Heinberg peak everything; waking up to the century of declines (2010)

I argued that the industrial expansion of the past century or two was mainly due to our rapidlyaccelerating use of the concentrated energies of cheap fossil fuels; and that as oil, coal

ON TECHNOLOGY, AGRICULTURE, AND THE ARTS

Chapter 1 - Tools with a Life of Their Own

Classy Tools

It’s the Energy, Silly

Peak Oil and the Limits of Technology

Staring at Techno-Collapse

Chapter 2 - Fifty Million Farmers

Intensifying Food Production

The 21 Century: De-Industrialization

Examples and Strategies

The Key: More Farmers!

If We Do This Well

Chapter 3 - (post-) Hydrocarbon Aesthetics

Designing for the Tragic Interlude of Cheap Abundance

Hydrocarbon Style: Big, Fast, and Ugly

Oh, To Be Hip Again

Manifesto for a Post-Carbon Aesthetic

ON NATURE’S LIMITS AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Chapter 4 - Five Axioms of Sustainability

History and Background

Five Axioms

Evaluation

Chapter 5 - Parrots and Peoples

Chapter 6 - Population, Resources, and Human Idealism

THE END OF ONE ERA, THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER

Chapter 7 - The Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change

Explaining Our Incomprehension

Acceptance and Beyond: Peak Oil Grief

Collective PTSD

A Model for Explanation and Treatment: Addiction and Dependency

Proactive Application: Social Marketing

Chapter 8 - Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism

Differing Perspectives

Differing Recommendations

Supply Side, Demand Side

Common Ground

Chapter 9 - Boomers’ Last Chance?

What Made the “Greatest Generation” Great

The “Me” Generation

The Boomers’ Defining Moments

The Path Taken

Another Fork in the Road

Chapter 10 - A Letter From the Future

Chapter 11 - Talking Ourselves to Extinction

Language and Religion

Grammar, Reason, Logic, and Evidence

Language and the Ecological Dilemma

Can Language Help Us Now?

Resources for Action

Notes

Index

About the Author

Copyright Page

Praise for PEAK EVERYTHING

Richard Heinberg brings important news that few will want to hear — the limits we’ve been hearing about for four decades are really upon us He also brings a pretty good hint of the directions we might take to escape the tightening knot An important book from an important thinker.

— Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

If humans survive the ongoing catastrophe that is this culture, it will be in great measure due to people like Richard Heinberg, who have the courage to directly face our predicament and the honesty to clearly yet gently

describe our alternatives Heinberg’s work is always both inspirational and educational, and Peak Everything

is no exception This book should be required reading at all high schools and colleges, for all activists, and for all policy-makers.

— Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame

There are few harder questions than the ones Richard Heinberg takes on in Peak Everything Fortunately, he

addresses them with his customary fearlessness, intellectual rigor and good sense More than anyone else I’ve encountered, Heinberg has an answer to the most fundamental question of all; “How shall we go on from here.” Reading this, I can believe there is hope that we can.

— Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front and Independence Days: A Guide to

Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation

Once again — and with eyes as peeled to the task as a Buddha’s — Richard Heinberg jumps into the cauldron

of global resource de- cline This is his most integrated report from the social, economic, and ecological contraction now unfolding, which he delivers with mindfulness, compassion, and a view to humanity’s strengths.

— Chellis Glendinning, author of My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization

Peak Oil is a great threat to our way of life, and Richard Heinberg is one of the world’s best-known writers

and analysts of the subject In Peak Everything, Heinberg gives us a series of provocative essays about the

profound individual and global implications of Peak Oil.

— Albert A Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder

With Peak Everything, Richard Heinberg is once again on the cutting edge We are all indebted to him for

helping us understand our 21st cenury world.

— Lester R Brown, President, Earth Policy Institute, and author of Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a

Civilization in Trouble

Join the Conversation

Visit our online book club at www.newsociety.com to share your thoughts about Peak Everything.

Exchange ideas with other readers, post questions for the author, respond to one of the sample

questions or start your own discussion topics

See you there!

It would be impossible to thank everyone who has helped with this book in some way The chaptersherein developed over many months, during which I was traveling a great deal and speaking toaudiences large and small about the problem of oil depletion, its likely consequences, and what wecan do to wean our societies from our collective addiction to fossil fuels I met hundreds of peopleduring these travels whose words and pioneering actions are reflected in these pages

Once again, I must acknowledge an enormous debt of gratitude to my wife Janet Barocco, whosupports and balances me in so many ways as I pursue the rather lopsided life of a writer-lecturer

This is the fourth book project on which I have had the pleasure of working with Chris and JudithPlant of New Society Publishers A note of appreciation must also go to Ingrid Witvoet, whoshepherded the book through the production process, and Murray Reiss, who copy-edited themanuscript

My thanks to Jennifer Bresee for research assistance, and to Susan Williamson for generalassistance

As in the past, my students and co-faculty at New College deserve mention for their ongoing

support, as do the subscribers to my monthly MuseLetter.

Finally, I would like to voice both appreciation and thanks to Julian Darley and Celine Darley — founders of Post Carbon Institute, and catalysts in the global response to the twin crises offossil fuels (climate change and resource depletion)

By James Howard Kunstler

Back in 2005, Richard Heinberg and I both published books on peak oil and its implications foreveryday life in technologically “advanced” societies We saw the general situation very similarly

but expressed our views of it differently I hugely admired Richard’s version of the story, The Party’s

Over, especially the trenchant title He brought tremendous kinetic clarity to a set of terrifying issues

that the best technical guys had previously only been able to present in mind-numbing charts andsludge-like prose I think both of us set out to shock the general reading public with news that had left

us both, personally, deeply shocked as the implications revealed themselves and we realized that theage of Cruisin’ for Burgers was coming to an end

Mostly since then, the public has proved to be unshockable by the news that we’re entering ahistorical period of hardship, that many of the familiar touchstones of daily life — from square meals

to daily commutes to the simple confidence that the lights will go on when you flick a switch — willnot be with us much longer I think there was an assumption by Richard and myself and lots of otherpeople thoughtfully observing the scene by then, that our society would take the message, spread itvirally (and rapidly!), and that our leaders in business, politics, science, and the media wouldmarshal our people’s best efforts to meet these challenges — at least to formulate some kind ofconsensus for action

No such thing happened Some people on the margins took note, but the general public gotdistracted and deluded We all know how denial works at the macro level now Not only was the

peak oil predicament broadly misunderstood (as Richard points out, it was never just about running

out of oil), but a mini-industry of delusion generators sprouted up to refute peak oil, folks like the

espousers of so-called “abiotic oil” theory — the idea that the earth has a creamy nougat center of oilthat continuously refills producing oil fields (for which there is no evidence whatsoever, by the way).Worse, the organs of legitimate governance, such as the US Department of Energy, refused to evenacknowledge that a) we had a big problem with future oil supplies, and not too far out, either, and b)

it had awful implications

For most of the first decade of this century, the federal government was run by the George W Bushgang, and it was understood that they operated on a strange ethos of faith-based-Babbittry in whichthe highest-and-best version of civilization was thought to be credit-card consumerism accessorized

by endless happy motoring (all lavishly garnished with Christian prayer) In other words, they had adeep vested interest in keeping all the usual rackets running: suburbia, derivatives-trading, highway-building, strip-mining… Fittingly, this operating system foundered utterly at the climax of the 2008

presidential election That’s when the Frankenstein monster of innovative finance keeled over on

Wall Street from an infarction of its mutant heart (the engine of debt), taking down the LehmanBrothers investment bank, the AIG insurance company (insurers to the alternative universe offraudulent bond derivatives), the two notorious government sponsored enterprises behind the housingbubble, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and threatening more generally to absolutely wreck the entireglobal financial system What an autumn that was! Trillions of dollars were dropped by helicopters

from the Federal Reserve (into the vaults of the foundering banks) and the financial system stayed onits feet — though it more and more resembled a lurching zombie than a healthy organism.

