Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

Give me this day my daily oil.

I believe very strongly that in the near future our carboholic addiction will lead to an immense catastrophe, both natural and economic. That’s why in everything I do I try to minimize my fossil fuel consumption; that’s why, rather than use my car, I bike to the village almost every day – almost 6 km away which also keeps me fit; that’s why I also have 10 solar panels, burn waste wood in my woodstove and live in a passive- solar house.

Nevertheless, in order to survive I need my daily oil. Yes, I am still an energy-hog. My musings on my most important morning meal will make that plain, preparation for which starts not at 6 a.m. but at 6 p.m. when I do the dishes for the day, not by machine but by rinsing, washing and drying them with my own hands. Part of my evening ritual is to clean our small slow cooker, fill it with one cup of organic oat flakes, add 3.5 cup of water and cover it with the lid. When I go to bed I plug it in, and in the morning the porridge is ready. I buy the oats in bulk – 10 kg – so the cost in money and environment is seemingly minimal, and, although it may appear that this is an excellent example of energy-efficiency, a closer look reveals that I am an energy-sinner, because there is more to breaking my fast than preparing the porridge. Consider the following.

My morning tea, for instance, is a real global mix. While boiling a full kettle of water, I dice a small piece of ginger root- of Chinese origin – and put this in a perforated container which comes with the large teapot, together with a bag of ginseng tea – from Korea – some peppermint – home-grown – some loose Rooibos tea from South Africa and loose green tea also all the way from the Far East. Over all this I pour the boiling water. This curious concoction gives me seven cups of tea of which I drink five in the morning (good for my kidneys since I have had stones there twice, thanks to my running) and my wife a more modest two.
So you see, my tea has traveled the seven seas before it arrives in Tweed, Ontario, and my fascination with far-fetched food doesn’t stop there.

While my brew is steeping, I add some tasty morsels and some neutral items to my fast-breaking food. First the tasteless stuff – one table spoon of soy-derived lecithin – perhaps all the way from Brazil – and two spoons of ground-up frozen flax seeds. At least that is of Canadian origin, likely from the prairies, 2000 km away. The more appetizing additions are frozen blueberries from Nova Scotia and fruit in season such as peaches from Niagara, apple or raspberries from our garden or a mandarin from the Middle East. Oh, yes, I make my own maple syrup, and always add a dash of that as well.

That’s my breakfast. And, in spite of all my efforts, it still requires a lot of polluting substances. A closer look at my plate reveals not only lots of body fuel, but also the equivalent of one liter of pure Alberta Crude tar-sand oil.

How do I arrive at that figure? Here’s my rough calculation: some 20 percent of my breakfast fuel is used in these teas and fruits, grown in fields many a thousand kilometers away, where tractors and natural gas-based fertilizers and petroleum-derived pesticides are used. Everything comes by container ships, emitters of lots of CO2. A further 50 percent is burned in processing, packaging and transporting them from their home-base to the store by boat or train or truck and car when we bring it home. The oats is at least Canadian, but it still goes through several steps before it is ready for my plate: after the land is plowed, disked, seeded, fertilized and the crop is harvested, it is trucked to a mill to be cleaned, steamed, hulled, cut and rolled to turn it into edible flakes, all at significant energy costs. It then needs packaging, more trucking and storing: another 30 percent of fuel.

Still that is a lot better than eating dry cereals, such as corn flakes. There the grinding, milling, wetting, drying, baking of a breakfast cereal requires about four calories for every calorie of food energy it produces. Throw in the packaging and the transportation, the heating or cooling in the store, the cost to get it to me, the consumer, and twenty calories of fossil-fuel energy is not an exaggerated figure.

Meat is worse.  In an article in Harper’s, February 2004, entitled, “The Oil We Eat,” I read that “it takes thirty-five calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of (feeding lot) beef.” The methane generated from these feed lots contributes greatly to the Green House Gases we produce in North America. In this late hour of civilization, it may well be the Christian thing to have a vegetarian diet.

