Published on Thursday, June 22, 2006 by Energy Bulletin
Fun while it lasted
By Stephanie Mills
Excerpt:
"In early 2002, picking up my first copy of Richard Heinberg's brilliant MuseLetter, I collided with his series of articles on Peak Oil, (later issued in book form by New Society Publishers as The Party’s Over and Power Down). Reading the MuseLetter on Peak Oil and its possible consequences was very like being in the passenger seat of that Chevy Capri confronting an oncoming vehicle and discovering that the best I could hope for from the situation was to learn some physics and anatomy the hard way. Heinberg's reasoned analysis of the evidence that oil (and natural gas) production are close to zenith and will decline; and his explanation of how utterly dependent much of the world's economy, particularly agriculture, is on fossil fuel, detailed the oncoming crash. I've always believed that relocalization could be a good thing, but living through a rapid default into it could be mighty rough. Serious demand-side responses to Peak Oil--households and regions growing most of their own food; staying home, cottage industry, walking, or diverting of federal taxes from armaments to railroads and other public transportation; inhabiting smaller, tighter houses in compact settlements and practicing Xtreme frugality--will take courage, work, and skills bygone as well as new. These latter can be difficult to acquire in a crisis. A way of life is something more than an easy-to-master assemblage of techniques."
"Apart from the fact that a high-tech megalopolis might not be everyone's ideal, something's missing from this vision. The catch to the “supply side” solutions like renewables, hydrogen or mini-nukes, which technological optimists imagine will forestall the energy crunch, is EROEI--energy returned on energy invested. The infrastructure within which such technological fixes would have to be produced presently runs on oil. Richard Heinberg’s caution regarding any crusade to switch business as usual over to hydrogen and renewables is “If it can’t be done without fossil fuels, it can’t be done." How much nonrenewable fuel must be expended in the manufacture of these new gadgets and facilities? After all, the people beavering away on fuel cells will still have to drive to their laboratories on asphalt (another petroleum product) roads."
Stephanie Mills is an author, lecturer and longtime bioregionalist. Her books include In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land (Beacon Press, 1995) and Epicurean Simplicity (Island Press, 2002). Since her emergence in 1969 as an ecological activist Mills has written prolifically, edited numerous periodicals, participated in countless conferences and served on the boards and advisory committees of dozens of ecologically oriented organizations from the local to national level. Since 1984 she has lived and worked in Northwest Lower Michigan. She is presently at work on a biography of Robert Swann.
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