Several readers have recently asked me why I stopped writing about peak oil? I could simply say that I turned my writing energy loose on novel writing; already having finished one and now half way through another. But I am accustomed to balancing multiple different writing projects, especially when they are in totally different genres.
What really happened is that I got tired of banging my head against the wall. Nobody is listening, and certainly not the people who need to; politicians and industry leaders, business executives and media pundits. The primary objective of all of them is perpetuation of business as usual. And that business as usual is the problem, not the solution.
I doubted whether my voice was needed any longer. There are, after all, many other voices out there still talking peak oil, most much stronger voices than myself. They seem content to carry on the fight even in the face of endless losses, all in the belief that no matter how many battles they lose they will eventually win the war. I can't do that. I'm much too pragmatic. I see no redeeming value in continuing to fight a battle which I know I will lose in the end. It is better, in my mind, to walk away and live to fight another day.
I have not abandoned peak oil. I can't. It is, in fact, the primary backdrop to the first novel I mentioned above. It is also the defining issue of our time for humanity, even if humanity thus far refuses to see that. But when you are faced with overwhelming opposition, the only way to carry on the fight is to go underground. And that is what I have done.
I have done a lot of thinking about why people refuse to face the reality of peak oil, all in an attempt to figure out how to force them to face it and deal with it. On the surface it appears that the answer is simple. People are afraid of what peak oil will do to their lives and, therefore, hope that it is not true and hope that by not accepting it, it will simply go away so they don't have to deal with it. It's an odd form of denial.
On the other hand, however, it is possible that the majority of people simply do not know about peak oil, are not aware that there is a very serious crisis ahead, do not yet understand that their lives are going to be turned upside down and they will be faced with a battle just to survive. That would be understandable.
Government, business, industry, and the mainstream media are all declaring that there is no problem, that we have more than enough oil and other energy to keep the lights on for millennia to come. Every new oil discovery, no matter how small and inconsequential, is touted as undeniable proof that there is an endless supply of oil and that all we have to do is find it and extract it. Who cares if we destroy ANWR as well as the Gulf and virtually all of Northern Alberta and wherever else we pursue a major oil play. From time to time they still trot out that old, totally discredited chestnut of the Russian abiotic oil theory that claims oil is being constantly generated in the earth's mantle from inorganic material and will never run out.
It leaves one to wonder, therefore, not why people are in denial or ignorant of the issue but, rather, why is so much effort being made by government and industry to keep people in denial, to keep them ignorant of the looming disaster? It's like not going public with the news that a one-hundred-mile-wide asteroid is headed directly for the earth. Better to let the masses enjoy their final days in ignorance. But as long as that much effort is being lavished on denial, a critical mass of people who understand and accept peak oil will never be achieved. And that is the real tragedy here, that that ignorance robs people of the option to prepare for what is coming.
Why, you may ask, should it matter? So people are kept ignorant of the looming crisis. So what? One very simple reason.... Peak oil is survivable, with knowledge and proper preparation. Even more importantly, however, is this reality. The worst impact of peak oil on global society could be prevented if we acted now with a radical change in direction in the way human society operates.
Preventable! If we change course!
The corollary to that, of course, is that if we do not change course and persist with business as usual, the entire human population will face the most extreme consequences of peak oil when it arrives. Guaranteed!
That is why, to me, it has always been a no-brainer. If we change course, we can prevent the worst impact. If we don't, we'll face the worst head on. Duhhhh! Let me think. Do I want to stare death in the face, with a one in ten chance of survival, and see if I can survive it or do I want to change direction and avoid it?
That's right! I said a one in ten chance of survival.
The human carrying capacity of the earth following the depletion of the planet's fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) is generally estimated at between .5 and 1.5 billion people. We currently have a global population approaching 7 billion and if the population trend continues for the next 40-50 years it will top 10 billion. Even if the carrying capacity is twice the estimate, which is very unlikely (it has been estimated that in the 2-3 decades immediately following depletion of the fossil fuels the population could drop to under 500 million) that would still mean that 3-4 out of every 5 humans alive at that time will not survive. Are you willing to gamble that you will be one of the survivors with no advance preparation?
In case you haven't heard, or have heard and still refuse to believe, peak oil is not, as some professional denialists would have you believe, some radical, fringe theory put out by a bunch of wacko conspiracy theorists. And it is not, as some of those conspiracy theorists suggest, a con job by the oil, coal and natural gas industries to keep the price of their products high. It is, in fact, in my opinion, not a theory at all. It is an inescapable reality that is unfolding even now.
The peak oil philosophy is supported by, taught about, lectured on, and written about by college professors, former energy industry executives no longer beholden to an industry paycheck and free to speak openly, some current and former national leaders, several major entertainers, a plethora of writers, a variety of reputable energy industry analysts, many leading economists, some brave, outspoken serving politicians, and a few brave mainstream journalists.
So why aren't people hearing the message? Noise! There are simply far more promoters of denial, pushers of business as usual, salesmen of the American dream, peddlers of happiness, all hawking their wares at maximum volume for any note of reality to possibly squeeze into the public consciousness. Who wants to hear about some threat to the good life when they can buy a car that parks itself? Who wants to hear about a looming disaster when American Idol is there on our high-definition, dolby stereo, flat-screen 64" plasma TV to entertain us? You mean The Osbornes and Survivor aren't really reality? You mean we aren't in Iraq to bring them democracy and freedom? And yes, Virginia, there really is no frickin' red-suited Santa Claus!
Wake up people! Before it's too damned late! You've got some changes to make! Turn off the TV. Park the Hummer in the garage. Turn off the damned air conditioner and open the windows. Boycott MacDonalds and WalMart and everybody else who's pushing the American dream of cheap and fast. Walk to the damned convenience store next time you need a quart of milk. Trade in those damned gucchi loafers for a pair of cheap sneakers. Sell all that expensive jewelery and buy a year's supply of rice and dried beans. Turn that 1/2 acre of grass in front of your house into a garden that produces stuff you can actually eat. And get the hell out of that 5000 square foot Mcmansion that you can't afford to heat and into something practical.
I don't know what to tell you, and I don't think it's my job. You have to educate yourself and decide what is the best way for you and your family and friends and community to survive. Every case is different. All I know is, if you are an average American, you're going to have to change a lot. And there's no time like the present. So don't wait. Get on with it. And if there are hurdles in the way, like zoning laws, work on changing and eliminating them now rather than later. Once we have passed peak oil, which I honestly believe has already happened but has been disguised by the prolonged economic downturn, it will become increasingly difficult to get your preparations done in time. You have to be prepared before things reach the critical stage.
I don't believe we will ever recover from the current global economic downturn. But we will, unfortunately, try very hard to recover. And those attempts at recovery will likely push us ever faster toward that post-carbon world and leave us wholly unprepared to deal with it.
