Apparently corporate ad agencies have realized that despite the millions they’ve spent on denial campaigns, people aren’t buying it. So they’ve changed their messaging. I can’t be critical of this, though I certainly am cynical about what it really means. However there is huge money in developing a new global infrastructure for energy. In developed countries like the US and the EU, this means a new grid and energy efficient transportation, not mention renewables. In under-developed countries it gets more interesting. The correct analogy is the spread of mobile phones.

Before affordable mobile phones, people in poor countries had no means of communicating with each other. Telephone lines and switches were primitive and costly and there was no incentive for telecom companies to invest in these poor economies. So, as mobile phones became ubiquitous even in these countries, it became obvious that they don’t require the networked telecom grids. Just build towers which is far cheaper than running fiber to houses and businesses. They are not tied to telecom grids.

The same will happen with energy. Solar, wind, geothermal, etc. can be localized to a building or a village. It does not require a physical link to a power plant hundreds of miles away. This means that we should see rural electrification in places like Africa which will help them pull out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

The awakening of the corporate giants to energy opportunity that is not tied to fossil fuels will be slow. However their futurists know that the current model is unsustainable, not just on supply issues but also because the vast majority of oil comes from regions that are politically unstable (Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, etc.). As the supply shrinks, the use of oil as an economic weapon will increase, creating instability in oil markets worldwide. Without a serious effort to provide alternative sources on both a national and local level worldwide, we will see wars waged over fossil fuels. As it is, a lot of us believe that the jihad being waged now is really about distribution of energy.

Shopping this way not only saves money and provides entertainment, it alerts you to what’s available locally and when. It’s still early but local asparagus is nearly over. There’s still plenty from New Jersey (The Garden State) which seems pretty local to me but Boo disagrees- she thinks there is a difference. 300 hundred miles of trucking I guess.

This past year we went almost every week, even in the dead of winter. The stalls morph into tents with propane heaters blasting and everyone has a chill somewhere. The local produce is things like cabbage, potatoes, apples-things that store well. You can still get nearly anything else from far off places. At least we’re thinking about the carbon cost when we pick up fruit from South America.

The food business in America amazes me. For low artificially low prices we can get virtually anything, anytime. When I was in Paris a few years ago we arrived early on a Saturday at the apartment we rented in Marais. Though lagged we wanted to wander and the first place we found was a weekly street market. I’d always heard about the quality of French fresh food but this was totally amazing. Perfect rows of glistening shrimp lovingly packed in ice, table after table of beautiful fruit and vegetables with literally dozens of varieties of each type. It was a cook’s paradise though I certainly was not planning on spending time cooking in the food capital of the Western world!

That night we had our first French meal in a restaurant in Place de Vosges, the amazing medieval plaza that fills an entire block. The highlight was incredible asparagus served with a lemony hollandaise. They were very thick and a pale green and melted in your mouth like no vegetable I’d eaten before. When Carol (my ex and still friend) bit into her order the expression on her face was priceless. Perhaps we’ll achieve that degree of subtlety and appreciation for our food in a few hundred years- though it may have taken a planetary crisis to force us down that path.

The paradox is that quality of life is not in any way based on how much you pay, if you take the time to make good choices. As I’ve written about I recently made a move to save some money on housing costs. I looked at a lot of apartments and chose one of five I looked at in the same building. When I made that choice several weeks ago I probably spent all of five minutes in the apartment I picked. I really couldn’t remember a lot of details about it and was keeping my fingers crossed that I had not made a poor decision. Given that I was paying several hundred dollars less than my previous place I expected compromises when I actually saw the place after committing to it.

Long story short, it is much nicer than my last place. This got me thinking about choices when we acquire things. I shop every week at our Public Market on Saturday mornings. It is more than shopping, it’s like a village market day where you know the vendors, familiar faces are everywhere and sitting at one of the cafes means carrying on a steady stream of conversations. Don’t get me wrong- this is not some idyllic West Coast town. Our population is over a million, the market is large and filled with a lot of Chinese container junk in addition to the fruit, fish, flower and meat merchants and the neighborhood where it is located is riddled with boarded up houses- you’d avoid it on non-market days. However the shopping is far better than our local groceries (Wegmans) which are widely heralded as the best in the country, and far cheaper.

Examples abound. A small well-designed and built house can be a better place to live than a MacMansion knocked together by drunken contractors whose only quality criteria is how fast they can work. My 2008 Civic is a better car than my 2004 Accord which was a very good car- and the Civic was $5000 less and gets 6 miles more per gallon, saving me even more money.

Electronics are another example. I replaced a company-supplied top of the line MacBook Pro with the cheapest plastic MacBook when I left that job. I see very little difference except for the screen being smaller and the Macbook weighing a lot less. MacBook Pro= $2600, MacBook= $1300.

So housing, food, transportation and tools can all be had for much less, with zero sacrifice, if you change your perspective about how you make buying decisions. It’s not rocket science and it can be a lot more fun- when is the last time you looked forward to grocery shopping?

Downsizing means looking closely at all of your stuff and clearing out the things you don’t need. In my case 75% of my books were either donated to the library store or curbed because of being old. The curbed ones disappeared instantly. I also got rid of any clothing I have not worn in the past year and any kitchen stuff that I don’t ever use. The feeling you get when you let this stuff go is amazing.

The Buddhists know that desire for material things causes suffering. These days I literally feel weighed down by my stuff and there is very little that I feel any strong connection with, excepting personal things made by or given by friends and family. My father died last fall and I have a copper vessel he made on my coffee table. It is priceless to me. Not much else is.

The current recession is causing most of my friends to reevaluate the things we value vs. those we covet. I talked with my friend Danny who, when he downsized, got rid of boxes of old magazines and a lot of other stuff. His friends told him to sell it on Ebay but he recycled via the curb like I did- and said it was liberating.

This trend- and I believe a lot of people are onboard- is a sea change for American society. Our realization that we have been foolish in our endless need for more stuff is not reversible. I’ll never be buying a luxury car, a big house or a giant TV no matter what my financial situation is. I simply have no need for the ego boost these things represent.

I believe many of my fellow boomers are coming to the same conclusion. We’re a rebellious lot and we’re actively rebelling against excess. And you know what? Life is a lot simpler without all that crap.