Those of you who follow me know that I have recently ceased making posts urging large-scale reform. The reasons for that are fairly simple, but they involve a psychological hurdle to get over.

I have been communicating with James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and David Holmgren, all of whom I have interviewed, about a Wise Action Plan. The goal was for us to agree on this Plan and then publicly pronounce it in an effort to get some sensible action on peak oil and climate change. Initially, I urged a response that included a revitalization of rail, large-scale wind or solar farms, and other actions that require the federal government to take a strong leadership role.

While the others generally agreed such actions would be a good idea, especially if they have been started 20 or more years ago, two of the three thought they were a waste of time. They had two reasons for this:

1. It’s too late. We needed to be getting off oil while we still had a surplus. Now that we’ve hit peak oil, diverting any oil to build solar panels means there is less for cars or crops.
2. They ain’t gonna. What politician is going to do that, barring an emergency situation? (Emergency is here defined as rioting, fuel rationing, or other severe measures.)

To be fair to our politicians, it’s hard to get elected telling people their lifestyle is going to change drastically, including many of them giving up their cars. The problem is partly cultural; we want what we want, and we’re going to keep electing politicians who give it to us until that is no longer possible.

And to be brutally honest, most of us have bought into the idea of unending growth and improvement, that the market will find solutions to concerns like oil depletion, and that if it were really that bad, somebody would do something.

At that point, we will be well into the emergency.

It has been difficult for me to give up on the idea of leadership from above. I ran federally as a Green Party of Canada candidate last go-round, but wouldn’t do it again. Even in the fantastic unlikelihood that the Greens got a majority next election, they could not do what needs to be done. Still too many people will resist change, and this resistance will be encouraged and financed – by vested interests.

Think Globally, Act Locally

As a result, I’ve gone local. Leadership is going to have to come from the grassroots, from us, from those who understand the reality and are willing to take some action. I believe that every village, town, city, and region should create a Transition Initiative to get off oil.

This is acting locally, and it is vitally important for your survival. Local resilience is ‘in,’ and for good reason. When oil prices go up, imports of everything – including food – are going to get more expensive and harder to get. If you’re already shopping at the farmer’s market, for example, you have helped support a local farmer who will now support you as options in the supermarkets get scarcer and pricier.

This is my new Wise Action Plan:

1. Start or join a Transition Initiative in your area.
2. Reskill.
3. Develop personal self-reliance, which includes everything from starting a garden to insulating your house.

If we’re lucky and good, these local movements will take off, multiply like viruses, and infect the planet. These local movements will bond together and require their governments to do the right thing – to protect us. They will do this not by lobbying or influence-peddling, but by sheer strength of numbers.

The purpose of this site is to find a ‘green’ lever big enough to move the world to sustainability. I titled it Go Green or Die because, well, that is true, we must, and becauseI thought it rather catchy.

That said, I have come to realise that people will not see climate change and peak oil as the crises they are unless and until a social tipping point is reached, where likely we will go from denial to near-panic. Various things can push us toward this tipping point; this site is my own small attempt, as are my The Way Home presentations, but we are not there yet and we are already late getting started on addressing these crises.

And that brings me to the main point. We cannot count upon governments or corporations – large organizations led by people with a strong vested interest in business-as-usual – to wake up and take action on climate change and peak oil in time.

I have come to accept this, and I won’t say I found it easy. I ran as as Green Party of Canada candidate in the last federal election, and as a Green Party of British Columbia candidate in the last provincial election. Clearly I recently thought that action at the national or provincial level was possible; I no longer think so.

It would be a long story to explain all my reasons why, but perhaps a small, real example will help illustrate. In the last provincial election, Lana Popham was one of my opponents as the NDP candidate. She seemed as ‘green’ as me; in talking with her, she clearly understood the threat posed by climate change. Her family runs an organic vineyard. She cycles everywhere.

