Carolyn Baker Interviews Robin Rucker

REAL PEOPLE, REAL PREPARATION, Part 5

RR: Initially, I thought I had the perfect career. I believed in the pharmaceutical industry and the good I thought it was doing. Then, four years into my career at my first job, the biotech startup I worked at was swallowed by a huge pharmaceutical company. I began interacting with this large company and quickly realized how na

While I was traveling, someone told me about a documentary they had seen on CNN about the possibility of the world running out of oil. I remember feeling frightened. It was 2000 and I was three months into my journey, and I decided I had better keep on traveling because it seemed likely that the ability to travel would become impossible in the future. Eventually, I went back to work because I still had a large mortgage, but I was still really unhappy.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?

RR: A few years later I met a man who was really educated about Peak Oil. He insisted that I read Richard Heinberg’s “Power Down,” Jim Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” and Matt Savinar’s “The Oil Age Is Over.” I was so terrified by Matt’s book that I could only read it at lunch time or I couldn’t sleep. I knew intuitively that all three authors were correct about the big picture of what they predicted, and I became very motivated to make big life changes. Talk about taking the red pill. I realized that as a middle manager in the biotech industry I had absolutely no practical skills and I really wanted to help people directly. I also knew that Silicon Valley would be an undesirable place to live during energy descent, so I decided to move. First, I moved to a small, rural community in Northern California. Although I learned a lot about homesteading and living off the grid (20 minutes from town, two and half miles up a dirt road), it was simply too remote for me. After a year I moved to a larger, progressive, semi-rural community that is less remote. I have been there for two years now and I love it. Many people in town are aware of what is happening, so I can talk about peak oil without getting a blank look in return.

Speaking Truth To Power