David MacKay’s book, can be read on-line.
Sustainable Energy – without the hot air
peak oil
“Peak Oil” or “Limits to Growth”
Reprinted from the Oil Drum.
There is a good deal of evidence that we are now a little past “peak oil”. Many of us find it doesn’t feel quite like we had imagined.
A lot of us had expected that peak oil would be basically a liquids fuels crisis, caused by geological limits. We expected that the solutions of the Department of Energy’s Hirsch Report would be sufficient to forestall a crisis, especially if we had started 20 years ago, instead of now. These solutions included things like more oil from tar sands, improving automobile efficiency, and electrification of transport.
Now, when we seem to be at peak oil, we find the current situation feels a lot more like a “box” caused by limits to growth, rather than a liquid fuels crisis. The limits are of many forms–not just geological limits relating to oil–but other resource limits as well, such as fresh water, and concerns about climate change and the environment. The financial system is even behaving strangely.
The fact that the financial system is also in distress is a surprise to many people. There is good theoretical reason to expect that once growth in underlying resources slows, a financial system based on compound growth will run into difficulty. This was predicted by M. King Hubbert and many others. The connection is not easy to see, though, and it is understandable that many would believe that the financial system would have had problems, even apart from limits to growth.
The fact that so many limits are involved makes it difficult to substitute one resource, such as biofuels, for another, such as petroleum products.
The fact that so many limits are involved also means that it is not just liquid fuels that are being constrained by the limits to growth box. In the diagram above, I show electricity, the credit system, the industrial system, and the agricultural system as being fenced in by limits, in addition to liquid fuels. I could probably have included many other systems as well, such as the international trade system, governmental systems, and long term promises, such as pensions and social security systems.
The world is finite, so it should not come as a great surprise that the various limits are being reached, to varying degrees, simultaneously. Systems such as the electrical system, the credit system, and the agricultural system all depend on availability of finite resources, so are affected as we start reaching limits of various kinds.
Timing
Another thing that some don’t think is quite right about the current situation is timing. The peak in liquid fuels production seems to have come and gone, but nothing too terrible has happened. The stores are full of food. The price of gasoline is fairly reasonable, compared to a year ago. Here again, I think if we look at our situation in terms of the limits to growth box, it is not just liquid fuels that are important, but a whole group of networked systems, all of which are affected (to varying degrees) by the constraints of the limits to growth box.
At this point, it seems to me that we are in the lull before the storm. Demand has dropped, because society could not afford high priced petroleum products, but the supply has not yet declined to reflect the lower price level. Stimulus packages have been put in places, but the cost has not yet filtered through the system. People are hopeful for a rebound, and this is reflected in the stock market prices.
To me, the most vulnerable system is the international monetary system. As long as countries trust each other, trade will continue as usual. Once this starts breaking down, it seems likely that countries will need real goods to barter, rather than relying on promises to pay. A breakdown in the international monetary system could cause a major interruption to trade and start a downward spiral. It seems like this could happen at any time.
Whether or not there is a crash, and the timing of such a crash, really depend on how all of the systems work together. Any kind of destabilization, such as new upward price pressures on fossil fuels, could telegraph through the system. Financial disruptions are especially likely.
It is my view that because of this networking, all systems will eventually fail together. A person cannot expect that one system, such as the electrical system, will greatly outlast the other systems. If either the electrical system or the financial system fails, other systems are likely to fail as well.
I see collapse as being stepwise – things may look good for a while, and then there will be a sudden step down. This may happen several times. We are on a step right now.
What Should We Do Now?It is hard to get any group of people to agree on an answer.
Method of Long Ago
We know one system which more-or-less worked in ages past. People lived in small communities, in very simple homes. Land was tilled by hand or using animal labor. All wastes were returned to the soil, so as to maintain soil fertility. Water was either from hand dug wells or from rainwater catchment systems. People burned whatever was close at hand (dung, peat, wood, coal) to cook their food and heat their homes. Transportation was by foot or using animal power.
Most people don’t really want to return to a system such as this. We have 6.7 billion people on earth now. It is not clear that this system could support more than 1.0 billion, even if techniques more advanced than those of our ancestors were used, such as better crop rotation. Life expectancies would likely be very short.
Intermediate Approaches
There are several possible intermediate approaches:
- Find new fuel alternatives–thorium; cold fusion; fourth generation biofuels (Question: Is there time?)
- Build out what we can of alternatives that perhaps aren’t running into limits as badly as other things – for example wind turbines, or if one is not concerned about climate change, increased coal generation of electricity; electric trains. (Questions: Will we just run into limits we haven’t considered? What do we do when these solutions fail? How many years will these solutions really work?)
- Build out lower tech solutions that have worked in the past–home gardens, small wind mills for farmer, rainwater catchment systems for homeowners, cotton gins, coal fired trains, raising donkeys for labor.
- Build communities of people who want to try to live in more of a sustainable fashion.
One can also work on solving parts of the problem:
- Start teaching skills so that returning to the methods of long ago will not be so problematic.
- Develop open pollinated seeds that will provide a balanced diet for many different climate areas.
- Start encouraging late marriages and one child families.
It seems to me that if limits to growth is really the issue, we should be very cautious about undertaking 20 or more year projects to do anything, unless we believe that the intermediate results will be worthwhile in themselves. There are just too many connections with systems that are likely to fail within the next 20 years.
Instead, it seems like we should concentrate on projects where a more immediate payoff is clear, or that will help us better reach a sustainable long-term situation. This would suggest that we should be starting more at the bottom of the above list of types of actions, rather than at the top.
blind spot
BLIND SPOT is a documentary that investigates the causes behind the reasons for the current crisis we find ourselves in. It establishes the inextricable link between the energy we use, the way we run our economy and the effect it has had on our environment. It takes as a starting point the inevitable energy depletion scenario know as Peak Oil to inform us that by whatever measure of greed, wishful thinking, neglect or ignorance, we are at a crossroad which offers two paths, both with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels our ecology will collapse and if we don’t, our economy will. Either path we choose to take will have a profound effect on our way of life.
available from www.filmbaby.com
Culture Change Study – Collapse Concerns and Wishes
Collapse wishes — what a genre. It must not be healthy to dwell on collapse too much, or you’ll collapse! But since the topic is all too demanding and real, It should be worth trying to help shape the future with intention or conscious awareness of what can and should happen. So here are three questions for you:
(This study is not so much for reliable, statistical confidence, but to find out about and share our thoughts.)
(1) what we are acting toward. Or, what main outcome might we be looking forward to?
(2) what do we relish leaving behind, as collapse begins or as it will intensify?
(3) what do we not want to leave behind unresolved; or, what needs to be done before it’s too late to accomplish it?You can be general, political, ecological, spiritual, or personal in your goals and dreams. Please be brief, and let us know if you are NOT living in the USA. We will publish on Culture Change many of the interesting stories, ideas, or dreams. Patterns will emerge. A part-two report will tabulate responses and describe the results.
The national traumatized but awakening psyche
We have noted that mass insanity seems to be making “progress,” and folks are hurting, having a hard time, are fearful, and undergoing deprivations. The New York Times did a service in reporting on the mental and emotional states of people on medications and having to cut corners in various departments of life. It was sad to read the histories and ongoing struggles.
