Looking for a place to crash

No place like home. Is England a good place in which to plan a post industrial future?
Photo from  www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk

People keep asking me where they think the best place would be to hold out when the post industrial age gets into full swing. I've said before that I think Britain is as good a place as any, with some large provisos. There are a number of reasons I think this to be so, which I'll go through nearer the bottom Here's a sample from an email a reader in Japan sent me:

“I'm trying to cobble together reasons for cautious optimism, or, at least, avoiding outright despair, since, among other things, I have two small children. I'm wondering if there is still time for some sort of managed transition or if a managed transition will occur in some places, while outright and rapid collapse occurs in others. And, thus, like all of us in the peak-oil-aware community, I spend a fair bit of time trying to figure out places where a gradual descent is more likely than outright collapse.”

What people are really saying, of course, is that they're scared. And with good reason. Taking a look at human history through an ecological perspective one cannot help but conclude that we have so vastly overshot our resource base – and are in fact consuming energy that was harvested for us millions of years ago – that we are like those cartoon characters that go off a cliff and hang there momentarily in the air before realising their situation just before gravity kicks in.

What happens when gravity re-establishes itself and the finite ecosystem on which we have evolved to live within – i.e. Earth – refuses to yield more energy treasures, is not going to be pretty. The first signs of this are already upon us in the form of financial tremors, shaking the foundations of the mostly abstract world of finance. But far more traumatic than any financial storm (although those can wreak a fair bit of havoc) will be the sense of drowning we start to experience as our artificially built human world is dragged beneath the waves by the concrete wellies of EROEI.

It's at this point, when it no longer makes sense to extract or 'produce' new energy because it would cost more energy than you would get back to do so, that things are going to get serious. Demand might still be rocketing for certain things like oil, coal, steel, concrete etc, but the straitjacket of supply will ensure that the price rockets to such an extent that only the very richest individuals, companies and nations will be able to afford them. We'll all feel the pinch, to put it mildly.

But of course nowhere is 'best' to try and weather such a cataclysm – the whole point of recognising the knock on effects of severely curtailed access to cheap and abundant energy is that there will be no 'one size fits all'. Thus, for me, Britain – or more specifically England – would work best – that is where I am from, after all. For a Mongolian herdsman, Mongolia would probably work best. It's wherever you feel most comfortable and would be able to build a good network of reliable friends and acquaintances that is the best.

Saying that, even without the aid of a crystal ball, some areas are clearly going to do worse than others. Only the most ecologically myopic would choose to move to an area in which human existence is strictly dependent upon the ability to pump water or grow crops using cheap energy. Las Vegas springs to mind. As does much of Saharan Africa. But let's not forget that the vast majority of humankind has no choice over where they live and it is only a few privileged people from the currently wealthy nations that have such a luxury. The chance to figure out a good place to be and to move there and get on with the hard business of fitting in and making a safe living is a great privilege open to only a few. If you're one of them, appreciate it.

But the huge windfall of almost free energy over the last century or so has made us energy illiterate. Energy, many people assume, comes out of wall sockets. If there's a blackout then energy companies and politicians are to blame. Cheap energy is our universal right, we are led to believe, and most people have no idea how fragile the state of affairs is.

Furthermore, as our societies industrialised and we left the land our ecological literacy has similarly diminished. I got a sharp lesson in this when we moved to Spain and lived on a hillside farm for three years. If it didn't snow heavily at the top of the mountain during the winter, we had no water in the summer and the trees died. It's a simple enough concept, but it didn't concern many of the foreigners moving to the area. Neighbours with more cash than us paid for tankers of water to be driven up the hill to their properties once a week to fill up their swimming pools at great expense. In the future this kind of extravagance will not just be frowned upon, it will be impossible.

But there is another fear factor at play. Aside from knowing where to live, people, myself included, want to know how long they've got before the music stops. I like using the analogy of stopping music because that's how I envisage our long descent. As I see it it will be like one of those children's birthday parties where all the kids are playing a game of stop-dance. The music is playing and all the kids are dancing merrily, flinging their arms out in joy and throwing shapes; a parent (her finger hovering over the 'pause' button on the CD player like some mischievous Greek goddess) decides when the music stops, whereupon all the kids have to stand as still as possible. The first one to move will be out, and then the music starts up again, albeit with less participants.

I'm not saying the jagged descent from Hubbert's peak will be anything like as much fun as playing stop dance (and there will be no jelly and ice cream at the end), but I am definitely of the 'long slow collapse' camp rather than the sudden abrupt end. There's a lot of space between a Promethean future living on spaceships among the stars on one hand and a sudden violent apocalypse on the other. Let's call that middle ground 'reality,' for want of a better word.