One result, of course, was the election of Mr Barack Obama, the appealing young change-agent (Ivoted for him), who seemed poised to beat an historic new path through these swamps ofcomplacency, decadence, and sheer stupidity into a new era of reality-based, tightly focusedcollective effort It hasn’t worked out In fact, Mr Obama has spent the first two years of his termmainly bailing out banks and the tattered remains of the suburban house “industry” — the car industry,the highway-builders… in short, propping up all the agents of the old status quo He hasn’t so much asgotten a new choo-choo train running from Chicago to St Louis

As Richard sagely observes, where the public is concerned, the ongoing banking fiasco that began

in 2008 has been a mighty distraction from all the other resource-and-energy issues that pertain torunning an “advanced” economy Nobody with real influence in this society — in politics or business

or in the New York Times Op-Ed section — seems to have considered the possibility that we may

have to prepare to run something less than an advanced economy It is my view that we had better getready for that, in the form of a comprehensive downscaling and re-localizing of all our activities,along with a re-set of what these activities run on and how And by “activities” I mean all the systems

we rely on for daily life, which can be described with precision: food production (farming),commerce, transportation, et cetera We’ll have to do all these things differently, whether we like it

or not, if we want to remain in the realm above savagery

The name of the game is Managing Contraction That’s what we’re in for, and we’d better play itwith as much intelligence and compassion as we can summon up This is one of the reasons I turned to

fiction after publishing The Long Emergency, with the novel World Made By Hand and, in the fall of

2010, its sequel, The Witch of Hebron I wanted to portray vividly a future America which was very

different from the place we know, a society that had already gone through a compressive contractionand come out the other side with a heart and a brain

Richard Heinberg has remained in the trenches of current events, reporting wisely on the greateststory of our time in a series of powerful books, never losing sight of his aspiration to help his fellowcitizens navigate through this most perilous historic passage I’m grateful to be his colleague

— James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency and The Geography of Nowhere, as well as novels World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron (fall 2010) He lives in Saratoga

Springs, NY

In titling this book Peak Everything, I was suggesting that humanity has achieved an unsustainable

pinnacle of population size and consumption rates, and that the road ahead will be mostly downhill

— at least for the next few decades, until humanity has learned to live within Earth’s resource limits

I argued that the industrial expansion of the past century or two was mainly due to our rapidlyaccelerating use of the concentrated energies of cheap fossil fuels; and that as oil, coal and natural gascease to be cheap and abundant, economic growth will phase into contraction I further pointed outthat world oil production was at, or very nearly at, its peak, and that the imminent decline inextraction rates will be decisive, because global transport is nearly all oil dependent Finally, I notedthat the shift from growth to contraction will impact every aspect of human existence — financialsystems, food systems, global trade — at both the macro and micro levels, threatening even ourpersonal psychological coping mechanisms

Nothing has happened in the past three years to change that outlook — but much has transpired toconfirm it

A good case can now be made that the year 2007, when this book originally appeared, was indeedthe year, if not of “peak everything,” then at least of “peak many things.” Since then we have begun ascary descent from the giddy heights of consumption achieved in the early years of this century

• Worldwide economic activity began to decline in 2008 and does not appear set to return to

2007 levels any time soon

• Global energy consumption likewise achieved its zenith in the years 2005 through 2007; sincethen, consumption growth has been confined to the Asian economies and a few oil and gasexporting nations

• Worldwide shipping, a good index of global trade and manufacturing, peaked in 2007

Of course it is simplistic to argue that everything has peaked (though Peak Everything makes for a better book title than Some Things Peaking Now, Most Others Soon) Perhaps the most glaring

exception is human population, which continues to grow and is virtually certain to pass the sevenbillion mark within the next couple of years

Here’s another non-peak: China’s economy is still growing rapidly, at the astonishing rate of 8 to

10 percent per year That means it is more than doubling in size every ten years Indeed, Chinaconsumes more than twice as much coal as it did a decade ago — the same with iron ore and oil Thatnation now has four times as many highways as it did, and almost five times as many cars How longthis can go on is anyone’s guess But surely not many more doublings in consumption rates can occurbefore China has used up its key resources

For what it’s worth, my forecast is for China’s continuing boom to be very short-lived As I argued

in my recent book, Blackout, there are hard limits to China’s coal supplies (the world as a whole will

experience peak coal consumption within the next two decades, but China will get there sooner thanmost other countries because of its extraordinary consumption rate — currently three times that of theUS) Since China has no viable short-term alternatives to coal to fuel its industrial machine, by 2020

or so (and possibly much sooner), that country will have joined the rest of the world in a process of

economic contraction that will continue until levels of consumption can be maintained by renewableresources harvested at sustainable rates.

World population growth may likewise continue for a shorter period than is commonly believed, ifglobal food production and economic activity peak soon in response to declining energy availability

In short, the world has changed in a fundamental way in the past three years, and the reverberationswill continue for decades to come Indeed, we have just seen the beginning of an overwhelmingtransformation of life as we’ve known it

Let’s look at a few specific factors driving this transformation, starting with limits to worldsupplies of petroleum

Oil Spike Triggers Economic Crisis

It is still unclear whether world oil extraction rates have reached their absolute maximum level As ofthis writing, the record year for world crude oil production was 2005, and the record month was July

2008 The 2005 to 2008 leveling off of extraction rates occurred in the context of steadily rising oilprices; indeed, in July 2008 oil prices spiked 50 percent higher than the previous inflation-adjustedrecord, set in the 1970s As a result of that price spike, the global airline industry went into a tailspin,and the auto industry has been on life support ever since

The only serious argument that world oil production could theoretically continue to grow for more

than a very few years is put forward by parties who explain away the evidence of declining

discoveries, depleting oilfields and stagnating total production by claiming that it is demand for oil

that has peaked, not supply — a distinction that hinges on the fact that oil prices these days are so high

as to discourage demand But since high prices for a commodity are usually a sign of scarcity, the

“peak demand” argument really amounts to a distinction without a difference

The oil situation is dire enough that one might assume it would be dominating headlines daily Yet,

in fact, it garners little attention That’s because the world’s ongoing and worsening oil crisis hasbeen obscured by a more dramatic and obvious financial catastrophe As we all know only too well,Wall Street banks — which had spent the past couple of decades giddily building a quadrillion-dollarhouse of cards — went into a free-fall swoon in the latter half of 2008 (right after the oil price spike),only to be temporarily rescued with trillions of dollars of government bailouts and guarantees It was

a spine-tingling show — and would have amounted to months of fine entertainment had it not been forthe fact that millions of jobs, thousands of small businesses and the economies of several sovereignnations also came tumbling down, and there just weren’t enough trillions available to rescue all ofthem (it obviously pays to be “too big to fail” and to have friends in high places)

The financial aspects of the crisis were so Byzantine, and the cast of players so opulently andimpudently villainous, that it was easy to forget the simple truism that all money is, in the end, merely

a claim on resources, energy and labor A financial system built on staggering amounts of debt and theanticipation of both unending economic growth and absurdly high returns on investments can onlywork if labor is always getting cheaper and supplies of energy and resources are always growing —and even then, occasional hiccups are to be expected

But that set of conditions is so last century.

