Infrastructure

What is infrastructure? Infrastructure is the essential, physical organizing framework meant to facilitate the smooth, day-to-day operation of society. It includes transit, waterworks, sewers and waste disposal, communications, the physical layout of the community and more. It is both a facilitator in helping the society function but also, often unintentionally, serves to limit and misdirect the manner of that operation and, most importantly, development and growth. The defensive walls constructed around the cities of Europe proved very valuable in protecting those cities from attack by enemies wielding swords and spears but they have also imposed frustrating limitations on the growth and development of those cities in modern times.

The American automobile industry, in order to improve its sales and profitability, bought up and shut down long-established and efficient public transit systems across the nation. They succeeded in having the interstate highway systems implemented, setting the nation on the road to being dominated by suburbs, of course devoid of public transit. They killed the city centre and left it to rot as retail rushed out to the suburbs where the customers now lived.

Many communities, trying to overcome the domination of the automobile, are finding that the needed added investment in effective public transit, and the infrastructure to support it, is generally greater than the public coffers can handle, definitely greater than the car-culture taxpayers are willing to support, that they are stuck with the private automobile being the driving force behind infrastructure choices. In my youth a saw the implementation of public water and sewer systems in my hometown, an expensive proposition that required years of special tax levies to pay and disrupted traffic and commerce in the town for years. The benefits were great enough - did you ever have to use an outhouse during a cold snap in the middle of February? - that the taxpayers were willing to absorb the special tax levies.

Man is not the only species that builds communal infrastructure. Among the others which do are; ants, termites, bees, beavers, groundhogs, prairie dogs, rabbits, and corral. Other species, however, do so instinctively. Man does so by intellectual choice. If anything, our instincts which were formed as early primates would mitigate against our creation of infrastructure. In fact, man is the only primate that does create infrastructure. This suggests that our tendency to create infrastructure was not a slow, evolutionary development but grew out of our developed methods of seeking security in numbers, of banding together and forming tribes.

Infrastructure and organized society have gone hand in hand from the beginning. It is critical in both modern and less developed societies. The infrastructure involved may be very, very different but equally critical. Infrastructure was critical to Greek society, the Romans (the Romans had a consistent town plan that they used in the development of most of their communities), the Aztecs and Mayans, and all other organized societies through history.

The one very important factor they all have in common is without constant maintenance the infrastructure soon begins to break down. And the society begins to break down with it. As it deteriorates the infrastructure that was critical in building the society becomes a dangerous liability. The critical dependence of society on its infrastructure was strongly highlighted in a report "Cumbria flooding exposes UK’s vulnerability to infrastructure failure". The report claims, "We are often only hours away from social collapse if our critical infrastructure were to fail totally.... The failure of a single piece of infrastructure, such as a bridge, not only causes difficulties in reaching basic commodities and services, but also leads to the failure of other connected infrastructure networks such as electricity, gas, telephone lines, waste and water supply."

All components of our infrastructure have a designed life span, either implied or explicit. Bridges and dams, for example, are generally designed for a life span of fifty years. Many commercial buildings may have a designed lifespan of thirty years or less. To achieve the designed life span, of course, the designer and builder of the infrastructure assume it will be properly maintained according to the instructions supplied. A large petrochemical plant I was involved in as a systems analyst, for example, had a large "chart room" where the thousands of drawings, blueprints and maintenance manuals and logs for the plant and all of its components were kept, maintained and constantly referenced by maintenance staff and engineers.