So how about the rest of the day? My daily two cups of shade-grown organic coffee is not an innocent consumption either. To process just one pound of coffee takes 8,000 calories of fossil fuel energy. I have been told that this equals one liter of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas,, and around two and a half pound of coal.

We eat at night a light snack, with a more full meal at noon, consisting of a salad three times a week, which, in the summer, is fully obtained from our garden, together with carrots, a leaf of kale, some parsley, a few slices of red beets, onion of course, some garlic also as well as plenty of cherry tomatoes, all seasoned with lemon juice, olive oil and flaxseed oil, three items originating from far away. On Sundays we have a plate of soup, while during the week our other meals are potatoes or some pasta with vegetables or sauce. Our large garden provides us with potatoes, beans, cabbages, sprouts, squash – you name it. The only meat we use is the occasional all-beef sausage when we have ‘Boerekool.”

If I were to be perfectly honest to God, I should change the line in the Lord’s Prayer from “Give Us this Day our Daily Bread”, to “Give us this Day our Daily Oil”, as we can’t get the one without the other. Slowly our world is starting to realize that oil use constitutes a sin against creation, reason why the line “Forgive us our trespasses” is something we have to pray continuously.

This article can be seen at: https://www.hielema.ca//. He can be reached at ‘hielema@allstream.net

Is another American revolution approaching?

Triple warnings suggest that a new revolution is revving up.

I spotted the first indication that a totally new world is in the making when I received the GEAB 20/20 report, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin, published in German, French, Spanish and English. Annual subscription cost: 200 Euro for 16 issues.

Its August 14 publication warns that later this year China will have completed its dollar switch, just as three disastrous waves hit the American economy: massive unemployment, serial failures in banking, housing and commercial real estate, and a terminal crisis in American bonds and securities. China’s transfer of its $2 trillion of US dollar holdings into hard assets in the form of oil, gold, copper, coal, iron ore and other commodities, together with the companies that mine them – losing $500 billion in the process – will signal the collapse of the greenback and the end of Empire America.  

The second warning came that same week from within the United States, where the Trends Research Institute believes that the momentum of the “Second American Revolution” has become unstoppable. Gerald Celente, the head of the Trends Research Institute, the major trend-forecasting agency in the world, wrote already in May of 2009 that the “bailout” would become a bubble.” Celente’s forecasts are not to be taken lightly, as he accurately predicted the 1987 stock market crash, the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1998 Russian economic collapse, the 1997 East Asian economic crisis, the 2000 Dot-Com bubble burst, the 2001 recession, the start of a recession in 2007 and the housing market collapse of 2008, among other things. More about this later.

The third alarm also originated in the USA, coming from Paul B. Farrell, the principal of Market Watch. He wrote in his August publication, “Expect a major house-cleaning, a second American Revolution. We predicted the “Great Depression 2″ around 2012. Well, we doubt taxpayers will passively sit one more time, like in the 1930s, in 2000, and the past few years. Next time voters will take a page from the history books about past revolutions in the American Colonies, France and Russia. A perfect storm will erupt in a massive global credit meltdown, bringing down Wall Street and the clandestine $670 trillion shadow central banking system. And the collateral damage will be massive and widespread.”

We simply will not see a return to ‘normal’ conditions, for the plain reason that they really were ‘abnormal,’ fueled by cheap money and cheap fuel. Many U.S. households now need a long spell in which to reduce debt, increase savings and become used to a lower standard of living. This will cause a permanent slowdown in consumer spending, and, since the American economic health depends for 70 percent on consumer spending, it’s mathematically impossible for its economy to bounce back, especially as household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began, while home equity has dropped to 41% (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. Deutsche Bank AG predicts that by 2011 48 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater, which will add to the already high level of public anger. As homeowner equity deteriorates and jobs disappear, banks will further tighten credit and foreclosures will keep on skyrocketing, adding to the pain, especially as homes are seen as castles and jobs represent status in life. To lose these symbols strike at the very core of the American ideal, will shatter consumer confidence beyond repair, and  add to growing despair.

