The realities of climate change and energy depletion mean that at some point, we will encounter situations where there is not enough of an energy resource or one of the things it enables – whether food or transport or whatever, to go around. In fact, eventually we will enounter many of these shortages. Whether they arise initially from a situation in which there are actual shortages or whether the shortages are structural problems of transport or caused by inequity and dishonesty almost doesn’t matter – we are going to run bang up against problems of access to resources.
When that happens, and assuming a functioning state, we are going to have to deal with questions of how to ration access to energy, food and other resources. This isn’t really up for debate – whether we manage to put the problem of rationing off for a while or not, we know that climate change and peak oil mean we will have to confront limits of access – indeed, we confront them now, when we ration things like food and access to housing by price.
Whether regionally or nationally, rationing is one way, probably the best way, to ensure reasonably equitable distribution – so while presently people see rationing as unimaginable, I would argue that we need to be laying the groundwork for just rationing strategies, administered equitably now – and that this isn’t actually as hard as we might think. No, it isn’t politically possible right yet – but it could become possible very rapidly. So I present a lightly revised version of a piece I wrote more than three years ago – suggesting that we need to consider strategies for the eventual implementation of resource rationing, whether at the national, state or local levels.
-SA
“Freedom From Want” poster (Norman Rockwell)Could a system of energy rationing, or even rationing of high energy goods and foods work in the US? The conventional answer is that it is politically impossible to even consider it, and that the public would never go along with it. But a closer look at the history of rationing during the second World War suggests that it might not be so unthinkable, and that in fact, rationing has historically been viewed as highly positive, pro-democratic and good public policy by the general populace. Now there are obvious historical differences between now and the past, but the framing of rationing may be more important than the exact historical context – in World War II, for example, where few real risks of famine or severe shortage existed, rationing was quite popular. Now, facing actual shortages and potential crisis, rationing is probably not as hard to sell as many people believe.
This is important because there are a number of public policy initiatives that include rationing plans. Among the most important are Richard Heinberg and Colin Campbell’s Oil Depletion Protocol, discussed in Heinberg’s book of the same title and George Monbiot’s proposal for carbon credit cards described in _Heat_. These are excellent and highly rational programs that create just responses to difficult issues, and they deserve to be given more attention than they have. I believe that in part, they have been underestimated because of the assumption that rationing is politically infeasible.
Formal rationing, whether voluntary or mandatory, is preferable to traditional capitalist rationing by price or taxation models. For genuinely scarce items for which everyone has a basic need, rationing is really the only just system. Energy, food, water and many basic consumer goods (shoes, energy lowering infrastructure adaptations, basic clothing) fall in the category of things that should not be rationed by price if they come up short. Otherwise, we risk doing irrevocable harm to the poor and those who are disproportionately unable to handle service disruptions – the elderly, the disabled and children.
Rationing by price also penalizes those who already use the least energy, by falling hardest on the poor, rather than those who use the most, and thus is less effective than formal rationing at reducing usage. It also creates strong social unrest and internal conflict, including violent conflict, at times when unity and engagement are most necessary. In short, rationing just plain makes sense.
It is also worth noting that rationing is not a distant hypothetical. State and local government imposed rationing of water has already occurred in the present and recent past in Australia and in some parts of the American southwest, in response to extended, devastating droughts. The language of rationing has begun to entering parlance in many countries again.
Understanding how rationing works within the culture is an important first step to making rational and wise rationing policy choices. If we make errors in initiating rationing, we risk turning the public against the whole procedure, and cutting rationing out of our options. On the other hand, careful public education about rationing, and framing of its implications can make rationing a political success in the face of both local energy and environmental crises and world wide ones.