While the oil price run-up was hardly the sole cause of the ongoing world economic crisis, it haseffectively imposed a limit to any possibility of “recovery:” as soon as economic activity advances,oil prices will again spike, causing yet another financial crunch.

Thus Peak Oil likely represents the first of the limits to growth that will turn a century of economicexpansion into decades of contraction But more constraints are lining up in the wings, ready to maketheir entrance

Evidence of Peak Non-Renewable Resources

In the original edition of this book, increasing scarcity of non-energy minerals was barely mentioned

In the three years since, the subject has received increasing attention from researchers and journalists.One report, “Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity,” by Chris Clugston (aformer corporate executive) deserves a couple of quotes here Clugston analyzed 57 non-renewablenatural resources (NNRs) in terms of production levels and price He begins his report by pointingout:

During the 20th century, global production levels associated with 56 of the 57 analyzed NNRs(98%) increased annually, while global price levels associated with 45 of the 57 analyzedNNRs (79%) decreased annually Generally increasing global NNR production levels inconjunction with generally decreasing global NNR price levels indicate relative global NNRabundance during the 20th century On the whole, global NNR supplies kept pace with ever-increasing global demand during the 20th century

So far, so good But that’s changing

Generally slowing or declining global NNR production growth in conjunction with generallyincreasing global NNR prices indicate increasing NNR scarcity during the early years of the

21st century Available global supplies associated with bromine, gold, and tantalumbecame extremely scarce during the 2000-2008 period Annual global production levelsincreased during the 20th century, then decreased during the 21st century; while annual pricelevels decreased during the 20th century, then increased during the 21st century

Clugston’s conclusion: “We are not about to ‘run out’ of any NNR; we are about to run ‘criticallyshort’ of many.”

The same message appeared in a prominent article in New Scientist magazine on May 23, 2007,

“Earth’s Natural Wealth: An Audit.” Here’s a useful tidbit from that article:

Take the metal gallium, which along with indium is used to make indium gallium arsenide.This is the semiconducting material at the heart of a new generation of solar cells that promise

to be up to twice as efficient as conventional designs Reserves of both metals are disputed,but in a recent report René Kleijn, a chemist at Leiden University in the Netherlands,concludes that current reserves “would not allow a substantial contribution of these cells” tothe future supply of solar electricity He estimates gallium and indium will probablycontribute to less than 1 per cent of all future solar cells — alimitation imposed purely by a

lack of raw material (www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm)

The specifics with regard to supplies of a host of non-renewable resources can be examined easilywith a few mouse clicks using the US Minerals Databrowser (mazamascience.com/Minerals/USGS/),which features data from the US geological survey

The Resource Pyramid

When presented with evidence of depleting stores of fossil fuels and minerals, some still object: newtechnology will enable us to continue increasing the amount of energy available to us And if we haveenough energy, we can solve our other supply problems — we can desalinate ocean water, growcrops in multi-storey greenhouses and breed limitless supplies of fish in captivity We can capturemineral resources from very low-grade ores We can mine gold and uranium from ocean water Wecan harvest minerals on other planets and ferry them back to Earth With enough energy, anything ispossible!

As an example of what can be done with technology, just consider what has happened in the naturalgas industry in the past couple of years: horizontal drilling and “fracking” (fracturing dense gas-bearing rocks with chemicals) have expanded US gas reserves and production rates, at a time whenenergy pessimists had been forecasting a supply collapse This “unconventional” gas is more thanmaking up for declines in conventional natural gas

In fact, the natural gas situation offers an instructive example of what depletion looks like.Depletion of oil, gas, coal and other nonrenewable resources is often wrongly portrayed as “runningout,” as though it indicated the complete exhaustion of the substance What we are really talking aboutare the inevitable consequences of the tendency of resource extractors to take the low-hanging fruitfirst, and to leave difficult, expensive, low-quality and environmentally ruinous resources to beextracted later Unconventional gas is more expensive to produce than conventional gas, andextracting it has worse environmental impacts (due to the need to inject a toxic brew of chemicalsunderground to break up the rock) The result: “fracking” technology may have enabled the industry togain access to new sources of gas, but natural gas prices will have to rise significantly to make thebusiness of producing this new gas profitable over the long run — and no one knows how long that

“long run” is likely to be, given the rapid depletion rates of most unconventional gas wells

Geologists and others who routinely deal with mineral ores and fossil fuels commonly speak of a

“resource pyramid:” the capstone represents the easily and cheaply extracted portion of the resource;the next layer is the portion of the resource base that can be extracted with more difficulty andexpense, and with worse environmental impacts; while the remaining bulk of the pyramid representsresources unlikely to be extracted under any realistic pricing scenario The optimist may assume thatthe entire pyramid will eventually be usable, but this is simply not realistic We have built a society

on the basis of cheap energy and materials At some point, as we move down the layers of the

resource pyramid, rising commodity prices and increasing environmental cleanup costs (thinkDeepwater Horizon) will undercut both demand for resources and economic activity in general Asthat happens, we see not just higher prices, but more volatile prices

This is exactly what happened with the oil price spike of 2008 Many commentators who

understand the essence of the Peak Oil dilemma have tended to assume that, as petroleum and otherresources become scarcer, commodity prices will simply escalate in a linear fashion What we sawinstead was a rapid rise in prices (driven by rising demand and falling supply, and then exacerbated

by speculation) precipitating an economic crash, followed by collapsing oil prices and curtailedinvestment in oil exploration — which, in due course, will provoke another rapid price rise Eachtime the cycle churns, it will likely have an even more devastating impact

The same will happen with natural gas as conventional gas grows scarce and the industry is forced

to rely on quickly depleting and expensive-to-produce shale gas; and the same will happen withcopper, uranium, indium and rare-earth elements Meanwhile, we will puzzle over the fact that theeconomy just doesn’t seem to work the way it once did Instead of having plenty of energy with which

to mine gold from seawater, we will find we don’t have cheap-enough fuel to keep the airlineindustry aloft Alternative non-fossil energy sources will come on line, but not quickly enough to keep

up with the depletion of oil, coal and gas Prices of energy and raw materials will gyrate giddily, butthe actual amounts consumed will be dropping In general, labor costs will be falling and rawmaterials prices rising — the exact reverse of what occurred during the 20th century; but theadjustments will be anything but gradual

It will take most folks a while to realize the simple fact that conventional economic growth is over.Done Dead Extinct

The End of Growth — and What Comes After

The economic crash of 2008 is commonly perceived as another in a long series of recessions, fromwhich a recovery will inevitably ensue Recessions always end with recovery; of course this one will

as well — or so we are told

Yet now the situation is different With oil production peaking, climate changing and fresh water,soil, fish and minerals depleting at alarming rates, the computer-based scenarios of the 1972 Limits toGrowth study seem thoroughly and frighteningly confirmed Decades of expansion fueled byconsumption and debt are ending; the time has come to pay bills, tighten belts and prepare for a future

of economic contraction

Now and again, we may see a year that boasts higher economic activity than the previous one But

we will probably never see aggregate activity higher than that in 2007 The Asian economies of Chinaand India will be brief holdouts from this general trend; but, as coal supplies in that part of the worldtighten, even the “Asian tigers” will soon be forced to confront limits to growth