Designed life span is all too often viewed, by those assuming responsibility for it, to be somewhat like many view the "best before" label on the food they buy, a guideline, a ploy to sell more product. They will take their chances and keep their fingers crossed. Many dams and bridges with a designed life span of fifty years are still heavily in use a hundred years and more after construction, many without appropriate and needed levels of maintenance. Many bridges built for an anticipated traffic load of "x" are still in operation after twice their designed life span with traffic loads of 3-4 or even 10 times more than the design criteria. Many large dams still operating more than a hundred years after construction have lost over half of their reservoir capacity from silting and are in constant danger of over-topping during a heavy rainfall or from erosion-induced land and mud slides. Many community water and sewer systems are well over a hundred years old, some more than two hundred years old, with an annual burden of water main breaks running into the hundreds, some in the thousands (Toronto has an estimated 11,000 water main breaks a year). In most of these communities the extensive suburban development around those communities is being connected to the same antiquated water and sewer systems placing tremendous added load pressures on those systems every year and burdening those suburbs with a water and sewer system already past its designed life span when they connect to it.

Infrastructure maintenance requires, of course, an army of specially-trained maintenance staff and an abundance of specialized equipment and facilities. In most cases, however, maintenance is short-changed, most often due to politically-imposed budget constraints. According to the report "Infrastructure Failure in America", "America's infrastructure is aging.... Now, with ever rising costs and reduced funding/taxes for public projects, compromises and trade-offs are made and only the things in worst shape are attended to. Evidence of this is all over the place - power grid problems and blackouts, the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the steam pipe explosion in New York, the levee breach in New Orleans. Unfortunately the blame falls on the agency responsible for infrastructure upkeep. Very rarely are the fingers pointed in the direction of politicians or government officials who make the money decisions and choose what gets funded." This is further highlighted in the report "Metropolitan Infrastructure Sustainability Study". This study found that "Funding emerged as the number one issue facing cities today. When asked to name their most serious infrastructure challenge, without prompting, three in five cities (59%*) said obtaining infrastructure funding was a key challenge. Some 42 percent* said funding gaps were creating challenges for maintaining or improving aging infrastructure. Cities are more likely to name funding for maintenance or retro-fitting of existing infrastructure, rather than funding for new infrastructure, as a critical challenge." Another report, "Infrastructure Investment Deficit" points out that "Recent research from various associations in Canada shows that there is a growing infrastructure investment deficit occurring in many sectors. This results in deteriorating infrastructure and escalating costs since the longer roads and buildings remain in a state of disrepair, the higher the costs to refurbish or replace."

This tendency to defer infrastructure maintenance is done under the assumption that the deficit can be made up later, and the hope that there will not be a disastrous infrastructure failure before then. But with peak oil fast approaching - or already here depending on which model you adhere to - this assumption that deferred maintenance can be caught up is very likely to result in a string of those disastrous failures that infrastructure and maintenance managers have for years been hoping against.

And yet even today massive investments continue to be made in new and upgraded infrastructure designed for operation in and dependent on a high-energy, high-tech world. A quick check of Google for "infrastructure investment" will net you literally millions of articles on projects for new and upgraded infrastructure.

But what if those choices were no longer available? What if the cost of maintenance and replacement mushrooms to 10-20 or more times current levels? What if the materials and parts needed to undertake that maintenance are no longer available? What if the specialized equipment and the transport to get equipment and maintenance personnel to the problem are no longer available? What if the heavy equipment to dig, build, move is no longer available? What if all of the fuel and energy to power all of that equipment is no longer available? This will be increasingly the case as we move deeper into the post peak era.

These are the true costs of peak oil. It's not about the cost of gasoline for the family car, not being to afford that driving vacation to Florida, the rising costs of food and other goods because of increasing transportation fuel costs. Those will be, or already are, the first warning signs that peak oil is upon us. But increasing costs will soon give way to scarcity and the depth of that scarcity will increase a little more each year. At first many poor nations will be priced out of the hydrocarbon fuel market. Soon, however, any level of government without the right to print money, even in rich countries, will start to wrestle with a growing disparity between income, which is primarily from taxation, and costs. Many of the American states, in fact, and many more communities, are already struggling hopelessly to balance their budgets. They soldier on, like the funding-deprived infrastructure maintenance staffs, in the belief that the deficit will be made up "when things return to normal." They fail to recognize the current situation as the new normal, the only slightly painful edge to a new reality that will not be corrected..... ever.

