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Starting up BurlingtonCAN.relocalize.net

grahamia — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 22:09:41 -0700

We have the structures in place, thanks to relocalize.net and Postcarbon Institute for people in Burlington ON to find each other and start exploring and learning about the local issues for energy and climate upset. Starting in October we will publicize organizational meetings. If you are an early-bird, sign on here and post your ideas.

Sustainable Burlington

Do local skills count more than money?

grahamia — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 12:36:15 -0700

A somewhat excerpted article from a thoughtful philosopher on the west coast. How much are you ready to accept the unacceptable? How will it affect you in Burlington?

Economics: The Sound of Aunt Edna's Knitting

By John Michael Greer

If the economic landscape beyond Hubbert’s peak proves to be the sort of rough terrain outlined in my last two Archdruid Report posts, how can individuals, families, and communities deal with it? On the large scale, opportunities for action are limited at best, not least because the noise of volatility can too easily hide the signal of decline. Just as recent plunges in the price of oil and natural gas have encouraged the delusion that we no longer have to worry about energy, the upside of the post-peak economy – the fortunes made, the speculative gambles that pay off, the boomtimes when demand destruction crashes energy prices and all seems right with the world – will make it easy for people to convince themselves that industrial society is still on track.

It’s easy to understand this sort of thinking, since the alternative is to accept the unacceptable: to admit that the industrial age is ending, and the luxuries, conveniences, and standard of living that define ordinary lifestyles in the modern world are going away, not just for a little while, but forever. That the unacceptable is also inevitable makes it no easier to cope with. Still, accepting the unacceptable is the crucial step in dealing with the economic impact of peak oil. Every assumption about the future has to be reassessed in the light of a contracting economy in which money and other forms of abstract wealth no longer guarantee access to goods and services.

Not that long ago in historical terms, it's worth recalling, money actually played a fairly small role in the overall economic picture. Until well after 1700, more than half of all goods and services in the western world were produced and consumed in household and community economies, and exchanged in customary networks governed by obligation and reciprocity, not supply and demand. Most households produced the great majority of their own food, clothing, and other necessities, and used surpluses to barter for specialty goods with other local producers. Cash served as a means of exchange for things produced so far away that transport costs and spoilage made barter unworkable. It took cheap, abundant fossil fuel energy to make transportation so cheap that centralized production and distribution of commodities could take the place of local production for local use.

In the aftermath of peak oil, such local economies are the wave of the future, and the money economy of the present and recent past is an anachronism. Since fossil fuel depletion is a gradual process, though, the changeover won’t happen all at once. This is a good thing, since the vast majority of people in the industrial world today lack the skills and tools to function in a local economy. Their jobs – from executives and consultants through salespeople, office staff, and all the other cubicle-shaped pigeonholes in the corporate caste system – serve functions internal to the industrial economy instead of producing goods and services people want or need.

The jobs that matter in a deindustrial economy, by contrast, are the ones that meet human needs directly. Farming is the classic example. If you grow food crops with your own labor, you don’t actually need the money economy, except insofar as it forces itself on you by way of property taxes and the like. Your labor provides you with value directly, since some of your crops end up on your own kitchen table; the rest can be exchanged with other local sources of goods and services you need – the seamstress next door, the blacksmith down the road, the general store in town. Money is a convenient way of facilitating these exchanges, but it’s not necessary; you can as well use barter, or local scrip, or any other means of exchanging value that comes to hand. Because what you produce has value to other people, you can trade for the things other people produce that you need, whether or not the money economy is there to mediate the trade.

...

In the deindustrial age, then, the farmer’s economic model is the more viable, because it can do without the mediation of the money economy. Other professions that produce necessary goods and services will be in the same comfortable position, since people will continue to need food, clothing, shoes, tools, and the like, and will trade for them using whatever means are available. Except in the most difficult times, they will also be willing to trade for other things that aren’t quite necessities; someone who brews good beer, for example, can count on a market for his wares in all but the most apocalyptic times, and quite possibly even then.

Since the twilight of the money economy will be a gradual process, it won’t necessarily be possible for individuals to make the transition to a deindustrial career in a single leap. What can and must be tackled right now is the learning curve demanded by any of these skilled trades. It’s not enough to line your shelves with books about organic farming, for example; you need to start buying tools, digging garden beds, and growing your own crops, and you need to do this as soon as possible, because mastering the craft of organic farming takes time. The same is true if you decide to take up blacksmithying, brewing, small appliance repair, or any other useful trade: you need to get the tools and start learning the craft, so you’ll have your Plan B firmly in place when the money economy folds out from under you.
...

People have different opportunities and talents, and one size emphatically does not fit all. For those who have access to garden space, though, a household garden is probably the top priority here. It’s not necessary to grow all your own food, or even a large proportion of your total calorie intake, for this to have a significant impact on your quality of life. In America, at least, bulk crops such as grains and beans will likely be available via the money economy for many years to come. Fruits, vegetables, and animal foods – that is, sources of vitamins, minerals, and protein – are another matter. A vegetable garden, a couple of fruit trees, and perhaps a rabbit hutch or a tank for carp or tilapia may mean the difference between malnutrition and health.

If you don’t have access to garden space, consider taking up a useful handicraft or two. Aunt Edna’s habit of knitting cardigans for all and sundry may have seemed quaint in the heyday of the industrial economy, but when central heating prices itself out of existence and transport costs put paid to clothing imports from Third World sweatshops, warm clothing you can make with your own hands has obvious value, and may also be a useful item of barter. The same is true of many other skills, from soapmaking and herbal medicine to the handyman skills that allow plumbing, furniture, and appliances to be repaired at home.

Another response to human wants and needs outside the money economy will be vital during the deindustrial age, and needs to be revived and practiced as soon as possible. This is the art of doing without. The industrial economy has trained all of us to think that the only possible thing to do with a desire is fulfill it, preferably by spending money on some consumer product or other. The contracting economy of the deindustrial age will offer very little leeway to this sort of self-indulgent thinking. On the far side of Hubbert’s peak, your capacity to survive will largely be measured by the number of things you can do without. It’s hardly an accident, either, that the world’s spiritual traditions also affirm the value of being unattached to material things.

Among the things we will have to learn to do without, though, perhaps the most important is not a material thing at all, but a habit – the deliberate cultivation of uselessness that goes by the name of “leisure.” Only a society flush with cheap energy could convince itself that the highest goal of human life is to sit around doing nothing, and even so it takes the nonstop blare of the media to distract us from the fact that sitting around doing nothing is the dullest of all human activities. Our grandparents’ generation and their ancestors knew as much, which is why leisure a century ago focused on creative activities rather than indolence, and why Aunt Edna knitted all those cardigans long after the industrial economy made home production of clothing unnecessary. The twilight of industrial society, like the fall of other civilizations before it, will doubtless be accompanied by plenty of tumult and shouting, but the real story – the signal behind all that noise – will be a much fainter sound: the soft clatter of Aunt Edna’s knitting needles, beginning to knit the fabric of a new and more sustainable world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fifth of a nine-part series.
Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=21327

Original article :
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com

Sustainable Burlington

What you "can do" Lists

grahamia — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:14:59 -0800

A list posted on www.theecologist.org at http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=432 30 STEPS TO AN OIL FREE WORLD Our addiction to oil is not inevitable. We can all take steps to kick the habit:

1. Walk, cycle, take public transport or consider a car-pool whenever possible.

2. Reduce your travel by air.

3. If you need a car, buy the most fuel-efficient (currently Toyota’s Prius and Honda’s Insight – both hybrid cars that use petrol and electricity) or one that runs on bio-diesel or natural gas.