One of the assumptions people make about rationing is that it was always resisted and resented. In fact, that’s not the case – generally speaking, rationing, if instituted fairly, has been viewed fairly positively, as patriotic and necessary, a chance for everyone to contribute in whatever national crisis is being averted. As Amy Bentley documents in her excellent book _Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity_, in February 1942, rationing had a two to one approval rating. More than 60 percent of those responding to a poll asking what the government ought to have done differently during the first year of World War II responded that they felt that rationing should have been instituted sooner, and the OPA, which regulated prices and rationing had extremely high approval ratings (Bentley, 23)
Women especially liked rationing. Throughout this essay, I will be talking about the history of rationing, mostly in World War II America (I will focus on applicability to the US here). Generally speaking, before rationing women were angry about shortages, frightened about nutritional deficiencies and often anxious about their own participation in the war effort, and how they would balance family needs with larger societal ones.
Rationing, with the strong message that food and domestic resource usage was a battlefield we could win, was a way of engaging women, and to a lesser extent, older men and those unable to fight (men were the largest percentage of victory gardeners). Knowing that things would be fairly distributed not only relieved women’s private fears of shortage, but enabled them to participate more in war and community work – for example, for women who took over factory work from men, knowing that they could expect to find food in the shops even at the end of the work day meant they were free to participate without fear of their children going hungry.
It is presently even more urgent that we engage women on the subject of rationing – American women make or strongly influence 90% of all purchases, cook 77% of all meals, and spend much more time with children than men do, thus influencing the not-inconsiderable purchasing and energy impact of children. In general, women schedule, organize and plan household activities more than men – that is, they are responsible for finding time for sustainable practices (this is not how it should be, merely how it is).
In the growing organic movement, according to Michael Pollan, women make 80% of all purchases (Pollan, 89). Another study estimates that women make 80% of all decisions to voluntarily cut energy usage in the household. All of these things mean that rationing will not succeed if it is positioned without regard to gender. Thus far, programs like the ODP and Carbon Credit Card model haven’t sought to use women’s communities or women as spokespeople and advocates, and that may have something to do with their lack of popular support.
Historically speaking, because most rationing has involved food and clothing, it has been focused on women, and often led by them. In fact, ration systems have often been empowering for some women – the best example being women in India during Gandhi’s revolution, but this is also true for women in the US during every major war and crisis. Even implicit discussions of energy and carbon rationing have largely focused on corporations and nations (mostly led by men) or have been presented by men, with a heavy emphasis on technical details, and, in the case of Monbiot, with a strong dismissal of the power of the personal.
But like it or not, the personal is often the currency of the daily realities of energy usage and purchasing, and much of the energy consumption, along with consumption of energy intensive items like food and goods is driven by women – they need to hear this message, and because they are not being addressed, they are tuning out.
It isn’t that people preferred rationing to no rationing, but they vastly preferred it shortages, lines and fears of inadequate nutrition. For example, in the 1970s, it was not rationing that came in for the greatest criticisms, but the long gas lines that people were forced to endure. Americans generally speaking were willing to go along with rationing during World War II and in the 1970s, and in other wars and difficult times were willing to voluntarily boycott, embargo and self ration goods. What they don’t like is to have some people get things and others not – this is widely perceived as anti-democratic. This notion was reinforced by much US and British advertising – it was patriotic and democratic to use only your fair share, fascist and anti-democratic to buy on black markets, price gouge or hoard. The most important thing was that we all be in it together.
Writing about the American Revolution, the historian Timothy Breen coined the term “Rituals of non-consumption” to describe the ways that in a culture of constraint, people derive satisfaction, power and pleasure from not buying things, or living within strictures. He argues in “Consumer Virtues in Revolutionary America” that in fact, the American Revolution was in part a revolution of buying habits.
Extending Breen’s idea to the present, this idea of ritualized non-consumption and consumer revolution becomes a powerful way of drawing connections between the radical change required for a low carbon, low fossil fuels society, and between the founding political event of America (at least for Americans . In fact, most wars have involved radical changes in consumer culture and behavior, including new communal cultures dedicated to enabling change and encouraging compliance.