Defining the Continuum from here to Post-Carbon Sustainability

To define a continuum or path of transition from today to life in the post-carbon world it is necessary to start with a reasonably clear vision of that post carbon world. Largely this vision has to be local, or at least regional, centered on the area in which you live or will live at that time.

It is always awkward forecasting the future. There are so many variables. But it is easier, in my mind, to predict what life will be like in that post-carbon world than at any point during the transition. If you can start with a clear vision of the destination you are in a better position to define your own transition path.

What will the post-carbon world look like? Here are just fifteen examples of the changes you will see in society as we slide down the energy-decline slope.

* The focus of life will be very much local, not the global focus of today. Sustainability will mean local self-sufficiency and self-reliance, either individually or as a community.
* Consumerism will be dead, dead, dead. The keyword will have become need, not want. Gone with consumerism will be the vast advertising industry that fuels consumerism today.
* Society will clearly not be dominated by the automobile. Electric cars may hang on for a while, as might cars running on locally-produced bio-diesel. The ultimate demise of the automobile will be, however, not a lack of fuel to run them but the inability to maintain the automobile manufacturing industry, an industry today based on planned obsolescence. Yes, it would be possible to make durable, rugged cars that would last decades, perhaps a century or more. But that would entail a complete overhaul of the industry mindset.
* Globalization will have died well before we enter the post-carbon world. In fact it is very much in the process of unwinding now. The massive fuel demands of large-scale trans-oceanic transport and the tremendous raw material demands of the ship-building industry simply are not going to be feasible in a world of net declining resources.
* Communities will produce all, or almost all, of their own food. If they trade it will likely be with other nearby communities but this will likely be limited to crisis times such as after crop failures.
* Travel will not be what it is today. Airlines will be a thing of the past, unless they convert to blimps and hot air balloons. Before that the industry will likely survive for a while as a luxury for the monied elite. Trans-oceanic shipping will be extremely limited, unless it reverts to sail but even then would be limited. Possibly, and hopefully, the once expansive railway system and services will be rebuilt in time but that is going to require a government commitment which, at the moment, seems very unlikely. The concept of travelling for vacation will probably disappear over time. The current highway systems will initially fall into disrepair and ultimately be abandoned to be reclaimed by nature. Some of the routes they followed may still be used, on horseback and on foot, since many of the early highways followed routes that were already well in use before that. People in cold climates will not travel south to escape winter but will, in fact, be very travel restricted by that winter weather.
* The manufacturing industry, if it survives, will be seriously downsized and refocused on society's needs, not the competitive and advertising-stimulated wants of today.
* Manufacturing processes will likely be reverse engineered so that production can be dispersed to regional areas where they will serve a discrete regional market.
* Housing will change dramatically, downsizing from the ubiquitous McMansions of today to the small, energy-efficient, cozy cottages and bungalows that were prevalent in our parents' time.
* Classical, perpetual-growth economics will have died a painful death. It is, indeed, in the process of dying now, real growth having already died years ago with the appearance of growth being propped up by a myriad of smoke-and-mirrors financial instruments. The wheels fell off in 2008 with the $147 dollar price for oil. Economists, if money is to continue as the lifeblood of human society, will have to find ways for that society to survive within a no-growth economy.
* The face of retail will change dramatically. Malls will be dead. A tremendous shake-out of the retail sector will have major casualties. What retail survives will mostly move into residential areas, close to the customer, and be run out of the home, not separate rental or owned space.
* The village or neighbourhood open-air market will become the primary source of commerce. Much of the commercial business will be for repair, maintenance, refit, mend, fix as the throw-away society dies.
* Many people assume the very useful internet will survive the decline in oil. It won't. The internet is cheap-energy- and technology-intensive. Cheap energy is even now disappearing as costs go up and available resources decline. And to think the computer manufacturing industry will survive the end of cheap energy is wishful thinking in the extreme. So the internet will not survive the end of cheap energy. Your ability to have and use a computer in any form in a post-carbon world will depend on your personal ability to fix, maintain and program it yourself, and your ability to personally or communally produce the energy to run it.
* Large cities with their multi-million populations and their rings of suburbs will not survive the end of cheap energy in their present form. They cannot be made food self-sufficient and do not have the internal resources to become self-reliant. They are critically dependent on massive infrastructure that is now expensive to maintain and, in the future, impossible to maintain. Cities in pre-industrial times generally did not exceed a million population (and those were rare), were surrounded by rich farmland (now covered by suburbs), depended on a large slave population (currently replaced by energy slaves), and generally had good water access for moving trade and commodities by sail and barge (now replaced by energy-intensive rail, trucking, ship and air).
* Medicine will become far less ubiquitous and far less technology intensive. That technology requires a thriving manufacturing industry that exists only because of cheap energy. And both the manufacture and use of that equipment consumes a great deal of energy. Every advance in technology has, in my opinion, reduced the ability and willingness of doctors to make a patient diagnosis with medical skills alone. This has been largely necessitated by our litigation-prone society.