4. Service your car regularly – keeping the engine tuned and your car tyres at the maximum recommended air pressure saves petrol.

5. Live as close to work as possible.

6. Shop locally rather than in out-of-town superstores.

7. Buy regionally and seasonally produced organic food whenever possible.

8. Switch your investments away from fossil fuel to renewable energy companies, or exercise your right as a shareholder to pressure energy companies to make the transition to renewables.

9. Boycott the products of companies that are obstructing the transition to renewables.

What the government can do:

10. Lobby your political representatives to press them to act, and vote accordingly.

11. Accept a target of phasing out oil & gas use within 50 years.

12. Discontinue all direct and indirect subsidies to the oil & gas industry.

13. Refuse licenses for the exploration and development of new oil & gas reserves.

14. Provide investment, grants, and tax breaks for the development and purchase of clean renewable alternatives to oil and for energy efficient vehicles.

15. Increase investment in public transport.

16. Pedestrianise city centres and introduce congestion charges in cities.

17. Require car makers to ensure an escalating proportion of their vehicle fleet sales consists of petrol-free vehicles.

18. Increase minimum energy efficiency standards for vehicles.

19. Change tariff policies on imports to support the local consumption of goods (particularly food) that have been produced locally.

What businesses can do:

20. Phase out subsidies to industrial food production, which is petrol-intensive, and support conversion to organic methods instead. 21. Oil & gas companies should commit to converting themselves into renewable energy companies, and redirect their investments accordingly.

22. Car makers should commit to mass-manufacture cars now that run on hydrogen fuel cells or other renewable fuels, and that use lighter materials.

23. Companies should convert their truck and car fleets to the lowest petrol-consuming vehicles available.

24. Companies should provide incentives for employees to leave their cars at home and use public transport instead, reduce air travel, and promote telecommuting.

25. Companies should site their offices close to public transportation.

26. Retailers should adopt a purchasing policy that provides preference to goods from short supply routes and regional markets.

27. Companies should shift freight out of trucks and onto rail and waterways.

28. Farmers should convert from industrial to organic farming methods.

29. The plastics & packaging industries should replace their use of oil with corn, soybean, potato starch or limestone derivatives. 30. The clothing industry should use vegetable starch and natural fibres, such as wool and cotton, instead of oil derivatives in their products.

Post Carbon Oakville

Deep Integration, NAFTA, Continentalism

grahamia — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 13:41:56 -0800

http://www.cowichannewsleader.com

Several articles at this local newspaper in Duncan Is BC are good wakeup alerts to the future of Canada, and relocalization, living next to the rogue state USA.

Closer ties to the U.S. a mistake By Robert Radford
Nov 04 2006

The North American Union, may seem like a good thing to some people: no more currency exchange problems, no more duties and tariffs, no more hassles at the border.

But before the Canadian people allow their politicians to create this union, there are a few factors I believe should be taken into consideration.

Integrity: The United States government has repeatedly demonstrated its "right," in the best interests of the United States, to violate the terms of any agreement, constitution, convention, treaty or understanding which may exist. Are we willing to form a union with a nation which can't keep its word?

Fiscal Responsibility: The United States has a debt of over $8,570 billion and it is increasing at the rate of 1.62 billion dollars a day, far beyond its ability to ever repay, even according to the most optimistic of forecasts. Are we willing to form a union with a nation which is bankrupt?

Resource Responsibility: The United States imports two-thirds of the oil which it consumes and the dried up lakes and rivers in parts of the United States demonstrate a lack of responsibility in water resource management. Canada possesses the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world, next to Saudi Arabia, and has 10 times more water resources than the United States. Are we willing to form a union with a nation which has its eyes on our resources after misusing its own?

Social Values: Anyone who has lived and worked in the United States for a few years is well aware that there are significant differences between the moral and cultural values of those who have been born and brought up in Canada and those who have been born and brought up in the United States. For example, Canadians value multi-cultural perspectives, whereas the Americans value a cultural melting-pot. Are we willing to form a union with a nation without a clear acceptance of the differences in our sets of values?

Consideration of factors such as these may seem like common sense to you and me. But can we count on our politicians to exercise it?

Robert Radford is a Cobble Hill resident.

Sustainable Burlington

Natural Gas in Short Supply on the Horizon

grahamia — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:50:42 -0800

Shane ONeill and Dan Bashaw members of London PeakOil Group, a postcarbon outpost like SB

----- Original Message ----- From: Dan Bashaw To: postcarbon-lo@lists.riseup.net Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 10:43 PM Subject: [p-c l] London and Natural Gas Supplies
Hi PCL list members;

Hm... I just ran across the scariest picture I've seen all year: North American Natural Gas Production Curves, projected over the next few years, with a massive production collapse projected between now and 2010.

Check it out at: http://europe.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/61031/618.

It raises the following very interesting dilemma:

“Simply put, by 2010 Conventional Gas production can be half of what is today in North America, falling from 20 Tcf/a to 10 Tcf/a. Jean doesn't hesitate to say that shortages will soon occur in this part of the world. Production already peaked in 2001, declining 5% up to 2005, so a downward trend is already there, but will that cliff unfold? Unconventional Gas production has been rising too slowly to avoid the peak, can it avoid the cliff?”

Now I realize that this is not news to many of you, (See: http://www.highnoon.ws/) but the immediacy of the production collapse was news to me!

Since moving to London, I've been struck with how unusually dependent we are on natural gas in Southern Ontario: I'll bet over 95% of homes here are gas heated, and the few that are not use electric heat, with at least some of the juice generated in gas-fired plants. I have not seen a single oil furnace since moving here, and the place we bought our wood stove from said 98% of their stove and fireplace installs are gas, not wood or pellet.

North American natural gas production cuts of 50% within three years (if the stats are roughly accurate) don’t mean ‘expensive gas’, they may mean ‘no gas’, depending on how the politics of NAFTA and competing regional distribution demands play out. I wonder whether 50% cuts would even allow the current pipeline distribution system to stay filled and pressurized.

The post and comments at The Oil Drum is pretty technical, but is a good starting point for discussion. Some questions to ponder:

Are the facts incorrect, or am I mis-interpreting them? Do we really have only 1000 days 'til the heat goes out in much of Ontario?

I believe the facts to be correct because of several issues remember the spike in NG during the summer - it was due to US power stations running on gas consumming so much gas in any single moment (reason = air conditioning) 2006 is the first year when you see 206 new power stations opened up and consumming gas- this never happened before and they need the gas to make the electricity- consider for a moment that Florida now has no oil or coal power plants - they have all been closed and even knocked down- they need the gas. The 206 plants was part of Bush's first policy in the White House and they have only come on stream in the past two years the amount of gas aplliances has soared and so has gas furnaces- as replacement to oil in many cases in the London area (reason= house insurance if you have an oil drum for storing the oil) the wastage has reached excessive levels- I mean quite literally we have soared in our use of NG

Can the natural gas distribution system continue to function under this level of deloading?