For example, during the American revolution, British woolen products, cloth and other materials were embargoed by American patriots. Despite the fact that Americans had been discouraged from sheep farming and wood industry, almost overnight a homespun culture grew up, with thousands of women now producing their own fabrics and wool. In the northern states during the civil war, a similar embargo on cotton led to women making homespun again out of wool.
Not buying things is one of the most radical acts a community can engage in, and a powerful one. During times of war and crisis, leaders have always asked their constituents to refrain from using or buying something, or to replace it with homemade goods. And the results of these acts can be deeply powerful – the enormously power East India Company, for example, was driven into a crisis from which it never recovered economically by American boycotts during the Revolution.
During World War I, there was no formal rationing in the US (although there was all over Europe), but average citizens instituted voluntary rationing – in _A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove_ Laura Schenone records that Herbert Hoover believed formal rationing unnecessary, that in fact, the public would do it for him out of patriotism without the expense of a formal program, and he was quite correct.
“…Hoover urged, begged and shamed American women into voluntarily conserving food. ‘Food will win the war,’ he proclaimed. His sacred mantra was repeated over and over again on billboards, posters, and pamphlets, and disseminated by state and local governments, libraries, schools, colleges, businesses, women’s clubs of every stripe and even chain stores. A master of the media, Hoover also got newspapers and magazines to scold women on a daily basis to save more food for the sake of liberty and democracy…Wouldn’t American women conserve for the sake of their starving sisters across the Atlantic?”
And, in fact, American women responded enthusiastically. They cut food waste by 20%, reduced consumption of dairy products and meat dramatically, even formed “vigilance committees” to keep an eye on communal garbage cans for waste. 14 million “liberty gardens” were planted, and American women initiated “meatless days” and “wheatless days” that would, during World War II, be made mandatory. Millions of women participated, with no more incentive than that it was patriotic.
That said, the end net results in food saved were not as substantial as non-voluntary programs, but the active participation of households in WWI served as a model for the more-effective WWII mandate.
Herbert Hoover was a political conservative who believed very strongly that conservation of resources for the war effort should be voluntary. I’m not a political conservative, but it should be noted that it isn’t merely conservatives who worry about handing the power to ration over to governments. In fact, the moderate success of Hoover’s model might be an important lesson for those of us engaged in voluntary reduction models – a way of resisting government beaurocracy and interference is to ration voluntarily sufficiently that external controls need not be extended.
And I must note here that despite the fact that Schenone clearly disapproves of Hoover’s paternalism, Hoover’s success should point out the possibilities of grassroots self-rationing. The fact that less than 100 years ago, an entire nation voluntarily went on rationing without any more government support than advertising should give us a vision of what is possible from a purely voluntary movement. It is well within the realm of possibility that a self-imposed model rationing program that grew popular enough (think the Compact, Craggers, or, dare I say, even our own Riot for Austerity ) might become the blueprint for a national program, with national support. At a minimum, such programs represent not just models, but existing social structures through which to transmit education material and support for those engaged, programs that might be put to use by governments in times of rationing. This is something to think about.
It is also essential to recognize that movements towards self-rationing indicate that rationing itself is not automatically viewed as an evil. In fact, often it is perceived as a meaningful way to make change. This also gives further evidence that the oft asserted claim that voluntary conservation can’t lead anywhere is wrong – what was once done can be done again. Instead, this provides a powerful contrary model of privately led, voluntary programs. That said, however, even privately led programs were made much easier by government *assistance* and to make meaningful reductions on a large scale, government must either lead or follow, it cannot ignore the problem.
In 1942, the Roosevelt administration instituted mandatory rationing in the US. Some items, like meat, shoes and coffee, were rationed because of genuine shortages of the item – increased demand, reduced transport availability, or producers gone to war were among the reasons that these items were not often unavailable in shops, and rationing ensured that spot shortages would stop, that those who were not free to stand in line would still get their fair share. Others, like gas were rationed not because there was any gas shortage, but because a study panel determined that gas rationing was the best way to save tires, and rubber sources were being held by the Japanese. Some proposed rationing programs were dismissed, including rubber rationing for girdles. Women overwhelmingly protested this call for the end of the girdle, arguing that the back support provided by foundation garments was essential to their productivity. They won.