Contemplating the end of growth — not as a theoretical possibility, but as a fait accompli, forced

upon us by circumstances largely of our own making — is of course a bit depressing The 20th centurywas one long expansionary surge punctuated by a couple of nasty world wars and a depression At thebeginning of that century, world population stood at a little over 1.5 billion; by the end, it was sixbillion In the industrialized West, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew from an average

of $5,000 to nearly $30,000 (in inflation-adjusted terms) We all came to believe that “progress”would go on like this more or less forever We would build colonies on the Moon, other planets,maybe even in other solar systems; we would conquer disease and hunger — it was only a matter of

But while we were planning for utopia, we were in fact setting the stage for collapse We weredepleting our planet’s usable resources and altering the composition of Earth’s atmosphere And wewere building a global financial regime built on the expectation of perpetually expandingconsumption and debt, a regime that could not function in a condition of stasis or contraction withoutgenerating billowing crises of default, insolvency and collapse

So, instead of being a continuation of the upward trajectory we have all grown accustomed to, the

21st century is destined to be one long downward glide punctuated by moments of financial, politicaland geopolitical panic And in retrospect, we’ll all probably eventually agree that our descent began

in 2008

We really have reached Peak Everything but we’ve barely had a chance to enjoy the view; howbrief was our moment at the apex! From here on, it’s going to be a bumpy, downward roller-coasterride

What’s the Point?

Why bother to mention any of this? Is it just to wallow in cynicism? Clearly, the only useful purposewould be to somehow improve our collective prospects Further economic growth may not be anoption for global society, but that doesn’t necessarily signify the end of the world Indeed, the range

of possible futures arrayed ahead of us is still wide, encompassing everything from (at one end of thescale) graceful industrial decline leading to a mature, sustainable world community of relocalizedcultures, to (at the other end) human extinction, or something very close to it

It’s not hard to see what could lead to the latter outcome If we are all still planning for expansionand it doesn’t ensue, many people will likely become furious and look for someone to blame.Politicians, seeking to avoid that blame and channel citizens’ anger for purposes of their ownaggrandizement, will offer scapegoats Some of those will be domestic, some foreign Scapegoating

of nations, religions and ethnicities will lead to global violence Meanwhile, very little attention will

be going toward addressing the underlying problems of resource depletion and environmentaldegradation (the death of the oceans, collapsing agricultural production due to climate change anddesertification, etc.) — problems that warfare will only exacerbate Add nuclear weapons, stirvigorously and voila: a recipe for utter and complete destruction

It doesn’t have to end that way

If we understand the nature of the limits we are confronting, it is still possible to back our way out

of the population-resources cul-desac we have entered In other words, if we plan for contraction, weare likely to do a much better job of transitioning to a sustainable level of population andconsumption than if we are still planning for growth and are continually finding our plans frustrated

The first thing we must do to plan successfully for contraction is to set achievable goals, usingsensible indicators We must cease aiming for increases in scale, amplitude and speed with regard tonearly every material parameter of the economy We must aim instead to increase society’s resilience

— its ability to absorb shocks while continuing to function That means relocalizing much economicactivity We must aim also to shore up basic support services, education and cultural benefits, while

de-emphasizing economic activity that entails non-essential consumption of resources.

Attainment of these goals will be greatly facilitated by the adoption of appropriate indicators.Currently, nearly all nations use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as their primary economic indicator.GDP represents the total market value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a givenyear, and a rising GDP is generally taken as a sign of progress If GDP is set to decline relentlessly in

a post-growth world economic regime, then we need a way to focus our collective attention on consumptive aspects of economic and civic life so as to motivate useful action in directions whereprogress is still possible

non-Fortunately, alternative economic indicators are beginning to garner attention in cities and nationsaround the world I discuss the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) on page 17 of the Introduction, butit’s also important to mention Gross National Happiness (GNH) That term was coined in 1972 byBhutan’s former King Jigme Singye Wangchuck to signal his commitment to building an economy thatwould preserve Bhutan’s Buddhist culture as the nation opened trade with the West Canadian healthepidemiologist Michael Pennock helped design GNH, and has advocated for the adoption of a “de-Bhutanized” version of it in his home city of Victoria, British Columbia Recently, Seattle has alsoexpressed interest in adopting GNH

Med Jones, President of International Institute of Management, has elaborated on GNH metrics,measuring socioeconomic development across seven areas, including the nation’s mental andemotional health:

1 Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of consumerdebt, average income to consumer price index ratio, and income distribution;

2 Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement ofenvironmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic;

3 Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such assevere illnesses;

4 Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental healthmetrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline in number of psychotherapypatients;

5 Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metricssuch as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits;

6 Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metricssuch as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and familylawsuits, public lawsuits and crime rates; and

7 Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of politicalmetrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom and foreign conflicts

Contraction in population levels and consumption rates doesn’t sound like much fun, but a fewdecades of improvement in Gross National Happiness — potentially achievable under materialcircumstances that are by now unavoidable — should be an attractive notion to most people

The related idea that life can be better without fossil fuels is a core tenet of the Transition Townmovement, which started in England in 2005 (I quote its founder, Rob Hopkins, on pages 135-136).Transition Initiatives are grassroots efforts to wean communities off dependence on oil and othercarbon fuels by promoting local resilience (through development of things like local food systems andride-share programs) Transitioners realize that it is probably futile to wait for elected officials to

take the lead in planning for the great energy shift, given that very few politicians understand ourpredicament — and given also that, even if they did, the measures they would likely propose would

be deeply unpopular unless the populace were first educated about constraints on fossil-fueledgrowth The genius of the movement lies in its engagement of the citizenry first The TransitionInitiatives appear to be taking off virally, with nearly 300 official sites around the world and over 70

in North America (as of mid-2010)

During the past two years, car sales have declined while bicycle sales have soared; the number ofyoung people taking up farming has increased for the first time in decades; and organic seedcompanies have had a tough time keeping up with mushrooming demand from home gardeners Thesetrends show that higher fuel prices and public awareness will indeed motivate behavior change But

we have a very long way to go before the people of the world have broken our dependency on fossilfuels, scaled back our use of other resources and sufficiently reduced our impact on natural systems.Meanwhile, public education and citizen-led efforts (like the Transition Initiatives) are essential now

to build community resilience so as to absorb the economic and environmental shocks that are on theirway, and to help us all adjust to life after growth

The peak has happened Get over it — and get to work

Introduction: Peak Everything

DURING THE PAST few years the phrase Peak Oil has entered the global lexicon It refers to that

moment in time when the world will achieve its maximum possible rate of oil extraction; from then

on, for reasons having mostly to do with geology, the amount of petroleum available to society on adaily or yearly basis will begin to dwindle Most informed analysts agree that this will happen duringthe next two or three decades; an increasing number believe that it is happening now — thatconventional oil production peaked in 2005-2006 and that the flow to market of all hydrocarbonliquids taken together will start to diminish around 2010.1 The consequences, as they begin toaccumulate, are likely to be severe: the world is overwhelmingly dependent on oil for transportation,agriculture, plastics, and chemicals; thus a lengthy process of adjustment will be required According

to one recent US government-sponsored study, if the peak does occur soon replacements are unlikely

to appear quickly enough and in sufficient quantity to avert what it calls “unprecedented” social,political, and economic impacts.2

This book is not an introduction to the subject of Peak Oil; several existing volumes serve that

function (including my own The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies).3

Instead it addresses the social and historical context in which Peak Oil is occurring, and exploreshow we can reorganize our thinking and action in several critical areas to better navigate this periloustime

Our socio-historical context takes some time and perspective to appreciate Upon first encounteringPeak Oil, most people tend to assume it is merely a single isolated problem to which there is a simplesolution — whether of an eco-friendly nature (more renewable energy) or otherwise (more coal) Butprolonged reflection and study tend to eat away at the viability of such “solutions.” Meanwhile, asone contemplates how we humans have so quickly become so deeply dependent on the cheap,concentrated energy of oil and other fossil fuels, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we havecaught ourselves on the horns of the Universal Ecological Dilem - ma, consisting of the interlinkedelements of population pressure, resource depletion, and habitat destruction — on a scaleunprecedented in history

Figure 1 Production profiles for world oil and natural gas, history and forecast.