No, and this is why we though it prudent to form the Post Carbon Group in London, as London is a weird place - she has no form of power production and is within the catchment of fuel sensitive cities. We wanted to push an awareness program and this has begun... the next stage is to instgate the Community Energy Plan.... remember Council were offered a report on Peak Oil but they declined needing to sanction it... as such it is business as ussual for this city... so there will be problems... as for the decline, if cities do not recognise this issue then they are commiting the public to very quick hardships- I believe that rather than funding the replacement of light bulbs we should be showing people how to use less gas.

If this projection is accurate, why isn't everyone involved in gas distribution and emergency planning freaking out big time?

an act of calm denial, again it has to do with awareness- the worst for the denial are actually the gas workers and furnace installers, they say there is no problem. The problem begins with the politicians- Elizabeth May has been the only politician to date to actually be aware of it and wanted to raise the issue if she had been elected, as for the other Ferderal candidates in the recent election- none of knew nor cared.

What mitigations are possible for London as a whole?

since doing Energuides for the region- I have stopped recommending gas appliances, rather I would like to see people save the money for geo-thermal The US just purchased $29 Billion of NG from Quater a couple of weeks ago and it is due to statrt coming into the States by 2008- only problem is that they do not have the ships or the LNG ports, as such Nova Scotia will be a point of access, and we are building that facility as I write Get off big gas, see if your gas appliances for cooking can be converted to propane and go solar for hot water or geothermal for heat and DHW Coal-derived ‘town gas’ is discussed at length in the comments at http://europe.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/27/61031/618.

What mitigations are possible at the neighbourhood and home level? How can you prepare your home for gas delivery disruptions that could last several weeks... or a full winter?

yes it is possible and this again is a reason for Post Carbon.... we have to get out and have the awareness program.... there are allot of ways to make one still live the same as before gas- as for disruptions - did you see Thunder Bay a couple of weeks ago- there was no preparaness for the disruption- people were asked to leave their houses. ... yet again I stress the need for Post Carbon to bring the awareness of this and the types of issues one will need to face I don't have any answers to these, but hope that you do... and that we can start discussing it now! at present all is ok, but do not use the EU as a comparision, they have gas lines to connect to, Ontario does not and as for town gas, it is not even a runner- we use too much. My preferred option is the exploration of co-gen

shane
Suddenly Feeling Very Chilly;

- Dan

Sustainable Burlington

CBC radio segment: local food for hospitals

Kgroen — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:43:12 -0800

Thursday Dec 14 episode for CBC's The Current included several segments pertaining to food:

Part 1: Discusses nutritive value of hospital food and issues pertaining to local food distribution for hospitals (e.g. regulations requiring institutional food services to have an open bidding process for large food supply contracts across canada).

American examples of private hospitals (Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, CA) and insurance providers (Kaiser Permanente also in CA) that are taking a lead in making local food a priority (including a 1/4 acre on-site garden at the hospital) The segment is 1/2 hour, but most of the local food issues are heard in the 13min - end of segment.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2006/200612/20061214.html

Sustainable Burlington

Dion Knows about Peak Oil

grahamia — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:20:24 -0800

http://canada.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/3/121020/783

Stephan Dion knows about Peak Oil. Why is he not talking about it?

Here is why :
Report from theoildrum, posted by Pascal Gagnon, of Roberval, Lac St Jean region, Dec 2006.

He came this summer in our city and the journalist told him about me and my report about peak oil. He told the journalist (and then me thereafter) that he read the following books : Twilight, Beyond Oil, The Party is over and many other reports.

I personaly sent him a copy of the french report I made and he told me it was one of the few french document available in Canada at this time.

So I think he will steer the party and the politics toward the talking of this problem, which is yet to be done here in Canada, especialy in Quebec.

For those who know french, this is from Pascal's site

Bienvenue à Roberval

Nichée au coeur des grands espaces et seule ville de la région située directement en bordure du lac Saint-Jean, Roberval vit en totale symbiose avec le majestueux plan d'eau qui baigne ses rives.

Au gré des saisons, ce lac - qu'on dit vaste comme une mer et beau comme un océan - offre à la ville et à ses 11000 habitants une étonnante diversité d'activités et des paysages sans cesse renouvelés!

Contact: gagnon_pascal at cgocable dot ca
Homepage: http://www.ville.roberval.qc.ca
Bio: Pascal Gagnon, Bsc CS, undergoind a MS in management. Involved in many aspect of Roberval city life. Working to make our place ready for PO

Post Carbon London (Ontario)

Community Garden Project Resources

grahamia — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 12:03:29 -0800

There are many variations on the Community Gardening theme. Some places it's the city who provides public space and water for a club or association to organize plots or allotments to local citizens. Other places it's citizens who get organized and use a vacant lot, or their own back yards.

Another variation on a community garden is to share someone's back or front yard as the gardening site for several families. This works very well in other cities.

The 2007 season has started, and we have not yet found the resources to get a gardening project started. Maybe next year, or over the winter we can discuss more.

For excellent information on urban farming, community farming, local food production, see these websites:
www.cityfarmer.org (Vancouver)
www.foodshare.org (Toronto)
www.yourbackyardfarmer.com/ (Portland)
www.oklahomafood.coop/ (yup, Oklahoma city, not gardening per se but excellent example of how to increase local food security)
www.organicconsumers.org/
www.environmenthamilton.org/eatlocal/directory/
www.torontoplus.ca/feature/gardening/68/community.jsp
www.foodlink-waterlooregion.ca/index.php?first=3ef29e4ebf789
www.communitygarden.org/ (American Community Gardening Association homepage)

Sustainable Burlington

Documentaries to screen

Toban Black — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 10:53:52 -0800

Are there any documentaries that Post-Carbon London should screen? The Post-Carbon organizers could use suggestions. Some of us want to set up screenings, but we're not sure what films to show.

It should be easy enough for us to set up screenings with the library, and the local chapter of the Council of Canadians will probably help us to organize the screening events.

We plan to screen The Power of Community soon and we'll screen Escape From Suburbia when it becomes available. We're also going to try to screen Manufactured Landscapes soon (trailer here). Otherwise, there are no plans at this point.

A Crude Awakening isn't available. Maybe Peak Oil: Imposed by Nature would be worth ordering and screening (here's a clip or a trailer).

A lecture-style piece called Climate Change, Despair and Empowerment has been suggested.

Someone else has suggested that Seeds of Change be screened -- possibly with help from another local green group. This film doesn't seem appropriate to me though.

Another possibility is The Oil Factor. This film would bring out the politics of oil, which people need to become aware of; yet, there are important considerations associated with raising oil politics (like interfering with attempts to create the perception that ecology somehow transcends politics).

Koyaanisqatsi is probably appropriate (clips here), but I haven't seen it for awhile. I worry that this one might present naive ideas.

As I understand it, Darwin's Nightmare presents a problem -- "invader species" -- that could be addressed through relocalization. In other words, I think this one might implicitly promote relocalization somewhat.

Another possibility, which I know nothing about, is Out of Balance.