I am glad that my age any deteriorating health make it unlikely that I will have to deal with that. It's not going to be pretty. But if you are younger, especially if you are still in or have recently left school, for God's sake do yourself a favour and stop listening to CNN and Fox and reading the mainstream daily for your news. They aren't going to tell you what's really happening until its too late. Don't let them keep you in the dark. You've got to get ahead of the game because it's all going to come apart in your lifetime.
Showing posts with label community preparation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community preparation. Show all posts
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Friday, July 20, 2007
July 18 Presentation at Bloomfield, Prince Edward County, Ontario
Peak Oil, Climate Change and Local Sustainability
Peak oil is the theory that we have or are about to have used up half the world’s endowment of oil and that what oil remains will be increasingly scarce and unavailable, steadily poorer quality, and increasingly more expensive. IT IS NOT a theory that we are about to run out of oil.
Global warming is the theory that man-made atmospheric pollution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, is causing the earth’s atmosphere to heat up to potentially dangerous levels.
Global Dimming is the theory that air born particulates, mostly from man-made pollution, are reducing the amount of the sun’s light and energy that are reaching the earth’s surface.
Overpopulation is the theory that total human population is exceeding the real carrying capacity of the planet.
I could speak for a whole hour on any one of those looming crises, but I won’t. My purpose here this evening is to try to encapsulate in a half hour or so how in this century the merger and interrelationship of those four crises, and a few other peripheral and related crises such as water, are going to affect;
* Food Security,
* Carrying capacity,
* Soil Fertility,
* Sustainability,
Both globally and, more important, locally here in Ontario and in Prince Edward and surrounding counties.
A few words about energy consumption;
* Global energy use per capita has risen more than 10 fold since the start of 20th century.
* One energy source has not replaced another, each is treated as an add on to the energy mix, resulting in layered energy options.
* Each of us uses the energy equivalent of over 300 slaves.
* Food on your table has traveled an average of over 2500 kilometers.
* The greater the energy use, the further removed we get from sustainability and self-sufficiency.
* This century we will hit not only peak oil but peak natural gas, peak coal, peak uranium, peak plutonium, as well as peaks in dozens of other finite resources; copper, gold, nickel, selenium, zinc, molybdenum, & more.
See my blog articles, Energy as the Catalyst in the Punctuated Equilibrium of Human Population Growth and Alternative Energy, Add-ons and Replacements
There is a not so old Saudi saying that prophetically encapsulates what we are facing in the near future with energy. It goes;
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car.
My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
The most critical and dangerous dependence on fossil fuels we have built is in food production and distribution. We use an average of 10 calories of energy, mostly from fossil fuels, to produce 1 calorie of food.
Despite the fact that we share it, albeit reluctantly, with millions of other species, the human population monopolizes over ¼ of the primary food production capacity of the planet. There is obviously considerable capacity still available to us, but only if we want to be alone. Our increasing monopoly of that primary productive capacity directly parallels the increase in human-caused species extinction. That doesn’t make us particularly evil. The dominant species in any environment always takes what it needs leaving weaker competition to fight for the scraps.
For the moment, then, let’s forget about those millions of other species. What exactly is the carrying capacity of the planet?
* Of the total global land mass, about 35% is arable land, 31% forested and 34% is either desert, tundra/permafrost or dedicated to other human uses such as urbanization or activity such as mining or recreation.
* Globally there are about 7.8 billion acres that are potentially arable of which 3.5 billion acres are now being used to produce food.
* The unused potential land is generally in areas lacking essential transport for moving product to market or infrastructure needed for the support of commercial food production.
* Of the 35% of the total global land mass that is arable or suitable for agriculture, about 2/3 is pasture or meadowland used for livestock.
* Another 10% (about 350 million acres) is used for grain and cereal production, much of that (75% or about 270 million acres) also used for livestock.
* Despite the global attraction of and growth in permaculture, only 1 percent of arable land is dedicated to permanent crops such as fruits and nuts.
* Essentially, all of human food production, excluding meat, dairy and sea food, is grown on less than 400 million acres. Each of those acres is, therefore, feeding about 15-17 people.
* If we were to bring all of the unused arable land into agricultural production with the same patterns as at present (85%+ for livestock support) we would net very little additional food-production land (about 600 million acres) to offset the anticipated drop in productivity of 80-90% on those current 400 million acres following peak oil. This would barely allow us to absorb the impact of a 25% drop in productivity.
* The unused potentially arable land is not in the same place as the 6.6 billion of us for whom it could reduce the impact of soil productivity loss following peak oil. It exists in pockets within the boundaries of already sovereign nations throughout the world, nations which themselves may be impoverished and unable to currently produce enough food for their own people.
* Probably, based on current patterns, these lands would more likely be used for high-profit crops like corn, soy and sugar cane to be used to produce bio-fuels in a world increasingly deficient in fossil fuel energy.
See my blog article, Post-Peak Agricultural Capacity
Global Water
We are very fortunate in Canada, exceptionally so in southern Ontario. Canada in general and southern Ontario in particular should be able to avoid the fresh water issues that will face much of the rest of the world this century and in the foreseeable future. The water rights issues that plague many drier areas such as Africa, South Asia and the western U.S. are and will be only an occasional problem in this area.
* Canada has the third highest volume of renewable fresh water in the world behind Brazil and Russia.
* Canada has more lake area than any other country in the world.
* The Great Lakes are the largest system of fresh, surface water on earth, containing roughly 18 percent of the world supply.
* Ninety-nine percent of surface freshwater by volume is in lakes and only one percent in rivers.
That is not to suggest that anyone should be complacent about water. Ultimately fresh water availability nets down to a resource issue for a single property, a single family, a single community. In essence, if you need it and you don’t have it or don’t have access to it, it is a serious problem for you.
* More than 2,200 major and minor water-related natural disasters occurred in the world between 1990 and 2001. Asia and Africa were the most affected continents, with floods accounting for half of these disasters.
* Of the dozens of water rights conflicts around the world I have read about and researched almost always agricultural water needs and water rights have lost out to the demands of urban areas and industry.
* Whenever the resolution of water rights conflicts is left in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats the resolution will be decided in favour of the highest voting density and financial contribution.
* The U.S. are moving inexorably toward solving the water needs of their agricultural and industrial heartland through the southward diversion of the waters of the Great Lakes. Considering the massive engineering project this would involve, peak oil could be a blessing in disguise.
Statistics from How much do we have?
Continued net decline in soil productive capacity
We are systematically destroying the overall fertility of our soil and losing productive soil.
* Our use of agricultural pesticides kills critical soil organisms,
* Intensive deforestation results in losing billions of tons of top soil,
* Annual U.S. topsoil loss is 7 billion tons (23 tons/year/person, 85% directly attributable to raising livestock),
* Intensive irrigation leaches vital mineral content out of topsoil,
* Air pollution results in toxic chemicals being absorbed into the soil,
* Industrial scale plowing and tilling results in billions of tons of top soil being dried up and blown away every year,
* We create an impermeable layer of hardpan just below the top layer of soil which prevents both plant roots and soil microorganisms reaching the mineral nutrients in the subsoil,
* Turning the soil exposes deep topsoil organisms and drives aerobic microorganisms deeper underground where they are killed for lack of air, water and heat from sunlight,
* We systematically destroy balance of soil nutrients through continued application of artificial NPK fertilizers,
* We change soil ph levels making it inhospitable for many soil organisms,
* We change symbiotic relationship of soil organisms and plants by replacing native plants with chemical-dependant monoculture.
