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From the Pump to the Plate: Rethinking & relocalizing our food and fuel systems
Julian Darley, HopeDance
‘Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night’. It looks like the severe food problems long predicted by some agriculture, climate and peak analysts are arriving more or less on cue, with tragic results. Some of the problems are more obviously connected to the growing energy crisis, some apparently not. But the underlying drivers of all the problems are energy and population, and that means there is something the West can do about it, provided we make the right connexions between our dinner plates, the gas pump and plight of the global poor.
… it’s about all of us and our clever but fragile complex supply chains. The first analytical questions we need to ask are where does our food come from and how is it produced. The answers invariably involved large amounts of oil and gas, whether for diesel in tractors, oil and gas in chemical additives, natural gas in nitrogen fertilizer, or the immense quantities of energy used in storing and transporting food. When we analyze our food more holistically, from a systems perspective, we find some embarrassing truths, in particular that our personal and public transport choices affect global food prices and availability.
… One of the most important – if unwelcome – ideas that peak oil analysis can bring to supply chain thinking is that of intermittent spot shortages: the realization that it isn’t just high prices that will cause problems, but actual breaks in supply. And food supply chain breakdown is happening now from Haiti through Senegal to Australia. People and animals are dying because of it, right now.
… I suggested that we can do something about this situation, but surely that is absurd? We can’t send rain to Australia and we can’t refill the oil fields of Texas, but we can think about our own food and fuel supply chain, and by making that more secure and resilient we can directly and indirectly help those farther away because what works for us can work for others, namely reducing our own food-energy consumption and producing at least some of our food and energy locally – part of what we call relocalization.
Julian Darley is founder and director of Post Carbon Institute and Global Public Media. He is the author of High Noon for Natural Gas: the New Energy Crisis (2004). Julian has an MSc in Environment and Social Research from University of Surrey in the UK, an MA in Journalism and Communications from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in Music & Russian. Julian currently lives in Sebastopol, California.
(1 May 2008)
Also at Global Public Media.
Rob Hopkins: Eco Worrier
Thomas Lane, Building (UK)
The era of cheap oil is over and our economic system is doomed, believes environmentalist Rob Hopkins. So is he gloomy? Not a bit of it. It’s such a tremendous opportunity.
2 May 2010. The world wakes up to news that the United States Air Force has started bombing Iran. With its country deep in recession, the US government needed something to divert attention from its domestic problems and Iran’s rapidly developing nuclear programme provided the perfect opportunity. But the plan quickly starts to unravel. A furious Iran suspends all oil exports to the West, as does its ally Russia. Anti-US riots in Saudia Arabia force its government to follow suit, a pattern that is swiftly repeated across the Arab world.
The oil shortage sees prices rapidly quadruple to nearly $500 a barrel. The price of all basic commodities rocket and stabbings at garages become a daily occurrence in queues for rationed fuel. A protest lobby calls for fuel duty to be scrapped, then blocks motorways when the government says no. The resultant panic-buying clears supermarket shelves and thousands are left without food. As fear grips the nation, one person remains calm. His name is Rob Hopkins and he lives in Totnes, south Devon. After all, he’s been expecting this for years.
This scenario may be fictional, but it has echoes of the 1973 oil shock. “There is a feeling we are coming to that time again,” says Hopkins who, at 39, just about remembers it first time round.
And he is well prepared if we do run out of fuel. Already his office, above a shop on Fore Street in Totnes, is barely heated and he wears a thick woollen jumper to keep warm.
(2 May 2008)
They don’t just shop local in Totnes – they have their very own currency
Rob Sharp, UK Independent
If you were to nip down to Devon’s Totnes market on a Saturday looking to buy some spelt flour pancakes, crêpes or falafels, then you might just encounter Lou Brown, who is a remarkably fine cook. But she has another, non-culinary distinction. Unlike most businesses in the country, Brown does not deal in currency with a picture of the Queen’s head on it. No, instead, her change features an image much closer to home. The town where she lives.
Brown, along with thousands of her fellow residents in this colourful south-west retreat, uses Totnes pounds: notes printed and traded locally (and decorated with a sepia depiction of the town’s main thoroughfare). The idea for the pound – used in 70 businesses round these parts – was introduced a year ago, to promote links between local businesses while reducing reliance on big business. The aim is to keep money circulating within the town’s local economy. If people are encouraged to buy local produce, the thinking goes, it will help to cut down on food – and trade – miles and also help to strengthen community relations and links with local producers.
