…Most of us know in our bones that a sea change is coming in agriculture. But the biggest driver of that change is not going to come from the issues that I’ve mentioned so far. The biggest driver is going to be the increasing cost and decreasing availability of fossil fuels, especially oil. Because agriculture is so dependent on oil, the entire system is extremely vulnerable to oil depletion—and to oil price spikes. The situation brewing on the horizon regarding oil compels us to begin rethinking how we grow our food, and even how we eat.

…As we might expect, The Great Waves of Change confirms what many have suspected: Humanity is entering into a prolonged period of great confusion and difficulty, for we have so irreversibly overused and abused the world that we have now unleashed a series of awesome consequences—the Great Waves of change themselves—that will fundamentally alter life on this planet. We are told that even in the best case scenario we must now prepare for a world of greatly diminished resources and a massive reduction in human population. From here, whether humanity will even have a future and whether human civilization can survive will depend on a tremendous outpouring of human ingenuity and cooperation. Resource depletion, especially of fossil fuels, will be a prominent feature of the Great Waves of change…

…Where we are now is at the beginning of a transition from an industrial growth culture to a culture of descent. This transition will be characterized by much cultural chaos, and then we will be declining or descending to a far more sustainable low-energy culture. Regarding this, David Holmgren says, “We have trouble visualizing decline as positive, but this simply reflects the dominance of our prior culture of growth… The real issue of our age is how we make a graceful and ethical descent.”