How will you chart your course to sustainability through that minefield? It won't be easy because it depends so much on timing. The first thing that you must do, if you are to be successful, is keep a close eye on the news. The signs will be there but you have to develop a very active and effective bullshit filter. You will have to be able to read between the lines. You have to use something other than the corporate dominated and controlled mainstream media to get at the truth behind what that mainstream media is telling you. Use sources like the internet, alternative newspapers, independent TV and radio.

If you wait for the mainstream media to present a clear and honest picture, like those who were surprised at the financial downturn, it will be too late. And, most importantly, you have to follow the news regularly, even keep notes, in order to spot the trends that are developing. The mainstream media are not going to suddenly one day run a headline that says we've run out of cheap oil - all that's left is shale and tar sands. What they will do instead is probably barrage you with stories about the marvellous new technologies that allow us to extract oil from shale and how that technology will extend the oil age by hundreds of years.

Fair warning will be available but you will have to search for it, dig for it, find sources that you trust and rely on them. Seeing, recognizing and accepting those warnings should, in most cases, give you enough chance to avoid the worst. It is, in my opinion, a terrible waste of your energy trying to convince others what is coming. Those who rely exclusively on the mainstream media will laugh at you and call you a doomer until the shit hits the fan. Then they will simply avoid you.

Good luck and enjoy the trip!

The Unintended Consequences of Critical Advocacy

Criticism or opposition increases the credibility of, and support for, that opposed.

That attack tells others that what you are opposing is important enough, enough of a threat, at least to you, to warrant attention. If it were not so you would simply ignore it. Then it would, perhaps, just sit there like a dead fish garnering nobody's attention. But that would, of course, simply give free reign to that opposition.

The fact that you criticize, attack or openly oppose something attracts people's attention to it. In so doing you may find that others agree with your criticism but you may also find that they disagree with you and decide that they must, perhaps because of your opposition, support that which you are criticizing. In other words, in your opposition you run a fifty-fifty risk, or higher, of garnering new supporters for that which you are attacking. This would, in turn, make it more threatening to you and make it more worthy of your opposition. It has the potential for a never-ending confrontation.

Most often that opposition elicits a response from the person(s) at the core of that which you are attacking. If it is important enough for you to criticize, after all, it is even more important to defend for those who have a part of themselves vested in it. If it's worth attacking it is worth defending. With the additional supporters to their cause that your opposition garners for them your continued attacks simply makes an ever-stronger, ever-more-threatening adversary.

When two opposing camps are in a position of constantly criticizing and attacking each other, the formula changes only slightly. The stronger of the two camps, generally, (or the one with the more appealing, people-friendly message) will generally maintain it's advantage for a considerable length of time, partly thanks to your opposition. When the weaker camp gains some momentum eventually, if maintained, that momentum may allow the growth in support to exceed the growth in support for the stronger side. Over time, as long as both sides are able to maintain their confrontation, that weaker camp may eventually gain the upper hand. But the battle to get to that point will, generally, be long and difficult.