* Soil erosion and other forms of land degradation now rob the world of 70-140,000 km2/year of farming land.
* Urbanization alone is responsible for the loss of 20-40,000km2/year.
* Worldwide, soil erosion has caused abandonment of 4.3 million km2 of arable land during the last four decades.
* The total world availability of topsoil is estimated at 7,000 gigatonnes - about seventy years of topsoil at current rates of destruction and loss.
State of global food production, consumption, distribution
* Before the Industrial Revolution the majority of people produced most of their own food, most of the rest acquired within a few miles of home.
* People then ate what could grow locally and ate what was in season or that they stored/preserved themselves. Now we eat tomatoes and celery in February, kiwi fruit and spring lamb from New Zealand, oranges from Israel, rice from the far east, beef from Argentina.
* The vast majority of people in the developed (and increasingly in the developing) world today who are growing food (now less than 2% of population) are not doing so for their own consumption.
* Agricultural produce today is fed into a heavily fossil-fuel dependant global food distribution system.
* Food today travels an average of 2500+ kilometers before reaching your table, takes a week, often much longer, to get there.
* Average food miles continue to grow with spread of urbanization and corporate-driven regional crop concentration.
* Food grown locally will be available in local food stores only by chance after having worked through the distribution system.
* Today more than ½ of global population live in cities, most with severe restrictions standing in the way of producing their own food.
* Most cities originated in and continue to expand into the very farmland they need to produce the food needed by their populations (urbanization responsible for loss of 20-40,000km2/year of arable land).
* The majority of people engaged in agriculture today are working land they do not own to produce product they do not, and cannot afford to, consume themselves.
* About 85% of “productive” agricultural land today is devoted to the support of livestock.
* The average diet today contains more meat and animal products in one day than our ancestors consumed in a week.
* Global emergency food grain reserves have shrunk in past ten years from marginal 119 day supply to a sub-critical 53 day supply.
* Ever increasing proportion of global food coming from GMO crops, an increasing use of terminator genes to ensure ongoing seed co. sales.
* Multinational corporations decide what is grown, how its grown, what is available in your local market (stocking decisions not made locally).
Understanding plant nutrition
Plants receive their nutrients through and digest their food, like you, in their stomachs. The topsoil in which a plant grows is, in reality, its stomach. The stomach is an organism’s nutrient supply buffer between the outside world and the critical internal systems. Whole foods are broken down by bacteria and enzymes into pure form suitable for transport through those internal systems, like our blood stream, to the cells and organs which need those nutrients for metabolism and maintenance. Enzymes intercept toxins and eliminate them before they can enter those internal systems. A glut of nutrients is buffered and released slowly to those internal systems.
For a plant, all of these functions happen external to its critical internal systems. Bacteria and enzymes in the topsoil, especially that narrow band of topsoil immediately around the roots, the root zone, do this work. The roots themselves, to continue the parallel, are like the portal vein leading from the small intestine to the liver. It is the last part of the digestive system external to the organism’s sensitive internal systems. The root zone is like the small intestine, releasing the broken down essential nutrients to the roots (the portal vein) for absorption into the internal systems.
Just as the digestion in your stomach is under the control of your internal systems (principal digestive enzymes are generated in your pancreas and released into the stomach) the “digestion” for a plant in the soil is under the control of the plant in that the principal digestive enzymes are generated internally and released into the root zone.
See my blog articles, Plants with stomachs - Peak oil implications and Plant stomachs and animal stomachs: the differences and similarities
Topsoil as a living organism
Just like your skin is the largest organ of your body, the topsoil may be the largest living organism on the planet.
A single pound of soil contains tens of millions of bacteria, fungi and other soil microorganisms critical to the survival of all terrestrial life. Many of these microorganisms can trace their family tree (pardon the pun) all the way back to the very beginning of life on earth.
Nature wastes nothing. Those microorganisms are responsible for breaking down the raw resources in the soil and beginning the process of cycling it through the web of life, whether that resource be a fallen tree, a dead animal, a pile of elephant dung, a cow’s placental sack, or the minerals in a rock that has worked its way up from the subsoil.
We have, unfortunately, put a large portion of our planet’s topsoil on force-fed chemical life-support with our use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other agrichemicals, like a brain-dead patient on intravenous life-support. We are destroying the natural fertility of the soil in the process. Just as it takes time to put a coma-recovery patient back on solid food (like weaning an infant off the bottle), it will take considerable time, possibly decades, to restore the natural fertility of soil that has been chemically maintained for decades.
When we remove life-support from the coma patient that patient generally dies relatively quickly. What will happen to our agricultural productivity when we pass peak oil and the agrichemicals begin to disappear? When we pull the plug on our soil’s artificial life-support?
Building/Maintaining Natural Soil Fertility
You’ve just picked a bunch of carrots. Consider what they are composed of;
* Water from the soil (maybe from rain or maybe irrigation),
* Hydrogen (in the carbohydrates) mostly from the water,
* Carbon, partly from CO2 but also from the soil,
* Other minerals like iron, sulfur, phosphorus, potassium from the soil,
* Fiber, collagen and vitamins like beta carotene produced by the plant from nutrients derived from the soil.
For most people the top of the plant ends up as “plant waste“. Before the carrot is eaten the root hairs and possibly the skin is pealed, more plant waste. The carrots are washed, the dirt flushed away. The carrot may be cooked, many nutrients lost into the cooking water which is discarded.
Generally none of this “wasted” plant material makes its way back to the soil in which the carrot was grown. The entire mass of that plant that was derived from the soil is a net loss for that soil.
We cannot continue to take organic material from the soil and replace it with a limited range of artificial nutrients (NPK) and expect that soil to remain viable. If we lose 100 billion tons of topsoil every year through erosion, how many billion tons or topsoil mass do we lose every year in food that we harvest from it? Artificial fertilizer use has grown 33-fold over the course of the Green Revolution in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain crop yields. And that usage will continue to grow, and still not maintain topsoil mass.
If we do not begin or resume returning to the soil what we take from it, we will continue to deplete the topsoil at a far greater rate than nature alone can replace it. Just as with any other resource, if we use it faster than it is being replaced it can eventually run out. We have broken the cycle. We must reconnect it.
As you drive around country roads take a look at the fields that have been in long term use for producing cash crops. Compare the depth of the soil in those fields to the depth of that surrounding those fields. The difference is mostly a combination of three things;
1) Soil compaction through the use of heavy farm equipment;
2) Soil loss from wind and water erosion;
3) Most important, continual loss of soil mass from crops being harvested and the “waste” organic matter not being returned to the soil.