Based on these projections, the Trends Research Institute concludes that another American revolution is in the making. The prodding by the Republican operatives and the fomenting by Fox news and right-wing radio show hosts are somewhat to blame, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of public discontent, which it sees as clearly real and un-staged.  

This aggravation has been exacerbated by a series of gigantic, unpopular, tax-payer-financed, government-imposed bailouts, buyouts and rescue- and stimulus packages, aimed at Wall Street, where bankers are pocketing millions, while John and Jane Doe must do with less pay, overdue accounts and fewer jobs.  With no public platform to voice their opposition, their options have been limited to fruitless petitions, e-mails and phone calls to Congress … all fielded by anonymous staff underlings.

Now, with Congress in recess and the elected representatives back at their home base, face-to face with the voters, public reaction is exploding.  The devil is not in the details of the health care reform, the devil is in everything the government is doing. Regardless of how plans are pitched or what is being promised, to the public all this Washington stuff is yet another example of big government taking a piece out of their leveraged-to-the-hill lives and making them pay for it; again telling them what they can or cannot do.

Though in its early stages, the “Second American Revolution” is underway. Says the Trends Research Institute report, “this will become the most profound political trend of the century, the trend that will change the world, a trend still invisible to the same economists who didn’t see the financial crisis coming until the bottom fell out of the economy, something I had warned against for years.” Even the Queen wondered why the money melt-down was not foreseen by the economists. No wonder that predictions by economists today are taken with a ton of salt. Instead of lawyers, economists are the butt of jokes nowadays. Here is one: “A man walked into a bar holding an alligator. He asked the bartender, ‘Do you serves economists here?’ The bartender said, ‘Yes we do.’ ‘Good,’ replied the man, ‘Give me a beer, and I’ll have an economist for my alligator.'” Today these same economists see green shoots everywhere: according to their projections Germany, France and even Japan are no longer in recession. Let’s have a reality check. Remember the parable Jesus spoke about the farmer who went out to sow and some seed fell on rocky ground, where ‘green shoots’ shot up, but soon withered? That’s what we are seeing now with the recession in a brief remission, thanks to massive government bail-outs – read taxes for the next generation.

 There are already some ominous stirring among the American folk.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reports the “Return of the Militias”.

You might recall how in the 1990’s the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, was the work of such a group. With the election to President of George Bush this movement faded away, but now, with another Democrat in the White House, and a black one at that, a second wave of secret warriors is in the works, augmented by the even larger antigovernment “Patriot” fraternity.

Example 1, as reported by the SPLC.

“In Pensacola, Florida, retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson tells a gathering of antigovernment “Patriots” that the federal government has set up 1,000 internment camps across the country and is storing 30,000 guillotines and half-million caskets in Atlanta. They are there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves in to round up or kill American dissenters, he says. ‘They’re going to keep track of all of us, folks,’ Gunderson warns.”

Example 2.

“On a site in Lexington, Mass., where the opening shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in 1775, members of Oath Keepers, a newly formed group of law enforcement officers, military men and veterans, ‘muster’ on April 19 to reaffirm their pledge to defend the U.S. Constitution. ‘We’re in perilous times…. Perhaps more perilous than in 1775,’ says the man administering the oath.

America is angry. It is seething.  Not since the Civil War has anything like this happened.  First there were over 700 anti-tax rallies and “Tea Parties” nationwide, mostly ignored or ridiculed by the general media. Then, on the Fourth of July throngs of citizens across the USA gathered to protest “taxation without representation,” and once again, the demonstrations were branded right-wing mischief and dismissed as irrelevant. Then, in early August, the third volley, aimed point blank at Senators and House members who were pitching President Obama’s health care reform package to constituents. In fiery town hall meetings – now often called ‘hell’ meetings -, enraged citizens shouted down their elected representatives.  It took a strong police presence and/or no nonsense bodyguards to preserve a safe physical space between the politicians and furious townspeople. 

All signs point not only to an economic Depression but a total all-encompassing Revolution, made worse by global warming, peak oil, and millions of heavily armed angry Americans, blaming the State for their ills.   