Post Carbon London (Ontario)

Energy Preparedness Action Plan

grahamia — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:25:53 -0800

See http://www.energyfinder.org. This is a social marketing tool with lots of promise. Imagine being able to do a preliminary assessment of the energy conservation potential in your city?

About the Community Energy Opportunity Finder
Developed by energy experts at Rocky Mountain Institute, the Community Energy Opportunity Finder mimics the preliminary analysis of an expert consultant in order to help your community realize the benefits of wise energy use.

It's easy to begin. The Finder helps you collect information on your community's energy use, and then demonstrates the potential energy savings; dollar savings; reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide emissions; and job creation from energy efficiency programs. The Finder also gives you an overview of the kinds of renewable energy sources that could power your community.

Steps to using the Finder

1. Create a new account.
2. Create a scenario for your community.
3. Follow the instructions in the data entry pages to collect current and projected data on your community's energy use and physical characteristics.
4. Review your community's results.
5. Browse through the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy pages to learn how to start and fund your own energy projects, review case studies of successful community energy programs and gather information on some of the latest energy efficient and renewable energy technologies.

Why use this tool?
A local economy might be compared to a bucket that the community would like to keep full. Business recruitment and community expansion are attempts to pour more money into the bucket. While these strategies may have succeeded in the past, today they often fail or generate more costs to the community than benefits.

Capabilities and Limitations
The Finder is designed to perform an initial evaluation of the opportunities for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in your community.

There are many calculations and assumptions built into the Finder, based on published literature and substantial experience from dozens of energy experts.

The strength of the Finder is that it helps you collect a small core of essential data on your community's energy use, and then generates a reasonable range of your community's potential energy savings, dollar savings, emissions reductions, and job creation. In a relatively short amount of time, then, you'll be able to see how your community can benefit from energy efficiency projects, and that not doing those projects is tantamount to throwing cash out the window.

This strength is also a limitation; much of the data that drive the Finder's calculations are typical for your climate region or building type, and your community may vary somewhat from the typical case. The data generated by the Finder are intended to give you an overall sense of your community's energy opportunities, but should not serve in place of a detailed audit of each area or building where energy is used.

Sustainable Burlington

Collapse and Its Discontents: Speaking Truth to Power

grahamia — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 08:09:40 -0800

http://carolynbaker.org/archives/collapse-and-its-discontents-a-carolyn-...

Many peak oil readers are familiar with Dmitry Orlov, who lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and from his experience offers options for surviving the collapse of Western civilization as we know it.

He starts off this new essay like this:
"It's been a couple of years since I started writing on the subject of economic collapse, as it occurred in Russia and as it is likely to occur here in the United States. Thus far, I remain reasonably content with my predictions: it's all lining up, slowly but surely. "

This will really wake you up to the high stakes poker game the human race is in right now.

Sustainable Burlington

IPCC Climate Change report

grahamia — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:50:57 -0800

Tim Flannery, well known for his book, The WeatherMakers, recently was honoured with the epithet of "Australian Man of the Year". He is still speaking out about climate change.
Here's a link to his comments about the Feb 2nd International Panel on Climate Change report: http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/temperature-predictions-conservat...

Here is a quote:
"It could be worse than this - there's a 10 per cent chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we're looking at six degrees or so," Prof Flannery said.

"That would be a disaster for all life on earth. Three degrees will be a disaster for all life on earth.

"We will lose somewhere between two out of every 10 and six out of every 10 species living on the planet at that level of warming.

"It will set in train a series of climate consequences that will run for a thousand years."

Prof Flannery said the clearest example of the IPCC's conservatism was its prediction the Arctic ice cap could disappear in summers by 2100.

"The actual trajectory we've seen in the Arctic over the last two years, if you follow that, that implies that the Arctic ice cap will be gone in the next five to 15 years. This is an ice cap that's been around for the last three million years," he said.

"Those predictions tell you a little bit about the conservatism of the IPCC, how rapidly the science is moving and how rapidly events in the real world are moving, far in advance I think of even the most sombre warnings by scientists working in this area."

He also brushed off the IPCC's use of the words "very likely" in relation to climate change having a human footprint.

"I don't think that that's an issue for debate any more," he said.

"It's our problem, we have to do something about it. We have the tools, we're so far we're lacking the will."

What do you think will make the will, political or personal, materialize?
Ian

Sustainable Burlington

Kunstler's best statement of the Post-carbon Agenda

grahamia — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 10:14:32 -0800

February 5, 2007
The Agenda Restated (see www.kunstler.com)
Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions." I find this bizarre because I never fail to present audiences with a long, explicit task list of projects that American society needs to take up in the face of the combined problems I have labeled The Long Emergency. That the audience never hears this, and then indignantly demands such instruction, only reinforces my sense that the cognitive dissonance in our culture has gone totally off the charts.
Insofar as I just returned from a college lecture road trip, and heard the same carping all over again, I conclude that it's necessary for me to spell it all out a'fresh. I think of this not so much as a roster of "solutions" but as a set of reasonable responses to a new set of circumstances. (Not everything we try to do will succeed, that is, be a "solution.") So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here it is.

* Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

* We have to produce food differently. The ADM / Monsanto / Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

* We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami....) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.

* We have to move things and people differently. This is the sunset of Happy Motoring (including the entire US trucking system). Get used to it. Don't waste your society's remaining resources trying to prop up car-and-truck dependency. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient. Need something to do? Get involved in restoring public transit. Let's start with railroads, and let's make sure we electrify them so they will run on things other than fossil fuel or, if we have to run them partly on coal-fired power plants, at least scrub the emissions and sequester the CO2 at as few source-points as possible. We also have to prepare our society for moving people and things much more by water. This implies the rebuilding of infrastructure for our harbors, and also for our inland river and canal systems -- including the towns associated with them. The great harbor towns, like Baltimore, Boston, and New York, can no longer devote their waterfronts to condo sites and bikeways. We actually have to put the piers and warehouses back in place (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Right now, programs are underway to restore maritime shipping based on wind -- yes, sailing ships. It's for real. Lots to do here. Put down your Ipod and get busy.

* We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.

* We will have to make things again in America. However, we are going to make less stuff. We will have fewer things to buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain is coming down on the endless blue-light-special shopping frenzy that has occupied the forefront of daily life in America for decades. But we will still need household goods and things to wear. As a practical matter, we are not going to re-live the 20th century. The factories from America's heyday of manufacturing (1900 - 1970) were all designed for massive inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have already been demolished. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.

* The age of canned entertainment is coming to and end. It was fun for a while. We liked "Citizen Kane" and the Beatles. But we're going to have to make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers. We'll need theater managers and stage-hands. The Internet is not going to save canned entertainment. The Internet will not work so well if the electricity is on the fritz half the time (or more).

* We'll have to reorganize the education system. The centralized secondary school systems based on the yellow school bus fleets will not survive the coming decades. The huge investments we have made in these facilities will impede the transition out of them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will be a less-affluent society, we probably won't be able to replace these centralized facilities with smaller and more equitably distributed schools, at least not right away. Personally, I believe that the next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable. And the activity of higher ed itself may engender huge resentment by those foreclosed from it. But anyone who learns to do long division and write a coherent paragraph will be at a great advantage -- and, in any case, will probably out-perform today's average college graduate. One thing for sure: teaching children is not liable to become an obsolete line-of-work, as compared to public relations and sports marketing. Lots to do here, and lots to think about. Get busy, future teachers of America.

