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Energy Descent Pathways – Post Carbon Cities, Transition Towns and Eco Villages
Graham Strouts and Davie Philip, Zone 5
s is the introduction to week of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV
The concept of “energy descent” was first proposed by Howard Odum who recognized that the human economy is governed by the Laws of thermodynamics and energy and resource availability.
Odum believed that if we were guided by geologists and ecologists as much as by economists, we would be able to safely navigate our way across the inevitable peaking of world oil production and find “a prosperous way down”.
David Holmgren drew on Odum’s thesis in creating the permaculture concept in the 1970s, and more recently proposed a set of “Energy Future Scenarios” to allow us to peak into the future and gain an image of where we may be heading.
“I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.”
-Davie Holmgren
… Transition Towns In response to converging challenges of an unraveling global economy, peak oil and climate change, some pioneering communities in the UK, Ireland and beyond are adopting the Transition process. These initiatives are taking an integrated and inclusive approach to increase our ability to look after itself into the long term and to adapt to the shocks that energy, food, economic and climate crises will bring. Networks have been established in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and most recently in the United States. The role of these Transition Networks is to accelerate change through inspiring, encouraging, and supporting communities as they consider how they will build resilience in the face of these challenges.
The 12th step in the Transition process is to ‘Create an Energy Descent Action Plan EDAP’. This plan is the culmination of the learning, the networking and the work done so far by a Transition Initiative’s activities.
(26 April 2009)
The Pocket Guide to Surviving the Next Great Depression
L.C. Larson, Great Depression Guide (book website)
… The Pocket Guide to Surviving the Next Great Depression provides practical suggestions on how you can deal with economic disaster. It is designed for empowering you to make good decisions in challenging times. It includes tips, tools, and information about preparedness, in addition to information on what to expect upon reaching the next Great Depression.
… Chapters
1. Introduction
2. How You’ll Know You’re in the Next Great Depression
3. What to Expect in another Great Depression
4. Stop Spending, Start Saving Now
5. Downsize to Simplicity
6. Avoiding and Managing Foreclosure
7. Stop Expecting New When Used Will Do
8. Eat Right When the Budget’s Tight
9. Growing a Garden and Exploiting Natural Food Resources
10. Befriend The Neighbors
11. Clothing
12. Mentally Preparing for Tough Times
13. The Gift of Giving
14. Going Off the Grid
15. Staying Employed Longer
16. How to Make Money When Nobody’s Hiring
17. Learn the Trade of Trade
18. Depression Era Recipes
19. Books Worth Their Weight in Gold During Another Great Depression
20. Sites to Surf
… About the author
L.C. Larson is a Minnesota-based entrepreneur and survivalist. For more than a decade he has practiced and taught both wilderness and urban survival skills. Larson has participated in FEMA Emergency Management Institute ISP training and also currently serves on several Workforce Council initiatives. In addition, he has been a successful businessman with coverage in numerous prominent publications, including Entrepreneur magazine. He lives in Minnesota.
(April 2009)
Recommended by EB contributor Jim Barton.
Beyond Peak Oil and Climate Change – a breakthrough
Marcin Gerwin, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
With the invention of the efficient CO2 to methanol process a new opportunity has appeared for reaching a breakthrough deal at climate conference in Copenhagen this year. We finally have the technology needed to reduce CO2 emissions fast. How can we replace oil for the benefit of the environment and the people?
When plants grow they convert CO2 and water into carbohydrates with the help of sunlight. This process is called photosynthesis. For many years scientists tried to mimic photosynthesis to produce methanol. It wasn’t easy. The main challenge was to design a catalyst that would allow the whole process to work. And it’s exactly a right catalyst that was recently discovered by professor Dobieslaw Nazimek from Poland. His team also found the way to provide the optimum conditions for production of methanol from CO2 and water. If their method was applied on a commercial scale, it could allow the production of methanol at 3 cents per liter (or US$0.11 per gallon) (1). Methanol can be used directly as a fuel for cars or it can be further processed to create regular gasoline or diesel (e.g. in the Mobil methanol-to-gasoline process). And it would be a clean fuel with no sulfur at all. Artificial photosynthesis can be also used to make fuel for electricity generation, heating or cooking. If designed with the cradle to cradle principles and introduced in a socially desirable way, it could provide a meaningful solution for the post oil future and help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Following the plant’s trail
How does the artificial photosynthesis work?
… It will take another year of research to design the large scale facility in Poland. If there is sufficient funding for the project, the first fuel for sale could be produced within 2 years. Professor Nazimek insists that the whole project should be funded from public money and for the benefit of people. This technology is already patented and some details are to be revealed in a publication later this year (3).
What is seminal about this method is that CO2 emissions can be reused. This creates a whole new situation. From unwanted waste from coal-fired plants, CO2 becomes a commodity.
… Life without oil
Though peak oil is certainly a challenge, it is also as an opportunity. It is like someone hitting you on the head: “Hey, wake up! What are you doing?”. Without sufficient supplies of cheap oil the consumer society is brought to a halt and it is an opportunity for positive change. It is a chance for a good life. As oil becomes less available we could redesign our neighborhoods, so that they become walkable and more people-friendly. The pace of life could be slower, people could be able to meet more often, work less and perhaps even eat together like in the village of Gaviotas in Columbia. We could reweave social ties, produce food locally, provide meaningful jobs and become independent from a global economy where people must work 10 hours per day because for some unexplainable reason they have to compete with each other and be more and more efficient. We could finally get past the culture where the quality of life is measured by a number of goods and services consumed.
It is certainly useful to have trains and buses connecting cities and villages, or even airplanes if their CO2 emissions could be captured. But trying to sustain car-dependent societies and the idea of never-ending economic growth is not the best way to make us happy.
Marcin Gerwin is a co-founder of Earth Conservation, a non-profit group working for sustainable development. He graduated with a Ph.D. in political studies, from the University of Gdansk, Poland, with his thesis: “The idea and practice of sustainable development in the context of global challenges”. He is also involved in a local initiative promoting participatory democracy in his home city Sopot, Poland.
(26 April 2009)
Marcin Gerwin has contributed several substantial articles to EB. I’m somewhat skeptical, having seen hundreds of too-good-to-be-true concepts turn out to be too-good-to-be-true. -BA