I’m not sure if there are any examples around here but around cities like Toronto, when they build a subdivision, the first thing they do is strip all the top soil and pile it up in a big hill. From there it may be sold to a jobber to be “cleaned”, bagged and sold in garden centers.
When the homes are completed the top soil that was stripped (it may have been a foot deep) is replaced with grass sod that may have as much as a whole inch of soil held by the grass roots. Homeowners go to the garden center to buy bags of topsoil (it may have actually come from the land on which their house sits) to build their flower gardens.
On the other side of peak oil when the global food distribution system begins to break down, the chance of growing any significant amount of food on suburban plots is slim and none.
Soil fertility consists of a number of key factors; carbon, other trace minerals, organic content, humus, soil microorganisms, water.
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum says that growth is controlled not by the total resources available but by the scarcest resource. When a plant consists primarily of carbon and carbon-based molecules, how can we believe that fertilizing with Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium is going to allow us to maintain yields and soil mass?
You restore and maintain natural soil fertility by building and continuing to nurture and replenish; carbon, other trace minerals, organic content, humus, and soil microorganisms.
Carbon
There is a soil type in the Amazon region of South America that has been receiving considerable scientific attention. It is called Terra Preta soil. It has been determined that this soil, as it is now constituted, is man-made. There are two keys to Terra Preta soil; 1) high carbon content, 2) a unique community of soil bacteria. The carbon in Terra Preta soil, it has been determined, originates from charcoal created as part of an ancient slash and char method of soil preparation. Terra Preta soil will net a yield of 300-800% that achievable in adjacent non-Terra Preta soil. Though it is thought that the unique soil bacteria is the more important component, black carbon soil supplementation alone has been proven to be very beneficial to soil and significantly improve yields, shorten required fallow times, improve soil water retention, reduce soil toxicity levels, and encourage growth of beneficial soil microorganism populations. Terra Preta soil, by the way, has also been found and proven to be self-renewing.
See the articles Terra Preta Soils - Agricultural Miracle from the Past? and Origins of Amazonia's Terra Preta Soils in my blog
Other trace minerals
The minerals in the soil largely originate from the base rock below the soil. That base rock is very slowly broken down by plant roots and soil microbes. In a natural system the minerals from the soil are constantly recycled by living organisms. In our unnatural agricultural systems minerals taken up by plants (they are used as critical co-factors in enzymes and hormones, in the formation of chlorophyll, in the structure of vitamins and more) is lost to the soil as those plants are removed in harvesting. Organic farmers often dust their fields with rock dust and other sources of trace minerals to replace minerals removed from the soil in harvesting. Bags of these materials can generally be purchased at garden centres and farm supply outlets.
Organic content and Soil Microorganisms
There are, of course, several traditional ways to return organic matter to the soil; using manure fertilizers, fallowing, planting and plowing under green manure crops, and composting. With the demands for maximum crop yields most of these practices have been abandoned in commercial farming operations. This is the most critical change that has to occur in revitalizing our soil fertility. Critically important is that all of these practices have a dramatic impact on the growth and health of the population of soil microbes. Organic content in the soil is also the most critical factor in the ability of the soil to maintain moisture, thus minimizing demands for irrigation.
See my blog article Soil fertility and carrying capacity
Post-peak Community versus homestead
The vast majority of people who become aware of the peak oil issue soon begin to consider the question of what type and size of community they want to be part of beyond peak oil, which communities will be the most sustainable, self-sufficient, self-reliant and survivable in the future.
The answer to that question is tremendously variable for a number of factors such as climate but most particularly depending on how far into the future one is thinking.
I cannot, in the time I have available, do justice to this issue. I would strongly suggest that you see a number of articles on my blog, Oil, Be Seeing You dealing with the issue;
* An argument against personal peak-oil preparation
* Homestead or community?
* Is there any alternative to powerdown? And the sooner the better?
* The right to pursue powerdown: seeking alternative lifestyles post-peak
* Relocalization and retail food chains
Essentially my belief is that it is critical to build strong, viable, self-sufficient and self-reliant community in preparation for the fast-approaching post-peak world. That community and its self-reliance critically includes all agricultural efforts in and around the community. The type of world in which our ancestors scratched self-reliant homesteads from the wilderness simply doesn’t exist anymore. The feeling for it may be strong in certain individuals but it has entered the world of myth.
Ideally post-peak community focuses on a bio-region. As I mentioned earlier, Prince Edward County is a very viable natural bio-region. The prospects of creating the self-reliance and self-sufficiency that will be the hallmark of successful post-peak communities is very strong here.
* There has been a strong build-up of a community of artisans and craft-persons with the type of skills that will be strong components of a post-fossil-fuel community.
* The county is effectively surrounded by water resources that should remain viable into the future.
* The Trent water system continues to deliver vital soil nutrients.
* The climate of the region is tempered by the water surrounding it.
* There is a strong agricultural tradition in the county, as well as a significant core of organic agriculture.
* The sizes of all communities in the county is conducive to building a regional network of self-reliant communities with a rational distribution of specialized skills and crafts.
The type of community that will be suited to the post-peak world, however, does not just happen. In our modern world the feeling and spirit of community, even here, has largely been lost. It will be critical to determine the skill sets that will be needed and ensure that those skills are built.
I could go on at length on this subject but it is important that you address this. The community has to be built from within. Local initiatives like the proposed establishment of a local farmer’s market, which I urge you to support, will be what makes the difference.
What you can/should do to prepare for the future
* Take care of whatever soil you have access to, maintaining soil fertility
* Ensuring access to clean water
* Understand sustainability and stewardship
* Forest management, plant trees, preferably hardwood, replace any harvested trees in kind
* Soil testing, classification, integration
* Root cellars, dehydrating, canning, smoking, drying, freezing
* Support local food production, 100 mile diet, 50 mile diet
* Heritage seeds, seed saving, surpluses
* Permaculture, three sisters, companion planting and other food production techniques
* Big and small islands - Bioregionalism and it's local applicability, relocalization
* Evaluate potential applicability of local currency
* Reduce consumption of animal products: meat and dairy especially; indoor food growing; public education and information exchange on sustainability within the community
Peak oil is the theory that we have or are about to have used up half the world’s endowment of oil and that what oil remains will be increasingly scarce and unavailable, steadily poorer quality, and increasingly more expensive. IT IS NOT a theory that we are about to run out of oil.
Global warming is the theory that man-made atmospheric pollution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, is causing the earth’s atmosphere to heat up to potentially dangerous levels.
Global Dimming is the theory that air born particulates, mostly from man-made pollution, are reducing the amount of the sun’s light and energy that are reaching the earth’s surface.
Overpopulation is the theory that total human population is exceeding the real carrying capacity of the planet.I could speak for a whole hour on any one of those looming crises, but I won’t. My purpose here this evening is to try to encapsulate in a half hour or so how in this century the merger and interrelationship of those four crises, and a few other peripheral and related crises such as water, are going to affect;
* Food Security,
* Carrying capacity,
* Soil Fertility,
* Sustainability,
Both globally and, more important, locally here in Ontario and in Prince Edward and surrounding counties.