Yet, the lack of awareness displayed by some of the anecdotes’ subject-patients, for example, made me believe that learning is in short supply for many of us. The advice one doctor gave was to metaphorically say to keep your eyes on the license plate of the car in front of you, or pull over at times. It’s a shame the idea of cutting car dependence to save money and help the environment, while depriving corporate bunglers of our hard-earned dwindling cash, is suppressed by corporate mass media and government.
When people act out their insanity — isn’t that a big part of what’s going on? — and masses cannot be ignored, there will probably be political change. You can include those thoughts for this survey, but to me the political changes are usually not as interesting or meaningful as a culture change.
But meanwhile, in this accelerated adjustment period — a Depression, some say — we are at least starting to question some things that weren’t discussed enough in the past. We have something in common, having to do with survival. We can get it right or I don’t think we’re gonna make it. Fortunately human kindness has been tested and is still ever present even in disastrous circumstances sometimes.
Culture Change is asking people to email brief answers to the 3 questions above by 27th April – not much time.
The Coming Siege of Austerity
More on what to expect from the future (and perhaps, what we need to combat climate change – austerity) from Jim Kunstler’s Clusterfuck.
It’s a curious symptom of the consensus trance zombifying the American public and its auditors in the media that something like a “recovery” is now deemed to be underway. And, as events compel me to repeat in this space, it begs the question: recovery to what? To Wall Street booking stupendous profits by laundering “risk” out of bad loans with new issues of tranche-o-matic securitized paper? This I doubt, since there isn’t a pension fund left from San Jose to Bratislava that would touch this stuff with a stick, even if it could be turned out in collector’s editions of boxed sets. Does it mean that American “consumers” (so-called) are awaited momentarily in the flat-screen TV sales parlors with their credit cards fanned-out like poker hands, ready for “action?” Not too likely with massive non-performance out in cardholder-land, and half the nation’s electronics inventory wending its way onto Craig’s List. Are we expecting more asteroid belts of new suburbs carved in the loamy outlands of Dallas and Minneapolis, complete with new highway strips of Big Box shopping and Chuck E. Cheeses? Go to banking’s intensive care unit and inquire (if you can) among the flat-lining production home-builders and the real estate investment trusts on life support when they expect to rev up the heavy equipment.
The idea that we’re about to resume the insane behavior that induced the current epochal malaise of economy is so absurd it will only be heard in the faculty dining halls of the Ivy League. And if America is not picking up where it left off eighteen months ago — the orgy of spending future claims on wealth unlikely to accrue — then what is our destiny? Based on what’s out there in the organs of public thinking, it seems that we don’t want to think about it.
So many forces are arrayed against a return to the previous “normal” that we will be lucky, in another eighteen months, to still find ourselves speaking English and celebrating Christmas. What’s “out there” is a panorama of mutually reinforcing critical problems pertaining to how we live on this continent. Like the obesity, heart disease, and diabetes that plague the public, these problems are disorders of lifestyle habits and the only possible “cure” is a comprehensive revision of lifestyle. With the onset of spring weather and the cheez doodles and monster truck rallies and Nascar tailgate barbeques and the drive-in beer emporiums all beckoning, can the public shift its attention from these infantile preoccupations to saving its own ass?
So far, the most striking piece of the economic fiasco is the absence of any galvanizing spirit among the millions getting crushed in the tragic unwind of our relations with money. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if there is any uproar over the evolving story of Goldman Sachs’s latest raid on the US Treasury, after booking billions in taxpayer-funded payouts funneled through AIG, based on double-hedged credit default swaps. Such magic tricks are understandably hard to follow, but a dozen-or-so federal attorneys with a middling background in differential calculus might suss out the trail that leads from Ben Bernanke’s work station to Lloyd Blankfein’s cappuccino machine.
Something similar may be said in regard to revelations last week of White House economic advisor Larry Summers’ connection with a number of hedge funds shoveling millions into his deep pockets for showing up once a week to cheerlead their “innovations” — not to mention his shadowy visits to the Goldman Sachs gravy train even after he signed onto the Obama campaign. As long as the stock markets seem to rally — no matter what else is really going on in America — nobody will pay much attention to these disgusting irregularities.
Since it is that time of year, and I am haunting the gardening shop, one can’t fail to notice the many styles of pitchforks for sale. My guess is that the current mood of public paralysis will dissolve in a blur of blood and spittle sometime between Memorial Day and July Fourth, even with Nascar in full swing, and the mushrooming ranks of the unemployed lost in raptures of engine noise and fried cornmeal. It doesn’t take too many determined, pissed-off people to create a lot of mischief in a complex society.
On the agenda in the second quarter of ’09 are ominous rumblings in the oil and food sectors. Half a year of cratered oil prices have decimated the oil industry and we’re driving at 100-miles-an-hour straight off a cliff into a new kind of supply crisis — even if industrial production and global exports remain moribund. So many drilling rigs are being decommissioned that the oil industry itself looks like it’s preparing for its own death, investment in exploration and discovery has withered with the credit markets, and the world may never recover from the year long hiccup in oil industry activity — translation: peak oil is biting back now with a vengeance. Its peakness will look peakier and the yawning arc of depletion beyond will look steeper and pose a threat to every globalized and continental-scale enterprise in the known world.
So many dire elements are ranging around our food production system (i.e. farming), from widespread drought and water table depletion to “input” shortages (especially fertilizers) to sickness in credit availability, that we’re all one bad harvest away from something that will make Pieter Bruegel-the-elder’s “Triumph of Death” look like Vanity Fair’s annual Oscar Party in comparison.
Barack Obama, charming as he is, had better drop his pretensions about kick-starting the old consumer economy, fire the Wall Street clowns and parasites who are running that futile exercise, and start preparing a US Lifeboat Economy aimed at reducing the scale and scope of our outlays so we can survive the coming siege of austerity. Meanwhile, I’m glad that he finally got a dog for the White House, because the President knows full-well where to turn in Washington if you want some genuine love and affection.
Household Dry Food Cooking
Craig Bergland shares his ‘hands-on experience in building and using cute little solar toys, and other semi-practical devices’, at the OilDrum Campfire. (A companion supplement to Household Dry Food Storage by J. Bradford).
A nice prime rib with horseradish is a wonderful thing as long as we can get it, but we know that it is more efficient to eat grains than beef. The EROEI on non-meat foods is far higher than farther up the foodchain. We also know they are healthier and clog our arteries less. Seeds can be stored long term with minimal preps. They can be ground and baked into flours (some say longer shelf-life when whole and living — tho’ old time bakers suggest aged flour is better). They can be soaked or cracked or flaked and cooked. They can be sprouted for greater bulk and superior nutritional content — as sprouting changes the chemical composition and increases vitamins and mass. Some can be malted to make simple sugars for consumption, and for brewing beer and alcohol. A seed diet frees up resources for more food for more (hungry) people. 30 pounds of seeds carried into the boonies is going to last me a lot longer than 30 pounds of meat. And, importantly, they can be planted in your garden to replicate themselves. Indefinitely. Because of minimal prep requirements, and long storage, they are my preferred stash. Especially since they eliminate the need for freezers and other hi-energy appliances which may lack long-term sustainability. If you don’t have the resources now for a solar powered freezer and batteries, etc., you can perhaps spend less current cash instead, and buy more food (seeds) for the buck. It all depends on how much money you have and how long you think we have before…it…happens. I’m unfortunately an Early Topper and think Mad Max is going to meet the Donner Party near-term, and for more reasons than just Peak Oil.