* We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring." Medical training may also have to change as the big universities run into trouble functioning. Doctors of the 21st century will certainly drive fewer German cars, and there will be fewer opportunities in the cosmetic surgery field. Let's hope that we don't slide so far back that we forget the germ theory of disease, or the need to wash our hands, or the fundamentals of pharmaceutical science. Lots to do here for the unsqueamish.

* Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. You can state categorically that any enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you. An entire social infrastructure of voluntary associations, co-opted by the narcotic of television, needs to be reconstructed. Local institutions for care of the helpless will have to be organized. Local politics will be much more meaningful as state governments and federal agencies slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs here for local heroes.

So, that's the task list for now. Forgive me if I left things out. But please don't carp at me, by letter or in person, that I am not providing you with anything to think about or devote your personal energy to. If you're depressed, change your focus. Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances.

Post Carbon Oakville

Eating Oil when we eat food

grahamia — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:25:30 -0800

http://transitionculture.org/2007/02/13/vandana-shivas-closing-address-t...

Excerpt from powerful moving speech by Shiva Vandana to UK Soil Association, posted on Feb 13 2007.

"Something went very wrong with industrialised agriculture to introduce
oil in an activity which could be done better without it. That’s what
the organic movement is about. Fossil fuels entered with the chemicals.
They entered with mechanization, and now, increasingly with
industrialised farming joining with globalised agriculture, we are
eating oil. We have stopped eating food. And on the one hand, the
challenge here in the North is how to stop eating oil and how to start
eating food again. And the challenge for us in the South is how to keep
eating food and make sure everyone has a bit more."

Read this physicist's appreciation of the damage being done to food production through globalized industrial fossil-fueled agriculture.

Ian

Sustainable Burlington

Now Coal looks like near term peak: Heinberg reviews German study

grahamia — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:03:24 -0700

from http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_179_burning_th...
MuseLetter #179 / March 2007
by Richard Heinberg

Burning the Furniture

A soon-to-be-released study by the Energy Watch Group in Germany on the future of global coal supplies has implications so surprising and far-reaching that energy policymakers may take years to digest it. This essay is intended to help speed that process. The report’s central conclusion is that minable global coal reserves are much smaller than is commonly thought, and that a peak in world coal production is likely within only ten to fifteen years.

... Today coal provides for over a quarter of the world’s primary energy needs and generates 40 percent of the world’s electricity.

... Meanwhile, coal remains the most environmentally damaging of the conventional fossil fuels. While it produces a quarter of the world’s energy, it is responsible for nearly 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, principally carbon dioxide (CO2).

... The report concludes: “the present and past experience does not support the common argument that reserves are increasing over time as new areas are explored and prices rise.” This argument is supported by the fact that even the world’s in-situ resources of coal have dwindled from 10 trillion tons of hard coal equivalent (hce) to 4.2 trillion tons in 2005—a 60 percent downward revision in 25 years.

... If the EWG report is right that the global coal peak will occur around a decade after the petroleum/gas peak, this probably implies a 10-year interval, starting around 2010, of relatively slow fall-off in total energy from fossil fuels, followed by a gradually accelerating decline.

... Taking into account regional gas constraints and a likely near-term peak in global coal extraction, it is perhaps more appropriate to speak instead a broad-spectrum energy crisis with implications for electricity generation, space heating, and agriculture as well.

... there is arguably no credible scenario in which these could grow fast enough to offset projected declines in any one of the three principal fossil fuels, much less all three together.

...Planned, strategic curtailment of energy use will of necessity be the primary adaptation strategy. This has enormous implications for every aspect of modern economies.

... a report by the Institute for Policy Research, “High Stakes: Designing Emissions Pathways to Reduce the Risk of Dangerous Climate Change,” concludes that in order to have a high degree of confidence of keeping average surface warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, carbon emissions must be reduced 70 to 80 percent below present levels by 2050). Even the 2 degree target is somewhat arbitrary:

... Climate advocates can make the argument that, even if society finds steep voluntary cuts in the use of coal and other fossil fuels to be economically onerous, there is really no alternative: declines in production will happen anyway, so it is better to cut use proactively and systematically than wait and be faced with shortages and price volatility later. The findings of the 2005 DOE-funded Hirsch report (“Peak of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management”) regarding society’s vulnerability to peak oil apply also to peak coal: time will be needed in order for society to adapt proactively to a resource-constrained environment. A failure to begin now to reduce reliance on coal will mean much greater economic hardship when the peak arrives.

... The new information about coal helps: it tells us that even if the economic price for carbon reduction is high, we have no choice but to proceed. There really is no “business-as-usual” option, even ignoring environmental impacts, given the resource constraints.

... If there is no credible way of replacing fossil fuels with other energy sources in order to meet the emissions reduction trajectories being proposed, this probably implies real economic pain. Unlike emissions, high energy prices are something everyone can understand.

... In other publications I have advocated a Depletion Protocol for oil as a policy tool to enable societies to better adapt to the impending peak in global petroleum production. Depletion protocols for gas and coal, while not as critical (since these fuels are not traded globally to the same extent as oil), could also help with the difficult process of adaptation.

Sustainable Burlington

Can Suzuki get Relocalization on the Sports page?

grahamia — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:06:33 -0700

http://www.energybulletin.net/28698.html

Published on Thursday, April 19, 2007 by Energy Bulletin

The relocalization of sport

By Bill Henderson

David Suzuki will be guest editor for the whole Vancouver Sun
on Saturday May 5th. Dr. Suzuki has always been an eloquent voice in
the vanguard of environmental education. He is as knowledgeable about
the 'slow motion catastrophes' threatening mankind's very existence as
anybody on the planet.

But can he get the possibilities of relocalization into print in the Sun Sports Section?

"What I would love to do is put a green slant in every
area," [Suzuki said], explaining he thinks the mainstream media do not
do enough to highlight how the environment is connected to all areas of
the news.

"You may get [stories] about floods in Bangladesh, drought in Ethiopia
and forest fires in northern Alberta, and they are all reported as if
they've got nothing to do with each other," he said, adding he would
like to start making those connections.

"One of the challenges we face is we are not seeing the world as a single entity and seeing how interconnected things are."

Suzuki also said he wants to get green stories into the sports and arts and life sections.

Suzuki to be guest editor for a day (Vancouver Sun, March 24, 2007)

Hundreds of pro and college teams criss-cross the continent by plane,
play in huge stadiums lit at enormous energy expense, in front of fans
most of whom have driven miles to the game.

I'm a jock and a fan; I live and die with my beloved Canucks (we're
just starting the playoffs). I empathize with Man U fans, Cowboy fans
and Sonic fans. But the dangers from climate change and peak oil are so
serious that we must reduce our use of fossil fuels radically and
immediately.

Climate change isn't just bad weather a century from now but the
increasing probability of human extinction from runaway climate change.
The end of cheap oil has the potential for escalating resource wars
including a final nuclear war. The Stanley Cup is the Holy Grail but...
we must change and NOW.

