What if the economy doesn't recover? In 2008 the U.S. economy tripped down a steep, rocky slope.
Employment levels plummeted; so did purchases of autos and other
consumer goods. Property values crashed; foreclosure and bankruptcy
rates bled. For states, counties, cities, and towns; for
manufacturers, retailers, and middle- and low-income families, the
consequences were - - and continue to be - - catastrophic. Other nations were
soon caught up in the undertow.
In late 2009 and early 2010, the economy showed some signs of renewed
vigor. Understandably, everyone wants it to get "back to normal." But
here's a disturbing thought: What if that is not possible? What if
the goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten, the game changed?
What if the decades-long era of economic growth based on
ever-increasing rates of resource extraction, manufacturing, and
consumption is over, finished, and done? What if the economic
conditions that all of us grew up expecting to continue practically
forever were merely a blip on history's timeline?
It's an uncomfortable idea, but one that cannot be ignored: The
"normal" late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth
actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be
perpetuated.
That "normal" is gone. One way or another, a "new normal" will emerge
to replace it. Can we build a different, more sustainable economy to
replace the one now in tatters?
Let's be clear: I believe we are in for some very hard times. The
transitional period on our way toward a post-growth, equilibrium
economy will prove to be the most challenging time any of us has ever
lived through. Nevertheless, I am convinced that we can survive this
collective journey, and that if we make sound choices as families and
communities, life can actually be better for us in the decades ahead
than it was during the heady days of seemingly endless economic
expansion.
In this essay, I would like to share my conclusions on this subject
and the process by which I arrived at them. It's a bit of a long
story, so please bear with me. First, the conclusions.
Four Propositions The following summary statements are fundamental both to grasping our
current situation and managing our way toward a desirable future:
We have reached the end of economic growth as we have known it. The
"growth" we are talking about consists of the expansion of the
overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more
money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material
goods flowing through it. The economic crisis that began in 2008 was
both foreseeable and inevitable, and that it marks a permanent,
fundamental break from past decades - - a period in which economists
adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is
necessary and also possible to achieve. As we will see, there are
fundamental constraints to ongoing economic expansion, and the world
is beginning to encounter those constraints. This is not to say the
U.S. or the world will never see another quarter or year of growth
relative to the previous year. Rather, the point is that when the
bumps are averaged out, the general trend-line of the economy
(measured in terms of production and consumption of real goods) will
be level or downward rather than upward from now on.
The basic factors that will inevitably shape whatever replaces the
growth economy are knowable. To survive and thrive for long,
societies have to operate within the planet's budget of sustainably
extractable resources. This means that even if we don't know exactly
what a desirable post-growth economy and lifestyle will look like, we
know enough to begin working toward them.
It is possible for economies to persist for centuries or millennia
with no or minimal growth. That is how most economies operated until
recent times. If billions of people through countless generations
lived without economic growth, we can do so as wel - - now and far into
the future. The end of growth does not mean the end of the world.
Life in a non-growing economy can be fulfilling, interesting, and
secure. The absence of growth does not imply a lack of change or
improvement. Within a non-growing or equilibrium economy there can
still be a continuous development of practical skills, artistic
expression, and technology. In fact, some historians and social
scientists argue that life in an equilibrium economy can be superior
to life in a fast-growing economy: while growth creates opportunities
for some, it also typically intensifies competition there are big
winners and big losers, and (as in most boom towns) the quality of
relations within the community can suffer as a result. Within a
non-growing economy it is possible to maximize benefits and reduce
factors leading to decay, but doing so will require pursuing
appropriate goals: instead of more, we must strive for better; rather
than promoting increased economic activity for its own sake, we must
emphasize whatever increases quality of life without stoking
consumption. One way to do this is to reinvent and redefine growth
itself.
The transition to a no-growth economy (or one in which growth is
defined in a fundamentally different way) is inevitable, but it will
go much better if we plan for it rather than simply watching in
dismay as institutions we have come to rely upon fail, and then try
to improvise a survival strategy in their absence.
In effect, we have to create a desirable "new normal" that fits the
constraints imposed by depleting natural resources. Maintaining the
"old normal" is not an option; if we do not find new goals for
ourselves and plan our transition from a growth-based economy to a
healthy equilibrium economy, we will by default create a much less
desirable "new normal" whose emergence we are already beginning to
see in the forms of persistent high unemployment, a widening gap
between rich and poor, and ever more frequent and worsening financial
and environmental crises - - all of which translate to profound distress
for individuals, families, and communities.