We know that  cheap money, easy credit and unrestrained borrowing brought on an economic crisis that cannot be cured by measures that promote more cheap money, more easy credit and more unrestrained borrowing, which will only worsen the situation and cause protests to speed up and riots to roil the American nation.

While there are many wild cards that could ignite the insurrection, The Trends Research Institute forecasts that if the threat of government-forced Swine Flu vaccinations is realized, it could be the final fuse.  Tens of millions will fight for their right to remain free and unvaccinated.

What is certain is that we live in new times, because many of our self-inflicted problems are now beyond remedy: America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debts, as they effectively are finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government. 

These new times have also spawned the Internet and other technologies which will spur on the “Second American Revolution,” aided by the ubiquitous camera-equipped cell phone, universal access to YouTube, and millions of twitters and tweets, all of which will give wide-spread publicity to the uprisings, which cannot be ignored, contained, managed, spun or edited down.  The revolutionary fervor will prove contagious. 

Can anything stop the coming revolution?  

The White House people are praying for an act of God in the form of a potent pandemic or a Class 7 mega hurricane hitting New York City: then the blame can be shifted to You Know Who. If all else fails, the administration will start a new war. Indeed, there are enough Black Swans crowding the skies these days to blot out the sun.

The continuous question for Christians remains “how to work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” (Philippians 2:12). For today this might mean how to live in awe and admiration for God’s creation, fully realizing that we constantly harm the cosmos God loved so much that it took the life of his only Son to ‘redeem’ it. If slashing Rembrandt’s ‘Nachtwacht” dishonors the name of this great master, then willfully polluting creation dishonors God’s name. It seems to me that expressing our love for God is done most effectively when we show love for His creation. Perhaps a new definition of ‘sin’ is in order.  

Triple warnings suggest that a societal insurrection is looming, which will only be beneficial if preceded by a personal one as the word ‘conversion’ – metanoia – implies a ‘revolution’ on the human level.

This article and many others can be seen at: https://www.hielema.ca//

Collapsitarians.

I bet you you’ve never heard that word before. I saw it for the first time on the Mother Jones web site. The word ‘collapsitarians’ speaks for itself: they are people who look forward to a total economic downfall and universal joblessness. They’d like to see the already fragile sectors of America’s recession plagued economy-finance, real estate, now the commercial segment as well – totally disintegrate so that something new, brighter, and more durable might appear. These old ways, they contend, will self-destruct because of fundamental flaws that will foster total failure in the near future. They fully realize that we humans are unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for our apparent disinclination to do so, and so they are convinced that we will self-destruct.

What these people hope – with utopian fervor, I may add – is that shoring up the ailing economies like Detroit’s and Wall Street with bailouts and stimulus plans will prove totally futile, and on the ashes of the 20^th Century ruins, they expect to see arise a new economy more geared to renewable energy and a simpler life style with less pressure and more freedom. The’ they’ include Luddites- those who see technology as a curse -, Anarchists – those who see government as the problem -, Survivalists – those who have already reserved a place in the country, well stocked with food -, the Green types – those who see collapse as something that was bound to happen -, as well as those who do not agree with the widespread American tendency to regard their country as “a city on the hill, God’s chosen race.” Even financial-sector employees are among those who just want it all over with.

These people – not an inconsiderable number – want collapse to come, and even nudge it along. “If you see Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall, go ahead and give him a good shove,” one advocate said: “Once all the rotten and fragile stuff falls to pieces, hardier and healthier and more reasonable ways of organizing experience will emerge. Collapse may sound scary, but it a desirable stage en route to a “more delightful, more sustainable world.”

Of course it’s not quite that simple. The Collapsitarians are mostly well-to-do folk, often self-employed, and perhaps well situated to weather an economic eclipse. But how about the misery of mass unemployment, the disenfranchised majority, suddenly declared surplus, with no job, no food, no future? That is already a grave problem with official unemployment approaching 10 percent while, when counting part-time work and those who have stopped looking for work, the real figure is 16.4 percent according to John Miller at Wheaton College.