I have argued (links at bottom) that the presently evolved pro sport configuration is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Instead why don't we relocalize sports, just as we're beginning to
relocalize the food system?. Why not support local stars playing in
local leagues at venues that are modest and close-by? Playing daylight
games would further cut energy consumption.

Relocalizing sports would reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and oil
use. In addition, just as relocalizing food can improve quality of
life, so would relocalizing sports. Little league and soccer coaches
will understand that returning the emphasis to local diamonds and
playing fields will bring more players and fans out to the games played
in the neighbourhood.

Local sports are great community builders. They are ladders for kids, and home for Old Farts, Use2Bees and Snocaps like me.

On sunny game days at my old Capilano Rugby Club, hundreds of fans
watch the day's series of games, drinking beer in the grandstand.
Talented local kids and wily vets play big games. The Cap Premier team
is best in BC and one of the best in North America.

After we play the Kats, I love walking around their clubhouse looking
at the old newspaper clippings from the 50s- and 60s-era Van Sun when local games with local teams like the Kats appeared on the front page of the Sports Section.

You could relocalize pro leagues and still have Nash and A-rod. You
could then have regional and national championships but with a much
smaller carbon footprint. Every game could be available on the Net.
When a clean-energy, low-footprint economy is flourishing, we could
reconfigure back to the leagues we love so much now.

But can Dr. Suzuki get discussion of relocalization into the Sports Section?

I e-mailed the question to Dr. Suzuki's press secretary at the David Suzuki Foundation. The response:

We are currently working with all sections of the Vancouver Sun
(including the sports section) to develop stories about environmental
awareness and sustainability. The staff and management of the Vancouver Sun
have been overwhelmingly supportive and enthusiastic about Dr. Suzuki's
guest editorship and I think you will see that reflected in all
sections of the newspaper.

So I think we will have an interesting experiment, because right now relocalization is not on the menu of public debate.

Why not?

Don't expect a bulletin from the Yankees or the Lakers management
admitting that their carbon footprint is inexcusable given the
seriousness of climate change. They won't offer to suspend operations
in favor of local leagues until clean energy is available. Hundreds of
million dollar operations. It won't happen.

And no government has the power to force the relocalization of sport.
Not without substantial governance innovation. Not a chance at the
moment.

So supposedly sharp minds automatically delete possible relocalization as a mitigation option. On May 5th, check the Van Sun
Sports Section and I think you will find stories about environmental
awareness and sustainability that will be completely within MLB, NHL,
NBA, NFL, etc. business-as-usual. I'm guessing maybe sports franchises going climate neutral. Hopefully I'm proven wrong!

Containment strategies especially by the Church of Business groups are
one of the main reasons the full spectrum of possible futures and paths
to get there aren't on the menu.

But relocalization will happen - is happening. A oil price spike that
is high enough could crash pro sports. Relocalization may seem like a
long shot now but witness the rebirth of gardening in our
neighbourhoods.

Relocalization of sport is reasonable, practical and an opportunity gateway. But will we read about it in the May 5th Vancouver Sun - and what does that tell you about our future on this planet?

Bill Henderson is an environmental activist and writer who lives in Gibsons, B.C. His website is www.pacificfringe.net.

Other articles by Bill Henderson:
Canucks, Consumption, Conscience (Conserve Magazine)
Demand Destruction - Stadium (Energy Bulletin)

Email: bill (at) pacificfringe.net

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bill Henderson provides a magnificent example of seeing things in a new light - showing how things could be.

In the related area of outdoor activities, Bill McKibben envisioned an alternative to jetting off to far-off places: The Future of Adventure (GORP).

More on Dr. Suzuki from the CBC: Top Ten Greatest Canadians. Photo of Dr. Suzuki from CBC. Photo of Bill Henderson from Conserve Magazine.

-BA

Article found at :
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=28698

Sustainable Burlington

Dow is crashing, dollar inflation outpacing Dow gains....

lifetree76 — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 18:22:30 -0700

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2007/0416.html

Articles based on this paper appeared in Britain's Independent and the USA's NY Times Magazine. Essentially, the dollar is inflating so quickly that stock gains in the Dow and other US exchanges aren't matching it, so that what appears to be gains are actually behind the dollar's value. Pricing US exchanges in gold, Euros, Pounds, Canadian Dollars, silver, oil, or other stable currencies indicate that the Dow is actually in the red and not making the money that it appears to be. The Dow of course is an indicator of future confidence in the market, if confidence was higher, more of the available liquidity available would be invested in the market. The over printing of currency has inflated the US Dollar and it is cutting consumer spending power in the US, having an affect on the purchases of housing and durable goods, with consumers only buying essentials and servicing debt.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

What municipalities have passed Peak Energy Resolutions?

lifetree76 — Fri, 25 May 2007 08:45:15 -0700

The mayor of my municipality would like to see examples of Peak Energy resolutions as I continue to campaign and lobby for recognition of this issue. I am particularly interested in the resolutions of Canadian municipalities. I know about SF, Portland, Bakersfield already. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

thank you in advance!

Post Carbon London (Ontario)

Sustainable Burlington Core Group Minutes

grahamia — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 13:58:14 -0700

Minutes of all meetings will be posted under this topic.

Sustainable Burlington

Depletion and Racism

Kgroen — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 08:42:03 -0700

Depletion, Racism and Paving the Road to Hell

A very interesting blog article indeed, please take the time to read. Here's the start to it:

"A while back a gentleman named Harvey Winston sent me an email, trying to explain why it is that the peak oil and climate change movements are as lily white as they are. I had asked in another post what we had to do to engage poor people, particularly poor non-white people, who are, after all, already the biggest victims of rising energy prices and climate change. Winston sent me some answers that are right on the money. And he kindly gave me permission to quote him and discuss this publicly...."

http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/2007/06/depletion-racism-and-paving-ro...

Sustainable Burlington

Depletion, racism

Kgroen — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:31:12 -0700

by John Michael Greer

The Archdruid Report (June 05 2007)

I'd meant this week's Archdruid Report to go sailing straight ahead
along the course charted out two weeks ago, with a discussion of the
role that population contraction is likely to play as the industrial age
winds down into the deindustrial future. Still, just as the guys on the
Argo got used to Jason or Hercules or somebody pointing off to starboard
and saying, "Hey, that island looks worth checking out", those of my
readers who have followed this particular voyage in search of the future
have probably learned to expect sudden swerves into unexpected territory.

This particular swerve was inspired in part by the last paragraph of a
blogpost by Sharon Astyk, whose writings on the crisis of the industrial
world are among the best out there. The post, "Depletion, racism, and
paving the road to hell" {1}, focuses on a side of peak oil very few
people like to talk about - the pervasive themes of race and class that
run through so many of its current narratives, offering starring roles
in dramas of survival only to middle-class whites, while relegating the
poor and nonwhite to walk-on roles as victims in mass graves or members
of the ubiquitous rampaging mobs of survivalist fantasy. While I have my
disagreements with some of her stances, it's a good post, and it points
out issues that have to be addressed if the ideas discussed in this
forum are ever to be more than the mental games of a privileged class
with no better use for its time.

But then there's the last paragraph, and the passage that brought me to
a dead stop: "[T]he one bright spot in this future is that peak oil and
climate change represent the greatest hope for reallocation of wealth
and justice in the world".