I nearly withdrew to give her a clear run, but was persuaded otherwise. She won anyway. What has been the result? Her party formed the Opposition, and made her Agriculture Critic. The leaders of the NDP have her spending her time and energy and goodwill campaigning to get bicycles exempted from a new tax.

And that is just a tiny example of why change is unlikely to come from above. It rarely does, really; those entrenched naturally oppose change.

I came to realise that it is up to us. “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” as the song says. We must at least work to save local areas as best we can, to make them sustainable and self-reliant. Done alone, that will not ultimately stop or save anyone from climate change. It will only buffer against the coming oil shock and allow life to continue in a somewhat civilised manner.

The best route I’ve found so far is Transition Initiative, which every town and city and region should be doing. It’s a grassroots movement to make the local region more self-reliant, less dependent upon oil. There is no head office, no Executive Director. There are only guiding principles and local examples.

This is all a long way of saying that I’ve joined my local Transition Initiative. That is where the action is going to come from. The movement has caught on and has spread like wildfire, which gives me hope for wider action. It would be wonderful if ultimately there were thousands and thousands of Transition Towns, and these millions upon millions of people joined forces to end dependence on fossil fuels.

This journey has allowed me to create The Way Home presentation that ends on a positive, optimistic note. I was trained by Al Gore to deliver the An Inconvenient Truth presentation, which I did 40-or-so times to a few thousand people in total. One thing that always bothered me was the lack of realistic solutions offered. I don’t mean just the “Change your lightbulbs” ‘solution,’ but even writing to your elected representative is largely a waste of time at this point.

Transition Initiatives do offer hope. I am going to re-do this site in the next few weeks to reflect the path we must take. Yes, we must ‘go green or die.’ But that message is not inspiring change. In an attempt to communicate the extent of the threat, it inspires fear.

What we need is the truth, which is that things are bad. We have not responded appropriately to warnings from experts, and we are going to pay a price for that. Ok, so what do we do? Reality must be faced, and realistic action must be taken. That is the focus of the Transition Initiative, and also of the new look of this site, which will become The Way Home.

There’s a lot being said about climate change, peak oil, and other looming catastrophes. Let’s be honest, none of these is helpful and all are potentially dangerous to life as we know it. Some years ago I moved from climate sceptic/denier to climate change warrior, after I investigated and discovered the reality of the threat. Corruption in the financial markets and in our democracies is also quite dangerous, as we have experienced in the current recession caused by crooked bankers and their bought politicians. But where climate change is a long-term threat, and we can stagger along for some time bearing the weight of the banksters, only peak oil looks very likely to deal a mortal blow soon.

Let’s go through these threats one-at-a-time.

Climate change

In brief, we are adapted to this climate, meaning everything from our agriculture to the countless cities at sea level, and any significant change is potentially catastrophic. Many vital crops stop growing above certain temperatures, and even the small amount of climate change we have seen so far is causing droughts and crop failures. A sea level rise of 1m (~3 feet) will displace 100 million people – and the latest projections are for a sea level increase of that magnitude this century. If temperatures rise sufficiently, and we are not doing anything to stop it, most of humanity and most species will be wiped from the face of the earth.

But devastating as climate change will ultimately be, it is not an immediate threat to us personally or to civilisation. (If you live in one of the developing countries, this is not true; bad things are happening now. The slaughter in Darfur was caused in part by the drying up of Lake Chad, which in turn was partly caused by global warming.) The major damage is expected to begin in 40-50 years, as displaced people move into crowded areas and turf wars begin, as water becomes in short supply and water wars begin, as many people realise their lives are going to be destroyed and they get angry about it.

Still, we are wired to respond to immediate threats that we can experience with our senses, and climate change has not passed that threshold yet for most people. They might be able to grasp the danger if it was presented graphically and if there were not paid fossil fuel company shills spreading misinformation and lies.

Pollution

Here I’m going to lump in everything from ocean dead zones (caused largely by excess agricultural chemicals) to acid rain to the hole in the ozone layer. All are bad news and contribute to the breakdown of the web of life that sustains us. Some we have actually taken constructive action on. None of the remaining are immediate threats, nor will be perceived as such.

