http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/185
MuseLetter #185 / September 2007 by Richard Heinberg
This issue is an edited version of the Introduction to Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines.
This is no mere palliative. Addressing the economic, social, and political problems ensuing from the various looming peaks will require enormous collective effort. If it to be successful, that effort must be coordinated, presumably by government, and enlisting people in that effort will require educating and motivating them in numbers and at a speed that has not been seen since World War II. Part of that motivation must come from a positive vision of a future worth striving toward. People will need to feel that there will be an eventual reward for what will amount to many years of hard sacrifice. The reality is that we are approaching a time of economic contraction and that consumptive appetites that have been stoked for decades by ubiquitous advertising messages promising "more, faster, and bigger" will now have to be reined in. People will not willingly accept the new message of "less, slower, and smaller," unless they have new goals toward which to aspire. They must feel that their efforts will lead to a better world, and tangible improvements in life for themselves and their families. The massive public education campaigns that will be required must be credible, and will therefore be vastly more successful if they give people a sense of investment and involvement in formulating those goals. There is a much-abused word that describes the necessary process - democracy.
The post-peak decline in availability of oil, natural gas, and coal - if our dependence on these fuels continues unabated - could trigger economic collapse, famine, and a general war over remaining resources. While it is certainly possible to imagine survivable transition strategies away from fossil fuels involving proactive efforts to develop alternative energy sources on a massive scale and to create policies mandating energy conservation, also on a massive scale, the world is currently as reliant on hydrocarbons as it is on water, sunlight, and soil. Without oil for transportation and agriculture; without gas for heating, chemicals, and fertilizers; and without coal for power generation, the global economy would sputter to a halt. While no one envisions these fuels disappearing instantly, we can avert the worst-case scenario of global economic meltdown - with all of the human tragedy that implies - only by proactively reducing our reliance on oil, gas, and coal ahead of depletion and scarcity. In other words, all that would be required in order for the worst-case scenario to materialize would be for world leaders to continue with existing policies.
But this can be formulated in another, more encouraging, way: If we do focus all of our collective efforts on the central task of energy transition, we may find ourselves contributing to the solution of a wide range of problems that would be much harder to solve if we confronted each one in isolation. With a coordinated and voluntary reduction in fossil fuel consumption, we could see substantial progress in reducing many forms of environmental pollution. The decentralization of economic activity that we must pursue as transport fuels become more scarce could lead to more local jobs and more fulfilling occupations, and more robust local economies. A controlled contraction in global oil trade could lead to a reduction of international political tensions. A planned conversion of farming to non-fossil fuel methods could mean a decline in environmental devastation caused by agriculture and economic opportunities for millions of new farmers. Meanwhile, all of these efforts together could increase equity, community involvement, intergenerational solidarity, and the other intangible goods listed earlier.
Surely this is a future worth working toward.