Cooking some kinds of seeds can take a long time. Soybeans especially, and overnight soaking is almost a necessity. BTW soybeans are not done until you can squish them between tongue and palate. A pressure cooker is a big ‘must have’ for your survival kit, and to even lower your current energy use. They use less water/fuel and some claim lose less nutrients. Simple cardboard tube/blankets can be built to further extend the cookers capabilities and mine will keep the pressure up for 20 minutes after removing from heat, and hold to 150 degrees for an hour. Pressure cookers can be used for distilling. My dad made ‘Grappa’ one time in our kitchen and the cooker exploded. While too young to remember that, I was told we moved out shortly afterwards.
PRESSURE COOKER IN HOME-MADE THERMAL BLANKET. (SANS COVERING TOP FOR CLARITY'S SAKE)
Many of us will be using wood and biomass to cook on. Open fires work well and are quick but fuel wasteful. Three stone fires are better but not much. Do a search for Rocket stoves, hobo stoves, and wood-gas stoves. I like the rocket stove, fairly easy to build with minimal tools, and hobo stoves are quick, too, but the best it seems is the tin can wood-gas stove which merely ‘sips’ fuel instead of a hungry roaring fire. (I posted a little about them on Jason’s article’s comments, and the flame is most impressive)
PICTURE OF MODIFIED PELLET/TWIG WOOD-GAS BURNER
Solar cooking is the champion when available. Solar box ovens can be bought or made from scrap materials. They work well, however sometimes they have a hard time getting to 350 to bake bread. When that’s the case, simply bake a little bit longer. A chunk of iron placed in the oven will help even out cloudy times and moderate the temperature.
OFF THE GRID SOLAR BREAD BAKING NICELY IN TYPICAL BOX OVEN
I have a one meter parabolic mirror which is great for frying and hot hot hot cooking. It is so hot, however, that it discolors cast iron pans, and takes that nice dark seasoning away and gets very grey. It even discolored the pressure cooker. I want to see if it will allow small batch smelting of soft metals. Wonder if it’ll melt a zinc penny for casting…? Probably illegal. When these were introduced into 3rd world countries, they were quickly shunned, because if improperly put away out of sunlight, they would often start folks houses and sheds on fire. Pretty dangerous devices, all told. There are several kinds of focussing cookers, and are not beyond the capability of many to make.
The solar winebox rice cooker I’ve built will do 20 oz of grains in an hour and a half. There is no need for tracking, just point it at the sun and soon it’s done. The only cost was for black paint, and the rest of it is from recycled materials. This type of double jar glass solar cooking is great, and as discovered will reach over boiling — enough to sterilize water.
A NEARLY COST-FREE SOLAR COOKER MADE FROM RECYCLED MATERIALS.
At one time I saw a parabolic trough used as the heat source for an oven. It was built in the early 1900′s I think, and was attached to a top oven which was surrounded with oil. The focus of the parabolic cylinder heated the oil-pipe to such a degree (bad pun) that 24-hour cooking was available — according to the article. Very impressive, and a possible neighborhood project for folks. Another project would be to design and build a self tracking solar oven for a convenient any-time-of-the-DAY quick cooking. And it could also be used to recharge batteries with a small PV attached and tracking. Now, how to make it return to sunrise position when the sun is gone for the day…?
And yet another project can be grain grinders as discussed well in a previous campfire article. While hand cranking is a grind (so sorry), electric or other mechanically powered grinders make life easier. In a pinch, of course we could probably make flour between 2 bricks or rocks, but not that desperate yet. This might be a good neighborhood project, the collective purchase and use of grinders and bulk grains and solar ovens. Kind of like, why does every house have a lawn mower, when one could be shared and thus less costly. We’re going to have to do many things collectively when it hits the F. Why not start now, to help cushion the blow?
Cooking with the sun just makes sense, and ovens can be really simple to construct:
http://www.portugalsmallholding.org/2009/04/diy-solar-oven/
PCI new manifesto and appeal
Post Carbon Institute Manifesto: The Time For Change Has Come
Also published at Richard Heinberg’s Museletter, is a new manifesto for the Post Carbon Institute, that ends with an appeal for us all to get busy(er), local and viral.
Introduction
The United States is in the beginning stages of an historic economic collapse. As of early 2009, five million Americans have already been pushed into the unemployment line, while an average of more than 600,000 join them each month. The Federal government has thrown more than a trillion dollars at the financial crisis, but the symptoms only worsen.
Meanwhile, an even more profound crisis has been silently gathering for decades and is now reaching a point of no return. This crisis manifests as the twin challenges of global fossil fuel depletion and environmental collapse.
The world almost certainly experienced peak oil production last summer, and peaks in natural gas and coal production are not far off1. But renewable energy sources are nowhere near ready to substitute in the quantities and applications we currently require. The best known, and potentially most severe, of environmental challenges is global climate change. Yet we are also now facing a series of natural resource limits—fresh water supplies, fish stocks, topsoil, and biodiversity—that threaten our very existence.
Our 21st century dependence on 20th century hydrocarbon energy (fossil fuels) is the root of all the economic and environmental threats we face. Individually, each of these challenges would test us. Their combined force will reshape our planet and society in unimaginable ways.
All of the debts for society’s century-long industrial fiesta are coming due at the same time. We have no choice but to transition to a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and economies that function within ecological bounds. Thus the most important question of our time: How do we manage the transition to a post-carbon world?
Post Carbon Institute is dedicated to helping individuals, families, businesses, communities, and governments understand and manage the transition to a post-carbon world. Our aim is to bring together the best thinking and models in such a way that the challenges we face can be easily understood, and the best solutions can be identified and replicated as quickly, sustainably, and equitably as possible.
These are unprecedented times that will test our courage, resourcefulness, and commitment. Many communities have already begun their post-carbon journey. We hope you join us.
The Limits
In 1972, the Limits to Growth report2 explored the consequences of exponential growth in population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion for Earth’s ecosystems. The book came under immediate fire and has remained controversial ever since, but its underlying premise is irrefutable: At some point in time, humanity’s ever-increasing resource consumption will meet the very real limits of a planet with finite natural resources. We believe that time has now come.
An explosion in population and consumption—fed by cheap, abundant energy—has brought previously unimaginable advances in health, wealth, transport, and communications. But this growth has come at an equally unimaginable cost. The world is at, nearing, or past a number of critical limits:
- Global oil, natural gas, and coal production
- Climate stability
- Fresh water and fish stocks
- Food production
- Biodiversity and habitats
Some of these limits are now well understood; some remain controversial or unknown to the general populace. The full scope of the damage to the biosphere and the depletion of natural resources would take volumes to describe in detail, 3 but the general picture is inescapable: we face looming scarcity.