What we'll likely see then is periods of crisis, that could last anything from a couple of years to a generation, followed by extended periods of calm – but, crucially, at a lower tempo and with fewer players. This is the way in which civilizations decomplexify themselves and our industrial civilization won't be markedly different. In the end, after probably 200 years or so, 99% of fossil fuels will be a distant memory and our descendants, when they are not cursing us for destabilizing the climate and wiping out many of the planet's life support systems, will at least be thankful that we managed to extract so much metal and leave it lying around for remodelling into simpler forms of technology.

In the meantime, for most of us we will feel like Winnie the Pooh in the opening lines of A.A.Milne's classic story:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

Each of the bumps will be a nasty shock but it won't finish us off. They'll likely take the form of bouts of hyperinflation, regional resource conflicts, a local nuclear meltdown or small nuclear war, a total national collapse of fish or pollinating insects, a famine or two.

Bump, bump, bump.

Each time it will be painful and protracted but eventually we will sort ourselves out again and either adapt to a different area or change our ways until we find ourselves at the bottom of the stairs, on level ground, which we may as well call a steady state economy in balance with nature.

This final stage (well, nothing is final …) is what John Michael Greer calls the Ecotechnic future – a future of far less technological complexity where we have in all likelihood returned to the kind of spiritual practices that resemble more closely those of the Kalahari Bushmen than the Vatican.

Which is a long winded way of getting to say why I think Britain would, for me and my family at least, be the right place to strap ourselves in for the roller coaster ride of a lifetime. First of all, as I see it, there are two major down sides when discussing Britain as a 'safe' place to be. The first elephant in the room is population. With around 60 million people it means that the challenge of feeding everyone is twice as great as it was the last time we were challenged to do so, during the Second World War. It was tough then, it'll be impossible then next time around.

The second big downside is that there is an awful lot of nuclear material lying around the place. When financial collapse is followed by serious resource constraint we will still need to devote huge resources to safeguarding the waste produced to generate today's cheap electricity. Only a blind optimist could imagine that nuclear waste dumps would not one day be abandoned to the elements and allowed to leak out into the air, seas and groundwater. Most nuclear power stations are currently built in areas that will be prone to raised sea levels. They are also mostly built in areas of low population density where, historically, the locals have not had much clout in Westminster.

Given these two facts you won't find me moving anywhere near a large city or a nuclear power station. Luckily the peninsula of south west England has neither of these and is far enough from London to make it not worth the effort. At least that's what I'm counting on – I'm sure people will insist otherwise.

There is also the problem of land ownership in Britain (specifically England) – but that's a problem I see resolving itself soon enough when the property bubble deflates and resources devoted to ensuring people are not allowed to live off the land are over stretched, forcing a change of policy in line with resilience and sustainability (as has been the case in Wales).

And now the good news. For all the complaining that people do about Britain it still has a lot going for it. One of the side effects of having, and losing, the world's most powerful empire is a culture of breast beating and teeth gnashing by those with less economic power. During the era of empire, to keep the elite at the centre of power they had to offer everyone else something. We natives were only restless when not being thrown a bone by the masters. And in those days, as Britain's imperial core extracted wealth from half the globe, there were plenty of bones to go around. But since the empire has shrunk in size to, as Adrian Mole memorably put it, some islands on the map that he couldn't locate because a cake crumb had fallen on them, the sense of entitlement hasn't shrunk correspondingly. I have been in enough bars in Spain to know that entire legions of people have left the UK, disgusted that it has 'gone to the dogs', and choosing to display their patriotism by moving to another, less economically fortunate, country.

Well fine. But what I see in the UK is a much greater sense of cooperation and willingness to face up to facts by quite a large slice of the population. Losing an empire can either make you bitter or it can turn you into a stoic. 'Mustn't grumble' people say, or 'worse things happen at sea'. Getting by is what is important and in most places community spirit is alive and well.

One only has to look at the Transition movement, and all of the people who practice sustainability as a matter of course. Up and down the country countless thousands are engaged, each to their own extent, in growing food organically, reviving old crafts and generally living in a post-consumer way. What's more, this isn't even a new thing, it's been part of the national character for decades. Perhaps thousands of years of having to deal with despotic kings and nobles has taught us that the best way to live is modestly – whatever it is there is a great reservoir of resilience built into the culture and it does not manifest itself in remotely the same way as, say, the people who choose to buy several guns and a shack in rural Montana and live off bear meat.

I don't mean everyone, of course. But perhaps enough.