'Limits to Growth' The journey that led to my formulating these propositions began in
1972, when a book called Limits to Growth was making headlines. This
relatively compact volume, which went on to become the best-selling
environmental book of all time, provoked the first Great Wake-up Call
of my adult life, changing the course of everything I have thought and
done ever since.
Let me explain why Limits to Growth impacted me so deeply.
That book, which reported on the first attempts to use computers to
model the likely interactions between trends in resources,
consumption, and population, was also the first major scientific
study to question the assumption that economic growth can and will
continue more or less uninterrupted into the foreseeable future.
The idea was heretical at the time - - and still is: during the past few
decades, growth has become virtually the sole index of national
economic well-being. When the economy grows, jobs appear, investments
yield high returns, and everyone is happy. When the economy stops
growing, financial bloodletting ensues. And so predictably a book
saying that growth cannot and will not continue beyond a certain
point proved profoundly upsetting in some quarters, and soon Limits
to Growth was prominently "debunked" by public relations efforts
organized by pro-growth business interests. In reality, this
"debunking" merely amounted to taking a few numbers in the book
completely out of context, citing them as "predictions" (which they
explicitly were not), and then claiming that these predictions had
failed. The ruse was quickly exposed, but rebuttals often don't gain
nearly as much publicity as accusations, and so today millions of
people mistakenly believe that the book was long ago discredited. In
fact, the original Limits to Growth scenarios have held up quite
well*
In principle, the argument for eventual limits to growth is a
slam-dunk. If any quantity grows steadily by a certain fixed
percentage per year, this implies that it will double in size every
so-many years; the higher the percentage growth rate, the quicker the
doubling. A rough method of figuring doubling times is known as the
rule of 70: dividing the percentage growth rate into 70 gives the
approximate time required for the initial quantity to double. If a
quantity is growing at 1 percent per year, it will double in 70
years; at 2 percent per year growth, it will double in 35 years; at 5
percent growth, it will double in only 14 years, and so on. If you
want to be more precise, you can use the Y^x button on your
calculator, but the rule of 70 works fine for most purposes.
Here's a real-world example: Over the past two centuries, human
population has grown at rates ranging from less than one percent to
more than two percent per year. In 1800, world population stood at
about one billion; by 1930 it had doubled to two billion. Only 30
years later (in 1960) it had doubled again to four billion; currently
we are on track to achieve a third doubling, to eight billion humans,
around 2025. No one seriously expects human population to continue
growing for centuries into the future. But imagine if it did at just
1.3 percent per year (its growth rate in the year 2000). By the year
2780 there would be 148 trillion humans on Earth - - one person for each
square meter of land on the planet's surface.
It won't happen, of course.
In nature, growth always slams up against non-negotiable constraints
sooner or later. If a species finds that its food source has
expanded, its numbers will increase to take advantage of those
surplus calories - - but then its food source will become depleted as
more mouths consume it, and its predators will likewise become more
numerous (more tasty meals for them!). Population "blooms" (that is,
periods of rapid growth) are always followed by crashes and die-offs.
Always.
Here's another real-world example. In recent years China's economy
has been growing at eight percent or more per year; that means it is
more than doubling in size every ten years. Indeed, China consumes
more than twice as much coal as it did a decade ago - - the same with
iron ore and oil. The nation now has four times as many highways as
it did, and almost five times as many cars. How long can this go on?
How many more doublings can occur before China has used up its key
resources - - -or has simply decided that enough is enough and has stopped
growing?
It makes sense that economies should follow rules analogous to those
that govern biological systems. Plants and animals tend to grow
quickly when they are young, but then they reach a more or less
stable mature size. In organisms, growth rates are largely controlled
by genes. In economies, growth seems tied to factors such as the
availability of resources - - chiefly energy resources ("food" for the
industrial system). During the 20th century, cheap and abundant
fossil fuels enabled rapid economic expansion; at some point,
therefor, fossil fuel depletion could put a brake on growth. It is
also possible that industrial wastes could accumulate to the point
that the biological systems that underpin economic activity (such as
forests, crops, and human bodies) begin to fail.
