Arriving in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the ambitiously named “International Conference on Peak Oil and Climate Change,” I could see that the airport was undergoing a major expansion. The soaring, optimistic curves of the new Gerald R. Ford International Airport seemed at odds with recent news about sky-high jet fuel prices and crumbling airlines – the new reality that was the subject of the conference.
Peak oil refers to the moment in time when the world achieves the all time maximum volume of oil production. World oil production has been flat for more than two years now, and a growing collection of geologists, environmentalists and economists say that peak oil has arrived, to be followed soon by an inevitable decline.
For those who expect an alternative fuel or technology to replace oil, the conference held out no hope. Keynote speaker David Goodstein, professor of physics at Caltech, and author of the book, Out of Gas, went through all of the alternatives: coal, natural gas, biofuels, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear and showed how each one has severe physical limitations in the real world. For instance, here is his take on nuclear energy:
“To produce enough nuclear power to equal the power we currently get from fossil fuels, you would have to build 10,000 of the largest possible nuclear power plants. That’s a huge, probably nonviable initiative, and at that burn rate, our known reserves of uranium would last only for 10 or 20 years.”
Even given that the post-oil economy will have to depend on more than one technology, many speakers emphasized the difficulty of building massive new infrastructure at a time when energy and materials are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive.
The upshot is that we have waited too long for this to be an easy transition. Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines, was particularly stark in his assessment. He said that during their lifetime, the baby boomers will have used up half of the world’s recoverable resources, leaving very little for future generations. He said that famine and massive dislocation of populations is inevitable and potentially billions of people will die: “The future is already here, it is just not evenly distributed yet – look at New Orleans and Baghdad.” And yet, he said, we cannot give into despair because “what we do right now will make an enormous difference in how many survive. We must act.”
Paradoxically, I found the 200 or so conference attendees to be an optimistic crew in some ways. Most crucially, the early advent of peak oil and peak coal will place a physical limit on direct human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Chemist Linda Schweitzer said, “I believe that 85 to 90 percent of all species of life would become extinct by 2100 if we did not have peak oil. Peak oil will force us to completely change our way of life. The consolation is that while I may be impoverished and die sooner than I would otherwise, at least life on the planet will continue.”
Richard Heinberg said that it is easy for politicians to give lip service to climate change and the moral imperative to save polar bears without any real commitment to action. Even California’s stringent climate legislation has an escape clause in case greenhouse gas regulations impact economic growth. But peak oil has no escape clause. “Peak oil is not optional,” Heinberg said.
When asked if peak oil and coal have been accounted for in climate change models, Heinberg replied that some of the climate models are “patently ridiculous” in their assumptions about the potential growth in fossil fuel emissions. However, he emphasized that recent news on the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse emissions is very bad and we cannot afford to be complacent. It is likely that we have already have reached critical climate tipping points and will need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere.
Heinberg called peak coal “an enormous opportunity” to reframe climate change issues. His analysis sees coal production peaking within the next 15 – 20 years, which is within the planning horizon for the new coal fired power plants that are being built. In this context, relying on coal for our power is not only a bad environmental decision; it is a bad economic decision.
Admittedly, while committed environmentalists may be able to see the bright side of peak oil in terms of climate change, it will be a hard sell to most people. Several breakout sessions and many hallway and pub discussions were devoted to the difficulty of communicating the threats and opportunities of peak oil. It is not a message that most people want to hear.
One of the things that I love about the Midwest (confession: I am from there) is the often selfless practicality of the people. Perhaps it is because, as Garrison Keillor says, “Midwesterners are brought up to expect the worst…we call it pervasive negative anticipation.” In other words, Midwesterners are born knowing how to put up storm windows.
So it was no surprise to hear Pat Murphy of The Community Solution say, “I want to disabuse you of any idea that a technical solution is just around the corner,” and then go on to describe his program of radical retrofits to convert the nation’s existing housing stock to fully weatherized buildings that can hold heat in the cold Michigan winters. I think it is no accident that the first grassroots peak oil conferences have taken place in Michigan and in Yellow Springs, Ohio where The Community Solution is based.
After thoroughly demolishing the prospects for the continuation of business as usual, the conference got down to the nitty gritty of survival in the post-carbon era. A plethora of breakout sessions offered ideas for community currency (peak money is also a concern), sustainable agriculture, local power generation, urban gardening, high tech carpooling, recycling and community preparedness.
Megan Quinn Bachman, also of The Community Solution and co-producer of the film, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, stressed the need for community contingency planning. In Cuba, she said, a group of agronomists had prepared an organic agriculture plan that sat on the shelf until the Russian economy collapsed and oil imports were cut in half. When the crisis hit, a blueprint was in place to guide what has become a very successful transformation to sustainable, low-input agriculture.
Quinn Bachman gave many examples of local action where citizens are inserting peak oil contingency plans into municipal and county planning processes. Even if most people in a community are not aware of impending peak oil, when the crisis hits, the contingency plan will give a context and a path forward for the town or county.
It struck me that peak oil contingency plans might function as sort of a reverse “Shock Doctrine,” the theory spelled out by Naomi Klein in her book of that name. The shock doctrine refers to the violent hijacking of economies in Latin America and elsewhere by corporate interests. The technique, developed over several decades, involved US encouragement of brutal military regimes that could impose a crisis. Standing in the ready would be economists trained by Milton Friedman and his Chicago School of Economics to administer the cure – an economic shock treatment of radical privatization and slashing of social services.
Milton Friedman is now famous for saying: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” What many peak oil activists are tying to do now is to provide a school of ideas that will be “lying around” as the reality of peak oil becomes inescapable.
Peak oil will impact our mental as well as our physical reality and we should be prepared for that too. Writer Stephanie Mills told the conference that she has been dealing with “pre-traumatic stress syndrome” in anticipation of the hard times ahead. Mills became famous in 1969 for her college commencement address titled “The Future is a Cruel Hoax,” where she announced that after reading Paul Ehrlich’s book, The Population Bomb, she had vowed to refrain from childbearing. This is still a radical notion to many people.
Mills shared some thoughts about how we can retain our humanity and equilibrium in the face of economic collapse. She said she uses a mental image from ballet. When a dancer spins, she maintains her balance by focusing on a fixed point. Human goodness and natural regeneration are what we should focus on. “We will still have hearts and souls,” she said, “and the sun is rising and setting every day.”
In keeping with the values of living simply and slowing down, values that we must cultivate for the future, Stephanie Mills used the Roman phrase festina lenta – to make haste slowly – invoking the Italian lifestyle of leisurely meals, relaxed conversation with friends and rest in the shade on hot afternoons. She said, “If we are panicked or stampeded…we may not get the kinds if results that will make for a good future for the seventh generation.”
Earlier, Richard Heinberg had made a similar point. “Emphasize what is not at peak,” he said, “community, solidarity, cooperation, ingenuity, artistry, free time.”
In the Midwest and elsewhere, people are embracing these values that they hope will see us through the turbulent times ahead. As in every other era of history, our challenge and our choice will be to focus on our shared humanity and resist the impulse to greed and violence. That choice, ultimately, is our only hope.