While cancer rates and the number of children with asthma are believed to be directly tied to pollution, neither threatens to cause a mass collapse or revolt.

Overpopulation

Population becomes overpopulation when that population lives unsustainably. Population overshoot is certainly fatal; it has brought down civilisations in the past that exceeded the carrying capacity of their local environment. It is also a very sneaky problem, because everything can appear fine one year followed by utter collapse and a die-back the next year. There is a famous and chilling story of reindeer on St. Matthew Island that illustrates this. No doubt the ‘denier’ reindeer were saying right up until the end, “Everything is going great! Our population continues to expand, and our GDP (in the form of new reindeer, moss eaten, and poop produced) has just set another record!”

In our case, we have exceeded the ability of the entire Earth to support us, at least in the manner we currently live. We are burning through ‘natural capital’ to keep the party going; we are like the person who appears to be living the high life but in reality is financing it all on credit cards. Sooner or later, the credit is gone and the bills come due.

Many have said that the ‘real problem’ we face is simply too many people: If there were only 100 million humans, we could all live like Americans. However, there are 6.5 billion of us and population is expected to peak at 9 billion around 2050, assuming one of the other limits mentioned in this article doesn’t slow us down first. The real problem is that we are living beyond our ecological means and this has caused most of the other problems.

Resource Scarcity

We are burning through the finite resources of the earth at a fantastic rate and in very short-sighted ways. We expend enormous amounts of energy to dig up various metals, for example, use much more energy to make them into something useful to us – and then re-bury them. Again, though, except for one particular resource, none of the lithium or uranium or topsoil or other natural capital we are drawing down is going to bring civilisation to a crashing halt soon.

Peak Oil

This brings us to oil, that one ubiquitous resource without which our civilisation will end abruptly, and most of us will live much diminished and shorter lives. The reason is that oil is literally in everything in one form or another; our society is utterly dependent upon it. Our food is utterly dependent upon it.

Once we have extracted half of all available oil, rather obviously supply begins to decrease. A reduction in supply means an increase in prices, and because demand is rising, those price increases are going to be sharp and devastating. There was a pre-recession spike up to $147 per barrel, and the price now sits around $80 per barrel, or four times what it was just a few years ago.

It appears that we have hit peak oil, or will very shortly. It had to happen at some point; there was only so much oil.

Because demand for oil is increasing while supply is decreasing, the price of everything containing oil in any form – which is virtually everything – will rise. And because oil is fundamental to our civilisation, any reduction in supply must either be replaced in some way or accompanied by a scaling back of civilisation. As there are no viable replacements for oil and because we have not taken steps to ‘get off oil,’ there is going to be a nasty crash that few will escape.

Fear

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: pointing out real threats is not scaremongering. Crying wolf is OK if there really is a wolf. Riding across the region warning people “The British are coming!” is the right thing to do if it’s true. And if climate change, peak oil, and other problems are real, then only a fool calls facing up to reality scaremongering.

Fear will not kill us. It can paralyse us, but that would be no different than our current state, in which we are not responding to legitimate threats. Fear can also galvanise us to action. If you see a bear charging toward you, fear would be a normal and even useful reaction as your body is flooded with fight-or-flight hormones.

Right now we face multiple crises but we dismiss them as problems. Climate change really is that bad. We are consuming the finite resources of the earth and shitting out pollution into our air, our water, and our soil. we have built our civilisation on oil and have not prepared to live without it. Consequences are to be expected. And while some people see this, many do not.

Fear is a legitimate emotion to feel when one looks at the future for your children – even for yourself. If peak oil is now, could this recession be due to high oil prices? Could this be a permanent recession because the price of oil is only going up from now on?

Peak oil has begun and we have not prepared at all. We should rightly be feeling angry at those who have deceived us about the dangers we face, and at our supposed leaders. They have betrayed all of us.