The concept has proved so popular that a cluster of other towns around the country are initiating copycat schemes.
(1 May 2008)
Also at Transition Culture.
Author McKibben assesses current state of environmentalism, urges local consumerism (video and transcript)
Monica Trauzzi, OnPoint, E&E TV
In his new book, “American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau,” environmentalist Bill McKibben collects famous pieces of environmental literature — pieces that reflect the growing and changing movement and that have inspired him in his advocacy.
During today’s OnPoint, McKibben discusses the book and assesses the current state of environmentalism. He gives his thoughts on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill and discusses several grassroots campaigns he is involved in that seek to spur individuals to act on climate change.
(1 May 2008)
Natural born survivors
Harriet Green, Guardian
Rising oil prices, global food shortages and the economic crisis are proof for many survivalists that society is on the brink of meltdown. But are their predictions all gloom and doom – or a chance to create new communities?
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For three years, my husband has talked about taking to the hills. About buying a smallholding on Exmoor where, with our four-year-old daughter, we can safely survive the coming storm – famine, pestilence and a total breakdown of society. I would wait for his lectures to finish, then return to my own interests. I had no time for the end of civilisation. As an editor on a glossy magazine until a few months ago, I was too busy. There was always a new Anya Hindmarch bag to buy, or a George Clooney premiere to attend.
But recently, I’ve wavered. Much of what he has been predicting has come true: global economic meltdown, looming environmental disaster, a sharp rise in oil and food prices that has already led to the rationing of rice in the US, and riots in dozens of countries worldwide.
This week, the details got scarier. The UN warned of a global food crisis, like a “silent tsunami”, while Opec predicts that oil, which broke through $100 (£50) a barrel for the first time a few weeks ago, may soon top $200.
… I’ve started to worry. Is my family prepared for the worst? I’m reasonably nimble at the computer keyboard, and a whiz with the hairdryer, but otherwise pretty useless. I’ve barely made or mended anything in my life. Thankfully my husband is three years ahead of me, and – with help from the many self-sufficiency manuals he’s collected – has evolved (or regressed) into a creature from the past: he’s got an allotment, has turned our garden into some kind of nursery for innumerable apple trees grown from pips (farewell, ornamental rose) and recently started knitting. He even has plans for a composting loo, in the event that water supplies fail.
… Aside from climate change, what underpins all this gloom is a belief that we have nearly reached, or already passed, peak oil – the point at which global demand for oil permanently outstrips dwindling supplies, causing prices to shoot up. And not just the price of oil, but the price of virtually everything else too, because our lives depend on ever-increasing amounts of cheap energy and synthetic petroleum byproducts.
… [Rob Hopkins of Transition Totnes] does possess survival skills, and he thinks they’re important. “Bushcraft training is very useful. It’s very empowering, learning to eat the things that are around you.” But there are other things we need to learn too. Indeed, a key part of the transition-town process is what he calls the “great reskilling”. “We no longer have many of the basic skills our grandparents took for granted. One of the most useful things a transition initiative can do is to make training widely available in a range of these skills.”
What skills does he have in mind? Bicycle maintenance? Home energy efficiency? Basic food growing? “You need to look at the skills people used to have that might still be appropriate, as well as looking at the skills people have now. Speaking to older people in the area around Totnes, it turns out that, for example, they all knew how to darn their socks. I know very few people my age who know how to do that, and it is a skill that, once we get beyond the throwaway society, we may well need again. Hence the sock-darning workshop we are running.”
Sock darning, eh? It’s not as glamorous as those George Clooney screenings, and it lacks the superficial appeal of a hoard of rice, or gold coins. But I’m pretty sure my husband hasn’t tried it yet, and in the spirit of amiably competitive self-sufficiency that I’m confident will soon become mainstream, I have decided that sock-darning may well be the survival skill for me.
(2 May 2008)
Richard Heinberg on Resilient Communities (YouTube video)
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
A while ago I wrote about Richard Heinberg’s main presentation at the Findhorn Positive Energy course, which introduced his idea of Resilient Communities Action Plans. His talk has just been posted ontoYouTube and you can see it below;
[YouTube at original – talk is in six parts)
(2 May 2008)
Written version is posted on Energy Bulletin.
