In the last couple of posts on this subject I had a look at some of the main issues and concepts that need to be addressed if we are to begin to navigate towards a sustainable alternative. While rising energy prices capture everyone’s attention, the overwhelming response is on supply side solutions: the oil is running out, what will we use instead?
The short-sightedness of both public and debate and official policy is most clearly seen in the concern for “keeping things going the way we are used to” for as long as possible: any suggestion that we are facing collapse or a serious unraveling of the economy is attacked as being “gloomer-doomer”. I guess if people had a little more time to stop and smell the roses, and were not so caught up in the rat-race and trying to pay the mortgage etc… they might be able to stop long enough to realize that growth cannot continue indefinitely and that it is not in anyone’s interest for it to do so.
The impression I get is that, even amongst many who recognise the limits to the current growth-based system and its inevitable demise, were there to be a major new oil discovery, say, it would just be pissed up against the wall like most of the rest of the 55million-year legacy of carbon fuels have been in the pursuit of an unsustainable dream which is inherently destructive and will come to an end one day any way.
Kunstler has written a post recently expressing his frustration with even his fellow-greenies who seem fixated on finding ways to continue the present system but with hybrid vehicles and less pollution- this would be equivalent to Holmgren’s “Green-tech stability”, the second of his “Energy Futures”.
The problem with this pathway is that a society at such a high level of energy consumption is inherently unstable- the human system was relatively stable for thousands of years at a low-population low-energy base prior to the oil age; but we now expect more per-capita energy consumption than emperors could have dreamt of in the past. Pierre Chomat, in his book “Oil Addiction- A World in Peril” claims that a plane load of Californians flying to Egypt to see the Great Pyramids would consume more energy than it took to build the Pyramids…
This seems belong the ability of the mainstream or the media: it is just too much of a conceptual leap to start saying: maybe we need a change of lifestyle, a change of direction altogether.
So we need to spend this time explaining the facts and figures of peak oil and resource depletion in general; we need to look at the Laws of Thermodynamics and point out that if anyone really had managed to find a way beyond them in a practical sense, we wouldn’t be so hung up on the internal combustion engine; and that turning around the system that has built up during the oil age will take a long time, like turning an oil-tanker- you need a couple of miles advance warning just to give the order to slow down. And we are not slowing down. We are not even sounding the alarm.
Eventually, however, if you really think these things through, there is only one suitable response:
Powerdown- Use Less Energy
“It is not the precise timing of Peak that is significant, but the shape of the inexorable decline curve the other side”.- Colin Campbell
Just to sum up so far and show how we get to this point:
1)Our culture and economy is extraordinarily dependent on an ongoing supply of oil and natural gas;
2)This supply is drying up. Oil discovery peaked in 1964 and we are now using oil 3-4 times as fast as we are finding new fields;
3)This isnt just an oil peak- it is an all-time energy peak for humanity. Renewables and even nuclear are fundamentally dependent on a functioning fossil-fuel base. With currently only 5% of global energy supplies coming from renewables and a lead-in time of probably decades needed to switch to any new fuel source, we can be sure that the growth economy is coming to an end. Resistance is futile! Any attempts to keep the unsustainable system going for a little bit longer will only make the crash worse when it comes.
Therefore we can conclude:
1)Whatever we do, we will have less energy in the future;
2)A mass public education campaign is urgently needed;
3)Solutions are to be found by creating small-scale, local communities;
4)Each community needs to work towards self-reliance in food, energy and essential trades and services.
We should be investing the still high-quantities of fossil energy that we have to invest in infrastructure that will require very low energy to run; that we need live more locally in every way possible; and that we need to re-invent the economy to be in line with natural systems that are inherently limited by available energy.
On an individual level, one of the first pieces of advice would be to Get Out of Debt. Although some say that when the crash comes everyone will be in the same boat and the banks wont be able to repossess everyone, this is a high-risk strategy, and it is unlikely we will be able to command the incomes we are used to for very far into the future. Rising energy prices are already putting the squeeze on many small businesses and we need to plan our livelihoods to be able to adapt to the near-future where many products will be redundant or simply too expensive. We will be moving into a “lean economy” in which waste will have to be curtailed and goods and services extraneous to meeting our basic needs eliminated.
So we might consider taking stock of our current situation and write a Personal Powerdown Pathway in which we plan to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels in every way we can and plan to adapt our livelihoods for a low-energy future. What skills do we have that might be useful in such a future? What goods or services could I offer the local community (forget about the Global Market Place!)? What do I need to put in place NOW while I still have access to fossil energy that will help support a more sustainable lifestyle in the future?
On a community basis, this could develop into an Energy descent Plan. This would include inventories of skills and services that are available in the locality, natural resources, demographics (how many people? how much land?); options for renewables; and a time-line to follow. A community group could be established to drive this process, as with the growing number of Transition Towns groups in Britain and Ireland. The Willits Economic Localization Project in California have also done a great deal of work on this level and have some really useful documents available.
A common objection to the Powerdown Alternative is that “people are very innovative; you are painting too gloomy and negative a picture. We will think of something, we always do”.
I would agree with this. Humans are persistently innovative and inventive and in the coming downward curve of Energy Descent there will be many, many exciting and novel inventions and new discoveries.
But none of these will overcome the laws of thermodynamics. None of them will allow an unsustainable system to continue indefinitely. Such innovations will be in the field of small-scale renewables and organic food production; they will be in the areas of passive-solar design and ergonomic hand-tools; but perhaps the most important ones will be in the realm of new ways of community governance and ways of relating and organizing ourselves.
