living on a small island is its own metaphor of the limits to growth, of our dependence on imports, an exchange made vivid.
we could stand at the harbours and note what is imported and exported. whatever needs are not met on island and whatever waste is not managed on island, it is clearly delineated by the shoreline. the funnels for people coming and going are narrowed to ferries, private boats, sea planes. the population doubles in the summertime. high school students from the smaller islands come by water taxi; the hospital is similarly a central draw, except when it is inadequate and folks are ferried or flown elsewhere.
what are the limits to growth? to some degree they are made invisible even here, by our blindness* to the energy use that props us up. the fossil-fuelled ferries are heavy with cars, with so many individuals making individual decisions to go here and do that and get this. but the cracks are showing as scarce labour for the ferries, compounded by scarce affordable housing make the system less dependable. folks may work here but not have a place to live here. like so many places, holiday rentals and speculative real estate elbow out long term housing. increasingly the island risks becoming just a hotel for the wealthy. this fragility, this vulnerability shows in the scarcity of doctors on the island. those who can afford to may see the proliferation of alternative modalities, which appears to be thriving, but travel off island for health is still significant.
the picture of food on this island repeats the pattern. this island was once a major source for the greater province. our farmer’s markets, honesty-box farm stands and local food culture are famous, yet almost all of what we eat comes in from elsewhere, as it is cheap imports that feed most folks, shopped for in warehouses off-island or picked up in a couple of smaller chains. the potential for local food resilience is there, but the profit-model and intense pressures from skyrocketing real estate and the cost of living mean that cheap food rules.
like the larger planet, the island itself is beautiful and many folks work to protect forest, farmland, watershed, ocean. the competing values in resistance to a profit motive, from families just trying to get by to tourist and holiday owners living excessive lifestyles, to seniors spending their earnings to travel the world, to speculative real estate, to clearcutting, to the demands of tourism. the island lives with an impossible, unsustainable tension.
yet a lingering history of looking out for each other, not just ourselves, it permeates island communities. the very awareness of our limits makes us turn to each other more often than not. farming, and well before that, hunting and foraging and rest and ritual for travellers paddling to the mainland etched a character on this place that will not easily submit to the greater forces of an extractive economy. these are the margins of resistance and it is from the margins, that rich edge, that diversity and possibility spring.
the moment we picture the teetering and collapse of fragile systems based on a model of, surprise, extraction from a system until its collapse demands the conquering of fresh territory, always competing to beat the other, winning, we can see how an island like this must reckon with its own colonisation. not being particularly convenient or useful besides logging – and it was already clearcut over a century ago – or as a holiday destination – and this is limited by trusts that have resisted development – well. what will the future look like here in transition from the energy-intensive age?
then it matters, whether the islanders can sustain themselves without intensive energy dependence, a transfusion of goods, foods, people ferried over. if we don’t create resilient systems that regenerate, life on the island will rapidly become very difficult. in a word, unsustainable.
how many can the island feed? what are the economics of paying for artificially bloated housing costs without a steady addition of inputs? how long can the island economy handle a near-constant flow off-island and can it circulate internally instead? if currencies became local, what does that look like? what are we eating, what are we wearing, how are we getting around, where do we all live, work?
the answers are necessarily collective, not individual. they must come from another pattern, stepping out of the conquering model into one of collaboration.
considering all this and much more is instantly vivid when we picture unplugging from the network, or being summarily unplugged, whichever comes first. how shall we live? it is urgent that we design a response that befits a tiny island just as we must answer for the greater biosphere of our entire planet. the question will not go away.
as ever, we can begin with ourselves and see how we might live this transition in our households, reaching out in action and conversation to hold on to each other, and reimagine together how we can bring our requirements back within the boundaries.
how are you already doing this small work?
***
thank you, dear patrons, for supporting this writing, i so appreciate you.
*i loved the discussions between nate hagens and simon michaux, and between the latter and manda scott on these concerns and revelations.