It is no coincidence that so many resource peaks are occurring together. All are causally related by way of the historic reality that, for the past 200 years, cheap and abundant energy from fossil fuels has driven technological invention, increases in total and per-capita resource extraction and consumption (including food production), and population growth. We are enmeshed in a classic self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Our starting point for future planning, then, must be the realization that we are living today at the end of the period of greatest material abundance in human history—an abundance based on temporary sources of cheap energy that made all else possible. Now that the most important of those sources are entering their inevitable sunset phase, we are at the beginning of a period of overall economic contraction.
Challenge & Opportunity
2008 was a year for the history books. Global oil production likely peaked over the summer4 and began its inevitable and terminal decline, leading to great uncertainty and shocks to everything from transportation and manufacturing to food production and healthcare. Climate scientists and activists, impelled by increasing evidence that global warming is happening faster and more severely than even the most dire of prior scenarios had predicted, united behind the call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 350 parts per million (we are now at 387ppm and rising).
Also in 2008, a new U.S. President was elected with the promise of “change. ” And of course, the global economy began its plunge towards a new Depression, triggered by the US mortgage crisis, the historic spike in oil prices, and the collapse of the automobile and financial industries.
Together, these events signal that the time for real change is upon us.
The Post-Carbon Transition
Seeing an opportunity to simultaneously address the economic and climate crises, the federal government recently authorized $500 million for “green collar” job training5, with the goal of creating new jobs to retrofit buildings and deploy solar and wind energy technologies. While this is a laudable start, the circumstances demand much more.
The post-carbon transition must not be limited to building wind turbines and solar panels, or weatherizing homes. Alternative energy sources and greater efficiencies are important, but will not suffice for two key reasons:
- There are no alternative energy sources (renewable or otherwise) capable of supplying energy as cheaply and in such abundance as fossil fuels currently yield, in the brief time that we need them to come online
- We have designed and built the infrastructure of our transport, electricity, and food systems—as well as our building stock—to suit the unique characteristics of oil, natural gas, and coal. Changing to different energy sources will require the redesign of many aspects of these systems.
The post-carbon transition must entail the thorough redesign of our societal infrastructure, which today is utterly dependent on cheap fossil fuels. Just as the fossil fuel economy of today systemically and comprehensively differs from the agrarian economy of 1800, the post-fossil fuel economy of 2050 will profoundly differ from all that we are familiar with now. This difference will be reflected in urban design, land use patterns, food systems, manufacturing output, distribution networks, the job market, transportation systems, health care, tourism, and more. It will also require a fundamental rethinking of our economic and cultural values.
The New Economy
Quite simply, our growth-based economy has failed us and is failing the planet. It is time to embrace a new economic framework, one that sees the economy as a subset of our global ecosystem, not the other way around. Herman Daly and Josh Farley, in Ecological Economics, contrast the two systems clearly:
“We define growth as an increase in throughput, which is the flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and back to the environment as waste. It is a quantitative increase in the physical dimensions of the economy and/or of the waste stream produced by the economy. This kind of growth, of course, cannot continue indefinitely, as the Earth and its resources are not infinite…
“Where conventional economics espouses growth forever, ecological economics envisions a steady-state economy at optimal scale. Each is logical within its own pre-analytic vision, and each is absurd from the viewpoint of the other. The difference could not be more basic, more elementary, or more irreconcilable.”
Recent global events have made it plainly clear which of the two economic frameworks is truly absurd.
Leading the TransitionThe winds of social change are upon us. Consumerism as we’ve known it is at death’s door—not because everyone has joined the Sierra Club, but because suddenly nobody can afford to buy much of anything. Our new historical moment requires different thinking and strategies, but it also opens new opportunities to solve some very practical problems. Ideas from the environmentalist community that for decades have been derided by economists and politicians—reducing consumption, re-localizing economic activity, building self-sufficiency—are suddenly being taken seriously, and people want to know more about them.
Quietly, a small but growing movement of engaged citizens, community groups, businesses, and elected officials has begun the transition to a post-carbon world. These early actors have worked to reduce consumption, produce local food and energy, invest in local economies, rebuild skills, and preserve local ecosystems. For some citizens, this effort has merely entailed planting a garden, riding a bike to work, or no longer buying from “big-box” stores. Their motivations are diverse, including halting climate change, environmental preservation, food security, and local economic development. The essence of these efforts, however, is the same: they all recognize that the world is changing, and the old way of doing things, based on the idea that consumption can and should continue to grow indefinitely, no longer works.
Alone, these efforts are not nearly enough. But taken together, they can point the way towards a new economy. This new economy would not be a “free market” but a “real market,” much like the one famed economist Adam Smith originally envisioned; it would be, as author David Korten has said, an economy driven by Main Street and not Wall Street.7
Thus far, most of these efforts have been made voluntarily by exceptional individuals who were quick to understand the crisis we face. But as the collapse unfolds, more and more people will be searching for ways to meet even basic needs. Families reliant on supermarkets with globe-spanning supply chains will need to turn more to local farmers and their own gardens. Many corporations—unable to provide a continuous return on investment or to rely on cheap energy and natural resources to turn a profit—will fail, while local businesses and cooperatives of all kinds will flourish. Local governments facing declining tax revenues will be desperate to find cheap, low-energy ways to support basic public services like water treatment, public transportation, and emergency services.
What we need now are clarity, leadership, coordination, and collaboration. With shared purpose and a clear understanding of both the challenges and the solutions, we can manage the transition to a sustainable, equitable, post-carbon world.
Elements of a transition strategy have been proposed for decades, with few notable results. Usually these have been presented as independent—sometimes even contradictory—solutions to the problems created by fossil fuel dependency and consumerism. Now that business-as-usual is ceasing to be an option for mainstream society, these strategies need to be re-thought and re-articulated coherently, and to become the mainstream. But this will require coordinated effort on the part of those who understand both the problems and the solutions.
The Role of Post Carbon InstitutePost Carbon Institute is dedicated to answering the central question of our times: How do we manage the transition to a post-growth, post-fossil fuel, climate-changed world?
It will be Post Carbon Institute’s role to publicly discuss these issues in accessible ways, and as aspects of a systemic, interdependent web of crises. We will gather and analyze response strategies (whether proven or under experimentation), and disseminate them to the individuals, communities, businesses, and governments who need them. We will develop the framing and messaging of these issues so as to significantly raise the visibility and impact of emerging solutions.
We will constantly monitor both challenges and exciting new developments in a range of fields: energy, climate, food systems, land use, green building construction and retrofits, biodiversity and ecological restoration, water, transportation, and new economic systems. We will highlight green-leader cities and businesses, Transition Town 8 initiatives and ecovillage developments, local energy cooperatives, and innovative NGOs.
Through our close relationships with forward-thinking communities and organizations, Post Carbon Institute is uniquely positioned to both draw from their best practices and provide them with the resources they need to quickly scale up and replicate their work. To our knowledge, there is no other organization taking this important leadership role.