Petroleum is not the only important resource quickly depleting Readers already acquainted withthe Peak Oil literature know that regional production peaks for natural gas have already occurred, andthat over the short term the economic consequences of gas shortages are likely to be even worse forEuropeans and North Americans than those for oil And while coal is often referred to as being anabundant fossil fuel, with reserves capable of supplying the world at current rates of usage for twohundred years into the future, recent studies updating global reserves and production forecastsconclude that global coal production will peak and begin to decline in ten to twenty years.4 Becausefossil fuels supply about 85 percent of the world’s total energy, peaks in these fuels virtually ensurethat the world’s energy supply will begin to shrink within a few years regardless of any efforts thatare made to develop other energy sources

Figure 2 Global coal production, history and forecast The International Energy Agency’s “WorldEnergy Outlook 2006” (WEO 2006) discusses two future scenarios for global coal production: a

“reference scenario” that assumes unconstrained coal consumption, and an “alternative policyscenario” in which consumption is capped through government efforts to reduce climate impacts Bothscenarios are compatible with the supply forecast here (EWG report, 2007) until about 2020.Thereafter, only a rate of demand corresponding with the “alternative policy scenario” can be met

Nor does the matter end with natural gas and coal Once one lifts one’s eyes from the narrow path

of daily survival activities and starts scanning the horizon, a frightening array of peaks comes intoview In the course of the present century we will see an end to growth and a commencement ofdecline in all of these parameters:

• Population

• Grain production (total and per capita)

• Uranium production

• Climate stability

• Fresh water availability per capita

• Arable land in agricultural production

• Wild fish harvests

• Yearly extraction of some metals and minerals (including copper, platinum, silver, gold, andzinc)

Figure 3 Global uranium supply from known resources, history and forecast, compared with supplyrequirements

Figure 4 World total annual emissions.

Figure 5 Global mean surface temperature

The point of this book is not to go systematically through these peak-and-decline scenarios one byone, offering evidence and pointing out the consequences — though that is a worthwhile exercise, and

it is instructive to contemplate a few graphs showing the general trends (see figures 1 through 5).Some of these peaks are more speculative than others Fish harvests are already in decline, so thisone is hardly arguable; however, projecting extraction peaks and declines for some metals requiresextrapolating current rising rates of usage many decades into the future.5 The problem of uraniumsupply beyond mid-century is well attested by studies, but has not received sufficient publicattention.6

Nevertheless, the general picture is inescapable: it is one of mutually interacting instances of

overconsumption and emerging scarcity.

Our starting point, then, is the realization that we are today living at the end of the period ofgreatest material abundance in human history — an abundance based on temporary sources of cheapenergy that made all else possible Now that the most important of those sources are entering theirinevitable sunset phase, we are at the beginning of a period of overall societal contraction

Figure 6 The global temperature anomaly is a measure of the difference between the mean globaltemperature at a given point in time and the average global temperature during the 20th century

This realization is strengthened as we come to understand that it is no happenstance that so manypeaks are occurring together They are all causally related by the historic reality that, for the past 200years, cheap, abundant energy from fossil fuels has driven technological invention, increases in totaland per-capita resource extraction and consumption (including food production), and populationgrowth We are enmeshed in a classic self-reinforcing feedback loop:

Self-reinforcing feedback loops sometimes occur in nature (population blooms are alwaysevidence of some sort of reinforcing feedback loop), but they rarely continue for long They usuallylead to population crashes and die-offs The simple fact is that growth in population and consumptioncannot continue unabated on a finite planet

If the increased availability of cheap energy has historically enabled unprecedented growth in theextraction rates of other resources, then the coincidence of Peak Oil with the peaking and decline ofmany other resources is entirely predictable.

Moreover, as the availability of energy resources peaks, this will also affect various parameters ofsocial welfare:

• Per-capita consumption levels

• Economic growth

• Easy, cheap, quick mobility

• Technological change and invention

• Political stability

All of these are clearly related to the availability of energy and other critical resources Once weaccept that energy, fresh water, and food will become less freely available over the next fewdecades, it is hard to escape the conclusion that while the 20th century saw the greatest and most rapidexpansion of the scale, scope, and complexity of human societies in history, the 21st will seecontraction and simplification The only real question is whether societies will contract and simplifyintelligently or in an uncontrolled, chaotic fashion

Good News? Bad News?

None of this is easy to contemplate Nor can this information easily be discussed in polite company:the suggestion that we are at or near the peak of population and consumption levels for the entirety ofhuman history, and that it’s all downhill from here, is not likely to win votes, lead to a better job, oreven make for pleasant dinner banter Most people turn off and tune out when the conversation moves

in this direction; advertisers and news organizations take note and act accordingly The result: ageneral, societal pattern of denial

Where might we find solace in all this gloom? Well, it could be argued that some not-so-goodthings will also peak this century:

• Economic inequality

• Environmental destruction

• Greenhouse gas emissions

Why economic inequality? The late, great social philosopher Ivan Illich argued in his 1974 book

Energy and Equity that inequality increases along with the flow of energy through a society “[O]nly

a ceiling on energy use,” he wrote, “can lead to social relations that are characterized by high levels

of equity.”7 Hunters and gatherers, who survived on minimal energy flows, also lived in societiesnearly free from economic inequality While some forager societies were better off than othersbecause they lived in more abundant ecosystems, the members of any given group tended to shareequally whatever was available Theirs was a gift economy — as opposed to the barter, market, andmoney economies that we are more familiar with With agriculture and full-time division of laborcame higher energy flow rates as well as widening economic disparity between kings, their retainers,

and the peasant class In the 20th century, with per capita energy flow rates soaring far above any inhistory, some humans enjoyed unprecedented material abundance, such that they expected that povertycould be eliminated once and for all if only the political will could be summoned Indeed, during themiddle years of the century progress was seemingly being made along those lines However, for thecentury in total, inequality actually increased The Gini index, invented in 1912 as a measure ofeconomic inequality within societies, has risen substantially within many nations (including the US,Britain, India, and China) in the past three decades, and economic disparity between rich and poornations has also grown.8 In the decades just prior to the 20th century, the average income in theworld’s wealthiest country was about ten times more than that in the poorest; now it is over forty-fivetimes more According to one study released in December, 2006 (“The World Distribution ofHousehold Wealth,”) the richest one percent of people now controls 40 percent of the world’swealth, while the richest two percent control fully half.9 If this correlation between energy flow ratesand inequality holds, it seems likely that, as available energy decreases during the 21st century, weare likely to see a reversion to lower levels of inequality This is not to say that by century’s end wewill all be living in an egalitarian socialist paradise, merely that the levels of inequality we see todaywill have become unsupportable.

