is exactly what the rest of the 379-page book is about, even if few readers seem to recognize it. Please read the book with this in mind. Thank you.]

Note that the good news does not concern a robust economy in any way. On the contrary, it concerns people finding comfort and satisfaction in a down economy, with reduced material goods and expectations. And this could very well indicate that we don’t need or even want the old robust economy to return because we’re better off without it.

Think about what this means. People have less money, so they spend less, meaning fewer goods are produced, which conserves energy and other natural resources. This in turn slows down the economy even more, and the downward spiral feeds on itself. If most people are okay with that, it would constitute an awesome revolution in the spendthrift consumer society.

On the other hand, the Establishment wants and needs everybody to spend more, not less, to keep the wheels turning, so its upward cycle can feed on itself. But that simply means faster depletion of all forms of nonrenewable natural resources and continued degradation of the planet.

The homestead thinking (as least so far as Countryside has been concerned for the past 40 years, and certainly as laid out in CIG to Self-Sufficient Living) is that we don’t need all the material goods the industrial world sells in order to be happy. We don’t need to waste the energy that goes into making and transporting all that stuff, we don’t need to waste the nonrenewable raw materials those goods are made of, and we don’t need the landfills and pollution they create when we toss them. This used to be as laughable as talking about organic gardening, but no more. The New Frugality is going mainstream.

Homesteaders know that everything has limits. A corn plant grows taller than a pepper plant, and a sequoia can be larger than a birch, but nothing grows forever. Not even an economy. But who is to say enough is enough, it’s time to stop and reassess the situation?

No group or individual is going to halt the madness. It has to die on its own, or, like the cancer it is, when it kills its host. In a worst-case scenario, that will happen when the planet runs out of recoverable oil and other forms of nonrenewable energy, or when burning those fuels makes the air unbreathable and the planet uninhabitable, or when water problems become dire enough to cause mass famine, or when a road or parking lot paves over the last acre of tillable farmland… in brief, when humans are no longer able to feed the monster.

It won’t have to go that far if enough people take enough small steps early enough to stave off that type of Armageddon. If they stop making and buying goods that, in reality, do little or nothing to enhance their lives and happiness anyway. Not many are willing to bell that cat, but when circumstances dictate, as they seem to be doing now, who knows?

Let the revolution begin! — Jd Belanger

Perhaps you missed it, but “superweeds” — unloved plants that thumb their noses at herbicides such as Roundup — were in the news last week. Of course, if you’ve been reading magazines such as Countryside for the past 30-40 years, it’s not news at all that weeds have adapted to plant-killers, requiring more and stronger chemicals in what becomes a never-ending spiral.

Most people missed the story because it wasn’t very widely reported: it wasn’t news because most people don’t care. Very few have any inkling of how this affects them, why it’s important, or even what it all means. They know very little about organic farming because they know very little about where their food comes from.

There is neither time nor space here to provide the background for anyone who has stumbled onto this site accidentally and lacks even a basic understanding of organic farming. But to at least try to provide a frame of reference, let’s just say that organic farmers don’t use synthetic biocides for many reasons, all of which funnel down to their effects on the biosphere, the Living Earth, which includes us. An herbicide — the plant-killer branch of the pesticide family — doesn’t only kill weeds. It kills other plants as well, of course, but through the webs of ecology it can also kill insects and other animals that depend on those plants for food or habitat. This in turn affects higher forms of life that depend on those creatures for sustenance. None of this takes into account the potential deleterious side effects of the chemicals on soil, water, and humans. This doesn’t begin to cover the subject, but it’s enough to get us to the next step.

Herbicides have been used since ancient times: conquering armies spread salt on the land to inhibit food production, thus starving their enemies. Salt has historically been used to control weeds in salt-tolerant crops such as asparagus. But it wasn’t until after World War II, when “better living through chemistry” arrived and the chemical factories of the war machine lay idle, that chemical pesticides and fertilizers transformed agri-culture into industrial agri-business.