For centuries we have accepted as the gospel truth that Capitalism is the way to go and questioning it a heresy, greatly cheered on by church-going folk who see heaven as their destination rather than a renewed earth, and so couldn’t care less what happens here. It reminds me of a saying attributed to Dresden James, who wrote that “When a well-packaged pack of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.” I know I have been called that and, no doubt, others will too.

One of them is Dr Tony Campolo, a man often quoted in the Christian Courier. He is professor emeritus at Eastern University, founded the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, his most recent books are The God of Intimacy and Action and Red Letter Christians. Yes, he too is a collapsitarian.

In an article in Tikkun, a Jewish magazine, he writes that “Babylon” was the code word that St. John used for “The Roman Empire,” and relating that to our own time we should recognize that what the apostle said about the Roman Empire applies to every societal system. That means that our Babylon is the American political-economic social order, which, like all Babylons, is doomed to fall, because its consumerism makes it impossible to be sustained. He quotes Revelation 18:12-13 to back his argument.  

Dr Campolo writes that “There is an obvious parallel in Revelation to the American Babylon. Ours is a consumeristic lifestyle that exhausts 42 percent of the world’s resources, even though Americans constitute just 6 percent of the world’s population. Our consumerism, like that of the Roman Empire, brings down our Babylon. Whether our political-economic system collapses in the immediate future as a result of our present crisis, or at some time in the future, is hard to predict. Frankly, it sure looks like now!

He writes that “When our Babylon falls, there will be two reactions. The first will be the reaction of those whom the Bible names as “the merchants.” We read that “They wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in one hour she has been laid waste (Revelation 18:18-19).”

This is a true portrait of the millions now in deep financial distress, including those ‘merchants’ in shopping centers, unable to move the stocks of consumer goods.

Dr Campolo continues, “But there’s another reaction to the collapse of Babylon. It can be heard in the shouts of a great assembly. The shouts are coming from people who are committed to God and His Kingdom. With acclamations of praise they say, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her fornication” (Revelation 19:1b-2a).

Babylon is called a whore because, like a whore, it has seduced people. Those whose citizenship and commitments have been in Babylon have been seduced into a comfortable “dainty” lifestyle of consumerism and now are having to face the reality that this lifestyle has come to an end. They are being forced to realize:

“The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!” … and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters will be heard in you no more; and an artisan of any trade will be found in you no more; and the sound of the millstone will be heard in you no more; and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more; for your merchants were the magnates of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery (Revelation 18:14, 22-23).”

The Good News is that as the facts of the collapse of Babylon spread, the people of God are not disheartened. This is because they were never allured by it in the first place. They were a people who had been “seeking, first and foremost, the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). These people of faith, following the instructions of their Lord, had not laid up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but had, instead, invested themselves in the Kingdom of God-a kingdom that will last forever (Matthew 6:19-20).

Campolo continues “In the face of the collapse of our American Babylon, we have to ask how much we have been a people whose lives and resources have been invested in God’s Kingdom, so that the collapse of our political-economic system does not threaten us. In the context of the collapse, with whom will we stand? Will we be with the merchants, and weep because our lives and resources have been invested in Babylon; or will we be able to join with those who shout “Hallelujah” because the seductive Babylon and all of the evils that go with her seduction are no more?”

Writes he “As our economic system collapses, I am coming to realize for the first time in my life that Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount are the most sensible words ever spoken. He said:

“No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. “Matthew 6:24-33.

So far my quotes from Dr Campolo.

What does all this mean?

It means that we must get ready for the second coming of the Lord which will come like a thief, says 2 Peter 3:10. Peter the apostle also tells us to look forward to that day and speed its coming, which, in essence means that we also must become collapsitarians, awaiting not Utopia, but the reality of the Kingdom. Dr Campolo did that by pointing out the ultimate fragility of our economic system, whose collapse, together with the immense dangers we face in Climate Change and other perils, will endanger everything we now take for granted. We too can speed up the coming of the Kingdom by spreading the Good News of its imminent arrival.

Bert Hielema lives in Tweed, Ontario, where plenty of rain promises a bountiful harvest.