I've seen some great things over the course of this crisis. Many of the people reporting in have revealed great acts of bravery, ingenuity and survival. Ingenious solutions have been suggested to help supply food, shelter, heat, electricity... you name it, on less oil than before.

That's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the many other people who haven't been making changes. There are a lot of people who have altered the bare minimum of things in their life and essentially continue exactly as they were, using too much resources and wasting what we have. People are still driving. The richer ones have even kept their SUVs and sports cars. So they pay a little extra for gas, so what? they can afford it. The same with food - there are a lot of people who quite happily spend a little extra on the air-freighted stuff because to hell with the environment and the poor people that are suffering, it's me time, damn it!

You know the problem? There's a lot of greedy people out there. Many people will choose what's best for them over what's best for everyone. While there's a lot of people that want change and are doing it in their own life, that means nothing unless we get the others out there who won't change. Some people need to be made to change.

And that's why we need politics. As much as I've loved wwo and the people I've interacted with, and admire many of the things that they've done, the truth still remains. All of us can try as hard as we can to change things but without government changing it too our efforts are lost in the tide.

Our fridge died today. It was barely 5 years old. Mum said that the one her parents owned in the 60s lasted 25 years and probably would still have gone on if they hadn't upgraded to the newest model. She said things lasted longer back then. And you know what? I think she's right. Everything I buy these days, be it a mobile phone or a saucepan, seems designed to break. Our consumer culture, living off cheap oil and plastic, means all those companies WANT their products to break, so that in a year or three we can buy their latest model.

We can go back to the old way, of designing things not to be state of the art but to do the job effectively and economically and LAST. But we can't make the companies build such things. Only government can do it. Only they can for instance make longer mandatory warranties on products, so that companies are forced to design ones that need less repair. We may end up spending more money on a particular product, but we won't have to buy it three or ten times as often. How many new, good kitchen knifes have you had to buy? I bet if they're good quality, you'll have ones that are decades old, because they're designed to last.

We need that mentality now. We need to conserve not consume. But the way the world works means companies want us to consume - they make more money that way. Only by good government can we change that. And that means that even the most-politically-averse of us MUST take part, because politics and government is the only way to make what we know to be common sense apply to everyone.

government can charge heavily to companies that import via aeroplane. They can ration food grown far away using energy-intensive methods. They can charge for road use, and for driving a heavy car. They can give incentives and encouragements to local business and trade, and to favour the small farmer over the big one. But they won't, not unless we make them.

This will be my last post. It's a cry, a desperate plea from a teenager growing up in a world that has changed so much in the last 8 months. At first I denied it existed, this oil crisis. Then I was angry at those that had caused the problem, those who had let our culture run unchecked without checks or balances, without any thought to stop spending our planet's precious resources.

Now I'm channeling my anger, and I urge everybody to do the same. We must make those at the top listen to our pain and our anger and our fears, about what the crisis has done and will do to our lives. Because if we don't force them to make a change, they won't. Now is the time for us to begin crafting a new world. The individual doesn't matter unless the whole world follows in her footsteps.

-Mia

[author note - week 31. This is Mia's last post in her own words. I have plans for something special tomorrow but it will not be a post by Mia. there's no commentary to this one. All I want to say is in her words.]