Monsanto had been a leading chemical company since 1901, but not until 1945 did it start producing and marketing agricultural chemicals, including 2,4D. In 1960, an Agricultural Division was established. Today, Monsanto is strictly an agribusiness, the largest seed company in the world, and famous for such controversial products as bovine somatotropin (Bst) and herbicides including Ramrod, Lasso, and Roundup. These are based on glyphosate, which Monsanto patented in the 1970s, and which became a cash cow for the company. When the patent ran out in 2000, cheaper products from China flooded the market, and glyphosate use proliferated even more.

Roundup was first sold in 1976. Then there was Roundup D-PAK. Then Roundup Ultra. Then Roundup UltraMAX. Each one was “new and improved.” But a more insidious development was “Roundup Ready” seeds. Through bioengineering, planted crops can resist the deadly effects of the herbicide, making its use even more widespread. Today, 80% of the corn and 90% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. come from Roundup Ready seeds (which of course come only from Monsanto). But if scientists can develop seeds immune to toxic chemicals, so can nature.

We already have the makings of a marvelously complex and intriguing bedtime story for anyone just starting to get involved in organic farming, but this is only the beginning.

For example, while organic farmers shun herbicides in general, if only on principle, glyphosate (and Roundup) have found some support. The chief scientist for a nonprofit organic advocacy group, the Organic Center, recently said, “If glyphosate isn’t the safest herbicide, it comes damn close.” Jeff Gilman, an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota, takes a very balanced and open-minded but scientific approach to all aspects of gardening. In The Truth About Organic Gardening, he discusses the pros and cons of glyphosate, concluding that properly used, it does have its place. He says “We aren’t surprised if a flame from a flamethrower, a common organic method of weed control, kills frogs, so why are we surprised that a heavy dose of Roundup does?” (Like many in the organic community, he’s bothered less by glyphosate than by the other ingredients in Roundup.)

The story would also involve such interesting twists as the 1996 lawsuit accusing Monsanto of false and misleading advertising by claiming that its glyphosate-based herbicides were “safer than table salt.” There were also accusations — and convictions — involving scientific fraud.

Early on, some scientists and many organic farmers were concerned about herbicide resistance to glyphosate. Monsanto, naturally, dismissed such concerns. Now they can’t, because farmers across the country are finding weeds that are unaffected by the herbicide. At least nine species are known to be immune, affecting millions of acres in more than 20 Midwestern and Southern states. And the other chemical companies are taking notice.

Now, here’s what should be the real news in this story: What has this taught us?

Don’t be silly. We haven’t learned a doggone thing. Here’s how the agribusiness industry is facing this challenge:

The other ag chemical companies see Monsanto’s trouble as an opportunity to revive the older, even more dangerous herbicides that Roundup displaced, including 2,4-D and dicamba. What’s much, much worse, they’re taking a page from Monsanto’s book and developing bioengineered seeds to match their own brands of herbicides. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dow Chemical Co., DuPont Co., Bayer AG, BASF SE and Syngenta AG are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop genetically modified (GM, or “Frankenstein”) soybean, corn and cotton seeds that can survive a dousing by their house-brand herbicides.

Have they lost their minds? Can’t any halfway intelligent individual see the handwriting on the wall?

Obviously not. Said Dan Dyer, head of soybean research and development at Syngenta: “The herbicide business used to be good before Roundup nearly wiped it out. Now it is getting fun again.”

Fun. As I said last week, the really terrifying thing is that some people actually like what the world is becoming. —Jd Belanger

Note: There will be no blog here next Friday. See you in two weeks.

This year’s crop of college graduates has woeful career prospects — perhaps the worst in the history of the country. Joe Queenan, writing in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, said “Even the Pilgrim toddlers in 1620 had better prospects. At least the Massachusetts economy was still expanding then.”

Queenan makes a strong case with some excellent points. To name a few:

• The average graduate today spent $100,000-$200,000 on a degree, and most are starting out with massive college debt.

• The unemployment rate for ages 20-24 is 17.2%.