But economists generally don't see things this way. That's probably
because most current economic theories were formulated during an
anomalous historical period of sustained growth. Economists are
merely generalizing from their experience: they can point to decades
of steady growth in the recent past, and so they simply project that
experience into the future. Moreover, they have ways to explain why
modern market economies are immune to the kinds of limits that
constrain natural systems; the two main ones concern substitution and
efficiency.
If a useful resource becomes scarce, its price will rise, and this
creates an incentive for users of the resource to find a substitute.
For example, if oil gets expensive enough, energy companies might
start making liquid fuels from coal. Or they might develop other
energy sources undreamed of today. Economists theorize that this
process of substitution can go on forever. It's part of the magic of
the free market.
Increasing efficiency means doing more with less. In the U.S., the
number of inflation-adjusted dollars generated in the economy for
every unit of energy consumed has increased steadily over recent
decades (the amount of energy, in British Thermal Units, required to
produce a dollar of GDP
has been dropping steadily, from close to 20,000 BTU per dollar in
1949 to 8,500 BTU in 2008). That's one kind of economic efficiency.
Another has to do with locating the cheapest sources of materials,
and the places where workers will be most productive and work for the
lowest wages. As we increase efficiency, we use less - - of either
resources or money - - to do more. That enables more growth.
Finding substitutes for depleting resources and upping efficiency are
undeniably effective adaptive strategies of market economies.
Nevertheless, the question remains open as to how long these
strategies can continue to work in the real world - - which is governed
less by economic theories than by the laws of physics. In the real
world, some things don't have substitutes, or the substitutes are too
expensive, or don't work as well, or can't be produced fast enough.
And efficiency follows a law of diminishing returns: the first gains
in efficiency are usually cheap, but every further incremental gain
tends to cost more, until further gains become prohibitively
expensive.
Unlike economists, most physical scientists recognize that growth
within any functioning, bounded system has to stop sometime.
But this discussion has very real implications, because the economy
is not just an abstract concept; it is what determines whether we
live in luxury or poverty; whether we eat or starve. If economic
growth ends, everyone will be impacted, and it will take society
years to adapt to this new condition. Therefor it is important to be
able to forecast whether that moment is close or distant in time.
Hence the Limits to Growth study. The authors fed in data for world
population growth, consumption trends, and the abundance of various
important resources, ran their computer program, and concluded that
the end of growth would probably arrive between 2010 and 2050.
Industrial output and food production would then fall, leading to a
decline in population. (By the way, the Limits to Growth scenario
study has been re-run repeatedly in the years since the original
publication, using more sophisticated software and updated input
data. The results were similar. See Limits to Growth: The 30-Year
Update.)
My Personal Story of Waking Up to Limits
That's why Limits to Growth meant so much to me when I encountered it
at age 21. I realized that the world in which I had been born, raised,
and educated was headed toward what is politely known as a "historical
discontinuity," but more colloquially termed "collapse," "a cliff," or
"a brick wall." Millions of young people today are having the same
experience as they learn about climate change. Welcome to the club.
At the time, I had been trying to make my way as a young musician. My
father had been a chemistry and physics teacher, but I had gravitated
toward the arts: after being trained as a classical violinist, I had
taught myself also to play electric guitar.
As I absorbed the implications of Limits to Growth, I realized that
there were more important things than band rehearsals and gigs to
attend to, so I mostly left the music business (though I continue to
be an avid amateur violinist) and began looking for ways to help
shift society toward a more sustainable path. I became a freelance
writer-editor and started pursuing projects I thought might lead me
toward a better understanding of global trends and of how our species
might avert an overwhelming economic and environmental disaster.
It was clear that society would need to undertake fundamental
changes. But what were those changes, exactly? I thought the best way
to find out would be to form an intentional community as a kind of
social laboratory in which to explore alternatives in energy, food
production, and lifestyles. I ended up spending most of the next 20
years living in three communities - - one in Toronto that I helped
establish, and others in Colorado and southern California that had
already been going for some time before I joined. Intentional
communities (sometimes also known as communes, with many now thriving
under the banner of "eco-villages") are a fascinating social
phenomenon, and hundreds still flourish worldwide.
