Zone5

Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak oil and Climate Change

Pat Murphy

New Society 2008

Pat Murphy is the Executive Director of Community Solutions who produced the seminal film “The Power Of Community” which charts Cuba’s transition to a low-energy society after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That film still rates as the most essential of the Peak Oil genre, combining as it does a succinct analyses of peak oil with the real world example of how Cuba coped with a massive and abrupt decline in oil supplies, showing how the people adapted as a community and used permaculture and low-tech solutions rather than attempting to maintain a high-energy lifestyle by other means.

Plan C is Pat Murphy’s book which provides a range of solutions through energy, food, housing and transport with a focus on how communities will adapt to lower energy supplies through lifestyle changes and reducing energy demand.

In Murphy’s typology, Plan A is “Business as Usual”- which will be prevented by absolute resource and environmental constraints; Plan B is the proposed switch to “Clean Green technology”- which will not be able to replace oil in time; while Plan D is “Die Off”. Thus we are leftwith Plan C which the plan of “curtailment and community”- the kind of responses being explored in the Transition movement, as well as our own Powerdown Community project, for which this book is a key resource.

This is, as Murphy tells us at the start, “a numbers book”, filled with graphs and statistics which, although heavily focussed on the US, set a standard for how we need to assess our current consumption, and how we could cut back if we learn to make differnet priorities and just do things differently.

After an opening chapter which outlines the basic realities of peak oil and climate change and how they will effect us, Murphy looks at “Peak Economy”, crunching the numbers for us between energy consumption, income and pollution: it is a pretty clear picture that the richer you are the more energy you are likely to consume and the more pollution you create- and yet few economists have appear to have addressed this fundamental issue.

In the next chapter, Peak Empire, Murphy looks at the relationship between war, colonialism and energy, concluding that “The United States of America has had its day in the sun, and its record is not a good one…There is still time to become a nation with new values and the world needs a new kind of US citizen- one no linger addicted to the consumption patterns made possible by cheap oil”.

A key contribution the book makes that is not always covered by other peak oil books is the role of the media in shaping our values and culture, and inhibiting appropriate responses:

How is it that media can change people’s values, creating a different world view than that of the education system, the culture at large or religions? For this to happen, people must recieve massive amounts of information with themes that can be repeated over and over again. Thus a population which immerses itself in media recieves an extremely high volume of manipulative data.

Part 2 attends to the responses to these issues. Crucially, Murphy emphasizes the need for numeracy skills- and the need to understand energy in terms of per capita consumption. A big part of our failure to respond is in a general lack of understanding of how much energy we actually use in different sectors, and this allows us to be manipulated by the media and get priorities wrong.

For example, recycling is often promoted as an important way to reduce our footprint, and Murphy provides us with a lot of relevant figures on how much Americans consume and throw away; but goes onto say

Big as the post-consumer solid waste problem is, it is insignificant compared to pollution, toxins and hazardous waste from manufacturing everyday products.

The following chapters cover community responses to housing, transport and food. The chapter on transport is of great interest, as Murphy again uses the facts  to show that conventional responses such as switching to mass transit may not reduce energy consumption enough, and argues that we needd to use the existing fleet of private vehicles differently, proposing a “smart jitney” system of private taxis and approprite software to link them with passengers in a convivial manner. Something like this emerged in Cuba, and apparently some of the software which could be used has been developed by Mapflow in Kinsale!

The food chapter is also excellent, giving some interesting data on the most nutritious vegetables as opposed to those most consumed: the first table is almost the inverse to the second.

He also quotes the wonderful Michael Pollan who has said

if you are concerned about your health you should probably avoid food products that make health claims.

The final chapters consider how to achieve these changes. In “Changind Practices” he emphasises the difference between conserving- which means minor adjustments- and curtailment- which “implies amuch more severe reduction in consumption (80-90%)”

It is too late to merely conserve. Curtailment must become the main driving force of Western Civilisation for the next century, just as consuming drove the last century…. Those who desire to make the transition successfully with minimal risk must start now to toughen and strengthen themselves physically and psychologically for difficult times to come. Such people will be more prepared to live in a future that is poorer in material goods but richer in spiritual, psychological and community benefits. Those who delay may not have the physical and emotional stamina to survive in a more physically difficult environment.

“Plan C” is a powerful and authoritative analyses of our energy predicament that helps us think outside the box in looking for solutions and helps give us the confidence to change. Essential reading for all transition and powerdown groups.