We need to begin a crash program to ‘get off oil’ immediately. We are in a predicament, which is different from a problem because problems have solutions. Predicaments may not. Turn your fear into anger and do something useful with it.

We face a legitimate crisis: the end of the age of oil.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

You would be wise to educate yourself about the reality of these problems. Do not take the word of politicians or talking heads, many of whom are paid by vested interests like the oil companies. Don’t believe me, for that matter, until you do your own investigation back to original, i.e., scientific, sources. I am confident that when you do, you will agree that I am representing reality fairly.

The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age well describes the problem of peak oil, which is our most pressing threat.

Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (New Society Publishers) discusses the realities mentioned above, namely that as a result of living unsustainably we now face shortages: peak oil, peak fish, peak topsoil, and so on.

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is an in-depth, impeccably sourced dissection of the lies spewed by vested interests to protect their profits at everyone’s expense.

Happy reading. If you don’t know, you cannot prepare. And if you are not prepared, your chances at surviving a downturn, setback, or collapse of any sort are greatly diminished.

Peak oil means that we have used half of all the available oil on the planet. From that point forward, oil will become scarcer, harder to extract – and more expensive.

Peak oil wise men say to expect oil price volatility with an overall upward trend. Consider these signs:

• The spike to $147 per barrel in October 2008, just before the banksters crashed the economy
• The price of oil is ~$80 per barrel in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, or 400% more than it was just a few years ago.

Note that there were recessions after the oil price spikes in 1973 and 1979.

The suburban foreclosure rate is higher than the urban rate, attributed to transportation costs which are 17% of the average American’s income, undoubtedly higher for many suburbanites commuting from work to Wal-Mart to McMansion in an SUV. The suburban foreclosure rate is a probable consequence of peak oil.

There will be other consequences, too. If the wise peak oil folks are again correct, we can expect:

• Modern agri-business dependence on oil means food prices will increase
• The increasing cost of transportation will cause everything, and especially imports, to rise in price

I have predicted that the outcome of these two is that our current recession is permanent. With food, transportation, and other costs permanently higher, there will be a reduction in overall employment because more of the family budget will go to these necessities.

Offsetting this drop in employment to an unknown amount will be new farm jobs (at very low pay) and likely a throttling of immigration.

Learning more about peak oil

The following sites are excellent on the subject of peak oil:

• The Oil Drum: Discussions about energy and our future
• Future Scenarios: Mapping the cultural implications of peak oil and climate change
• The Archdruid Report: Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society

There are also some great books that explain peak oil and its consequences clearly:
James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century pretty much sums it up.

Kunstler has also written a novel, World Made by Hand, in an attempt to convey what it would be like for those living in a post-peak oil world.

John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age also does a great job explaining peak oil and why we don’t see it: we have all bought into the myth of unending progress, rather than accepting that much of our progress has come by burning oil.

The Oil Drum is one of the best resources on the web for keeping up-to-speed on peak oil’s progress and ramifications. The site also lists several “Peak Oil Primers,” and amusingly ranks them on a DEFCON scale. The DEFCON scale was designed to indicate the activation level of the U.S. military, with DEFCON 5 being “normal peacetime military readiness” all the way up to DEFCON 1, which signals an “imminent or ongoing attack.”

Having spent some time on each of those sites, I can say that they all predict very bad outcomes as peak oil progresses. TOD’s DEFCON rating appears to come from the optimism a site has about avoiding the worst of these outcomes, and how far along we are. I think it is fair to say that Kunstler and Savinar think sliding down the razor’s edge is unavoidable.

Where would you rate yourself? Do you think we still have time to develop alternatives, that peak oil has not yet arrived, that its impact will be slow and we can adapt? Put yourself at DEFCON 5, the lowest rating. Think like Kunstler and Savinar, that there are going to be significant casualties and a big chunk of civilisation will be lost? You’re at DEFCON 1. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in-between.