By the early 1990s, I was eager to reconnect with mainstream society
and bring what I had learned to a wider audience. My wife, Janet
Barocco, and I had met in an intentional community in southern
California; together we moved to a suburban home in Santa Rosa. By
the latter years of the decade I was teaching in a college program on
sustainability that I had helped initiate and design, while also
continuing to make my way as a freelance environmental writer.
It was at this point, in 1998, that I heard a second Great Wake-up
Call.
Peak Oil
It came in the form of an article in Scientific American
by veteran petroleum geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherr're
(both of whom had overseen exploration and production in major oil
companies), explaining why world oil extraction would reach a maximum
around 2010 and begin its permanent decline thereafter. I quickly
realized that Peak Oil would likely be the first non-negotiable
global limit to growth. The hazy forecast that industrial society
would hit a wall sometime in the 21st century was suddenly focused to
a painful specificity. Growth had acquired a hard expiration date.
Of course, oil does not pose our only societal limit, or even the
most important one in the bigger scheme of things: climate, water,
and topsoil are clearly more crucial in the long run. But the peaking
of world oil production could potentially bring modern industrial
civilization to its knees, while also undercutting coordinated
efforts to deal with all sorts of other problems.
Up to this point I had little interest in the subject of oil, or
energy generally. However, as I re-read the Scientific American
article, I realized the pivotal role petroleum plays in the modern
world - - in transportation, agriculture, and the chemicals and materials
industries. I began spending hours each day studying energy history
and oil production statistics. I soon realized that the Industrial
Revolution was really the Fossil Fuel Revolution, and that our modern
food system is based on cheap fossil energy. Further, the entire
phenomenon of continuous economic growth - - including the development of
the financial institutions that facilitate growth, such as fractional
reserve banking and the marketing of derivatives - - is ultimately based
on ever-increasing supplies of cheap energy. Growth requires more
manufacturing, more trade, and more transport, and those all in turn
require more energy. This means that if energy supplies can't expand
and energy therefore becomes significantly more expensive, economic
growth will falter and the financial system built on expectations of
perpetual growth will fail, possibly in a rather spectacular way.
As early as 1998, Campbell, Laherr're, and others were discussing a
Peak Oil impact scenario that went like this: Sometime around the
year 2010, they theorized, stagnant or falling oil supplies would
lead to soaring and more volatile petroleum prices, which would
precipitate a global economic crash. This rapid economic contraction
would in turn lead to sharply curtailed energy demand, so oil prices
would then fall; but as soon as the economy regained strength, demand
for oil would recover, prices would again soar, and the economy would
relapse. This cycle would continue, with each recovery phase being
shorter and weaker, and each crash deeper and harder, until the
economy was in ruins. Meanwhile, volatile oil prices would frustrate
investments in energy alternatives: one year, oil would be so
expensive that almost any other energy source would look cheap by
comparison; the next year, the price of oil would have fallen so far
that energy users would be flocking back to it, with investments in
other energy sources looking foolish. Investment capital would be in
short supply in any case because the banks would be insolvent due to
the crash, and governments would be broke due to declining tax
revenues. Meanwhile, international competition for dwindling oil
supplies might lead to wars between petroleum importing nations,
between importers and exporters, and between rival factions within
exporting nations.
Naturally, I also examined the arguments against the likelihood of a
near-term peak in global oil production. What if Campbell and
Laherr're were simply wrong? There are those who claim that new
technologies for crude oil extraction will increase the amount of oil
that can be obtained from each well drilled, and that there are nearly
endless reserves of alternative hydrocarbon resources (principally tar
sands and oil shale) whose development will seamlessly replace
conventional oil, thus delaying the inevitable peak for decades.
There are also those who say that Peak Oil won't be much of a problem
even if it happens soon, because the market will find substitutes as
quickly as needed - - whether electric cars, hydrogen, or liquid fuel
made from coal. I found all of these arguments weak: the new oil
extraction technologies won't come into wide use for several years,
and will be applicable mostly to newly developed fields (of which
there are fewer and fewer each year as exploration efforts continue
to show mostly disappointing results), not to the old super-giant
oilfields that produce the great bulk of oil that we use today. Tar
sands and oil shale will be slow to extract; indeed, in the case of
oil shale, we may never derive liquid fuels in any substantial
quantity due to the enormous costs of processing this very low-grade
material. And substitutes like electric cars, liquids from coal, and
hydrogen will take a very long time to develop and will in most cases
be much more costly than the equivalent elements of our current system
of petroleum fuels and internal combustion engines.