This is the current reality for the peak oil movement. Our constant criticism of the business-as-usual oil industry mentality, our incessant demands that our politicians and leaders address the peak oil issue, are the modern day equivalent of Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Our message about peak oil and the ensuing disintegration of life as we know it frightens people. It is not somewhere they want to go. It is not somewhere they can go, in their minds. What is there to support?

Our opponents in this, of course, offer a much more appealing vision of a future, however unrealistic it may be in our minds. And their job is simple. They, if you accept the gospel, offer a future of unlimited potential, wealth, growth, development, a lifestyle of your choosing. The peak oil movement offers despair, hard work, starvation, a struggle for clean water, elimination of travel, a world without cars, without electric can openers for God's sake.

Even today the majority of people in the world remain blissfully unaware of the peak oil issue and the crises facing us in the near future. Of every ten people that our constant campaigning makes aware of the issue more than half are going to reject our message and, instead, get religion and embrace the gospel according to Exxon. If they have to put their effort into something, after all - and for most their awareness and awakening all but compels them to action - then they are going to put that effort into something that promises them a benefit, a bright future, a continuation of the good life.

Our increasing membership in the peak oil movement is, for the moment, coming at a terrible price. It is growing our opposition at an even faster rate. They have the full power of the political machine, mass media, and gobs of money to use in the battle. We, on the other hand, are all too easily dismissed as crackpots, conspiracy theorists, doomsayers, as wanting the societal destruction and massive die-off that we warn about. There isn't a serious peak oil advocate who hasn't lost friends, built walls between themselves and members of their family over their advocacy. Most have simply eventually withdrawn into their own shell and, for the sake of harmony, ceased talking about peak oil among friends and family.

The more you can put your opponent in the role of criticizing you, or even defending themselves in such a way that it highlights your opposition, the more they in turn run the risk, however, of garnering additional support for you. This is often what happens at the turning point in the confrontation, at the point where the weaker opponent begins to get the upper hand.

This is a trend we are definitely starting to see in the peak oil movement. The cornucopians, the oil company executives, the paid shills, the pork-barrel politicians, the "I'll tell you whatever you want to hear" economists are increasingly in the position, while trying to defend their own stance, of having to criticize the peak oil movement, its statistics, its forecasts, its warnings of dire circumstances. In so doing, however, they are themselves increasing the visibility of the peak oil movement. They are, themselves, increasing the army of supporters for the peak oil theory/message. They are actively sowing the seeds of their own eventual defeat. And the harder they hit, the louder they yell, the more they are pushing people to the other side, into supporting the peak oil movement.

This change in conditions, however, imposes upon we in the peak oil movement a responsibility, if we are to capitalize on the changes taking place and reach enough people to form a critical mass sufficient to cause some move toward the development of a sustainable, post-peak future. It is time for us to take the high road. The cornucopians are feeling the heat. The reality of the situation is starting to bite them and everyone else in the ass. It is becoming an increasingly difficult reality to ignore or argue against. We don't need to yell anymore.

The more quietly we carry the message forward, and the louder the opposition rails against it, the more credibility it gives our message in the minds of those who have not yet joined one camp or the other. We will, with an air of quiet confidence and calmness, garner increasingly more support than the loud, critical, unrealistic opposition. It will become increasingly apparent to more and more people as the global economy implodes that the good life the other side is offering them is unachievable. With that recognition should also come the realization that preparation for a very different future is now needed. That is where the critical mass comes from.

In order to help people achieve a full understanding of the implications of peak oil, however, it is important that we continue connecting the dots, continue linking peak oil with the global oil wars, the collapsing world economy, the renewed push for nuclear energy, rising unemployment, the global freshwater crisis, the global hunger crisis, global topsoil loss, and, yes, global warming and climate change. They must be helped to see that the good life they have been pursuing and which has been promised to them has come at a price which threatens the survival of themselves and their children and grandchildren. They must finally be convinced that it is time to take the red pill.