Furthermore Britain, being the first industrial nation, still has plenty of the infrastructure that allowed it to prosper in those heady newly-industrialised days. One of the main elements of this is the canal network, which reaches into most corners of the country and has survived largely intact thanks to the money and efforts of enthusiasts and the tourism industry over the years. Canal boats are still in manufacture and shifting freight from roads to horse-pulled canal barges will be one of the low energy possibilities of the future that will keep regional centres connected and ensure trade links.

Aside from the canals there is also an excellent (by most standards) train network. Margaret Thatcher did her bit to destroy the inefficient extremities of the network but as the economic calculus shifts there is no great reason why old branch lines cannot be brought back into service again. Furthermore, the UK is criss crossed (some would say covered) with good quality (for now) roads that, even if they are used less and less frequently by motor vehicles, will still be very usable by low-tech transport such as horses and bicycles. The smallish size of the country also makes it navigable by bicycle and it's entirely possible to cycle fully-laden from one extremity to the other on a bike in around 10 days (I know, I've done it).

Of course, there are monumental challenges facing Britain in getting it on track to becoming a sustainable set of islands – but show me a place where this isn't so. The only place I can think of that might even get close is Greenland – and even that might find itself at the centre of an oil war.

Lastly, but definitely not least, it's worth remembering that many of the ancient spiritual traditions that were so prevalent in Britain until the all-conquering Christianity arrived, are still very much practised, albeit often out of sight. Philip Carr-Gomm in his Book of English Magic reckons that in England you're never too far from a practising witch – even if she does look like just a regular person in a regular job. Druidism is booming and Pagan societies are enjoying a similar resurgence. What's more, being an 'eccentric' when it comes to displaying your fondness for Earth spirits is more-or-less acceptable in England, and I for one am looking forward to seeing the forthcoming film the Spirit of Albion.

What all these have in common is a worship of Earth magic i.e. a religion of being connected to the planet that supports you. In the decades and centuries ahead, with organised 'revealed' religions on the wane, these alternatives could be ready to step into the limelight. This has always been acknowledged: step into any old English church, lie down on one of the pews (assuming a service isn't going on) and focus on the celling. Up there, among all the angels and frescoes and what have you, more often than not, you'll likely see a cheeky leaf-fringed face looking back down at you. This is the Green Man – a little architectural anomaly in most churches but nevertheless an undeniable reminder that, behind all the pompous edifices of our constructed temples lies the inescapable fact that we are all, whether we like it or not, a part of the ecosystem.

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By the way, along with the RSS feed problem, which now seems to be fixed, some people were also finding it difficult to post comments. I have now removed all barriers, so you shouldn't have any more problems.

22 Billion Energy Slaves

Hubbert's Peak. Poster courtesy of www.afterpeakoil.com

Welcome to my new blog. The title refers to the ex-oil geologist Colin Campbell's remark that the amount of work we get today from fossil fuels is the equivalent of having some 22 billion human slaves working for us round the clock 365 days a year. That's a lot of service we are getting but the shocking thing is that in the coming years and decades most, if not all, of these slaves are going to go away. What we are going to do as those slaves head off into retirement is the core theme of this blog.

Yes, Peak Oil. It's a term that is being bandied around increasingly these days and, basically, it refers to the fact that humanity has extracted around half of all known accessible reserves of oil and other liquid fossil fuels from the Earth's crust. Unfortunately, not many people take this fact too seriously - after all, if we've used up the first 150 years' worth doesn't that mean we don't have to worry about them running out for another 150 years?

If only. We are right now standing on the bumpy plateau of the oil production curve - or Hubbert's Peak as it's known - names after the late American geophysicist M. King Hubbert who sketched out a bell curve for US petroleum production, which posited that supply would peak in the late 60s or early 70s. His theory proved remarkably prescient, not just for the US but for all major oil fields, and the US did indeed experience a peak and has been in decline ever since. By the same reasoning Hubbert predicted that world oil supply would peak in 1995. He might have been off by a few years, and nobody can agree when or even if the peak was reached, but the International Energy Authority now states that conventional crude oil peaked in 2006.

A potted history of Peak Oil can be summarised as follows:

- In 1955 Hubbert predicted it but was ignored and even vilified.
- In the early 1970s oil shocks sent the industrial world into a panic and emergency measures were introduced to conserve energy
- In the 1980s people who were sick of energy rationing voted in politicians who promised a return of the good times - namely but not exclusively Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Raegan. These politicians pulled out all the stops and, combined with new (and very timely) discoveries in the North Sea and Alaska the industrial world was drowned in cheap oil ... for a time.
- Now, in 2011, with a peak having been reached we suddenly find ourselves in the position that emerging giant economies such as India and China, with a voracious appetite for fossil fuels, are demanding their share of the energy bonanza. That's why oil has gone up from around 10 dollars a barrel to the current price of over 100. Nobody knows how high the price will be in two, five or ten years, but 200 dollars a barrel does not seem unlikely.