Other items were de facto rationed – factories were prohibited from making refrigerators, new cars and other luxury items, and there were simply none in stores. Again, American consumers were told it was their patriotic duty to invest their money in war bonds and other patriotic activities, rather than luxury goods. There was surprisingly little controversy on these points.
In 1941, there were real fears of shortages, inadequate nutrition, and hunger to match that experienced by much of Europe during the war. By 1942, Russians and Scandinavians really were starving to death, and the British were experiencing desperate food shortages. Americans were shipping food abroad, and being asked to share what they had with millions of other hungry people – to consume less so that others could have more.
A famous poster of the period showed a middle class white man, his wife and two children at a table, joined by two American soldiers, and a stereotypical Russian, Englishman and Mexican in serape. The American family is reassured that they will get the majority of American food, but are told that we must make room at our table for our allies. “Don’t begrudge it – but produce and conserve, share and play square with food.” We have a strong precedent, then, from both World War I and II for a rationing that isn’t simply based upon local shortages, but upon a world-wide mutual interest and concern.
Americans, for example, have in the past been willing to make do with less so that others will be less hungry. Again, this is a powerful iconography, one that argues strongly against the notion that only personal suffering would make the case for rationing. This is a strategy that might well be deployed by advocates of the ODP and Carbon rationing programs – the notion that Americans have to do with less to preserve the lives of their allies is not merely rhetoric any more – with global warming and the tragic consequences of fuel crises and the food crisis for poor nations, this might, in many ways be a more compelling argument than peak oil itself for a national rationing program.
In fact, in 1946, shortly after rationing was finally lifted, when it became obvious that 800 million people world wide were in danger of starvation because of disrupted food supplies and war related crop failures, more than 70% of Americans, in three separate polls, indicated that they would prefer to have rationing reinstated. Historians make a great deal of the orgy of consumerism of the 1950s, perceived as a response to war rationing. But it is perhaps even more significant that at the end of the war, most Americans were not only willing but enthusiastic about cutting back on their own new supplies of meats and sweets so that others would not go hungry.
Bentley quotes a Mrs. E.H. Gembel as writing to Truman, “Sir, we support any measure necessary to provide for the starving people of the world. Get tough.” (Bentley, 146). In fact, it was the US government, led by Herbert Hoover again, that resisted citizen calls for rationing. Women especially expressed their willingness to go back to rationing and eat less in order to serve the hungry. Again, addressing discussion of rationing to women may bear more fruit than discussing it before congress.
This flies in the face of the oft assumed notion that Americans would not be subject to arguments that are mostly about other people’s needs. Now it is true that we live in a different era – but that works in more ways than one. We are, of course, less accustomed to privation. But we also have much more leeway to give things up. Again, what has been done can often be done again.
Four Freedom posters (US postage stamps 1993)
The iconographic World War II poster was Norman Rockwell’s famous “Freedom from Want” poster, reproduced since in a thousand places. Rockwell created a series of posters to illustrate Roosevelt’s four freedoms that should apply world wide. The Office of War Information, in charge of propaganda posters initially rejected Rockwell’s images, which are among the most famous American paintings in the world now. Rockwell’s images of “Freedom of Speech” “Freedom of Worship” and “Freedom from Fear” are among his best work.
