Supplies of oil and groundwater are in decline, and neither resource can be swiftly substituted. Oil is the universal elixir, used for petrol, pesticides, fertilizers, factory farmed food, transportation, refrigeration, heating, lighting, medicines, cement, much of the stuff in shops, in the office, in the factory, in the sky, in the home, in the hospitals, in computers, in our every day life. Peak oil heralds the end of the party, like when the grog runs out. Only worse. No ride home, except on a bike; no morning Jacuzzi, unless you've got plentiful water tanks and solar panels; no breakfast without an edible garden or a local food co-op. Perhaps malls will morph into farmers' markets. Fast companies will slow down. Tomorrow's hot jobs will be those now considered uncool, as in organic agriculturalists, water diviners, orchardists, recyclers, compost lavatorians, geologists, gas siphoners, builders of bamboo bikes, renewable energy boffins... Numerous voices are urging people to powerdown, to adapt to a post carbon future.
It's an issue that remains below the media radar. It will not attract advertising. The life-after-oil scenario embraces a web of perils, such as the depletion of phosphates, topsoil, species; climate chaos, endless war and population overshoot. It foresees the collapse of the consumer society, the end of suburbia, the return of localization, now re-branded as re-localization. It is not a re-run of hippie druggie free love communes, despite the whiff of lentils and dandelion. The powerdown project is practical, community-engaged and globally aware. It rests on the assumption that cheap fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern civilization, and that their imminent decline invites catastrophe. So chop wood, carry water, put a windmill on the roof, re-skill and get to know your neighbours.
BEYOND PEAK OIL AND GAS ALREADY?
No other energy source comes near to replacing oil. The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) puts a "high probability" of global Peak Oil occurring before 2010 or 2015. In a presentation to the US Department of Defence on June 20, Matthew R Simmons, the founder and chairman of the world's largest energy investment bank, said the world was "probably beyond peak oil and gas". www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Energy%20Conversation%20BW.pdf
ASPO is scornful of attempts to create synthetic crude oil from coal, gas or tar-sands (costly and impractical). Bio fuels are limited by the lack of arable land not devoted to food. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source and has little likelihood of delaying the impact of peak oil. Britain would need 100 nuclear power plants to produce enough hydrogen to replace its existing use of transport fuel. A Cornell University study has concluded that each unit of ethanol energy requires 117 percent of fossil fuel energy to produce. The largest gas suppliers are located in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and countries of the former Soviet Union. It is expensive to ship long distances and requires specialized ports and infrastructure. As for the oil companies, only Chevron and Total have so far admitted the supply situation is dire. On June 19, an industry conference in Darwin was warned that exploration costs had lately jumped by over a third, to little effect, and that progress was further threatened by a lack of equipment.
Let's step back a bit. Keep in mind that our addiction is absolute. Oil fuels 90% of all transportation. It is involved in the production of 95% of all the goods in shops, including 95% of all food - produced as it is, mainly by industrialized means and carted across the world, sometimes in refrigerated planes. Current global consumption is 85 million barrels a day, rapidly rising, as China, India, and the rest of Asia gets hooked. Back in 2001, these issues surely plagued the minds of Dick Cheney and his colleagues from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America at their Energy Task Force summit, held at White House. Here, the most powerful people on Earth poured over maps of oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals in Iraq. The minutes of this meeting remain classified, but its significance is obvious. Saudi Arabia's oilfields are less extensive than advertised and some are polluted, "brine stained with oil". The oilfields of Iraq are known as the last of the ripe overhanging fruit. "Sagging so low", notes Linda McQuaig "that it practically touches the ground under the weight of its ripeness". No permafrost, no contamination. Vast pools of oil, yearning for exploitation. In 2001, Iraq was a sitting duck. Ruled by a hated dictator, its geography offered a platform for the US to control the Gulf. The point of the invasion was to establish a garrison on top of an oil field. What's next? Only last week, President Vladimir Putin's top political adviser put it bluntly: the US is seeking "international energy domination under the guise of promoting democracy". No-one is allowed to mess with the consumer society. The White House credo is powerup; Venezuela beware, don't mention the Greenhouse...
HAIRCUTTING, FRIED CHICKEN, OPEN-HEART SURGERY
While demand for oil keeps accelerating, the current rate of decline is about 8% per annum, according to energy specialist, Mathew Simmons, so that by 2020, the total supply could have dropped from 85 to 25mb/d barrels a day. But by 2030, oil demand is expected be 115 million barrels a day. Could this be why Bush & Co have been acting like outlaws? Worldwide, a few billion addicts might be facing cold turkey, and right now, weapons are probably being stockpiled in suburbia. Enter the Powerdown scenario, the "path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing". Small, self-sustaining communities that are touted as cultural lifeboats in times to come.
The only realistic alternative to endless resource wars, according to Richard Heinberg in his book, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Port-Carbon World, is a strategy that shrinks per- capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develops renewable power, and "humanely but systematically reduces the size of the human population over time. Powerdown would mean a species-wide effort toward self-limitation." Heinberg believes that once the processes and implications of resource depletion are understood, the pro-growth argument will collapse. http://www.energybulletin.net/2291.html
The 21st century is not going to be about mobility, writes John Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency. "It's going to be much more about staying where you are, not about being in constant motion. It's going to be about being in a place that you care about and you have to care for and that is going to change the basis of how we live". Does this seem far fetched? Not to the mainstream Trends Research Institute, which is tracking the "rapidly growing desire of more people to be self-empowered, non-reliant, and 'off the grid'".
BUY NOW, SETTLE IN 2010
Kunstler's depiction of sprawl as the "dirty secret of the American economy" has relevance to many countries with bottom lines stoked by spreading McMansions, and their endless accessorizing, furnishing, servicing and renovating. Once this is activity is subtracted from the GDP, there isn't much left, according to Kunstler "except for haircutting, fried chicken, and open-heart surgery".
What are the possible stages in the collapse of civilization? Richard Heinberg says energy shortages will start to bite in about five more years, leading to economic turmoil, frequent and lengthening power blackouts, and chaos. Over several years, food production plummets, resulting in widespread famine, even in formerly wealthy countries. Wars - including civil wars - rage intermittently. Meanwhile ecological crisis also tears at the social fabric, with water shortage, rising sea levels, and severe storms ... One after another, central governments collapse. Empires devolve into nations; nations into smaller regional or tribal states. But each lower stage reaches its own moment of unsustainability and further collapse ensues. Between 2020 and 2100, the global population declines steeply, because of climate chaos and crop failure.
It's a grim picture, which perhaps under-estimates human ingenuity, though its warning is timely. Over a 100 post carbon local groups have already joined the network. (See http://relocalize.net)
While some believe that humans are facing the greatest challenge in their history, others still stridr the last beach fronts with charts, publicists and compliant architects. Australia's Gold Coast developers are offering "sculptured residential skyscrapers of unrivalled luxury living with uninterrupted views of the (rising) ocean from every stunning apartment". One 77 floor tower is called Soul. Another tower phallus is called Oracle, though designed for a future of non Greenhouse skies and gushing wells. You can buy an apartment now, and settle at the end of the decade.
The Oracle offers three outdoor swimming pools/lagoons, water features; indoor lap pool, spa, steam room, sauna, state of the art gym, executive lounge and private wine lockers, plus in house cinema, surround sound, a vast screen, perhaps for watching The Day After Tomorrow. Should that day come, residents can retreat to the zen gardens and tai chi lawn, to stay focused and fit, in case the elevator fails. Seventy seven floors is a long hike home, but at least your head will be back in the clouds. ends
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