Peak Oil Survival and Cooperation Groups

[genoxy]

Hi All,

I've been following Peak Oil on and off for a couple of years now (much more closely after Katrina).

My instinct tells me that we are already in Peak Oil as we speak, and that the time to act upon it has arrived (if not passed).

The way I see it, our rich yet fragile economy, which is full of bank notes and not much else, is about to suffer a double, devestating blow. Firstly, when it becomes apparent that Peak Oil has been reached, all new investment would cease and banks will "go under" (especially when people will desperatly try to get their money out). Secondly, as the price of oil and gas continues to rise to new records this winter or the following (if we're lucky), small businesses will collapse, draging with them the bigger ones.

My repeated attempts to get my family and friends interested has amounted to nothing (with the exception of my housemate, who at last seems to be in the stage of denial, so I'll give him a few more weeks ).

I have seen a few posts here of people who are trying to grow their own food etc. which is all good, but in all honesty, to survive the coming events, we will need a much greater scale of cooperation. To try and "go it alone" seems madness to me.

So basically, what I am looking for is individuals who would be interested in meeting up and preparing a practical action plan.

Feel free to send PM

[RevdTess]

You will find plenty of people on this bbs looking for much the same and there have been several posts similar to yours in the past month. The difficulty is that everyone is in different places, physically, financially, and in terms of their practical skillsets. To build an intentional community from such disparate building blocks will take considerable persistence and leadership. I'm very interested in participating in any London-based discussions on this subject.

Oh, and I'm sure capitalism will survive. There are still plenty of resources to exploit and possess, even if it's not oil.

[Blue Peter]

Yes, it is difficult setting up a community, and heaven only knows whether anyone from here will succeed.

However, I think that we probably do have a little time in which to do things. The consensus last week, was that there was likely to be a recession with a consequent drop in demand, which will push out PO a bit further (which was already being pushed out to 2010-ish in a revision by ASPO also last week).

However, recessions and other such things are not always great backdrops for organising things, though they may concentrate the mind


Peter.

[MacG]

This is a tricky one. People who have accepted "the light" today are of another composition than the majority. Extreme individualists (although we have learned to hide it) and independent minds. Such people are extremely difficult to herd into collaboration. Quite like herding cats.

It takes all kinds to run this world, and we "enlightened" represent a very tiny slice of everything which is needed to run a society. I happen to think that we are very important though. Analogy: The eyes represent less than 0,5% of body weight, but the body will not do very well with eyes removed ...

[isenhand]

So basically, what I am looking for is individuals who would be interested in meeting up and preparing a practical plan of action.

So am I

There are many ways to do it as well, here is one idea:
Holonic future


My feeling is time is the main problem.

[isenhand]

Such people are extremely difficult to herd into collaboration. Quite like herding cats.

Civilisation is the process where the majority are dragged up

Sometimes it only takes a small amount of people to get civilisation to head in a certain direction and often those small amount of people don?t fit in with the majority.

It takes all kinds to run this world, and we "enlightened" represent a very tiny slice of everything which is needed to run a society. I happen to think that we are very important though. Analogy: The eyes represent less than 0,5% of body weight, but the body will not do very well with eyes removed ...

Agree, and a cat with eyes will go the right way

[genoxy]

The consensus last week, was that there was likely to be a recession with a consequent drop in demand, which will push out PO a bit further
Peter.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with this analysis. A recession will NOT push Peak Oil further. Let me try and explain why (though it's a bit hard without drawing a graph).

A recession following Peak Oil, will mean demand going down dragging price of crude with it. So this recession will be short-lived followed by economic recovery due to the falling price of oil.

But, PRODUCTION will not go down, rather it will simply stay "balanced" on the slope leading downwards. So a second recession, worse than the first will follow, this time with even less oil to go around.

So what you get is an endless cycle of recession followed by a partial recovery each time, followed by a worse recession, and so forth.

So what we are likely to see is the economy going all over the place, with PRODUCTION remaining "on the slope", so to speak.

Anyway, this, I believe, is the "best case" scenario. It is very likely that instead, we will get an economic system so shocked by Peak Oil, that the whole infrastructure of it will shatter, leaving us with no food and money that means f**k all!

On a more pleasant note, I would like to thank all the replies so far, which are very interesting.

[jwanders]

I was thinking that we might be able to set up some sort of "green registry" on the PowerSwitch site. This would be a place where anyone interested in joining a project could post details of what they're looking for, where it could be located and what skills they had to offer. Does this sound like something useful?

If so, I know there are a number of IT types around; any volunteers feel like doing some database work?

Of course, there's every chance that something like this exists already; I did a bit of unfruitful digging but it certainly wasn't exhaustive. Perhaps we can find a site that almost does what we want and get them to expand it.

[PowerSwitchJames]

Capitalism is going to get one nasty kick in the teeth but it'll survive...just not on the scale we see it today. Capitalism plays perfectly on the 2 fundamental driving forces behind human action - fear and greed. Now, if the driving forces for human action were share and care, things would be different!
The financial systems we have today will be wrecked, but the accumulation of capital has gone on and will continue to go on for as long as people can.
That is not to say that on small and local scales we won't see increasing levels of cooperation, but to think that capitalism will disappear is incorrect.
We will probably see a reversal of the privatisation of essential utilities on a national scale and a more government restrained capitalism. At least, that is what I see happening within my lifetime. I find it incredibly hard to imagine a socialist revolution happening in the UK. I'm expecting things to get terrible here (and around the world) but it'll probably have to get worse than that!
Never say never though!