Figure 7 World water use, consumption

Figure 8 World water use, withdrawals.

Figure 9 Water availability, history, and forecast

Figure 10 Annual world grain production, total amounts and amounts per capita.

Figure 11 World population, history and forecast

Figure 12 Annual marine (saltwater) fish catch.

Figure 13 Combined oil, gas, and coal production projections, in billions of barrels of oil equivalentper year This graph shows the probable future for fossils fuels, the source of roughly 85 percent ofthe world’s current energy budget

Figure 14 Global arable land.

Similarly, it seems likely that levels of humanly generated environmental destruction will peak andbegin to recede in decades to come As available energy declines, our ability to alter the environmentwill do so as well However, if we make no deliberate attempt to control our impact on thebiosphere, the peak will be a very high one and we will do an immense amount of damage along theway On the other hand, we could expend deliberate and intelligent effort to reduce environmentalimpacts, in which case the peak will be at a lower level Especially in the former case, this peak islikely to lag behind the others discussed, because many environmental harms involve reinforcingfeedback loops as well as delayed and cumulative impacts that will continue to reverberate fordecades after human population and consumption levels start to diminish As the primary example ofthis, annual greenhouse gas emissions will undoubtedly peak in this century — whether as a result ofvoluntary reductions in fossil fuel consumption, or depletion of the resource base, or societalcollapse However, the global climate may not stabilize until many decades thereafter, until variousreinforcing feedback loops that have been set in motion (such as the melting of the north polar icecap,which would expose dark water that would in turn absorb more heat, thus exacerbating the warmingeffect; and the melting of tundra and permafrost, releasing stored methane that would likewise greatlyexacerbate warming) play themselves out Indeed, the climate may not return to a phase of relativeequilibrium for centuries

Well, if the goal of the last few paragraphs was to balance bad-news peaks with cheerier ones, that

effort so far seems less than entirely successful Surely we can do better Are there some good things that are not at or near their historic peaks? I can think of a few:

• Ingenuity

• Artistry

• Beauty of the built environment

Of course, some of these items are hard to quantify But a few can indeed be measured, and efforts to

do so often yield surprising results Let’s consider two that have been subjects of quantitative study.Leisure time is perhaps the element on this list that lends itself most readily to measurement Themost leisurely societies were without doubt those of hunter-gatherers, who worked about 1,000 hoursper year, though these societies seldom if ever thought of dividing “work time” from “leisure time,”since all activities were considered pleasurable in their way.10 For US employees, hours workedpeaked in the early industrial period, around 1850, at about 3,500 hours per year.11 This was up from1,620 hours worked annually by the typical medieval peasant However, the two situations are notdirectly comparable: a typical medieval workday stretched from dawn to dusk (16 hours in summer, 8

in winter), but work was intermittent, with breaks for breakfast, midmorning refreshment, lunch, acustomary afternoon nap, mid-afternoon refreshment, and dinner; moreover, there were dozens ofholidays and festivals scattered throughout the year Today the average US worker spends about2,000 hours on the job each year, a figure somewhat higher than it was a couple of decades ago (in

1985 it was closer to 1,850 hours) Nevertheless, an historical overview suggests that the intensiveness of human labor seems to peak in the early phase of industrialization, and that asimplification of the modern economy could result in a reversion to older, pre-industrial norms

time-In recent years the field of happiness research has flourished, with the publication of scores ofstudies and several books devoted to statistical analysis of what gives people a sense of overallsatisfaction with their lives International studies of self-reported levels of happiness show that oncebasic survival needs are met, there is little correlation between happiness and per capita consumption

of fossil fuels According to surveys, people in Mexico, who use fossil fuels at one-fifth the rate of

US citizens, are just as happy (See Figure 15.)

The opportunities to continue to enjoy current (or even higher) levels of happiness and to reducework hours may seem pale comforts in light of all the enormous social and economic challengesimplicit in the peaks discussed earlier However, it is worth remembering that the list above detailsthings that matter very much to most people in terms of their real, lived experience The sense ofcommunity and the experience of intergenerational solidarity are literally priceless, in that no amount

of money can buy them; moreover, life without them is bleak indeed — especially during times ofsocial stress And there are many reasons to think that these two factors have declined significantlyduring the past few decades of rapid urbanization and economic growth

In contrast with these indices of personal and social well-being, Gross Domestic Product (GDP)per capita is easily measured and shows a mostly upward trend for the world as a whole over thepast two centuries But it takes into account only a narrow set of data — the market value of all finalgoods and services produced within a country in a given period of time Growth in GDP is used totell us that we should be feeling better about ourselves and our world — but it leaves out a widerange of other factors, including damage to the environment, wars, crime and imprisonment rates, andtrends in education (like whether more or fewer people graduate from high school or college, and thequality of the education received.) Many economists and non-governmental organizations havecriticized governmental reliance on GDP for this reason, and have instead promoted the use of a

Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which does take account of such factors While a historical GDPchart for the US shows general ongoing growth up to the present (GDP correlates closely with energyconsumption), GPI calculations show a peak around 1980 followed by a slow decline.12 If we as asociety are going to adjust agreeably to lower rates of energy flow — and less travel and transport —with minimal social disruption, we must begin paying more attention to the seeming intangibles of lifeand less to GDP and the apparent benefits of profligate energy use.

Figure 15 How self-reported levels of happiness vary according to per-capita annual energyconsumption in various nations

Figure 16 US Gross Domestic Product and Genuine Progress Indicators compared, 1950 to 2002.Addressing the economic, social, and political problems ensuing from the various looming peaks is

no mere palliative and will require enormous collective effort If it is to be successful, that effortmust be coordinated, presumably by government, and enlist people by educating and motivating them

in numbers and at a speed that has not been seen since World War II Part of that motivation mustcome from a positive vision of a future worth striving toward People will need to believe in aneventual reward for what will amount to many years of hard sacrifice The reality is that we areapproaching a time of economic contraction Consumptive appetites that have been stoked fordecades 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,” unlessthey have new goals toward which to aspire They must feel that their efforts will lead to a betterworld, with tangible improvements in life for themselves and their families The massive publiceducation campaigns that will be required must be credible, and will therefore be vastly moresuccessful 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.

As another way of mitigating our paralyzing horror at seeing our society’s future as one of decline

in so many respects, we should ask: decline to what? Are we facing a complete disintegration of

everything we hold dear, or merely a return to lower levels of population, complexity, andconsumption? The answer, of course, is unknowable at this stage We could indeed be at the brink of

a collapse worse than any in history Just one reference in that regard will suffice: the MillenniumEcosystem Assessment, a four-year analysis of the world’s ecosystems released in 2006, in which1,300 scientists participated, concluded that of 24 ecosystems identified as essential to human life, 15are “being pushed beyond their sustainable limits,” toward a state of collapse that may be “abrupt andpotentially irreversible.” 13 The signs are not good

Nevertheless, a decline in population, complexity, and consumption could, at least in theory, result

in a stable society with characteristics that many people would find quite desirable A reversion tothe normal pattern of human existence, based on village life, extended families, and local productionfor local consumption — especially if it were augmented by a few of the frills of the late industrialperiod, such as global communications — could provide future generations with the kind of existencethat many modern urbanites dream of wistfully

So the overall message of this book is not necessarily one of doom — but it is one of inevitablechange and the need for deliberate engagement with the process of change on a scale and speedbeyond anything in previous human history Crucially: we must focus on and use the intangibles that

are not peaking (such as ingenuity and cooperation) to address the problems arising from our overuse

of substances that are.

