The end of the world as we know it

As befits heading into a season characterised by reflection on death [Hallowe'en and Rememberance day gone and Advent to come],
I've been doing some very sobering reading lately which pretty much makes a lot of talk about emerging church, postmodernity, human interaction with technoogy etc etc look like arranging deckchairs on the Titanic or whistling in the dark at best. I knew that we were running out of oil. What I hadn't yet grasped was the implications of that. I had forgotten or failed to factor into my thinking just how much of what we routinely do is powered by oil: our agriculture relies on fertilisers and pesticides mmade from ... oil; our food is transproted huge distances by ... oil; much of what we by is made from plastics in whole or in part and plastics are mostly made from ...oil. Our constructions and even manufacture of energy alternatives is dependent on oil. Oil is woven into our lives in countless ways some signiificant, some trivial, alll eating away at a non-renewable resource whose production has just peaked or is about to. To catch a sense of where my sobering has come from read this:
"Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the 'crash' that many fear -- a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the 'soft landing' that many people hope for - a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. Joseph A. Tainter"

I am contemplating how our preaching and worship can give a greater sense of urgency about the voluntary change alluded to above and to the removal of consumerism from our day to day thinking. One of the things that impressed me about the Nine O'Clock Service was the utter seriousness about this issue. And in all the developments in Alternative Worship and emerging church since then, we have not really recovered that strand -and it's about time we did.

Then there is the urgency of developing ways to commend and make possible the peace transitions that will be required. How can we create the preconditions and conditions for justice and peace for aocieoties where scarcity and the consequent heavy temptations to bullying violence are in the ascendant? Is peacemaking practical politics in a world of scarce energy?