The centerpiece of our effort is the development of a select community of Post Carbon Fellows—leading or emerging experts in the most important issues concerning the transition. Post Carbon Fellows will regularly write and speak about both their specific area of expertise and the transition as a whole. Together, Fellows will publish an annual Roadmap For the Transition, covering each of the principal issue areas—and the latest efforts to address the crisis—in a unified, holistic way.
How is this different from what is already happening? Most if not all of the relevant information we are concerned with already exists, much of it on the Internet. There are magazines devoted to various aspects of the “alternatives” movement, and there are organizations doing good work in these areas. But what’s lacking is a unified vision of both the challenges and solutions that sees all of these fields as interrelated.
This unified vision can be communicated through the work of a think tank composed of thought leaders from key fields who can identify, contextualize, and bring to light the most exciting developments within their areas of expertise, while highlighting the relationships between these fields. No other organization is so well positioned to reach, learn from, and support transition efforts in such a broad array of fields. No other organization has the reputation and background to be able to connect grassroots organizers, policymakers, and the media on these issues.
Appeal
As bad news continues to pour in from climate scientists, petroleum geologists, and economists, there is a growing realization that the decisions we make in the next few years will determine what the world will be like for generations—perhaps millennia—to come. This historic moment of transition is a precious and brief opportunity; we all have some sense of what is at stake and what could happen if society continues down its current path.
But if we are successful in our efforts, the movement to nurture a sustainable post-carbon world will go both viral and local. It will become the mainstream, and the kinds of efforts we are championing will be so commonplace that further work on our part will be unnecessary. In the meantime, we have one chance—and it may be humanity’s very last chance—to turn away from the precipice. We have an enormous challenge, and extraordinary opportunity. Please join us.
Richard Heinberg, on the timing of the collapse
In his monthly Museletter, Richard Heinberg talks about the timing of global economic collapse and the fraught nature of accurately predicting when this will occur.
The general picture is clear enough. A combination of peak oil, climate change, and the bursting of the mother of all economic bubbles will result in a collapse of the global economy, perhaps of civilization itself. If we are still to avert the worst of a crisis that could eventuate in untold death, destruction, and tragedy, we need to restructure the world’s energy systems and money systems immediately.
This message (in one form or another) is issuing from scores of independent writers, environmental organizations, and economic analysts. Indeed, even before anyone had ever heard of a Credit Default Swap, going all the way back to the early 1970s if not earlier, similar warnings were periodically heard.
But forecasting global catastrophe can be a tricky business, because everyone wants to know just when it will happen. And there’s the rub. As a card-carrying member of the Cassandra Club, I’ve found this a perennial briarpatch. There have been so many variables at play that about all one could say with absolute confidence is that industrial civilization will run out of rope “sometime in the first two or three decades of the 21st century.” But most people consider that too vague, and institutional leaders have shown repeatedly that they are likely to respond only to definite warnings about fairly imminent catastrophe.
This puts an unfair onus on those in the business of waking the world up to the impending crunch. Jump the gun and you wind up sounding silly; make a conservative forecast for some bland-sounding disruption sometime in the distant future and you fail to motivate anyone to change course.
Some recent readings have highlighted these pitfalls in fascinatingly different ways, leading me to draw a fairly striking conclusion (which we’ll get to in a moment) regarding the current global economic crash.
One of these readings is Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb. There is still much to admire in this book, over 40 years since its publication. Here is mention of the greenhouse effect, along with good analysis of ecosystem degradation, pollution, and the fragility of industrial agriculture. However, the author famously forecast events that didn’t happen within the timeframe he thought they would (I say “famously,” because pro-growth PR trolls have made a cottage industry out of bashing Ehrlich ever since). Granted, these “forecasts” were presented only as likely scenarios, but many readers came away anticipating enormous famines in the 1970s—which, of course, never occurred (or were they merely postponed?).
Another wonderful book from decades past (in this case, 1978) by Warren Johnson, titled Muddling Toward Frugality: A Blueprint for Survival in the 1980s, is a reminder of lost opportunities.
Muddling is one of the classics of a genre that also includes William Catton’s Overshoot. Johnson begins the book with “An Ecological View of History” that manages, in 25 pages, to tell the story of our species about as concisely and clearly as anyone has managed to do (I have a particular fondness for encapsulated cultural-ecological histories—and offered my own version in the first chapter of The Party’s Over—so I know a good one when I see it). He goes on to explain the inevitability of the coming ecological-economic-demographic crisis, again with lucidity. The remainder of the book is a discussion of how we can “muddle through” the tough times ahead toward a way of life that is more localized and less consumptive of energy and resources.
The book is suffused with the aura of its time. In 1978 the world was reeling from soaring energy prices and was in economic turmoil. Johnson assumed that those high prices would continue, and that gradually society would adjust. It would all be rather painful, but we would eventually figure out, through trial and error, how to accommodate ourselves to scarcity, giving up on economic growth and learning to live within limits. Reading this in 2009, it’s pleasing to learn about the relatively shock-free future we can look backward to.
Johnson does note that a few potholes could get in the way of successful muddling. For example, if climate change accelerates, if the economy collapses, if there is geopolitical conflict over remaining resources, or if (as a result of any of these problems) political institutions become destabilized, then muddling just won’t cut it.
Tellingly, most of these scary developments have come to pass.
One possibility Johnson didn’t discuss: What if energy prices fall? Well, in that case there would be no pressure to adapt, and society would go back to its old bad habits of growing and consuming. Then the crunch, when it finally did arrive, would be much worse, making muddling impossible.
That, of course, is exactly what has occurred in the interim. Oil prices plummeted in the mid-1980s, stayed low through the ’90s, the SUV was born, and here we are.
Another recent read: Australian politician and foreign correspondent Colin Mason’s The 2030 Spike: Countdown to Global Catastrophe, published in 2003. The book’s thesis was recently supplemented by Jonathan Porritt’s essay, “Avoiding the Ultimate Recession“: both writings hinge on essentially the same forecast for a giant economic-environmental crunch in about twenty years as a result of converging circumstances that include oil depletion, overpopulation, climate change, food and water shortages, and (in Mason’s analysis) a breakdown of international law.
Mason paints a dire picture of life two decades hence, and then in the rest of his book helpfully details 100 priorities for immediate action to avert the new Dark Age. It’s all great stuff. But the question that leapt to my mind the moment I saw the book’s title was: Do we really have until 2030?
Porritt, to be fair, says all of this could happen as soon as 2020. But still, the essential notion both authors share is that we have one bounce left before the splat, a period of business-as-usual that we must use wisely as a time for rapid proactive re-engineering of society to avert catastrophic climate change, environmental collapse, and resource depletion.
Mason and Porritt understandably don’t want to make Ehrlich’s or Johnson’s mistakes. Porritt tellingly titles his essay “Avoiding the Ultimate Recession.” He’s saying (paraphrasing now): “Hey folks, what we’re seeing currently may be bad, but we’ll get over it. What happens in a decade or two when climate change kicks in will constitute a Depression from which there is no recovery. So let’s get ourselves in gear to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
But the enormity of the current economic meltdown raises the question: Is this really just a hiccup, or is it the beginning of the end (not of the world, perhaps, but certainly of life as we have known it for the past decades)?