That's an astonishing statement, and the fact that similar statements
can be heard all over the peak oil community is one of the more
astonishing things about it.

After all, Astyk is not exactly the only person who thinks that the
crisis of industrial society is "the greatest hope" for social change.
She may not be pleased to hear that the same hope guides Nick Griffin,
current head of the British National Party. The BNP, for those who don't
keep tabs on the far end of British politics, is an extremist party of
the far right that advocates, among other things, "repatriating"
nonwhite people from Britain to their (or their great- great- great-
grandparents' ) country of origin. It would be hard to find a wider
political gap in today's world than the one between Griffin and Astyk,
and yet both think that peak oil is on their side.

They're not alone in that belief, either. Find a political or social
movement far from the mainstream these days and odds are you'll find it
proclaiming that peak oil will put the future they desire into their
waiting hands. Marxists waiting for proletarian revolution, Klansmen
waiting for the South to rise again, neoprimitivists waiting for
civilization to go away so they can lead the hunting and gathering
lifestyle of their dreams, all pin their hopes for the future on peak
oil. If there are still Distributivists out there - I hope there are;
Distributivism always seemed more humane to me than a good many of the
notions that elbowed it aside in the political free-for-all of the 1930s
- I would not be surprised in the least to hear them claim that peak oil
will inevitably bring Chesterton's dream to pass. Not since Doctor Fox's
Genuine Arkansas Snake Oil stopped being sold on the carnival circuit, I
suspect, has one remedy been applied to so many different diagnoses.

This invites satire, but there are patterns at work that deserve close
and serious attention instead. Most of the grand mythic narratives that
compete for attention in today's collective imagination claim that
history has a direction and a goal. Some, like the mythology of progress
I've tried to anatomize before, take some set of current trends and
project them out indefinitely in the direction of Utopia. Others take
some set of current trends, define their necessary endpoint as hell on
earth, and use that identification to rally opposition against them. Yet
there's at least one more class of narrative, one that sees the goal of
history as something hidden in the undergrowth of events, known only to
the few just now, but destined for sudden revelation.

Most of the narratives of this third class derive in one way or another
from a single source - the unique historical experience of the Jewish
people. Like the other minor kingdoms of the ancient Near East, the Jews
saw themselves as sharers in a covenant with a tribal god, who gave them
his protection in exchange for their faith and offerings. Like their
neighbors, they struggled to square that faith with the brutal realities
of the international politics of their time. After a brief heyday under
David and Solomon, the history of ancient Israel was a story of decline
ending in the catastrophe of deportation to Babylon.

The conquest of Babylon less than a century later by the Persian Empire,
though, sent the story spinning in a new direction. Under Persian rule
the Jews were permitted to return home, restore a national community and
rebuild their temple. This astonishing redemption at a time when all
reasonable hope had faded had a profound impact on Jewish religion and
culture, and became the template against which Jewish history before and
afte found a measure. To Jewish theologians then and ever since, the
restoration of the Temple showed that the god of Israel had not failed
his people even when all the facts seemed to point the other way. The
tenacious faith this conviction bred played a crucial role in allowing
the Jews to survive the much greater catastrophes that lay in wait as
history unfolded.

Yet the same faith found other believers as core ideas of Judaism got
taken up and reworked by the younger religions of Christianity and
Islam, and spread in these new forms across the face of the planet. The
same vision of a divine plan within contemporary adversities that would
be made plain in some future act of redemption became common currency
for human hopes across the world. When medieval Welsh rebels invoked the
dream of King Arthur come back from Avalon to drive the English invader
back into the sea, or 17th century Chinese secret societies claimed that
the Mandate of Heaven still rested with the hidden heirs of the Ming
dynasty, those claims echoed with the same hope of national redemption
that kept their Jewish contemporaries going through their own bitter
troubles.

Later still, as religion gave way to less overtly mythic ideologies in
the collective imagination of much of humankind, the same story spun out
into a galaxy of versions backing any political or social movement you
care to name. Very few narratives can undergo that sort of diffusion
without being debased into a cliche', or even a mental automatism, and
the idea that history must be on the side of whatever ideology one
happens to support has become so common these days that it approximates
the latter.

A more specific problem, though, is that if peak oil is on anyone's
side, it's not likely to be that of the liberal causes for which Astyk
hopes to recruit it. Most of the great achievements of the liberal
tradition have taken place in times of economic expansion - consider the
abolition of the slave trade in the prosperous early Victorian era, for
example, or the civil rights movement in America in the boomtime 1950s.
Times of economic contraction, by contrast, tend to foster reactionary
politics - consider the spread of totalitarian regimes across Europe in
the decade that followed the stock market crash of 1929. Those
tendencies are no more absolute than anything else in history, but they
do exist.

The causes driving this pattern are doubtless complex, but one core
factor can be teased out of Astyk's own analysis. When the economic pie
is growing larger, nobody has to lose part of their share in order for
those unfairly deprived to get more. When the pie is static, though, a
gain for anyone is a loss for somebody else, and when the pie is
actually shrinking, the division of slices can all too easily degenerate
into a mad scramble for scraps and crumbs. Abstract concepts of equity
become hard to keep in sight when it's your own children who risk going
hungry. For many middle class people who had been secure from want, the
Great Depression brought this experience, and reactionary regimes that
promised them security prospered accordingly.

I don't think it's necessary to be a "doomer", whatever exactly that
label means, to think that as the industrial world begins sliding down
the far side of Hubbert's peak, the pie of today's industrial economy
will shrink a great deal, and a lot of people who are comfortable today
will find themselves in the same situation their grandparents faced in
the years after 1929. I also don't think it's necessary to be a "doomer"
to notice that while most parties on the left are avoiding the
implications of peak oil the way a ten-year-old boy tries to wriggle
away from an elderly aunt's kiss, the BNP and other parties of the far
right are already hard at work positioning themselves {2} to take
advantage of post-peak realities.

Thus if Astyk means simply that liberals might be able to respond to the
social impacts of peak oil and climate change, and in the process regain
some of the ground they've lost in recent decades, she may be right.
They'll have to work overtime, both to counter the advantages held by
reactionaries and to make up for time already lost, but the thing has
been done successfully before - the New Deal comes to mind. On the other
hand, if she's claiming that the wrenching social problems set in motion
by these two factors will necessarily favor her agenda, she's likely
misleading herself, and she may be doing the causes she supports a
significant disservice.

More generally, it may be worth suggesting that those who claim that
peak oil is a door to their favorite Utopia are engaged in the same
unproductive act. As the age of cheap abundant energy comes to an end,
things will change; more likely than not they will change drastically,
and for most people, many of those changes will be for the worse. I've
argued here and elsewhere that the scope of those changes can best be
understood by comparing them to the decline and fall of civilizations in
the past. One lesson that can be learned from the past, though, is that
waiting for catastrophe to accomplish your goals for you is one of
history's classic losing bets.

If anything but a slow decline into confusion and forgetfulness is to
take form within the shell of today's industrial civilization, it will
have to be built brick by brick and board by board, and its resemblance
to Utopia will be tempered by the sharp realities of resource limits and
a biosphere in disarray. History chooses her own course, and those who
insist that history is necessarily on their side are likely to find out
the hard way that if she helps anyone at all - which she does not always
do - it is most often those who help themselves.