A few words about energy consumption;
* Global energy use per capita has risen more than 10 fold since the start of 20th century.
* One energy source has not replaced another, each is treated as an add on to the energy mix, resulting in layered energy options.
* Each of us uses the energy equivalent of over 300 slaves.
* Food on your table has traveled an average of over 2500 kilometers.
* The greater the energy use, the further removed we get from sustainability and self-sufficiency.
* This century we will hit not only peak oil but peak natural gas, peak coal, peak uranium, peak plutonium, as well as peaks in dozens of other finite resources; copper, gold, nickel, selenium, zinc, molybdenum, & more.
See my blog articles, Energy as the Catalyst in the Punctuated Equilibrium of Human Population Growth and Alternative Energy, Add-ons and Replacements
There is a not so old Saudi saying that prophetically encapsulates what we are facing in the near future with energy. It goes;
"My father rode a camel. I drive a car.
My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
The most critical and dangerous dependence on fossil fuels we have built is in food production and distribution. We use an average of 10 calories of energy, mostly from fossil fuels, to produce 1 calorie of food.
Despite the fact that we share it, albeit reluctantly, with millions of other species, the human population monopolizes over ¼ of the primary food production capacity of the planet. There is obviously considerable capacity still available to us, but only if we want to be alone. Our increasing monopoly of that primary productive capacity directly parallels the increase in human-caused species extinction. That doesn’t make us particularly evil. The dominant species in any environment always takes what it needs leaving weaker competition to fight for the scraps.
For the moment, then, let’s forget about those millions of other species. What exactly is the carrying capacity of the planet?
* Of the total global land mass, about 35% is arable land, 31% forested and 34% is either desert, tundra/permafrost or dedicated to other human uses such as urbanization or activity such as mining or recreation.
* Globally there are about 7.8 billion acres that are potentially arable of which 3.5 billion acres are now being used to produce food.
* The unused potential land is generally in areas lacking essential transport for moving product to market or infrastructure needed for the support of commercial food production.
* Of the 35% of the total global land mass that is arable or suitable for agriculture, about 2/3 is pasture or meadowland used for livestock.
* Another 10% (about 350 million acres) is used for grain and cereal production, much of that (75% or about 270 million acres) also used for livestock.
* Despite the global attraction of and growth in permaculture, only 1 percent of arable land is dedicated to permanent crops such as fruits and nuts.
* Essentially, all of human food production, excluding meat, dairy and sea food, is grown on less than 400 million acres. Each of those acres is, therefore, feeding about 15-17 people.
* If we were to bring all of the unused arable land into agricultural production with the same patterns as at present (85%+ for livestock support) we would net very little additional food-production land (about 600 million acres) to offset the anticipated drop in productivity of 80-90% on those current 400 million acres following peak oil. This would barely allow us to absorb the impact of a 25% drop in productivity.
* The unused potentially arable land is not in the same place as the 6.6 billion of us for whom it could reduce the impact of soil productivity loss following peak oil. It exists in pockets within the boundaries of already sovereign nations throughout the world, nations which themselves may be impoverished and unable to currently produce enough food for their own people.
* Probably, based on current patterns, these lands would more likely be used for high-profit crops like corn, soy and sugar cane to be used to produce bio-fuels in a world increasingly deficient in fossil fuel energy.
See my blog article, Post-Peak Agricultural Capacity
Global Water
We are very fortunate in Canada, exceptionally so in southern Ontario. Canada in general and southern Ontario in particular should be able to avoid the fresh water issues that will face much of the rest of the world this century and in the foreseeable future. The water rights issues that plague many drier areas such as Africa, South Asia and the western U.S. are and will be only an occasional problem in this area.* Canada has the third highest volume of renewable fresh water in the world behind Brazil and Russia.
* Canada has more lake area than any other country in the world.
* The Great Lakes are the largest system of fresh, surface water on earth, containing roughly 18 percent of the world supply.
* Ninety-nine percent of surface freshwater by volume is in lakes and only one percent in rivers.
That is not to suggest that anyone should be complacent about water. Ultimately fresh water availability nets down to a resource issue for a single property, a single family, a single community. In essence, if you need it and you don’t have it or don’t have access to it, it is a serious problem for you.
* More than 2,200 major and minor water-related natural disasters occurred in the world between 1990 and 2001. Asia and Africa were the most affected continents, with floods accounting for half of these disasters.
* Of the dozens of water rights conflicts around the world I have read about and researched almost always agricultural water needs and water rights have lost out to the demands of urban areas and industry.
* Whenever the resolution of water rights conflicts is left in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats the resolution will be decided in favour of the highest voting density and financial contribution.
* The U.S. are moving inexorably toward solving the water needs of their agricultural and industrial heartland through the southward diversion of the waters of the Great Lakes. Considering the massive engineering project this would involve, peak oil could be a blessing in disguise.
Statistics from How much do we have?
Continued net decline in soil productive capacity
We are systematically destroying the overall fertility of our soil and losing productive soil. * Our use of agricultural pesticides kills critical soil organisms,
* Intensive deforestation results in losing billions of tons of top soil,
* Annual U.S. topsoil loss is 7 billion tons (23 tons/year/person, 85% directly attributable to raising livestock),
* Intensive irrigation leaches vital mineral content out of topsoil,
* Air pollution results in toxic chemicals being absorbed into the soil,
* Industrial scale plowing and tilling results in billions of tons of top soil being dried up and blown away every year,
* We create an impermeable layer of hardpan just below the top layer of soil which prevents both plant roots and soil microorganisms reaching the mineral nutrients in the subsoil,
* Turning the soil exposes deep topsoil organisms and drives aerobic microorganisms deeper underground where they are killed for lack of air, water and heat from sunlight,
* We systematically destroy balance of soil nutrients through continued application of artificial NPK fertilizers,
* We change soil ph levels making it inhospitable for many soil organisms,
* We change symbiotic relationship of soil organisms and plants by replacing native plants with chemical-dependant monoculture.
* Soil erosion and other forms of land degradation now rob the world of 70-140,000 km2/year of farming land.
* Urbanization alone is responsible for the loss of 20-40,000km2/year.
* Worldwide, soil erosion has caused abandonment of 4.3 million km2 of arable land during the last four decades.
* The total world availability of topsoil is estimated at 7,000 gigatonnes - about seventy years of topsoil at current rates of destruction and loss.
State of global food production, consumption, distribution
* Before the Industrial Revolution the majority of people produced most of their own food, most of the rest acquired within a few miles of home.
* People then ate what could grow locally and ate what was in season or that they stored/preserved themselves. Now we eat tomatoes and celery in February, kiwi fruit and spring lamb from New Zealand, oranges from Israel, rice from the far east, beef from Argentina.
* The vast majority of people in the developed (and increasingly in the developing) world today who are growing food (now less than 2% of population) are not doing so for their own consumption.