• Most middle-class kids are totally unprepared emotionally for the world they are about to enter — and it’s a world that’s tougher than ever.

• These kids are also inheriting costs that were unthinkable in the past. “Who’s going to pay for the health care bill?” Queenan asks. The federal deficit… cops’ and teachers’ and firemens’ pensions… social security?

He notes that many kids who can’t find jobs are staying in school, usually law school. Applications are at an all-time high, even though thousands of legal positions at investment banking firms have disappeared forever. Recent Ivy League law school graduates are now working as file clerks, substitute schoolteachers, census takers. The college grad flipping burgers has become a cliché, and the “hero” of Queenan’s piece is an Ivy League grad working as an intern at a street fair in New York.

Not long ago, young graduates became Henrys: High Earnings, Not Rich Yet. Today not many can claim the high earnings part.

For the past 30-40 years The Establishment — our normal everyday society — has warned high school grads that they had to go to college in order to get ahead in the world. That was true when there was a demand for engineers and other skilled professionals. Now there is some question about the need for more such workers, but also concerns about more practical occupations. If everybody goes to college, who will repair our aging cars and leaky faucets?

Computer programming is being outsourced overseas. You can’t outsource putting on a new roof or unclogging a toilet to a lower-paid offshore worker.

Of more interest to me is seeing highly trained, highly educated, highly successful men and women burning out in the world of commerce and industry, and turning to less stressful, more satisfying occupations. I recently read a story on the unusually large number of politicians who are quitting that arena, which used to be a sinecure! Former executives are becoming artisan bakers or cheesemakers, or they run a small country hardware store or B&B. They have discovered that making a living isn’t the same as making a life.

Then too, it always amuses/amazes me to read about someone who retires… and then does what they had always dreamed of doing, such as gardening, wood-carving, or raising cattle. And they’re happy! So why in the world did they wait so long? (“Life is what happens while you’re getting ready to live.”)

No doubt there are some people who really and truly want to become lawyers because they love laws or whatever it is that turns lawyers on. But there are obviously many, many more who want to become lawyers only because they want to rake in big bucks. These are people who are going to have to readjust their thinking.

Just one more sociological note, of the many that could be used in my argument: many experts are now saying the current generation is likely to be the first that will not achieve the financial success of their parents. The importance of this is that it will have an inevitable effect on our mood: It will create a feeling of desperate hopelessness… or it will create a challenge of the make-lemonade variety… on a national scale.

At this point it all comes together so seamlessly it’s almost embarrassing to state the obvious: Why don’t more young people skip all the middleman nonsense and cut to the chase? Why don’t they decide what really and truly matters, then go for it, right now?

Not everyone will accept that. But those opting for an opulent lifestyle must recognize the challenges they face. They will have to fight even harder for jobs that will support them in the manner to which they would like to become accustomed — meaning even more stress. They’ll face the bitterness of the losers. They will have to face the wrath of those already up-in-arms about outrageous compensation and conspicuous consumption.  They will most likely face what some are calling ruinous taxation on their extravagant incomes.

But instead of just giving in and giving up, some of these people will see the light. Doing something they love, they won’t even notice that they can’t afford an annual cruise or vacation abroad. Recognizing that even in mansions, people live in only one room at a time, they will transform their humble cottages into dwellings filled with beauty and love (and without a mortgage — putting even more bankers and lawyers out of work).

And naturally, in my dream world they will produce most of their own food in their gardens, chicken coops and goat sheds. (Those who prefer city living will have acceptable substitutes.) Along with this will come all the other attributes of sustainable living, because one thing leads to another. But someone has to take the first step.

My dream world has glommed onto many other possible catalysts in the past 50 years, all of which turned up empty. Maybe this one will too. But when so many people are lamenting their current situation and future prospects, there is hope. Even if only a few see the light, there could be a massive shift in attitude.

So, should we pity the class of 2010? Heavens, no. Their career prospects might be woeful, but they have an awesome opportunity to save the world. —Jd Belanger