The “Freedom from Want” poster was more troubling and controversial in many ways – American allies criticized it because the image of the festival meal with giant roast turkey on it seemed a slap in the face to those going hungry, to say that, as Bentley puts it, “The scene illuminated the ‘inalienable right’ of Americans to eat their familiar and abundant foods in their traditional ways, and not just at Thanksgiving. (60).” But the image can be read another way – that what was powerful about Rockwell’s illustration was his capacity to invoke the stability of the festival in times of restriction. That is, the image of Thanksgiving and the unified family (everyone, including the young men are home to eat here) is the reminder that restriction and the festival can exist simultaneously, indeed, that one can be made possible by the other. This too is an important message – instead of offering absolute restrictions, the notion that one conserves to celebrate, that careful husbandry enables generosity and abundance is important here was well. The advantage of tradable rationing systems is that they allow people to make conscious and free choices to use a fair share as they prefer.
Despite the disproportionate emphasis given to the famous “Freedom from Want” poster, it is important to remember that Rockwell’s dinner image appeared in context with the other three posters both in its initial publication in the _Saturday Evening Post_ and later in many reproductions. Thus, Thanksgiving, that in many households begins with a prayer is juxtaposed with images of people praying in the “Freedom to Worship” image, with the blue collar man who speaks up at the town meeting in “Freedom of Speech”, and with the mother and father tucking their children safely into bed together in “Freedom from Fear.” That is, these things are associated with each other – food rationing, not explicitly mentioned but in the psychological background, and its commitment to fairness and thus abundance for everyone is linked to democratic participation, to religious freedom and its connections to community life, and also to security. Add to this posters such as the little girl canning at her mother’s side, saying “We’ll have lots to eat this winter, Mommy, won’t we?”
Thus we see the context that rationing must derive from – it isn’t merely about scarcity, it is about enabling the creation of a moral context for us to eat and live within. Rationing advocates have the chance, if they are wise enough to take it, to frame rationing as a moral response to insufficiency, and to link it to other justice movements, and to imbue the act of conservation with a larger, collectivized meaning.
In fact, the whole notion that rationing is about democracy, equality, and sharing – not just with your literal neighbors but with your neighbors around the world is what made rationing acceptable, even preferable to other systems, such as price based rationing. Millions of American homemakers signed a pledge abjuring black markets, promising not to buy from shopkeepers who price gouged, and swearing to turn in ration coupons for their goods. The message, both promulgated by the state and argued by women themselves was that their willingness to play fair meant a shorter war, a more democratic system and a greater degree of justice. Women were justifiably proud of their willingness to ration.
There was anger over rationing – some shortages were greeted with frustration, particularly coffee. And there was a great deal of resentment over unequal treatment. For example, gas rationing was a particular point of contention, both in the US and Britain, where often political figures and people of local influence were able to get larger rations. Anyone who doesn’t grasp the anger directed at Al Gore or Tony Blair for their failure to conserve when ordinary people, particularly blue collar people, are being pressured to do by economic reality ought to take a serious look at this phenomenon. Rationing can be perceived as just, fair and reasonable, but only if the exceptions are minimized, and limited to the truly needy.
World War II was remarkable because of the widespread, egalitarian participation. Everyone’s sons went to war, not just the poor. Male Hollywood celebrities enlisted. All four Roosevelt sons went to war and the White House table went without sugar and coffee. While hardly perfect, even racial segregation was to some degree reduced and the stage set for greater change by the desegregation (fiercely resisted) of the armed forces. Women of all classes participated, if not perfectly equally, then in a way that marked radical change, in war work and endured largely the same restrictions. Famous women like Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall ran Stage Door Canteens, not only performing for soldiers, but making them sandwiches, washing the dishes themselves and dancing with the soldiers.
It wasn’t that all hierarchy or inequality broke down – far from it. In fact, some labor gains were lost, and the Japanese internment camps represented a remarkable instance of simply hideous repression. But most people were bound by similar restrictions, and to an astounding degree, the restrictions were obeyed. Rich families as well as poor went without meat, or ate offal. Rich people as well as poor bought their shoes with ration coupons. In 1942, when a poll asked whether the government should ration items that *might* be in short supply in the future, 73 percent voted for immediate rationing to avert shortages and to increase the fairness of distribution. More than communal culture, the abiding concern was *fairness* – restrictions were acceptable, but they had to be applied across the board.