* Agricultural produce today is fed into a heavily fossil-fuel dependant global food distribution system.
* Food today travels an average of 2500+ kilometers before reaching your table, takes a week, often much longer, to get there.
* Average food miles continue to grow with spread of urbanization and corporate-driven regional crop concentration.
* Food grown locally will be available in local food stores only by chance after having worked through the distribution system.
* Today more than ½ of global population live in cities, most with severe restrictions standing in the way of producing their own food.
* Most cities originated in and continue to expand into the very farmland they need to produce the food needed by their populations (urbanization responsible for loss of 20-40,000km2/year of arable land).
* The majority of people engaged in agriculture today are working land they do not own to produce product they do not, and cannot afford to, consume themselves.
* About 85% of “productive” agricultural land today is devoted to the support of livestock.
* The average diet today contains more meat and animal products in one day than our ancestors consumed in a week.
* Global emergency food grain reserves have shrunk in past ten years from marginal 119 day supply to a sub-critical 53 day supply.
* Ever increasing proportion of global food coming from GMO crops, an increasing use of terminator genes to ensure ongoing seed co. sales.
* Multinational corporations decide what is grown, how its grown, what is available in your local market (stocking decisions not made locally).
Understanding plant nutrition
Plants receive their nutrients through and digest their food, like you, in their stomachs. The topsoil in which a plant grows is, in reality, its stomach. The stomach is an organism’s nutrient supply buffer between the outside world and the critical internal systems. Whole foods are broken down by bacteria and enzymes into pure form suitable for transport through those internal systems, like our blood stream, to the cells and organs which need those nutrients for metabolism and maintenance. Enzymes intercept toxins and eliminate them before they can enter those internal systems. A glut of nutrients is buffered and released slowly to those internal systems.For a plant, all of these functions happen external to its critical internal systems. Bacteria and enzymes in the topsoil, especially that narrow band of topsoil immediately around the roots, the root zone, do this work. The roots themselves, to continue the parallel, are like the portal vein leading from the small intestine to the liver. It is the last part of the digestive system external to the organism’s sensitive internal systems. The root zone is like the small intestine, releasing the broken down essential nutrients to the roots (the portal vein) for absorption into the internal systems.
Just as the digestion in your stomach is under the control of your internal systems (principal digestive enzymes are generated in your pancreas and released into the stomach) the “digestion” for a plant in the soil is under the control of the plant in that the principal digestive enzymes are generated internally and released into the root zone.
See my blog articles, Plants with stomachs - Peak oil implications and Plant stomachs and animal stomachs: the differences and similarities
Topsoil as a living organism
Just like your skin is the largest organ of your body, the topsoil may be the largest living organism on the planet.A single pound of soil contains tens of millions of bacteria, fungi and other soil microorganisms critical to the survival of all terrestrial life. Many of these microorganisms can trace their family tree (pardon the pun) all the way back to the very beginning of life on earth.
Nature wastes nothing. Those microorganisms are responsible for breaking down the raw resources in the soil and beginning the process of cycling it through the web of life, whether that resource be a fallen tree, a dead animal, a pile of elephant dung, a cow’s placental sack, or the minerals in a rock that has worked its way up from the subsoil.
We have, unfortunately, put a large portion of our planet’s topsoil on force-fed chemical life-support with our use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and other agrichemicals, like a brain-dead patient on intravenous life-support. We are destroying the natural fertility of the soil in the process. Just as it takes time to put a coma-recovery patient back on solid food (like weaning an infant off the bottle), it will take considerable time, possibly decades, to restore the natural fertility of soil that has been chemically maintained for decades.
When we remove life-support from the coma patient that patient generally dies relatively quickly. What will happen to our agricultural productivity when we pass peak oil and the agrichemicals begin to disappear? When we pull the plug on our soil’s artificial life-support?
Building/Maintaining Natural Soil Fertility
You’ve just picked a bunch of carrots. Consider what they are composed of;* Water from the soil (maybe from rain or maybe irrigation),
* Hydrogen (in the carbohydrates) mostly from the water,
* Carbon, partly from CO2 but also from the soil,
* Other minerals like iron, sulfur, phosphorus, potassium from the soil,
* Fiber, collagen and vitamins like beta carotene produced by the plant from nutrients derived from the soil.
For most people the top of the plant ends up as “plant waste“. Before the carrot is eaten the root hairs and possibly the skin is pealed, more plant waste. The carrots are washed, the dirt flushed away. The carrot may be cooked, many nutrients lost into the cooking water which is discarded.
Generally none of this “wasted” plant material makes its way back to the soil in which the carrot was grown. The entire mass of that plant that was derived from the soil is a net loss for that soil.
We cannot continue to take organic material from the soil and replace it with a limited range of artificial nutrients (NPK) and expect that soil to remain viable. If we lose 100 billion tons of topsoil every year through erosion, how many billion tons or topsoil mass do we lose every year in food that we harvest from it? Artificial fertilizer use has grown 33-fold over the course of the Green Revolution in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain crop yields. And that usage will continue to grow, and still not maintain topsoil mass.
If we do not begin or resume returning to the soil what we take from it, we will continue to deplete the topsoil at a far greater rate than nature alone can replace it. Just as with any other resource, if we use it faster than it is being replaced it can eventually run out. We have broken the cycle. We must reconnect it.
As you drive around country roads take a look at the fields that have been in long term use for producing cash crops. Compare the depth of the soil in those fields to the depth of that surrounding those fields. The difference is mostly a combination of three things;
1) Soil compaction through the use of heavy farm equipment;
2) Soil loss from wind and water erosion;
3) Most important, continual loss of soil mass from crops being harvested and the “waste” organic matter not being returned to the soil.
I’m not sure if there are any examples around here but around cities like Toronto, when they build a subdivision, the first thing they do is strip all the top soil and pile it up in a big hill. From there it may be sold to a jobber to be “cleaned”, bagged and sold in garden centers.
When the homes are completed the top soil that was stripped (it may have been a foot deep) is replaced with grass sod that may have as much as a whole inch of soil held by the grass roots. Homeowners go to the garden center to buy bags of topsoil (it may have actually come from the land on which their house sits) to build their flower gardens.
On the other side of peak oil when the global food distribution system begins to break down, the chance of growing any significant amount of food on suburban plots is slim and none.
Soil fertility consists of a number of key factors; carbon, other trace minerals, organic content, humus, soil microorganisms, water.
Liebig’s Law of the Minimum says that growth is controlled not by the total resources available but by the scarcest resource. When a plant consists primarily of carbon and carbon-based molecules, how can we believe that fertilizing with Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium is going to allow us to maintain yields and soil mass?
You restore and maintain natural soil fertility by building and continuing to nurture and replenish; carbon, other trace minerals, organic content, humus, and soil microorganisms.