It’s still a judgment call, at this point.
Maybe Geithner and Bernanke can pull off a miracle and stabilize the economy. In that case, with energy demand having fallen so far below its level of just a year ago, it might take as long as five years from no—who knows, maybe even seven—for depletion and decline to cause oil prices to spike again, giving the economy the coup de grace. At that point, there can indeed be no recovery, only adaptation. That’s the best-case scenario I can imagine (in terms of preserving the status quo).
But I have a hard time picturing that. A much more likely scenario, in my view: We will see a few months of fairly gradual economic deterioration (slowed by the mighty efforts of the Bailout Brigade), followed by a truly ugly global economic meltdown. The result will be a general level of economic activity much lower than the world is accustomed to. Efforts to right the ship will include protectionist legislation (that will provoke international confrontations), the convening of world leaders to create a new global currency and financial system (which probably won’t succeed, at least not the first time around), and various populist uprisings that will lead to political instability around the globe. Energy demand will remain low, but energy production will fall dramatically due to lack of investment. Carbon emissions will therefore fall too, so the world’s attention will be diverted from tackling the greenhouse gas issue, even though climate impacts from previous carbon emissions will continue to worsen.
But here’s the crux of the matter: unlike the situation the world faced in the 1970s, there is no prospect for another cheap-energy bounce this time. It’s too late to muddle. We have run out the clock on proactive adaptation. From now on, collective survival will hinge on the strategies we adopt for emergency response. Some strategies will make matters worse, while others will lay the groundwork for better times to come. This is what it has come to. One doesn’t wish to sound shrill, but there it is.
The closer we have gotten to the crunch, the smaller the margin of error in predicting it. There really isn’t that much difference between Porritt’s most pessimistic date for catastrophe (2020) and my most wide-eyed optimistic one (2016). But perhaps the closer we get to the event horizon, the less discussions over timing really matter, because the whole conversation makes sense only as a way of motivating coordinated action prior to the crunch. Once the unwinding has begun, no more preparation is possible. Our strategy must change from crisis prevention to crisis management.
That’s where we are right now, in my view.
So what we desperately need to be talking about are ways to manage crisis that will minimize human suffering while preserving the environment and laying the groundwork for a sustainable way of life for future generations.
It’s a new conversation, so it will take a while to re-orient ourselves to it. But let’s not take too long. One thing we can say about the timing that I think just about everyone would agree with: it’s speeding up.
100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil
Following on from Techno-Peasant’s eye-opening, but ultimately realistic article about living outside of civilization, I thought this would be a perfect time to publish Sharon Astyk’s brilliant list of “100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil“. Lists rarely cut it when looking at real life solutions or providing effective advice: these things are better accumulated as life-experiences and shared knowledge. However, this list is far too good to ignore – American-centric it may be, but considering that the USA is probably the most oil-dependent culture on Earth, it seems a decent basis for all industrial cultures. Some items may not be relevant, some are obvious, some are a little wishy-washy, but taken as a whole you would be foolish not to read it:
SPRING
1. Rethink your seed starting regimen. How will you do it without potting soil, grow lights and warming mats. Consider creating manure heated hotbeds, using your own compost, building a greenhouse, or coldframe, direct seeding early versions of transplanted crops, etc…
2. Your local feed store has chicks right now – even suburbanites might consider ordering a few bantam hens and keeping them as exotic birds. Worth a shot, no? You can grow some feed in your garden for Them, as well as enjoying the eggs.
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can’t grow for a year because of some crisis? Order extras from places with cheap seed like www.fedcoseeds.com, www.superseeds.com, www.rareseed.com.
4. Yard sale season will begin soon in the warmer parts of the country, and auctions are picking up now in the North. Stocking up on things like shoes, extra coats, kids clothing in larger sizes, hand tools, garden equipment is simply prudent – and can save a lot Of money.
5. The real estate “season” will begin shortly, with families wanting to get settled in new homes during the summer, before the school year starts. If you are planning on buying or selling this year, now is the time to research the market, new locations, find that country property or the urban duplex with a big yard.
6. Once pastures are flush, last year’s hay is usually a bargain, and many farmers clean out their barns. Manure and old hay are great soil builders for anyone.
7. Check out your local animal shelter and adopt a dog or cat for rodent control, protection and friendship during peak oil.
8. As things green up, begin to identify and use local wild edibles. Eat your lawn’s dandilions, your daylily shoots, new nettles. Hunt for morels (learn what you are doing first!!) and wild onions. Get in the habit of seeing what food there is to be had everywhere you go.
9. Set up rainbarrel or cistern systems and start harvesting your precipitation.
10. Planning to only grow vegetables? Truly sustainable gardens include a lot of pretty flowers, which have value as medicinals, dye and fiber plants, seasoning herbs, and natural cleaners and pest repellants. Instead of giving up ornamentals altogether, grow a garden full of daylilies, lady’s mantle, dye hollyhocks and coreopsis, foxgloves, soapwart, bayberry, hip roses, bee balm and other useful beauties.
11. Get a garden in somewhere around you – campaign to turn open space into a community garden, ask if you can use a friend’s backyard, get your company or church, synagogue, mosque or school to grow a garden for the poor. Every garden and experienced gardener we have is a potential hedge against the disaster.
12. Join a CSA if you don’t garden, and get practice cooking and eating a local diet in season.
13. Eggs and greens are at their best in spring – dehydrated greens and cooked eggshells, ground up together add calcium and a host of other nutrients to flour, and you won’t taste them. We’re not going to be able to afford to waste food in the future, so get out of the habit now.
14. Make rhubarb, parsnip or dandelion wine for later consumption.
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy People.
16. Start a compost pile, or begin worm composting. Everyone can and should compost. Even apartment dwellers can keep worms or a compost Bin and use the product as potting soil.
17. Use spring holidays and feasts as a chance to bring up peak oil with friends and family. Freedom and rebirth are an excellent subjects To lead into the Long Emergency.
18. Store the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
19. With the renewal of the building season, now is the time to scavenge free building materials, like cinder blocks, old windows and scrap wood – with permission, of course.
20. Try and adapt to the spring weather early – get outside, turn down your heat or bank your fires, cut down on your fuel consumption as though you had no choice. Put on those sweaters one more time.
21. Shepherds are flush with wool – now is the time to buy some fleece and start spinning! Drop spindles are easy to make and cheap to use. Check out www.learntospin.com
22. Take a hard look back over the last winter – if you had had to survive on what you grew and stored last year, would you have made it? Early spring was famously the “starving time” when stores ran out and everyone was hungry. Remember, when you plan your food Needs that not much produces early in spring, and in northern climates, A winter’s worth of food must last until May or June.
23. Trade cuttings and divisions, seeds and seedlings with your neighbors. Learn what’s out there in your community, and sneak some useful plants into your neighbors’ garden.