Our One Great Task: The Energy Transition

As we have seen, just a few core trends have driven many others in producing the global problems

we see today, and those core trends (including population growth and increasing consumption rates)themselves constellate around our ever-burgeoning use of fossil fuels Thus, a conclusion of startling

plainness presents itself: our central survival task for the decades ahead, as individuals and as a

species, must be to make a transition away from the use of fossil fuels — and to do this as peacefully, equitably, and intelligently as possible.

At first thought, this must seem like an absurd over-simplification of the human situation After all,

the world is full of crises demanding our attention — from wars to pollution, malnutrition, landmines, human rights abuses, and soaring cancer rates Doesn’t a monomaniacal focus just on fossilfuels miss many important things?

In defense of the statement I would offer two points

First, some problems are more critical than others A patient may suffer simultaneously from abroken blood vessel in the brain and a broken leg A doctor will not ignore the second problem, butsince the first is immediately life-threatening, its treatment will take precedence Globally, there aretwo problems whose potential consequences far outweigh all others: Climate Change and energyresource depletion If we do nothing to dramatically curtail emissions of greenhouse gases soon, wewill almost certainly set in motion the two self-reinforcing feedback loops mentioned previously —the melting of the north polar icecap, and the melting of tundra and permafrost releasing storedmethane These would lead to an averaged global warming not just of a couple of degrees, butperhaps six or more degrees over the remainder of the century And this in turn could make much ofthe world uninhabitable, make agriculture impracticable in many if not most places, and result notonly in the extinction of thousands or millions of other species but the deaths of hundreds of millions

or billions of human beings

If our dependence on oil, natural gas, and coal continues unabated the post-peak decline in theiravailability could trigger economic collapse, famine, and a general war over remaining resources.While it is certainly possible to imagine strategies to develop alternative energy sources and mandateenergy conservation on a massive scale, the world is currently as reliant on hydrocarbons as it is onwater, 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-casescenario of global economic meltdown — with all the human tragedy that implies — only byproactively reducing our reliance on oil, gas, and coal ahead of depletion and scarcity In otherwords, all that is required for the worst-case scenario to materialize is for world leaders to continuewith existing policies

These two problems are potentially lethal, first-priority ailments If we solve them, we will then beable to devote our attention to other human dilemmas, many of which have been with us for millennia

— war, disease, inequality, and so on If we do not solve these two problems, then in a few decadesour species may be in no position to make any progress whatever on other fronts; indeed, it willlikely be engaged in a struggle for its very survival We’ll be literally and metaphorically burning thefurniture for fuel and fighting over scraps

My second reason for insisting that the transition from fossil fuels must take precedence over otherconcerns can likewise be framed in a medical metaphor: often a constellation of seemingly disparatesymptoms issues from a single cause A patient may present with symptoms of hearing loss, stomachpain, headaches, and irritability An incompetent doctor might treat each of these symptoms separatelywithout trying to correlate them But if their cause is lead poisoning (which can produce all of thesesigns and more), then mere symptomatic treatment would be useless

Let us unpack the metaphor Not only are the two great crises mentioned above closely related(both Peak Oil and Climate Change issue from our dependence on fossil fuels), but, as I have alreadynoted, many if not most of our other modern crises also constellate around fossil fuels Even long-standing and perennial problems like economic inequality have been exacerbated by high energy-flow

Pollution is no different We humans have polluted our environments in various ways for a verylong time; activities like the mining of lead and tin have produced localized devastation for centuries.However, the problem of widespread chemical pollution is a relatively new one and has grown muchworse over the past decades Many of the most dangerous pollutants happen to be fossil fuelderivatives (pesticides, plastics, and other hormone-mimicking chemicals) or by-products from theburning of coal or petroleum (nitrogen oxides and other contributors to acid rain)

War might at first seem to be a problem completely independent of our modern thirst for fossil

energy sources However, as security analyst Michael Klare has underscored in his book Blood and

Oil,14 many recent wars have turned on competition for control of petroleum As oil grows scarcer inthe post-peak environment, further wars and civil conflicts over the black gold are almost assured.Moreover, the use of fossil fuels in the prosecution of war has made state-authorized mayhem farmore deadly Most modern explosives are made from fossil fuels, and even the atomic bomb —which relies on nuclear fission or fusion rather than hydrocarbons for its horrific power — depends

on fossil fuels for its delivery systems

One could go on In summary: we have used the plentiful, cheap energy from fossil fuels, quitepredictably, to expand our power over nature and one another In doing so we have produced alaundry list of environmental and social problems We have tried to address these one by one, but ourefforts will be much more effective if directed at their common root — that is, if we end ourdependence on fossil fuels

Again, my thesis: many problems rightly deserve attention, but the problem of our dependence onfossil fuels is central to human survival, and so as long as that dependence continues to any significantextent we must make its reduction the centerpiece of all our collective efforts — whether they areefforts to feed ourselves, resolve conflicts, or maintain a functioning economy

But this can be formulated in another, more encouraging, way If we do focus all of our collectiveefforts on the central task of energy transition, we may find ourselves contributing to the solution of awide 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 substantialprogress in reducing many forms of environmental pollution The decentralization of economicactivity that we must pursue as transport fuels become more scarce could lead to more local jobs,more fulfilling occupations, and more robust local economies A controlled contraction in the globaloil 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 the environmental devastation caused byagriculture and economic opportunities for millions of new farmers Meanwhile, all of these effortstogether could increase equity, community involvement, intergenerational solidarity, and the otherintangible goods listed earlier

Surely this is a future worth working toward

The (Rude) Awakening

The subtitle of this book, “Waking Up to the Century of Declines,” reflects my impression that even

those of us who have been thinking about resource depletion for many years are still just beginning to

awaken to its full implications And if we are all in various stages of waking up to the problem, we are also waking up from the cultural trance of denial in which we are all embedded.15

This awakening is multi-dimensional It is not just a matter of becoming intellectually anddispassionately convinced of the reality and seriousness of Climate Change, Peak Oil, or any otherspecific problem Rather, it entails an emotional, cultural, and political catharsis The biblicalmetaphor of scales falling from one’s eyes is as apt as the pop culture meme of taking the red pill andseeing the world beyond the Matrix: in either case, waking up implies realizing that the very fabric ofmodern life is woven from illusion — thousands of illusions, in fact

Holding that fabric together is one master illusion, the notion that somehow what we see around us

today is normal In a sense, of course, it is normal: the daily life experience of millions of people is

normal by definition The reality of cars, television, and fast food is calmly taken for granted; if lifehas been like this for decades, why shouldn’t it continue, with incremental developmental changes,indefinitely? But how profoundly this “normal” life in a typical modern city differs from the lives ofprevious generations of humans! And the fact that it is built on the foundation of cheap fossil fuelsmeans that future generations must and will live differently