I continued to study the world energy situation for the next few
years. And, with every passing year, events appeared to be supporting
the Peak Oil thesis and undercutting the views of the oil optimists.
Oil prices were trending upward - - and for entirely foreseeable reasons:
discoveries of new oilfields were continuing to peter out, with most
new fields being much more difficult and expensive to develop than
ones found in previous years. More oil-producing countries were
seeing their extraction rates peaking and beginning to decline
despite efforts to maintain production growth using high-tech,
expensive secondary and tertiary extraction methods like the
injection of water, nitrogen, or CO2 to force more oil out of the
ground. Production decline rates in the world's old, super-giant
oilfields, which are responsible for the lion's share of the global
petroleum supply, were accelerating. Production of liquid fuels from
tar sands was expanding only slowly, while the development of oil
shale remained a hollow promise for the distant future.
I corresponded with and met the authors of the Scientific American
article, and interviewed other petroleum geologists and engineers.
One expert after another offered further reasons for concluding that
the thesis of "The End of Cheap Oil" was correct, that there were no
ready substitutes for crude oil, and that the consequences of a
near-term global oil production peak would be profound.
Given the almost complete absence of mainstream media coverage of the
subject, I spent several months assessing whether I should step into
the breach and write a book on Peak Oil. The fact that I had no
background in the oil industry or in any relevant academic field
weighed against doing so. Yet the need was clearly overwhelming, so I
decided to try. I spent 2001 and 2002 writing The Party's Over: Oil,
War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, which was published the
following year and went on to sell over 50,000 copies with
translations in six languages. I began receiving lecture invitations,
and, over the next few years, gave over 300 talks to a wide variety of
audiences in a dozen countries. More books followed: PowerDown:
Options and Actions for a Post Carbon World (2004); The Oil Depletion
Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse
(2006); Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007);
and Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (2009).
I was determined to sound a warning not just to the general public,
but especially to politicians and appointed government officials.
Members of a burgeoning informal global network of Peak Oil activists
arranged for me speak to hundreds of national, state, and local
politicians and appointed officials in the U.S., to about a hundred
members of the European Parliament, and to national Parliamentarians
in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand.
From Scary Theory to Scarier Reality
Then in 2008, the Peak Oil scenario became all too real. Global oil
production had been stagnant since 2005 and petroleum prices had been
soaring upward. In July, 2008, the per-barrel price shot up nearly to
$150 - - half again higher (in inflation-adjusted terms) than the price
spikes of the 1970s that had triggered the worst recession since
World War II. By summer 2008, the auto industry, the trucking
industry, international shipping, agriculture, and the airlines were
all reeling.
But what happened next riveted the world's attention to such a degree
that the oil price spike was all but forgotten: in September 2008, the
global financial system nearly collapsed. The reasons for this sudden,
gripping crisis apparently had to do with housing bubbles, lack of
proper regulation of the banking industry, and the over-use of
bizarre financial products that almost nobody understood. However,
there are reasons for concluding that the oil price spike was a much
more important contributor to this economic meltdown than is
generally discussed (see http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49798
).
In the aftermath of that global financial near-death experience, both
the Peak Oil impact scenario proposed a decade earlier and the Limits
to Growth standard-run scenario of 1972 seemed to be confirmed with
uncanny and frightening accuracy. Global trade was falling. The
world's largest auto companies were on life support. The U.S. airline
industry had shrunk by almost a third. Food riots were erupting in
poor nations around the world. Lingering wars in Iraq (the nation
with the world's second-largest crude oil reserves) and Afghanistan
(the site of disputed oil and gas pipeline projects) continued to
bleed the coffers of the world's foremost oil-importing nation.
Meanwhile, the debate about what to do to rein in global climate
change exemplified the political inertia that had kept the world on
track for calamity since the early '70s. It had by now become obvious
to nearly every person of modest education and intellece that the
world has two urgent, incontrovertible reasons to rapidly end its
reliance on fossil fuels: the twin threats of climate catastrophe and
impending constraints to fuel supplies (with most of the remaining oil
reserves located in just a few countries). Yet at the Copenhagen
climate conference in December, 2009, the priorities of the most
fuel-dependent nations were clear: carbon emissions should be cut,
and fossil fuel dependency reduced, but only if doing so does not
threaten economic growth.
The cruel irony, obvious to my Peak Oil-aware colleagues but
apparently not to the delegates at Copenhagen, was that the
decades-long era of rapid economic growth based on increased
fossil-fueled production and consumption is over anyway. The world's
last chance to collectively, cooperatively negotiate a turn away from
the precipice was being squandered for the sake of a goal that was no
longer achievable.
I could take no satisfaction from these confirmations of the Limits
to Growth and Peak Oil scenarios; being able to say "I told you so"
hardly made up for the shock of knowing that our last opportunities
to change direction had been missed and that the train of industrial
civilization was now not merely still chugging toward a broken
bridge, but was actually starting to plummet into the gorge below. We
had succeeded somewhat in helping increase public awareness of an
issue: due to the efforts of thousands of scientists, writers, and
activists, "peak oil" had become a recognizable term in public
discourse. But we had failed to budge government policy in more than
very minor ways (I had, for example, assisted the City
Council-appointed Peak Oil Task Force of Oakland, California, which
produced a sensible report on which, so far, little action has been
taken).
The world has entered a new era. The project of awakening and warning
policy makers and the general public was worthy of the investment of
all the effort we could muster. In fact, it would have been negligent
of the Limits to Growth authors, Colin Campbell, Jean Laherr're, and
thousands of climate and environmental scientists and activists
(myself included) not to give it our best shot. But it is now too
late to avert a collapse of the existing system. The collapse has
begun.
It is time for a different strategy.
By saying this, I am not suggesting that we should all simply give up
and accept an inevitable, awful fate. Even though the collapse of the
world's financial and industrial systems has started, effort now at
minimizing further dire consequences is essential. Collapse does not
mean extinction. A new way of life will almost certainly emerge from
the wreckage of the fossil-fueled growth era. It is up to those of us
who have some understanding of what is happening, and why, to help
design that new way of life so that it will be sustainable,
equitable, and fulfilling for all concerned. We all need practical
strategies and tools to weather the collapse and to build the
foundation of whatever is to come after.
Journey to a New Economy
The propositions described above, and my personal journey, are the
starting points for a search that can be summarized in a single
question: What are the guideposts toward a livable, inviting
post-growth society?
This search has in many instances entailed a literal, geographic
journey. During the past few years, as I traveled the lecture
circuit, I met thousands of people who had already concluded on their
own that the global stage was being set for an economic crash of epic
proportions. They had passed through the psychological stages of
grief - - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They
were thinking creatively, building new lives, and experimenting with
a wide range of strategies for meeting basic human needs while using
much less of just about everything.
Some of these folks, like me, had been thinking along these lines for
a long time - - since the 1970s. Many were much younger, though, had
learned about Peak Oil or climate change just within the past few
years, and had recently decided to devote their lives to building a
post-hydrocarbon world. Some were clearly members of what was known
in the 1970s as the "counterculture." Others were mainstream
citizens - - investment bankers, real estate sellers, high school
teachers, small business owners, corporate middle managers - - who had
chanced upon information that awakened them forcibly from their
routines. Many of these folks lived in large cities, but others in
small towns or on farms; some were rich, some poor (a few by choice);
some were devout, others agnostic or atheist; some were working alone
on survivalist projects, while others were building community
organizations; some saw the transition as a business opportunity
while others were working through non-profit organizations. Here are
just three examples that stand out.
In 2005, while on a lecture tour in Ireland, I met a young college
teacher named Rob Hopkins who believed that life could be better
without fossil fuels. He had led his students in developing an
"Energy Descent Action Plan" for their town, and believed he had the
seed for something larger and more significant. He soon moved back to
his native England to earn his Ph.D., and designed his thesis project
around helping the village of Totnes begin a cooperative, phased
process of transitioning away from its dependence on fossil fuels.
This project in turn led to the start of a series of Transition
Initiatives in villages, towns, and neighborhoods throughout the U.K.
In 2007, a version of Rob's written Ph.D. thesis was published as a
book (The Transition Handbook) that quickly began inspiring others to
take up this strategy. Today there are hundreds of Transition
Initiatives at various stages of development in a dozen countries
(including over 50 in the U.S.).