Carbon
There is a soil type in the Amazon region of South America that has been receiving considerable scientific attention. It is called Terra Preta soil. It has been determined that this soil, as it is now constituted, is man-made. There are two keys to Terra Preta soil; 1) high carbon content, 2) a unique community of soil bacteria. The carbon in Terra Preta soil, it has been determined, originates from charcoal created as part of an ancient slash and char method of soil preparation. Terra Preta soil will net a yield of 300-800% that achievable in adjacent non-Terra Preta soil. Though it is thought that the unique soil bacteria is the more important component, black carbon soil supplementation alone has been proven to be very beneficial to soil and significantly improve yields, shorten required fallow times, improve soil water retention, reduce soil toxicity levels, and encourage growth of beneficial soil microorganism populations. Terra Preta soil, by the way, has also been found and proven to be self-renewing.See the articles Terra Preta Soils - Agricultural Miracle from the Past? and Origins of Amazonia's Terra Preta Soils in my blog
Other trace minerals
The minerals in the soil largely originate from the base rock below the soil. That base rock is very slowly broken down by plant roots and soil microbes. In a natural system the minerals from the soil are constantly recycled by living organisms. In our unnatural agricultural systems minerals taken up by plants (they are used as critical co-factors in enzymes and hormones, in the formation of chlorophyll, in the structure of vitamins and more) is lost to the soil as those plants are removed in harvesting. Organic farmers often dust their fields with rock dust and other sources of trace minerals to replace minerals removed from the soil in harvesting. Bags of these materials can generally be purchased at garden centres and farm supply outlets.
Organic content and Soil Microorganisms
There are, of course, several traditional ways to return organic matter to the soil; using manure fertilizers, fallowing, planting and plowing under green manure crops, and composting. With the demands for maximum crop yields most of these practices have been abandoned in commercial farming operations. This is the most critical change that has to occur in revitalizing our soil fertility. Critically important is that all of these practices have a dramatic impact on the growth and health of the population of soil microbes. Organic content in the soil is also the most critical factor in the ability of the soil to maintain moisture, thus minimizing demands for irrigation.
See my blog article Soil fertility and carrying capacity
Post-peak Community versus homestead
The vast majority of people who become aware of the peak oil issue soon begin to consider the question of what type and size of community they want to be part of beyond peak oil, which communities will be the most sustainable, self-sufficient, self-reliant and survivable in the future.The answer to that question is tremendously variable for a number of factors such as climate but most particularly depending on how far into the future one is thinking.
I cannot, in the time I have available, do justice to this issue. I would strongly suggest that you see a number of articles on my blog, Oil, Be Seeing You dealing with the issue;
* An argument against personal peak-oil preparation
* Homestead or community?
* Is there any alternative to powerdown? And the sooner the better?
* The right to pursue powerdown: seeking alternative lifestyles post-peak
* Relocalization and retail food chains
Essentially my belief is that it is critical to build strong, viable, self-sufficient and self-reliant community in preparation for the fast-approaching post-peak world. That community and its self-reliance critically includes all agricultural efforts in and around the community. The type of world in which our ancestors scratched self-reliant homesteads from the wilderness simply doesn’t exist anymore. The feeling for it may be strong in certain individuals but it has entered the world of myth.
Ideally post-peak community focuses on a bio-region. As I mentioned earlier, Prince Edward County is a very viable natural bio-region. The prospects of creating the self-reliance and self-sufficiency that will be the hallmark of successful post-peak communities is very strong here.
* There has been a strong build-up of a community of artisans and craft-persons with the type of skills that will be strong components of a post-fossil-fuel community.
* The county is effectively surrounded by water resources that should remain viable into the future.
* The Trent water system continues to deliver vital soil nutrients.
* The climate of the region is tempered by the water surrounding it.
* There is a strong agricultural tradition in the county, as well as a significant core of organic agriculture.
* The sizes of all communities in the county is conducive to building a regional network of self-reliant communities with a rational distribution of specialized skills and crafts.
The type of community that will be suited to the post-peak world, however, does not just happen. In our modern world the feeling and spirit of community, even here, has largely been lost. It will be critical to determine the skill sets that will be needed and ensure that those skills are built.
I could go on at length on this subject but it is important that you address this. The community has to be built from within. Local initiatives like the proposed establishment of a local farmer’s market, which I urge you to support, will be what makes the difference.
What you can/should do to prepare for the future
* Take care of whatever soil you have access to, maintaining soil fertility
* Ensuring access to clean water
* Understand sustainability and stewardship
* Forest management, plant trees, preferably hardwood, replace any harvested trees in kind
* Soil testing, classification, integration
* Root cellars, dehydrating, canning, smoking, drying, freezing
* Support local food production, 100 mile diet, 50 mile diet
* Heritage seeds, seed saving, surpluses
* Permaculture, three sisters, companion planting and other food production techniques
* Big and small islands - Bioregionalism and it's local applicability, relocalization
* Evaluate potential applicability of local currency
* Reduce consumption of animal products: meat and dairy especially; indoor food growing; public education and information exchange on sustainability within the community
Monday, December 18, 2006
The debate over viable community size in a post-fossil-fuel age
The vast majority of people who become aware of the peak oil issue soon begin to consider the question of what type and size of community they want to be part of beyond peak oil, which communities will be the most sustainable, self-sufficient, self-reliant and survivable in the future. The answer to that question is tremendously variable for a number of factors such as climate but most particularly depending on how far into the future one is thinking. The difference between community survivability at the moment of peak oil and fifty or a hundred years later will be considerable. And if one is considering long term survivability not only for themselves but for their children and grandchildren then one has to look well beyond peak oil which is likely to occur sometime in the next one or two decades.
For most people pondering community survivability their thoughts turn to how to make the community in which they live, whether village or city, workable as energy resources decline. This, however, seems for most people to be done without any understanding of a historical perspective. Most ancient communities that we today identify as cities, such as Athens, Rome and others, were generally between 20 and 80 thousand in size, with as much as half the population or more being slaves. The first city larger than a million population, for example, didn't occur until well into the fossil-fuel era and that was in Asia (Beijing, population 1.1 million, 1800). The largest European cities at the time were; London, 861,000; Paris, 547,000; Constantinople (Istanbul); 570,000; and Naples, 430,000. The development of cities in Europe, in fact, largely began only in the late Middle Ages as a means of defending against frequent Norse invasions and sacking of coastal communities. The majority of early European cities were, in fact, walled cities because of the constant battles between competing feudal states that developed following the collapse of the Roman Empire. But even these European cities of the early industrial age were disease-plagued, festering with crime, and becoming seriously polluted from the heavy use of coal for both industrial and domestic needs. The large cities of more than a million population with which we have become so familiar in our lifetime simply did not exist before the fossil-fuel era for the simple reason that they were not sustainable without the availability of a tremendous amount of energy. The few large cities of ancient times were supported through the use of extensive slave labour as a form of energy. It is estimated that the slave population of ancient Athens, for example, actually exceeded the free population.
The obvious question is; are large cities going to be sustainable through the energy downslope and into the post fossil-fuel age? Will large cities be a viable, sustainable community structure a hundred years or more into the future?