Again, the awakening I am describing is an ongoing visceral as well as intellectual reassessment ofevery facet of life — food, work, entertainment, travel, politics, economics, and more Theexperience is so all-encompassing that it defies linear description And yet we must make the attempt

to describe and express it; we must turn our multi-dimensional experience into narrative, because that

is how we humans process and share our experiences of the world

The great transition of the 21st century will entail enormous adjustments on the part of everyindividual, family and community, and if we are to make those adjustments successfully, we will need

to plan rationally Implications and strategies will have to be explored in nearly every area of humaninterest — agriculture, transportation, global war and peace, public health, resource management, and

on and on Books, research studies, television documentaries, and every other imaginable form ofinformation transferal will be required to convey needed knowledge in each of these areas.Moreover, there is the need for more than explanatory materials; we will need citizen organizationsthat can turn policy into action, and artists to create cultural expressions that can help fire thecollective imagination Within this whirlwind of analysis, adjustment, creativity, and transformation,perhaps there is need and space for a book that simply tries to capture the overall spirit of the timeinto which we are headed, that ties the multifarious upwellings of cultural change to the science ofglobal warming and Peak Oil in some hopefully surprising and entertaining ways, and that begins toaddress the psychological dimension of our global transition from industrial growth to contractionand sustainability

This book was conceived during a brief stay in a tiny village in west Cornwall in late 2006.Perhaps the bleakness of the countryside at that season is reflected in the title However, I hope alsothat Cornwall’s rugged beauty and its people’s remaining connections with down-to-earth, pre-industrial ways of thinking and of doing things are also somehow represented, if only indirectly, inthese pages

The chapters herein are self-contained essays and while I have made every effort to put them into ahelpful and logical order, readers who like to savor a book’s last chapter first or to read chapters out

of sequence will find that this approach works reasonably well here

Each chapter has a story attached to it, which I will relate briefly.

“Tools with a Life of Their Own” was written in response to a penciled letter from therepresentative of a radical anti-technology magazine asking for an article I wrote the requestedarticle and sent it to the e-mail address noted in the letter Then, when no reply was forthcoming, Isent a printout of the essay via “snail mail” to the return address on the envelope Still no reply Tothis day I do not know whether my article was rejected, whether my messages were intercepted byFederal agents, or whether the magazine’s editors’ ambivalence about technology rendered themunable to manage their communications responsibly The essay was later published in the anthology

Living a Life of Value, edited by Jason A Merchey.16

“Fifty Million Farmers” is the edited text of a speech delivered in November, 2006 to the E F.Schumacher Society (which has published the full version).17 Over the past few months I have offeredessentially the same message to the Ecological Farming Association in Asilomar, California, theNational Farmers Union of Canada in Saskatoon, and the Soil Association in Cardiff, Wales Eachtime I discussed the likely impacts of Peak Oil and gas for modern agriculture, and emphasized theneed for dramatic, rapid reform in our global food system

“Five Axioms of Sustainability” came from many years of frustration over the widespread,

careless use of the terms sustainable and sustainability The words would not have gained so much currency if many people were not worried that our society is in some sense unsustainable — i.e., that

it cannot survive in its current form Yet the terms are frequently tacked onto practices and programs(e.g., “sustainable yields” on investments) that can have no substantial impact whatever on society’sability to survive into the future This chapter represents my effort to help refine our workingdefinitions of these key terms It is somewhat tougher reading than the rest of the book, and I hadthought of making it an appendix; however, it is not an afterthought, but goes to the heart of everyother significant discussion in the text

Three chapters were inspired by creative works: “(post-) Hydrocarbon Aesthetics” came from a

visit to an Arts and Crafts museum exhibit; “Parrots and Peoples” followed my viewing of the

documentary film The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill; and “Population, Resources, and Human Idealism” was my response to the Broadway musical, Urinetown In each case, the result was not a

review in the usual sense, but rather an exploration of ideas relating to the theme of this book

“The Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change” arose from scores of conversations with peopleabout their experience of the awakening process Clearly, humanity is addicted to fossil fuels, and thisessay offers some suggestions on what sorts of group therapy might help us kick the habit

I was inspired to write “Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism” after participating intwo days of meetings in San Francisco in the fall of 2006, in which prominent Climate Change andPeak Oil activists attempted to form common strategies It was my impression that the discussantsoften did not understand one another well, hence my effort to sort out the issues and point towardpotential paths for better communication and coordination of efforts

“Boomers’ Last Chance?” is both a personal mea culpa and a plea to the other members of my

demographic cohort We may belong to the peak generation, in that we will have consumed somethinglike half the world’s nonrenewable resources during our lifetime We have enjoyed an unprecedentedparty, but the privilege of having a place at this greatest banquet in history implies an enormousresponsibility to future generations

“A Letter From the Future,” originally published in 2000, is of the genre of the classic novel

Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy, which imagined, from that writer’s perspective

in the late 19th century, life in our time Bellamy’s vision inevitably proved myopic: while Looking

Backward was popular and influential (it sold over a million copies and inspired many Progressive

reforms throughout the next two decades), it did not successfully anticipate the world of the early 21stcentury Bellamy saw our era as one in which government would control the means of production anddivide wealth equally between all people and in which all citizens would receive a college educationand be given freedom in choosing a career, from which they would retire at age 45 In short, Bellamyforesaw a socialist utopia and entirely missed the realities of globalization, sweat shops, andenvironmental devastation My own effort is likely to be just as inaccurate — though while Bellamy’sfailed by being too sanguine, I hope mine proves too dire

“Talking Ourselves to Extinction” is a meditation on the power of language — a tool whosedevelopment and use has shaped us as a species Cultural evolution occurred primarily becauselanguage enabled us to coordinate our efforts to respond quickly to environmental challenges andopportunities Words have given us power over nature, and have given some human groups powerover others Today, if we are to survive, we must change our collective behavior radically andswiftly; only our species’ unique linguistic talent is capable of orchestrating such an evolutionaryshift This book is a testament of hope that words can help us recognize the limits of nature, and thelimits of power itself, before it is too late

ON TECHNOLOGY, AGRICULTURE, AND THE ARTS

Tools with a Life of Their Own

NEARLY EVERYONE complains from time to time that our tools have become Sorcerer’s

Apprentices; that we have come to serve our machines instead of the other way around; and that,increasingly, our lives are regimented as if we ourselves were mere cogs in a vast mechanism utterlybeyond our control

We are not the first people to feel this way: criticism of technology has a history The Luddites ofearly 19th-century England were among the first to raise their voices — and hammers! — against thedehumanizing side effects of mechanization As industrialization proceeded decade-by-decade —from powered looms to steam shovels, jet planes, and electric toothbrushes — objections to theaccelerating, mindless adoption of new technologies waxed erudite During the past century, books byLewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, Kirkpatrick Sale, Stephanie Mills, Chellis Glendinning,Jerry Mander, John Zerzan, and Derrick Jensen, among others, have helped generations of readersunderstand how and why our tools have come to enslave us, colonizing our minds as well as our dailyroutines

These authors reminded us that tools, far from being morally neutral, are amplifiers of humanpurposes; therefore each tool carries its inventor’s original intent inherent within it We can use arevolver to hammer nails, but it works better as a machine for the swift commission of mayhem; andthe more handguns we have around, the more likely it is for inevitable, daily personal conflicts to goballistic Thus, as clashes over human purposes form the core of ethical and political disputes,technology itself, as it proliferates, must inevitably become the subject of an increasing array ofsocial controversies Battles over technology concern nothing less than the shape and future ofsociety

In principle, those battles, if not the scholarly discussions about them, reach all the way back to theNeolithic era, and perhaps to our harnessing of fire tens of thousands of years ago Lewis Mumforddrew a through-line emphasizing how modern megatechnologies are externalizations of a socialmachine that originated in the pristine states of the Bronze Age: