This is the introduction to the first week of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Centre in Dublin.It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV.

The general introduction was posted last week.

Powerdown Toolkit

1    THE CHALLENGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND PEAK OIL

Subject

The development of the modern world since the beginnings of the industrial revolution has been characterised by one over-riding issue: the ever-increasing use of non-renewable fossil fuels. Since the 1850s, oil- especially liquid petroleum- has come to dominate modern economies, allowing the rise of the private motor car for the majority of the rich industrialised inhabitants.

Like all minerals that are extracted from holes in the ground, oil is subject to depletion: the easy-to-get cheap oil has already been extracted and what remains will be progressively harder to get and likely to get more expensive, relative to spending power.

It is widely believed that we may have recently passed the all-time peak in global oil production {1} and are entering a new era of energy descent: from now on, year on year, generation on generation, we will have to adapt to having progressively less energy.

One way to understand this is to see that in the case of oil, for example, world discovery rates peaked in 1964 and have been declining ever since despite increases in technology and investment, even as the demand continues to increase. Many countries individually have already peaked: the United States domestic oil production has been declining since the early 1970s; Britain obtained peak production from its North Sea fields in 1997.{Campbell 2005} Climate change will bring another set of challenges perhaps of an even more devastating kind. CO2 levels are about 30% higher than at any other time in history, and the rates of increase truly exceptional: 200 times faster than at any other time in the past 650,000 years.{3}

As a result, the temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees C {4 } with a further increase of 0.5 degrees expected in the next 2 decades; some analysts  believe this will set off a series of positive feedbacks in the earth’s climate meaning that the warming atmosphere will lead to yet more warming- the scenario of “runaway climate change”.

An example of a “positive feedback” in climate change can be seen in the  “albedo effect”: as the ice melts around the Arctic and Green land, the darker ocean below will absorb more of the sun’s energy, creating more warming. Not only will this have a truly catastrophic effect on millions of people who live near the coast which will be eroded and swamped by rising sea levels, but it will more than anything highlight the fragility of a civilisation which has swapped sustainable, low-energy lifestyles for dependency on dwindling supplies: the relatively benign and stable temperate climate that civilisation has grown up in over the past ten thousand years may flip into a new regime in which our long supply-chains and over-extended economy will be sorely tested- if they are able to continue to function at all.

In particular, farmers the world over will have their crops threatened by uncertain climate events and the rich importing food nations will not have energy reserves available to buy their way out of trouble. According to Spratt and Sutton, we will need to work hard to eliminate all carbon emissions as soon as possible, as well as actively cooling the planet, if we are to maintain a safe climate.

Response

Peak oil and climate change will change our civilisation in ways only slowly beginning to be realised by a culture that has grown up with- and become dependent on- the promise of unending supplies of cheap energy. So deeply ingrained in the modern psychology is this presumption of unending growth and “progress”- predicated on increasing energy supplies and a stable climate- that the responses offered tend to focus exclusively on supply-side solutions- the energy is running out so what will we use instead?

However, it is unlikely that we will be able to make up the shortfall in oil supply from other sources.{5} The IEA estimates renewables to account for currently 18% of world energy supply, most of which- 13%- is “traditional biomass”- ie. firewood. Moreover, demand for energy is expected to still increase, and the rates of increase in renewable energy capacity may barely keep up with this, let alone replace the current consumption of fossil energy.

The responses to climate change also tend to assume to a large degree that current lifestyles can be maintained while we reduce carbon emissions; but as we have seen, the need to act urgently to prevent runaway climate change requires a willingness to curtail our energy consumption and accept a more modest standard of living. And given that we are to a large extent tied into an enormous infrastructure created to run off fossil fuels, the task of switching to another form of energy may seem overwhelming.

Community Powerdown advocates a different approach, which focuses on redesigning our lifestyles and adjusting our priorities so that we need less energy in the first place: Instead of passively waiting for new technologies that will permit us to continue with our high energy lifestyle, we arrange to live nearer our work or combine living and work spaces; we promote local food production, Community Supported Agriculture and eat lower down the food chain in order to reduce the energy component of our food; we learn to cut our cloth according to our measure; to seek small and slow solutions; and to seek abundance and creativity in the synergies that can only come from a resilient community. Here is an opportunity for us to pause in the story of human evolution and ask some deeper questions: What do we want to use energy for? Are there other ways we can lead abundant lives without the need for continually increasing our energy consumption?

The climate undoubtedly raises questions about survival, but peak energy does so too, in different ways.  We will need to discover ways of keeping going despite dramatic and rapid reductions in supplies of oil, gas and coal, but the onset of the coming energy famine could be soon, and sudden. The response we need to find will require a sense of urgency.  It is one in which the people will take the lead.  There will not be the energy needed to maintain the transport-dependent, energy-extravagant, large-scale urban economy we have at the moment.

This response will recruit and stimulate local intelligence and ingenuity; it encourages people to deal with the problem, to learn, to develop the opportunities that are particular to the place they live in.  The bottom-up motivation makes use of the biggest energy-asset available to us: the wit and intelligence of the people. We will have a chance of inventing our way to solutions if and only if we have the freedom to do so.  In the process, we may succeed in building resilient, self-reliant, fast-learning communities, designed to respond to climate change and energy famine with the brilliance, inventiveness and surprises characteristic of a natural ecology.

Barriers to change

The greatest barrier to powerdown solutions is the perception that we have always had cheap abundant energy, so we will continue to have this. Our current dependency will make it hard to look for alternative solutions which, at first, will seem like going backwards to a time of hardship. This will require a psychological adjustment as much as changes in policy: with an understanding of peak oil, the future is not what it used to be.

Secondly, there are systemic inertias in the globalised system, which means that it may take many years to change course, much as it takes a long time for an ocean liner to change course when approaching an ice-berg. There needs to be vision and leadership as well as grass-roots action. We will need to work together in the same way that people came together during the Second World War if we are to devise appropriate responses, with appropriate urgency. This will require over-coming some of the trends of the last 50 years which have tended to lead to a dissolution of community. Finally, there is a tremendous skills deficit in that many traditional skills for example for working the land, animal husbandry, and so on have been lost. It is to address this particular issue that the Transition Movement for example promotes The Great Re-Skilling.

… and opportunities

But from other points of view, the river will be flowing our way.  Among the resources and opportunities that will become available, here are three:

1.    The incentive.  High energy costs and breakdowns in supply will leave us with little alternative to a radical change in the way we live. A slower, less energy-ntensive lifestyle, will involve less stress. We may look forward to more time  with our families and more time to “smell the roses”.

2.    The momentum of community.  Community, once started, learns to build itself: it calls on the strengths of its people – a resource which it could not know it had until the action began.

3.    The framework.  When energy prices get very high, and when the outages in energy start, it will be necessary to have, up and running, an energy-rationing system to guarantee that every energy-user is guaranteed access to at least his/her basic entitlement.  Whatever precise detail of the energy-rationing system that will be used, it will include a steadily-decreasing energy budget which will guide people and communities down the energy descent, providing a long term horizon of some twenty years ahead.  This is not a task that can be done by any of us working on our own: there will be an alignment of interests.  We will want to join together to make a future.

{1}See for example Jason Bradford’s interview with Nate Hagens: http://globalpublicmedia.com/nate_hagens_on_the_partys_over_going_local .{2}Campbell, C. Oil Crisis 2005 {3} http://www.esf.org/index.php?id=855 {4} Spratt, D. and Sutton, P. Climate Code Red-the case for emergency action 2008 {5} Ted Trainer Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society 2007