Village life, on the other hand, has not been a picture of pastoral bliss. Prior to the industrial revolution village the life of all communities, especially villages, and the majority of people who lived in them largely revolved around agriculture with villagers working the fields that surrounded the village. Most European villages through the middle ages and up until the peasant revolts following the Black Death came into being as part of large feudal estates. In general, the villages were where the fiefs, "villeins" and serfs (realistically one small step above slaves) lived. These serfs were, in effect, indentured to the lord of the estate. They did not and could not own land but were allowed to occupy and work land on and for the estate. They were, in most instances, even restricted by the lord to marrying within the village, the source of a lot of genetic abnormalities by intermarrying within shared blood lines. The serfs paid for their right of land possession and occupancy with labour for the lord of the estate (generally three days a week) and with taxes paid to the lord, often in the form of a specified proportion of what they produced on the land. Their offspring were also beholden to the lord and tied to the same piece of land on which their parents livedtheir lives. After the peasant revolts following the Black Death this form of indenturing largely disappeared and villages for the most part became free villages.
I have focussed on life in communities before the industrial revolution and the serious onset of the fossil-fuel age for a reason. The factors and forces that originally led to the development of communities and stood in the way of them growing beyond a limited size are the same forces that will affect ongoing survivability of communities throughout the world during the global decline of fossil fuel reserves and thereafter. The reality that caused these earlier communities and societies to be largely focused on agriculture and the land on which it was practiced is the same reality that will beset us as the world's fossil-fuel supplies disappear. This is a finite world. The only source of input to this planet is the steady flow of energy that we receive from our sun. Prior to the invention of the windmill and the solar cell, the primary effective means of converting that incoming solar energy into useable form was through plant photosynthesis, the basis of support for all life on this planet. we do have the potential, which they did not before the industrial revolution, of using other forms of energy when our fossil fuel reserves have been depleted. As well as the wind energy and solar energy mentioned above we have nuclear energy, tidal energy, hydro-electricity, geo-thermal energy and the possibility of long-term use of bio-fuels. The long-term potential for continued use of these energy sources, however, depends on the long-term survival of an organized society and viable community structures through which to maintain these energy infrastructures.
All of these alternatives essentially are based on the generation and distribution of electricity. Though electricity is a key part of the ability for our modern world to function, the most important aspect of energy in our world is that of various transportation fuels and other products such as fertilizers and pesticides produced from fossil fuels. The primary underpinning of our transportation has been and continues to be oil. The simple reality is that there is no source of energy that we can turn to that can effectively substitute for the fuels that we derive from oil. Once global oil production peaks and as we begin the slide toward depletion of these global oil reserves the impact on the functionality of our global society will be unquestionably severe. The ability to continue to service large cities and their burgeoning suburbs without the transportation fuels derived from oil will be severely impacted. If food production all occurs outside our cities, as it does for most cities around the world today, then the ability to deliver those foods into a city to feed millions of people and the ability to return waste nutrients to the land on which the food is grown in order to maintain the fertility of that land, will be severely hampered if not impossible. The necessary substitute of human and animal power for the energy derived from fossil fuels in the production of that food will severely impact the ability and the desire of those working the land to put in the vastly greater quantity of effort needed to produce sufficient surplus food to feed the huge populations of large cities. The relationship between cities and rural areas today is largely based on mutual benefit, rural areas producing food surpluses for the city and the city producing goods destined for use in the rural areas. Those relationships are likely to break down as fossil fuel reserves decline.
The changes that took place in Cuba following their loss of access to needed oil and other products in the collapse of the Soviet Union does show that large urban areas can be reoriented to the production of large volumes of their needed food within their boundaries. Whether this could be accomplished in most North American and European cities is questionable. Much of our urban soil is toxic, has been denuded of vitasl topsoil in the construction process, has been bombarded year after year with chemicals, has been leached of vital mineral nutrients through constant irrigation, has been denuded of critical organic nutrients through constant mowing, etc. And even in Cuba, much of the adjustment following the collapse of the Soviet Union involved the relocation of large numbers of people out of cities like Havana into rural areas as a source of labour for food production.
So what size community will be viable as we approach and pass the effective depletion of our fossil fuel reserves? Essentially that will predicated on the ability of each community to produce most, if not all, of its own food through the labour and effort of its own people. I believe the fact that the majority of ancient cities were of the order of 20-80,000, and that the vast majority of ancient communities were villages or agricultural communities, strongly suggests that the smaller communities are going to be the most survivable in a post fossil-fuel age.
It suggests that the primary orientation of any community is going to have to production of the food needed by that community. In northern climates, such as we endure here in Canada, access to some form of energy, like wood from a sustainably managed forest, for home heating is going to be equally critical. I believe networks of smaller communities, possibly with each community also specializing in tradeable goods such as tools and household articles, with these communities centered on a common bio-region, will probably become the predominant societal structure over time.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Homestead or Community?
There is a common thread running on three of the peak oil groups in which I participate that is at the heart of much of the duality within the peak oil movement. These threads are discussions on an article by Rob Hopkins in early September in Energy Bulletin. The article is entitled "Why the Survivalists Have Got It Wrong." The whole article can be found at http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=20051.
This article illustrates an unfortunately common misconception of the peak oil movement and, specifically, of peak oilers. That misconception must, in my mind, betray a lack on understanding for the author of the article. It is as though the author is aware of peak oil (the article is, after all, in Energy Bulletin, one of the most trusted information sources for peak oilers) but knows absolutely no one "involved in" the peak oil movement.
The article starts from and stays with the premise that peak oilers are "run for the hill survivalists" who all adhere to a philosophy of building their own isolated, wilderness survival homestead, totally cut off from any involvement with or sense of responsibility to any community. I have addressed this issue before in other articles. The huge flaw in the argument presented in this article, however, is a perception that peak oilers arrive at this strategy by choice, by first choice in fact. Therein lies the betrayal that the author would seem not to know any peak oilers, at least not well enough to understand their motivation.
No peak oiler that I know, whether on the various forums I am involved in or personally, has as their first choice running off into the wilderness and disassociating themselves from community. Most "seasoned" peak oilers arrive at this option out of frustration after years of being considered a nut case, years of fruitless attempts to warn those around them of the coming danger. Eventually most peak oilers reach the point where they feel that if no one wants to listen, if no one wants to see the danger ahead and start to prepare, then to hell with them. There's too little time to prepare without wasting it on people who adamantly do not want to listen.
In every peak oiler's failed efforts are attempts to motivate community into preparation. This is with the clear recognition, to most, that the only viable survivability must be community based. Clearly individual preparation and the abandonment of and isolation from community is not their prefered approach.
Even though pursuing personal preparation is where most peak oilers end up, most still do so with the belief that sooner or later the wider community will "get it" and when they do the isolated, prepared peak oiler will be there to assist, to train, to educate, to organize. Most believe that when the community is ready, meaning the community ceases to be an impediment to preparation, they will reinvolve themselves with that community. I have an old saying that I think says it best; "The right idea at the wrong time is the wrong idea."
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