This is the twenty-seventh issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
On this Memorial Day weekend, I hear a newscast saying, “More terrorist attacks are expected before the elections,” which prompts me to wonder how George W. Bush may hope that will help him get elected. Having just watched an independent film entitled “Fourth World War,” which documents the struggles of people worldwide against economic globalization, my head is filled with images of protesters in the streets of Genoa and Montreal with kerchiefs over their noses and mouths to protect against teargas; African people of all ages singing in three-part harmony while dancing joyously in the streets as they demonstrate for their rights. On dieoff.org, I saw the graphs which showed the rise and fall of the fossil fuel era on the vast timeline of the universe’s history, and seeing what a tiny blip it really is, I grieve all the more the loss of lives in the quest for control of Iraqi oil. It is so clear to me that I need to decrease my personal dependency on fossil fuel. Sometimes when I’m feeling closest to the creeks and the earth, I feel a deep animal fear of motor vehicles passing by. Yet I drive one; I’m an addict, stuck in denial of the impact I am making on the planet. One of these days I’m going to start “Fossil Fuel Addicts Anonymous,” with myself as the charter member.
I’m departing from my usual format and instead giving you some quotes that are meaningful to me on the subject of our society’s fossil fuel addiction (and what to do about it).
From Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in In These Times:
“I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver's license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut. And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any more of those. Cold turkey. Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.”
From Cecil Bothwell’s “Soupletter” (for full text, see www.braveulysses.com)
“Economist Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times (May 14, 2004), observes that oil production capacity is very close to a breaking point right now. There is no elasticity in the system and any significant disruption of supplies could easily cripple the U.S. and world economy… As we come back down to earth from our cheap petroleum orbit, our landing site needs to be as soft as possible, and we need to come down as gently as possible…
Where we will land as the global economy comes unstitched is in our local communities, and the softness of the landing will depend on their resilience. We will have to rely on local food production, local energy sources, local manufacturing and a local support network -- all the friendships and alliances that make a real community tick.
How hard we land will be a function of how dependent we are on the petroleum supply. At the most personal level, and in the nearest term, this comes down to your car’s mpg rating, home insulation, lighting choices, commute distance, diet, number of children -- all the disparate pieces that combine to create one’s energy requirements. Extended to the community, these individual choices affect the survivability of the whole.”
From Thom Hartmann, author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight:
“A few generations hence, our descendants will look back on the industrial world of today with a combination of awe, wonderment, and horror. Their past is our future - a transitional era of dwindling energy supplies, resource wars, and industrial collapse.”
A lengthy quotation from Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over:
“Global discovery of oil peaked in the 1960s… Global oil production will doubtless peak at some point in the foreseeable future. According to many informed estimates, the peak should occur around 2010, give or take a few years. When the global peak in oil production is reached, there will still be plenty of petroleum in the ground - as much as has been extracted up to the present, or roughly one trillion barrels. But every year from then on it will be difficult or impossible to pump as much as the year before.
Clearly, we will need to find substitutes for oil... Solar and wind are renewable, but we now get less than one percent of our national energy budget from them; rapid growth will be necessary if they are to replace even a significant fraction of the energy shortfall from post-peak oil. Nuclear power is dogged by the unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal. Hydrogen is not an energy source at all, but an energy carrier: it takes more energy to produce a given quantity of hydrogen than the hydrogen itself will yield. Moreover, nearly all commercially produced hydrogen now comes from natural gas - whose production will peak only a few years after oil begins its historic decline. Unconventional petroleum resources - so-called "heavy oil," "oil sands," and "shale oil" - are plentiful but extremely costly to extract… even if efforts are intensified now to switch to alternative energy sources, after the oil peak industrial nations will have less energy available to do useful work - including the manufacturing and transporting of goods, the growing of food, and the heating of homes.
To be sure, we should be investing in alternatives and converting our industrial infrastructure to use them. If there is any solution to industrial societies' approaching energy crises, renewables plus conservation will provide it. Yet in order to achieve a smooth transition from non-renewables to renewables, decades will be needed - and we do not have decades before the peaks in the extraction rates of oil and natural gas occur. Moreover, even in the best case, the transition will require the massive shifting of investment from other sectors of the economy (such as the military) toward energy research and conservation. And the available alternatives will likely be unable to support the kinds of transportation, food, and dwelling infrastructure we now have; thus the transition will entail an almost complete redesign of industrial societies.
The likely economic consequences of the energy downturn are enormous… With less energy available, less work can be done - unless the efficiency of the process of converting energy to work is raised at the same rate as energy availability declines. It will therefore be essential, over the next few decades, for all economic processes to be made more energy-efficient. However, efforts to improve efficiency are subject to diminishing returns, and so eventually a point will be reached where reduced energy availability will translate to reduced economic activity. Given the fact that our national economy is based on the assumption that economic activity must grow perpetually, the result is likely to be a recession with no bottom and no end.
The consequences for global food production will be no less dire. Throughout the twentieth century, food production expanded dramatically in country after country, with virtually all of this growth attributable to energy inputs. Without fuel-fed tractors and petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, it is doubtful that crop yields can be maintained at current levels.
The oil peak will also impact international relations... The US - as the world's largest energy consumer, the center of global industrial empire, and the holder of the most powerful store of weaponry in world history - will play a pivotal role in shaping the geopolitics of the new century. To many observers, it appears that oil interests are already at the heart of the present administration's geopolitical strategy.
There is much that individuals and communities can do to prepare for the energy crunch. Anything that promotes individual self-reliance (gardening, energy conservation, and voluntary simplicity) will help. But true individual and family security will come only with community solidarity and interdependence. Living in a community that is weathering the downslope well will enhance personal chances of surviving and prospering far more than will individual efforts at stockpiling tools or growing food.
Meanwhile, nations must adopt radical energy conservation measures, invest in renewable energy research, support sustainable local food systems instead of giant biotech agribusiness, adopt no-growth economic and population policies, and strive for international resource cooperation agreements.
These suggestions describe a fundamental change of direction for industrial societies - from the larger, faster, and more centralized, to the smaller, slower, and more locally-based; from competition to cooperation; and from boundless growth to self-limitation.
If such recommendations were taken seriously, they could lead to a world a century from now with fewer people using less energy per capita, all of it from renewable sources, while enjoying a quality of life perhaps enviable by the typical industrial urbanite of today. Human inventiveness could be put to the task, not of making ways to use more resources, but of expanding artistic satisfaction, finding just and convivial social arrangements, and deepening the spiritual experience of being human. Living in smaller communities, people would enjoy having more control over their lives. Traveling less, they would have more of a sense of rootedness, and more of a feeling of being at home in the natural world. Renewable energy sources would provide some conveniences, but not nearly on the scale of fossil-fueled industrialism…
There are many hopeful indications that a shift toward sustainability is beginning. But there are also discouraging signs that large political and economic institutions will resist change in that direction. Therefore much depends upon the public coming to understand the situation, taking personal steps, and demanding action from local and national governments.” (end of Heinberg quotation).
At times such as these, it is tempting to get lost in the dramas of daily life and to take some sort of refuge in the sense of powerlessness we feel as individuals. Such attitudes are certainly prevalent even at communities like Earthaven. But that is a luxury we can’t afford. The time to take collective action is here!
As the Hopi prophecy says: “There is a river flowing very fast. Let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep your eyes open and your heads above water. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
Cathy Holt
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