Читать книгу Tales From the Sustainable Underground - Stephen Hren - Страница 8

Foreword

by Lyle Estill

When I first caught wind of Sustainable Underground I was jazzed. I thought of all the laws that have been written in support of the status quo, and of all the nights people in the sustainability movement have spent sweating over breaking them. I felt it was a story aching to be told.

When it was kicked around by the publishing industry, I encouraged Stephen to stick with it. I’m glad he did, because it became a wonderful read.

I found myself laughing out loud at the sight of Stephen with his high-end coffee maker at the campsite of the primitive anarchists — deprived of his morning caffeine fix for lack of fire lighting skills. And I found myself heartbroken to read of the collapse of a Texas collective based on organizational deficiencies.

Stephen brings his background, his humility, and his baggage to the book. In doing so he adds a delightful personal level which helps embellish the facts. Those who know Stephen know that he lives low on the carbon consumption totem pole, with intention. And while he is an inspiration to those who know him, he is often treated as a well-heeled novice by some of the characters in this book.

I was in Paris when Stephen’s email arrived — asking for a foreword “by yesterday.” I immediately dropped my Hemmingway and Miller to give Sustainable Underground a read. As soon as I delved into the manuscript I was visited by Jean Paul Sartre who insisted, “existence precedes essence.”

Can a lowly building inspector know the essence of a completed cob house before such a thing exists? Possibly not. Sartre was right, Stephen had offered up existential proof, and all was well.

To write this book Stephen embarked on a series of wild journeys around America to not only visit, but also to probe those activists, and doers who are reshaping our society’s landscape into something that might sustain human life on this garden planet.

Sometimes flaunting the law, sometimes hiding from it, and sometimes ignoring it completely, the real life characters in Sustainable Underground are all pushing the envelope of societal change.

I feel it is a daring book. When it comes to the “War on Drugs,” for instance, Stephen not only delves into the issue, but also makes himself known as a partisan with the underdog side. I admire that courage. It makes me want to join the fight, rather than staying silent, with my stash kept in my refrigerator door.

With its many stories and interconnections; from art to primitive anarchism to urban renewal, Sustainable Underground draws on everything from Faulkner to neighborhood activists. In doing so it engenders a certain faith that perhaps our species is capable of a wholesale change that might empower and sustain us all.

I suppose the notion of “faith” might indicate that Sartre had it wrong. Sustainable Underground calls on the reader to find the essence, of things before those things can be brought into existence.

Either way the book provides us with a necessary start point where we can forget about the law and the current order of things so that we can think differently about the world we inhabit, and reshape it in a way that allows us to thrive within those limits which are imposed upon us by nature.

Lyle Estill has been taking chances with the law and disrupting the status quo since he started making fuel with Piedmont Biofuels in 2002. He is the the publisher of Energy Blog, and author of Biodiesel Power, Small is Possible and Industrial Evolution. LyleEstill.com