While in Montana for a speaking engagement at the University of
Montana in Helena in spring 2009, some local Peak Oil activists drove
me to the town of Ronan and introduced me to Billie Lee, who had
helped start Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center. The Center is
housed in a fairly small, nondescript building and features
medium-scale food processing equipment that local small food
producers can rent at reasonable rates. This enables small farmers to
produce value-added products (everything from canned soups to herbal
tea bags) that are profitable and are price-competitive with those
made by industrial food companies located hundreds or thousands of
miles from Ronan. Local food has become an obsession for the
sustainability-minded during the past few years, and local food
systems will be a necessary pillar of post-growth economies. Yet
aspiring small-scale farmers often have a hard time getting started
because they cannot afford the equipment to enable them to produce
profitable value-added products. Here in the tiny hamlet of Ronan was
an ingenious solution to the problem, and one that deserves to be
replicated in every agricultural county in the nation.
On a trip to New England in 2007, I met Lynn Benander, a community
energy activist and entrepreneur who had started a project called
Co-op Power to bring renewable energy to low-income and multi-ethnic
communities throughout the Northeast. Typically, renewable energy
projects cost more to get going than conventional coal or gas power
projects, and so they tend to be found in wealthier communities and
regions. Conversely, the most polluting energy projects tend to be
sited in or near poor neighborhoods or regions. Co-op Power aims to
change that imbalance of power in a way that any community can copy.
A typical project: You help four people put up a solar hot water
system and everyone comes to help you put up yours; you save 40 to 50
percent off your total system price, get to know your neighbors, and
learn how your system works. Co-op Power had also pioneered a
cooperative financing method that cuts through the usual roadblocks
to renewable energy projects in poorer neighborhoods by leveraging
member equity.
Individually, these initiatives and projects may seem to be on too
small a scale to make much of a difference. But multiplied by
thousands, with examples in nearly every community, they represent a
quiet yet powerful movement.
Few of these efforts have gained national media attention. Most media
commentators who address economic issues are focused on the
prospects - - positive or negative - - of the existing growth-based economy.
These projects don't seem all that important within that framework of
thinking. But in the new context of the no-growth economy, they may
mean the difference between ruinous poverty and happy sufficiency.
The trends are already in evidence: as the financial crisis worsens,
more people are planting gardens, and seed companies are working hard
to keep up with the demand. More young people are taking up farming
now than in any recent decade. In 2008, more bicycles were sold in
the U.S. than automobiles (not good news for the struggling car
companies, but great news for the climate). And since the crisis
started, Americans have been spending much less on
non-essentials - - repairing and re-using rather than replacing and
adding.
Many economists assume these trends are short-term and that Americans
will return to consumerism as economic crisis shifts into recovery.
But if there is no "recovery" in the usual sense, then these trends
will only grow.
This is what the early adopters are assuming. They believe that the
nation and the world have turned a corner. They understand something
the media either ignore or deny. They're betting on a future of local
food systems, not global agribusiness; of community credit co-ops
rather than too-big-to-fail Wall Street megabanks; of small-scale
renewable energy projects, not a world-spanning system of fossil-fuel
extraction, trade, and consumption. A future in which we do for
ourselves, share, and cooperate.
They're embarking on a life after growth.
* * *
The realization that growth is at an end raises many questions. Will
the financial impact be inflationary or deflationary? Will some
nations fare better than others, leading to protectionist trade wars?
Will the "down-sizing" of social and economic complexity lead also to
a substantial die-off of the human species? How quickly will all of
this happen?
There simply are no hard and fast answers to such questions. The
financial, energy, food, transport, and political systems on which we
rely are complex, so it is almost impossible to reliably model their
response to a shock such as a resource limits-imposed end to economic
growth. The only reasonable response, it seems to me, is to act as if
survival is possible, and to build resilience throughout society as
quickly as can be, acting locally wherever there are individuals or
groups with the understanding and wherewithal. We must assume that a
satisfactory, sustainable way of life is achievable in the absence of
fossil fuels and conventional economic growth, and go about building
it. This will be the focus of my work from now on - - and it is likely to
be the work of the next few generations as well. Call it Transition,
call it cultural survival and renewal, call it what you will, it is
the only game in town for the foreseeable future.
analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably
with key features of business-as-usual
scenario&."
By Richard Heinberg
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 21:56:21 -0500
Reprinted from ENERGY BULLETIN
From: carolyn@carolynbaker.net
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