24. If you’ve got a nearby college, consider scavenging the dorm Dumpsters. College students often leave astounding amounts of Stuff behind including excellent books, clothes, furniture, etc…
25. Say a schecheyanu, a blessing, or a prayer. Or simply be grateful for a series of coincidences that permit us to be here, in this place, as the world and the seasons come to life again. Try to make sure that this year, this time, you will take more joy in what you have, and prepare a bit better to soften the blow that is about to fall.SUMMER
1. If you don’t can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don’t garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer’s market at the end of the day – they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
2. Consider dehydrating outer leaves of broccoli, cabbage, etc…, and grinding the dried mixture. It can be added to flours to increase the nutritional value of your bread.
3. Buy hay in the summer, rather than gradually over the winter. Now is an excellent time to put up simple shelters for hay storage, to avoid high early spring and winter prices.
4. Firewood, woodstoves and heating materials are at their Cheapest right now. Invest now for winter. The same is true Insulating materials.
5. Back to School Planning is a great time to reconsider transportation in light of peak oil. Can your children walk? Bike? If they cannot do either for reasons of safety (rather than distance) could an adult do so with them? Could you hire a local teenager to take them to school on foot or by wheel? Can you find ways to carpool, if you must drive? Grownups can do this too.
6. Also when getting ready to go back to school, consider the environmental impact of your scheduling and activities – are there ways to minimize driving/eating out/equipment costs/fuel consumption? Could your family do less in formal “activities” and more in family work?
7. Consider either home schooling or engaging in supplemental home Education. Your kids may need a large number of skills not provided By local public schools, and a critical perspective that they certainly Won‘t learn in an institutional setting. Teach them.
8. Try and minimize air conditioning and electrical use during high Summer. Take cool showers or baths, use ice packs, reserve activity When possible for early am or evening. Rise at 4 am and get much of Your work done then.
9. Consider adding a solar powered attic fan, available from Real Goods www.realgoods.com.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home A paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite The neighbors in. Get to know them.
11. Be prepared for summer blackouts, some quite extensive. Have Emergency supplies and lighting at hand.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will Be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
13. Make your own summer camp. Instead of sending kids to soccer Camp, create an at-home skills camp that helps prepare people for Peak oil. Invite the neighbor kids to join you. Have a blast!
14. Begin adapting herbs and other potted plants to indoor culture. Consider adding small tropicals – figs, lemons, oranges, even bananas can often be grown in cold climate homes. Obviously, if you live in a warm climate well, be prepared for some jealousy from the rest of us come February.
15. Plant a fall garden in high summer – peas, broccoli, kale, lettuces, Beets, carrots, turnips, etc… All of the above will last well into early Winter in even the harshest climates, and with proper techniques or In milder areas, will provide you with fresh food all year long
16. Put up a new clothesline! Consider hand washing clothes outside, Since everyone will probably enjoy getting wet (and cool) anyhow.
17. If you have access to safe waters, go fishing. Get some practice, and Learn a new skill.
18. Encourage pick-up games at your house. Post-peak, children will Need to know how to entertain themselves.
19. For teens, encourage them to develop their own home businesses over The summers. Whether doing labor or creating a product, you may rely On them eventually to help support the family. Or have them clean out Your closets and attic and help you reorganize. Let them sell the stuff.
20. Buy a hand pushed lawn mower if you have less than 1 acre of grass. New ones are easy to push and pleasant, and will save you energy and that Unpleasant gas smell.
21. Keep an eye out for unharvested fruits and nuts – many suburban and rural Areas have berry and fruit bushes that no one harvests. Take advantage and Put up the fruit.
22. Practice extreme water conservation during the summer. Mulch to reduce The need for irrigation. Bathe less often and with less water. Reduce clothes Washing when possible.
23. This is an excellent time to toilet train children – they can run around naked If necessary and accidents will do no harm. Try and get them out of diapers now, Before winter.
24. Consider replacing lawns with something that doesn’t have to be mown – Ground covers like vetch, moss, even edibles like wintergreen or lingonberry, Chamomile or mint.
25. If it is summer time, then the living is probably easy. Take some time To enjoy it – to picnic, to celebrate democracy (and try and bring one aboutFALL (AUTUMN)
1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc…) are easily made from cheap or free materials – goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I’ve heard of getting them free.
2. Stock up for winter as though the hard times will begin this year. Besides dried and canned foods, don’t forget root cellarable and storable local produce, and season extension (cold frames, greenhouses, etc…) techniques for fresh food when you make your food inventory.
3. Thanksgiving sales tend to be when supermarkets offer the cheapest deals on excellent supplements to food storage, like shortening, canned pumpkin, spices, etc… I’ve also heard of stores given turkeys away free with grocery purchases – turkeys can then be cooked, canned and stored. Don’t forget to throw in storable ingredients for your family’s holiday staples – in hard times, any kind of celebration or continuity is appreciated.
4. Go leaf rustling for your garden and compost pile. If you Happen into places where people leave their leaves out for Pickup, grab the bags and set them to composting or mulching Your own garden.
5. Plant a last crop of over wintering spinach, and enjoy in The fall and again in spring.
6. Or consider planting a bed of winter wheat. Chickens can Even graze it lightly in the fall, and it will be ready to harvest in Time to use the bed for your fall garden. Even a small bed will Make quite a bit of fresh, delicious bread.
7. Hit those last yard sales, or back to school sales and buy a few extra clothes (or cloth to make them) for growing children and extra shoes for everyone. They will be welcome in storage, particularly if prices rise because of trade issues or inflation.
8. The best time to expand your garden is now – till or mulch and let sod rot over the winter. Add soil amendments, manure, Compost and lime.
9. Now is an excellent time to start the 100 mile diet in most locales – Stores and farms and markets are bursting with delicious local produce And products. Eat local and learn new recipes.
10. Rose hip season is coming – most food storage items are low in accessible vitamin C. Harvest wild or tame unsprayed rose hips, and dry them for tea to ensure long-term good health. Rose hips are Delicious mixed with raspberry leaves and lemon balm.
11. Discounts on alcohol are common between Halloween and Christmas – this is an excellent time to stock up on booze for personal, medicinal, trade or cooking. Pick up some vanilla beans as well, and make your own vanilla out of that cheap vodka.
12. Gardening equipment, and things like rainbarrels go on sale in the late summer/early fall. And nurseries often are trying to rid themselves of perennial plants – including edibles and medicinals. It isn’t too late to plant them in most parts of the country, although some care is needed in purchasing for things that have become rootbound.
13. Local honey will be at its cheapest now – now is the time to stock up. Consider making friends with the beekeeper, and perhaps Taking lessons yourself.
14. Fall is the cheapest time to buy livestock, either to keep or for butchering. Many 4Hers, and those who simply don’t want to keep excess animals over the winter are anxious to find buyers now. In many cases, at auction, I see animals selling for much less than the meat you can expect to obtain from their carcass is worth.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a “cold room/area” – a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn’t freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and Insulating it with Styrofoam panels
16. Now is a great time to build community (and get stuff done) by instituting a local “work bee” – invite neighbors and friends to come help either with a project for your household, or to share in some good deed for another community member. Provide food, drink, tools and get to work on whatever it is (building, harvesting, quilting, knitting – the sky is the limit), and at the same time strengthen your community. Make sure that next time, the work benefits a different neighbor or community member.