All of this should show that any rationing program must emphasize fairness and democratic equality – there need to be few exceptions, and the more people who share in deprivation, the more unifying the overall effect. Celebrities should be enlisted, and application must be regardless of class, race, gender and political affiliation. Environmental activists right now often make the case that their flying or traveling “enables others to use less energy” – but for every person we influence directly, another person is alienated because our message doesn’t match our personal habits. Those who wish to advocate for these kinds of programs must lead the way personally – that means getting off the planes, and finding other ways to lead, except in the most urgent exceptions.
We know how deeply important fairness is to this discussion, as China, Russia and India have all announced they won’t do anything about global warming until the rich nations do. The rule about fairness being an absolute policy applies across national borders, it seems – and justifiably so. Anyone who proposes to argue for rationing must argue for as just a system as possible – and must model that rationing. Hypocrisy gets us nowhere.
Along with egalitarian applications, education was absolutely essential to rationing in every era. Recipes for meatless, wheatless and sugarless dishes flew down from national administrations, out of women’s magazines and from neighbor to neighbor. Suggestions for how to build looms and make substitutes for tea and sugar were exchanged by women during the American revolution, and ways of preserving food without salt were passed through women’s teas in the South during the civil war.
Patterns for socks for soldiers, new card games that could substitute for going out driving or taking vacations – all of this was absolutely essential, for several reasons. First of all, because it helped people find ways to conserve and make do. But also because exchange is a central way we interact with one another – in a conserving society, where gifts and luxury foods are restricted, the exchange of suggestions, advice, kindness and mutual support substitute for goods and luxuries. When those things are taken away, the loss is felt more acutely.
Generally speaking, programs with the greatest success used *existing* social and community structures to transmit not just the requirement to conserve, but also classes and suggestions as to how to do it better. Such material was best absorbed within one’s community – during World War II, attempts were made to offer nutrition classes to working class women, but the economic gap between them and the nutritionists was too great to engender good results. Eventually, a highly successful program of paying “block captains” to take classes and transmit knowledge within their neighborhoods and communities was undertaken, and immigrants, African Americans and working class people learned from their neighbors.
One of the important emphases of rationing was freedom of choice – the point system, applied to most foods, enabled people to choose how to use their rations. The US government, according to Bentley, made heavy emphasis of the link between the freedom to choose how to use your limited assets and democratic freedom.
Both the ODP and Carbon Credit Cards are tradable rationing systems – politically speaking, this is likely to appeal to capitalist cultural assumptions, and can be linked to freedom, and also to justice for ordinary working people. The fact that ordinary people already use less energy than the rich is potentially a political selling point for those interested in appealing to those “squeezed” by things like lack of health insurance and increased food costs. The dual emphasis – that tradable rationing can improve the economic stability of lower middle and lower class households and that people are still free to choose how to use their energy should be strongly emphasized, and linked to democracy.
We need to make clear that the question is not “will we ration” but “will we ration by price, or will we ensure everyone gets some?” Any system of rationing needs to draw very clearly a picture of the alternative – of shortages, lines, hunger, poverty, abandoned cars. These are real consequences, and rationing should be portrayed as the collective, fair, and above-all, anti-elitist option.
For example, Victory Garden movement reiterated that what we do not buy, the ritual of non-consumption is even more important than what we do buy, and it did it while valuing anti-elitist skills such is agriculture and physical strength. The movement cut across racial and class lines. In parts of the south more than 90% of African Americans, often angry at their government in other respects, grew Victory gardens. The call for national victory gardeners was phrased as a form of participation in the war effort as essential as military itself. In a poem engraved on a statue dedicated to Victory Gardeners, we learn,
“Not he alone, nor the family that gathers at his table –
But all men everywhere, fighting for Freedom’s cause,
Are richer for his work.
For the food he does not buy is theirs to have…
In camps, in ships on every bloody sea,
On battle fronts where food is life itself….