Endnotes:

{1} http://www.energybulletin.net/30518.html

{2} http://www.bnp.org.uk/peakoil/index.htm

{3} http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

Sustainable Burlington

Jim Kunstler writing about export cuts by producers and ramifications

lifetree76 — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 19:11:15 -0700

"Stop wringing your hands about that new strip mall, think hard about how you're going to feed yourself in the coming years . . ."

I get lots of letters from people in various corners of the nation who are hysterically disturbed by the continuing spectacle of suburban development. But instead of joining in their hand-wringing, I reply by stating my serene conviction that we are at the end of the cycle - and by that I mean the grand meta-cycle of the suburban project as a whole.

It's over. Whatever you see out there now is pretty much what we're going to be stuck with. The remaining things under construction are the last twitchings of a dying organism.

It is not an accident that the housing bubble coincided with the phenomenon of Peak Oil. First of all, the housing bubble should more properly be called the suburban bubble, because most of the activity came in the form of "greenfield" housing subdivisions, and included all the additional crap-o-la accessories required by them -- strip malls, power centers, Outback steak houses, car washes, et cetera. The suburban expansion has been based entirely on cheap-and-abundant supplies of oil. Similarly, it was not an accident that the suburban project faltered briefly in the 1970s, when America's oil production entered its long decline, OPEC seized the moment, and oil prices shot up. Notice that the final suburban blowout occurred after 1990, when the North Sea and Prudhoe Bay oil strikes came into full production, disabling OPEC, and a world oil glut finally drove prices as low as ten dollars a barrel in 1999. That ushered in the climactic phase of suburbia, as represented by things like the standard 4000-square-foot Toll Brother's McMansion and the heyday of the super-gigantic SUV to go with it.

The American public has no idea how over all that is. The bottom is falling out under not only the housing market (as in houses up for sale) but on the whole apparatus for delivering future houses, and the car-oriented crap associated with it. The production home-builders, such as Toll Brothers, Hovanian, Pulte, et cetera are going down and they will not be coming back. There will be a great deal of wishing that they might come back, but they won't. Likewise, the commercial builders of all the various forms of suburban retail will be waiting to "turn the corner." But they will discover that the wall they have hit has no corner. It's just a wall. For anyone who wonders how much we do not need anymore retail space in America, have a look at this chart showing the comparative amount of retail square-footage allotted for citizens of each nation:

Those of you considering the purchase of more WalMart stock, take note.

Some years back, when those watching the oil scene began to coalesce in their recognition that a worldwide production peak was imminent and hugely significant, the concept developed that this peak would take the form of a "bumpy plateau," meaning that supply-and-demand would teeter in an uncomfortable relationship for a period of time as markets and economies adjusted to the new reality by oscillating from higher prices to "demand destruction" to recession to recovery to higher prices, and so forth. This was expected to go on for quite a while before the world really headed into a slow permanent decline.

The latest statistical work by Dallas geologist Jeffrey Brown over at The Oil Drum.com, suggests that something else is happening, something that was not anticipated: an imminent oil export crisis. This Export Land Theory states that exporting nations will have far less oil available for export than was previously assumed under older models. (Story here.) The theory states that export rates will drop by a far greater percentage than net production decline rates in any given exporting country. For example, The UK's portion of the North Sea oil fields may be showing a nine percent annual decline for the past couple of years. But it's export capacity has declined 60 percent. Something similar is in store for Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela -- in short, the whole cast of characters in the export world. They are all producing less and they are all using more of their own oil, and have less to send elsewhere.

Brown's math suggests that world oil exports will drop by 50 percent within the next five years, certainly enough to trigger a systemic breakdown in market allocation, meaning serious supply shortages among the importing nations. That's us. We import two-thirds of all the oil we use.

The implication in all this is that the activities that have become "normal" for us during the post World War Two era will very shortly become untenable. An economy based on suburban expansion and incessant motoring is on the top of the list of supposedly "normal" activities that will not be able to continue. I would maintain that even if we had 20 years, no combination of bio-fuels and other alternatives would enable us to keep suburbia running. But this latest work indicates that we have much less time to adjust.

This new information is consistent with my view that we had better prepare to make other arrangements for living in this country, by which I mean specifically re-localizing, de-globalizing, with an emphasis on local agriculture wherever possible, the emergency restoration of passenger railroad service and related modes of public transit, the rebuilding of local commercial infrastructures, and a radical rethinking of how we inhabit the landscape under New Urbanist lines.

Perhaps the most imminent danger is that the financial markets, which have been driving our insane, hollowed-out economy, will soon recognize what's in store and implode, creating a crisis of capital that will leave us with no ability to make any emergency investments, such as would be required to rebuild the railroad system. The equity markets sure blinked last week when two hedge funds based on phony-baloney collateralized debt obligations tanked. The collateral underlying this load of hallucinated "wealth" is comprised of contracts made by the insolvent for suburban houses worth far less than the value stated on the contracts -- with every indication that the real value will keep dropping.

In any case, those who keep wringing their hands over the bulldozers leveling the plots of prairie, or cornfield, or desert -- those distressed folks can direct their anxiety elsewhere. Worry less whether one final strip mall will tilt up out in gloaming, and think harder about how you are going to feed yourself and your family in a couple of years when the stupendous motorized moloch of American life begins to sputter, and the Cheez Doodle shipments can no longer make it to your supermarket shelves, and all that is "normal" melts into air.

Chatham-Kent Oil Age Planning Group (CKOAP Group)

Shock Doctrine

grahamia — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:39:22 -0800

Richard Heinberg, Oct 2007, "Individuals and families should take to heart the advice given prior to every commercial airline flight: “Secure your oxygen mask before helping others.” In other words, see to your own survival prospects first. This is not necessarily selfish behavior: communities and nations in which individual members are prepared and relatively self-sufficient will fare much better than those in which everyone is dependent and unequipped. If no one is prepared, who can teach others what to do? Learn the life-skills of the pre-fossil-fuel era; know how to use and repair hand tools; know where your water comes from and how to compost wastes; grow food."

Now surf to http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film to watch the quickest expose of modern conservative economics (neo-con) and start waking up. As Klein says, getting informed in the only way to protect ourselves from the systemic shock treatments being planned, aided or abetted by the economic elites.

yes.

Ian

Sustainable Burlington

PCT makes The Star! Way to go folks! (A request for media outreach ideas.)

prof — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 13:44:46 -0800

Congratulations to Post Carbon Toronto, and especially Dr Lemon, for getting the ear of Tyler Hamilton, the Star's "Energy Reporter". (I wonder how long they've had one of those?) His article is in the Business section for Jan 3, 2008, at http://www.thestar.com/article/290582.

Calling from Montreal, I would like to see a comparable article produced here, and would be grateful for any tips on contacting and/or addressing the media. I believe the time is ripe and many editors may be receptive to addressing the problem... and this may be key to getting it onto the public agenda.

I had a student who managed to get a short piece in the Montreal Mirror, which was helped by the fact that we were having a screening of The End of Suburbia in a public forum. I would appreciate hearing others' experiences of getting press attention, perhaps to build a list of tactics from which others may draw.

Again, congratulations and gratitude.

Shane Mulligan
Montreal

Post Carbon Montreal