[newmac]

Genoxy.

It all depends whether the recession occurs before or after Peak. If it occurs after Peak then you are correct. If it occurs exactly at Peak then you are also correct. If it happens before Peak then the recession could reduce demand enough to drop prices enough to allow the other side out of the recession to take production higher than the "demand" peak. Whether this or the next peak is a "supply" peak or a "demand" peak won't be known until a few of your downside peaks have been witnessed.

I think that last weeks general consensus was reached by those who thought that recession was going to be brought on before peak (albeit by a couple of years) due to in part by high oil prices but also such factors as housing bubbles, the cyclical nature of our economies, fear over US debt, ongoing wars, gas shortages (infrastructure), fossil fuel shortages (natural disasters) etc.

[genoxy]

Dear Newmac,

Sounds logical to me what you wrote, just two point to take notice of.

Firstly, the information we are getting is very confusing. For example, just yesterday I read that Saudi Arabia's production is already down 1.17% on last year. On the other hand you can read all those reviews saying they are years away from peaking, so it's a bit difficult to understand when PO happens, if we're not there already.

Second point to take notice of is that since oil is so crucial to the economy, it would take a huge price increase to actually see a drop in demand. That means that even if recession begins before PO, demand for oil might not actually drop until we reach the actual PO.

[Joe]

The question was "do you think that our capitalist economy will survive the rude awakening coming our way?"

I'd agree with James in that the ideaology of the capitalist economy will almost certainly survive; the majority of people in the UK will inevitably continue to trade goods and skills in pursuit of personal gain. While we do have a relatively strong tradition of socialism and trade unionism, I just don't see communism sitting comfortably with the British mindset (although this could indeed change).

However, many of the corporate behaviours that many of us have subconsciously come to include in our definition of the 'capitalist economy' - e.g. outsourcing business functions to distant nations to exploit poorer workers, the wholesale rape of the 'commons', cynical marketing strategies designed to entrap and exploit consumers can only continue to exist because of the economies of scale that can be achieved with massive transport networks and power hungry telecommunications and IT infrastructures.

These excesses may become increasingly extreme as corporations take ever more drastic measures in the short term as they struggle to maintain profitability, which will exarcerbate their vulnerability to the point that the whole system becomes unstable, at which point I guess either a slow unravelling or sudden collapse will happen.

My gut feeling is that the degree to which many sectors of the economy have consolidated suggests that collapse will happen fairly quickly; for example, if the grocery sector were made up of tens of thousands of independent traders like my corner shop, a business failure would have economic shockwaves that would travel about as far as the end of my street, but if (when) Wal-Mart goes, the effects will be massive because their enormous market share means that not only will lots of customers have to drive further to buy food, but huge numbers of employees and suppliers (many of whom may have been forced into exclusive supply agreements) will lose their incomes. This in turn has implications for the lending banks, who have lent far more money than they ever had and so on...

Also the guy who runs my corner shop isn't constrained by the inertia of his business (for example the kind of long term contracts that big businesses need to achieve their economies of scale); he is small enough and flexible enough to make quick decisions to diversify his product range: if Hovis is getting too expensive, he can switch to an independent local baker to fulfill his small orders. If imported carrots from the cash & carry get too expensive he can seek out a local organic supplier etc. Also in his favour is the fact that he is inherently local - his customers don't have to drive to get there so as petrol costs rise, people are less likely to drive to the local Asda to save 3p on a pint of milk.

So, the 'capitalist economy' when thought of in terms of the trappings of big business and corporate behaviour does indeed seem like something of a house of cards that has very little chance of surviving Peak Oil, whereas smaller independent economic activity (albeit still capitalist) could well continue a lot longer.

[isenhand]

Personally, I think capitalism as we know it won?t survive. I find it hard to see how any growth economy could continue. You can not grow for ever, that is just impossible on this finite world. Nature will sooner or later put an end to it and maybe that is what we are seeing now. I also don?t see socialism / communism as a way to go either. They are really just forms of capitalism anyway as they have the manipulation of money etc. its just the owners of the capital that change.

An alternative would be to have a moneyless society. One based on energy is the one I prefer but that is not the only one possible. Resources are shared equally and things are produced to meet needs. I would see a network of communities as a start down that line. That would form part of a society that is in balanced with technology and ecology and production and demand. A spiritually enlightened society, if you will, that also has a high standard of living.

[RevdTess]

Personally, I think capitalism as we know it won?t survive. I find it hard to see how any growth economy could continue.

It could continue through a series of recessions followed by periods of growth driven by 'lesser' abundant fuel sources such as coal. While any resources exist, there will always be the incentive to own and exploit them for personal gain. That's capitalism.

Obviously the whole thing could be killed off by authoritarian communism, but then it's still exploitation of resources, just not by individuals

[peaky]

The difficulty is that everyone is in different places, physically, financially, and in terms of their practical skillsets. To build an intentional community from such disparate building blocks will take considerable persistence and leadership.

I agree. It's frustrating that so many of us are so keen and yet we seem unable to get together and plan for many reasons. Perhaps we could have a new forum block on Creating Intentional Communities and then sub topics for Devon, Susex, London etc and see what comes of that. Any thoughts Good Admin People?