And in those dark and hungry lands now being freed –Where food is more than life…
Where food means tyranny’s long hoped for end.
The seeds of Victory are planted in his garden….”
The poem is heavy handed, of course, but it links ordinary acts, like daily gardening, placed in the context of rationing, to resistance to tyranny, and makes them available to ordinary people. These kinds of links are tremendously powerful rhetorically – more powerful, I would suggest, than the simple statement of necessity or any fear mongering. People are willing to endure remarkable things in order to feel powerful and valued. A rationing movement must make it clear that the consequence of participation is that you are doing something important. Fortunately, that’s true.
Many people can be persuaded to view their ordinary actions, including their ordinary actions of conservation, and acceptance of rationing as acts of resistance and power. Ultimately, selling rationing will be about de-emphasizing what you don’t have and about emphasizing the returns – particularly the returns in terms of social goods. Particularly emphasizing that individuals are acting in powerful ways by resisting is important – for example, in discussing Carbon Rationing, George Monbiot is somewhat dismissive of personal solutions. But to make rationing politically palatable, it must be represented as an independent way of resisting, shared by everyone. There is, of course, an inherent contradiction between these two things, and yet it is possible for them to function towards both ends in truth and in representation.
It is important to note that the recognition that acts of non-consumption are important and powerful is one that is extremely scary to corporate powers. All through World War II, Doris Kearns Goodwin documents that the rights of consumers and the rights of corporations were in constant tension. In fact, members of the OPA were appointed specifically to represent consumers against corporate authority. In some cases, consumers found that they were newly empowered to resist corporate authority. For example, a group of activist women in Syracuse, NY challenged the dairy industry on rising milk prices. When one of the leaders was derisively asked “Have you ever produced milk?” The woman in question stood up and announced in public that yes, indeed she had, that she had several children and had produced quite a quantity of milk, and moreover, that as a mother of soldiers and a war worker, she had a right to resist price gouging.
In this case, a movement towards non-consumption had the undesirable (to corporations and many government figures) effect of empowering consumers, and encouraging them to resist corporatism. While this is by no means a certain result, a growing movement towards better, safer, local food has the potential to reduce corporate power in all spheres, simply by the fact that rationin brings acts of consumption explicitly into the political sphere. Once people begin to see that, this extends into other areas of their lives. Framing energy rationing as a logical continuation of consumer movements like the slow food movement is likely to help bring public opinion around to accepting rationing as a structure.
All of this was predicated upon, of course, a reasonable threat of shortage and crisis. But such things hardly need manufacturing – events are heading us steadily in that direction. Experiences of shortage and rationing by price will become more and more normal. And as we have seen, rationing has its virtues, particularly over shortages and unequal distribution, or traditional rationing-by-price. We have reasons to ration already. What we lack is a full articulation of the benefits of rationing.
It does not seem unlikely to me that a case for rationing energy (a la the ODP) and carbon emissions could be made compellingly within the next few years, in response to emerging shortages and inequities. Existing self rationing programs could be expanded, and should think carefully about how they might be adapted into regional, state or even national programs.
Models will be needed, and existing community structures will be required. Getting outside the internet and outside of the current political parameters of peak oil and climate change will be important – there are large numbers of people who simply won’t be involved with something they perceive as elitist or leftist in origin, but who would be willing to ration for reasons of patriotism, and because their neighbors are doing it. So one of the most important things voluntary rationers can do is bring rationing into their churches, to their local republican party, to their neighbors – not in a threatening way, but in a celebratory one. Support groups to help people cut emissions, reduction picnics and parties, recipe exchanges, techniques and cool tricks, sermons and library talks, movies and parties – these are the exchange medium of change. More importantly, these communal activities become a substitute for what is given up.
Rationing is both possible and potentially quite palatable, as long as it occurs in the context of public education and strong connections to current events. Rationing will probably eventuall emerge as democratic – much more so than price rationing, and making a good case for rationing is essential to good public policy.
Sharon