17. Most local charities get the majority of their donations between now and December. Consider dividing your charitable donations so that they are made year round, but adding extra volunteer hours to help your group handle the demands on them in the fall.
18. Many medicinal and culinary herbs are at their peak now. Consider learning about them and drying some for winter use.
19. If there is a gleaning program near you (either for charity or personal use) consider joining. If not, start one. Considerable amounts of food are wasted in the harvesting process, and you can either add to your storage or benefit your local shelters and food pantries.
20. Dig out those down comforters, extra blankets, hats with the earflaps, flannel jammies, etc… You don’t need heat in your sleeping areas – just warm clothes and blankets.
21. Learn a skill that can be done in the dark or by candlelight, while sitting with others in front of a heat source. Knitting, crocheting, whittling, rug braiding, etc… can all be done mostly by touch with little light, and are suitable for companionable evenings. In addition, learn to sing, play instruments, recite memorized speeches and poetry, etc… as something to do on dark winter evenings.
22. While I wouldn’t expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc…
23. Use a solar cooker or parabolic solar cooker whenever possible To prepare food. Or eat cool salads and raw foods. Not only won’t You heat up the house, but you’ll save energy.
24. A majority of children are born in the summer Early fall, which suggests that some of us are doing more than Keeping warm
25. Celebrate the harvest – this is a time of luxury and plenty, and should be treated as such and enjoyed that way. Cook, drink, eat, talk, sing, pray, dance, laugh, invite guests. Winter is long and comes soon enough. Celebrate!WINTER
1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you – woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery… take advantage of people who want to teach their skills
2. Get serious about land use planning – even if you live in a suburban neighborhood, you can find ways to optimize your land to produce the most food, fuel and barterables. Sit down and think hard about what you can do to make your land and your life more sustainable in the coming year.
3. The Winter Lull is an excellent time to get involved in public affairs. No matter how cynical you tend to be, nothing ever changed without Engagement. So get out there. Stand for office. Join. Volunteer.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness – keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don’t just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not – but planning for the former won’t prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
5. Most schools would be delighted to have volunteers come in and talk about conservation, gardening, small livestock, home-scale mechanics, ham radio, etc…, and most homeschooling families would be similarly thrilled. Consider offering to teach something you know that will be helpful post-peak (although I wouldn’t recommend discussing peak oil with any but the oldest teenagers, and not even that without their parents permission
6. Now is the time to convince your business, synagogue, church, school, community center to put a garden on that empty lawn. If you start the campaign now, you can be ready to plant in the spring. Produce can be shared among participants or offered to the needy.
7. The one-two punch of rising heating oil and gas prices may well be what is needed to make your family and friends more receptive to the peak oil message. Try again. At the very least, emphasize the options for mitigating increased economic strain with sustainable practices.
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area’s elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc… Offer help with stocking Up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they Are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save May be your own.
10. Get out and enjoy the cold weather. It is hard to adapt to colder Temperatures if you spend all your time huddled in front of a heater. Ski, Snowshoe, sled, shovel, have a snowball fight, build a hut, go winter Camping, but get comfortable with the cold, snowy world around you.
11. Have your chimney(s) inspected, and learn to clean your own. Learn to care for your kerosene lamps, to use candles safely, and how To use and maintain your smoke and CO detectors and fire extinguishers. Winter is peak fire season, so keep safe.
12. Grow sprouts on your windowsill.
13. Now is an excellent time to reconsider how you use your house. Look around – could you make more space? House more people? Do projects more efficiently? Add greenhouse space? Put in a homemade Composting toilet? Work with what you have to make it more useful.
14. If a holiday gift exchange is part of your life, make most of your gifts. Knit, whittle, build, sew, or otherwise create something beautiful for the People you love.
15. If someone wants to buy you something, request a useful tool or preparedness Item, or a gift certificate to a place like Lehmans or Real Goods. Considering giving Such gifts to friends and family – a solar crank radio, an LED flashlight, cast iron pans, These are useful and appreciated items whether or not you believe in peak oil.
16. Do a dry run in the dead of winter. Turn out all the power, turn off the water. Turn off all fossil-fuel sources of heat, and see how things go for a few days. Use What you learn to improve your preparedness, and have fun while doing it.
17. Learn to mend clothing, patch and make patchwork out of old clothes.
18. Write letters to people. The post is the most reliable way of communicating, And letters last forever.
19. Make a list of goals for the coming year, and the coming five years. Start Keeping records of your goals and your successes and failures.
20. Keep a journal. Your children and grandchildren (or someone else’s) may want To know what these days were like.
21. Wash your hands frequently, and avoid stress. Stay healthy so that you can be useful To those around you.
22. For those subject to depression or anxiety, winter can be hard. Find ways to relax, Decompress and use work as an antidote to fear whenever possible. Get outside on sunny Days, and try and exercise as much as possible to help maintain a positive attitude.
23. Memorize a poem or song every week. No matter what happens to you, no one can ever take away the music and words you hold in your mind. You can have them as comfort and pleasure wherever you go, and in whatever circumstances.
24. Take advantage of heating stoves by cooking on them. You can make soups or stews On top of any wood stove or even many radiators, and you can build or buy a metal oven That sits on top of woodstoves to bake in.
25. Winter is a time of quiet and contemplation. Go outside. Hear the silence. Take pleasure in what you have achieved over the past year. Focus on the abundance of this present, this day, rather than scarcity to come.
A Farm for the Future
‘A Farm for the Future’ is the BBC’s recent excellent documentary on Peak Oil and its effects on farming, leading to the promotion of Permaculture (all of which happened at 8pm on a Friday evening, so a good visible slot for the masses!). I’ve included some blurb from Chris Vernon of The Oil Drum written just before broadcast below as an intro:
On Friday the BBC will be broadcasting an excellent peak oil documentary; it focuses on farming. Presenter and co-producer Rebecca Hosking explores the importance of oil in farming and the potential impact of peak oil. The film has a passionate narrative centred on Rebecca’s small family farm in South West England; can she make her farm fit for the future?
The subject mater is top notch. Colin Campbell and Richard Heinberg contribute, permaculture, forest gardens, gardening vs farming, biofuels, biodiversity, industrial farming and no-till farming are all covered. It seems certain that present methods cannot go on feeding Britain as they are highly dependent on fossil-fuel. The film concentrates on the necessity to find a new way to feed the nation.
Above all, the presentation comes from the heart. It is sure to capture the imagination of many people who, not least due to the deepening recession, are primed for new ideas like never before.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this film is that it exists at all. Within the BBC, the Natural History Unit is one of the most conservative. The producers of ‘A Farm for the Future’ had a tremendous struggle getting this film made. BBC executives were not keen; the big global travellers even called the film “messed up propaganda”. However two years after I met with co-producer Tim Green at the inception of the film; it does now exist. The hope is that with the Natural History Unit producing a film with peak oil at its heart, the gates are now open to all the other departments such as News at Ten, Panorama, Horizon etc. to cover peak oil. There is knowledge and understanding of peak oil within the BBC but also nervousness about reporting.
Rebecca and Tim would like to thank the community here at The Oil Drum for providing much of the information needed to make this possible.