Why should any of this matter?

Unfortunately it matters a great deal. Indeed, it's no exaggeration to say that what we must face up to in the coming years will be the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced and there will not be a single one of us whose world will not be turned upside down. Those 22 billion energy slaves will be going away, and there aren't any other kinds waiting in the wings to take over. With a tiny handful of exceptions, every one of us alive in the rich world today was weaned on oil. Our food is grown with it, it powers the way we move around and everything from clothes and medicine is made with it. We might as well call ourselves Homo Petroleus.

It's normally at this point in a discussion that someone politely (or impolitely) points out to me that, don't I realise, the slack from oil will be taken up by renewable energy, nuclear power and other things, like coal.

One of the points of this blog is to detail why that won't be happening.

It's a difficult thing to acknowledge but what we face right now is nothing less than the end of the industrial age. Some people might say 'great' - but we shouldn't romanticise the pre industrial age. For the great majority of us the rest of our lives will consist of one crisis after another as political and financial institutions fall, energy crises rear their heads and ecological catastrophes loom. It won't be pretty and, given that several billion of the world's population rely on fossil fuels for their food production, we can count on there being a lot less of us around in the future.

While recognising these facts is likely the most important thing you can ever grasp, it is equally important not to equate it with some kind of apocalypse. Yes, things are going to get ugly, but it will be a long process. Civilisations generally take a couple of hundred years to die. Ours is unlikely to be exceptional - although we often think it is. But with the right preparation it will be perfectly possible to at least manage our energy descent in a way that keeps us alive and, if we're lucky, comfortable.

These are the kind of hard to stomach facts that I will be presenting in this blog. But one shouldn't despair. The kind of steps I am going to be suggesting generally involve taking charge of your affairs and thus empowering yourself. All of us have been bombarded with the psychological detritus of the industrial age since we were born and learning how to switch off its influence is like lifting a huge load off your shoulders.

A bit about me. I'm 40 years old, a father of two and although I am British I currently live in Denmark. I studied economics at university and went on to become an energy trader but then jacked in the corporate world to become a journalist in Spain, where I started my own environmental newspaper The Olive Press. Since then I have been the editor of a newspaper in Denmark and have been a freelance correspondent for The Guardian newspaper. I have also been an active participant in the Peak Oil blogosphere (so dispersed are its adherents at present that's the main forum for communication) and have studying the implications of what is in store for us for the past couple of years. There are a number of key figures in the Peak Oil scene and most of them are American. Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over and Peak Everything, is a favourite of mine, as is another hard hitter Dmitry Orlov, who witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union firsthand.

There are other names of course but my principal influence, which I will fess up to right from the start, has been and continues to be the Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, John Michael Greer, whose book The Long Descent simply blew me away. His weekly Peak Oil blog The Archdruid Report has become an addictive cerebral dose of analysis and food for thought and is read by thousands. Incisive as his essays are, he has always maintained that his analysis springs purely from his own American perspective and acknowledges that other cultures may interpret his ideas in slightly different ways. It's in this spirit that I'm presenting this series of blog posts - or dispatches - from a British perspective. We have our own political system and ways of doing things that can, at times, be quite different to the US. It's going to be quite a journey because the one thing that becomes apparent as you start to explore Peak Oil is that immediately a host of other disciplines and subjects present themselves. Indeed, one might expect a contemplation of Peak Oil to be a never ending procession of production charts and geological analysis. It isn't.

To gain a thorough understanding of the challenges that are beginning to force themselves upon us it will be necessary to explore everything from economics and physics (especially the Laws of Thermodynamics), to religion, architecture, social theory, psychology and ancient history. There will also be large doses of philosophy, analysis of current affairs and DIY. It's going to be an interesting exploration and I hope that you, the reader, will share it with me. There is little time for preparation (that should have started 30 years ago) but I aim to produce one post per week, or more if time allows.

To round off this post I'll give you a little hint of the urgency of our situation. In 2009 the august and dry International Energy Agency failed to mention the term 'Peak Oil' anywhere in its 600 page annual report on the state of the world's energy supplies. In the 2010 report is casually mentioned Peak Oil for the first time and stated that it had already happened. In the 2011 report, which came out a few days ago, comes with a number of dire warnings suggesting that if we don't change our ways quickly then much of humankind will have been wiped out by the end of the century. If that sounds alarmist then that's because it is. If a report could have a flashing blue light on it and an air raid siren then you can guarantee that this one would.

But did you read that in the news? No, I thought not.