Personally, I stand at Defcon Zen. What is will be, and we do what we can.

I see us as just on the edge of the first step down of our punctuated decline; we’re in Greer’s first crisis. He predicts that such crises, which include economic depressions, typically last 10-25 years. During the crisis period, we are adapting to a lower availability of energy, and must scale back our civilisation accordingly.

I figure the current recession will deepen and many people will become permanently unemployed. There are millions who will simply have to find other ways to get by, or “make other arrangements” as Kunstler says, because there just won’t be jobs for everyone. In this first crisis, though, I think there will be ways for most who want to, to get by.

Conservation and local gardens have great potential to slash individual energy and food costs and energy use very quickly. They also cut the need for income. I think local responses will spring up, like local farms reviving and suddenly being profitable, as they no longer have to compete with subsidised imports.

While this means most people will eat more locally-grown and in-season food, it also means the price of food will rise. That means people have less money for everything else, and that means higher unemployment.

There are currently many farm jobs filled by migrant workers and immigrants, legal and not, and there will be great pressure to throttle immigration. I think the developed countries will have to stabilise their populations, whether they like it or not, within this crisis. Americans and Canadians will need the jobs, and will pick fruit and harvest vegetables, like it or not.

This counters the rise in unemployment to an extent as yet unknown, although the wages will be low. And so it goes, spiralling slowly down until we reach some sort of equilibrium where we can sustain a certain lifestyle, either sustainably if we’re wise, or temporarily if we’re not. In the first case, we can begin to rebuild. In the second, there will be a partial recovery and many will think good times are just around the corner, but in reality another step down awaits.

The crisis has begun; it’s going to get worse before it gets better – and it may not get better. Or, it could be an improvement on what we have in many ways. We could make a big shift to living sustainably, to implementing a zero-waste society – waste not, want not – and end up with walkable communities, net-zero energy solar houses, and a pretty decent standard of living. Fewer electronic geegaws, though.

How we respond is unknown as we proceed down this first slope. So far, there has been precious little action and disaster seems certain. But it’s a bumpy ride down, and we may wake up at any point during this first crisis. Once awake, there are wise courses of action to take, ones that lead us to a sustainable future so that this is the last crisis, and there are other courses that merely bring on another step down.

I suspect part of what wakes people up will be the ongoing devaluation of their homes. More and more people will be “underwater” and the banks will simply have to take a writedown in some way. If not willingly, there will be unignorable public resistance.

An oil war in the Falklands would be a shock, too. It would sure look like an Imperial Power siphoning off a resource from a developing country. The issue has already united Latin America. The potential for a war between the United Kingdom and Latin America could jolt people awake.

Or something could trigger a very rapid and deep decline, such as Saudi Arabia cutting back on supply significantly, regardless of the reason. War. Terrorist act. A recognition that their oil fields are in decline plus a sudden desire to use their oil to build a post-oil economy, leaving much less for export. Then it wouldn’t matter how ‘awake’ people were; the descent to a lower level will be rapid.

There is no way to know what it will take to wake humanity from its slumber, or if that is possible, and what the response would be. Given these unknown and at present unknowable variables, it only makes sense to take a Zen approach. Well, what to me is a Zen approach, given that I know very little about Buddhism:

• A good future is possible
• Wake people up
• Save my own soul

The first two I have already covered: A decent future is possible but only if people wake up and take a sustainable course of action. That is the purpose of this site.

The soul, whatever it may be, is only alive that anyone is aware as long as the body is alive, so if you want to save your soul then save your body. I am doing my best to acquire skills that will be valuable during the crisis, to ensure I have a secure place to live, a garden, a protective community, and so on.

We are entering a new and challenging era. There will be much that can be learned, many things rediscovered. It can be good or it may be bad, but ultimately we each must make the best of whatever time and circumstances we have.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The second book is John Michael Greer’s erudite explanation of peak oil and the expected outcome.

The third book is about a growing local movement to “Transition Towns,” and offers a positive vision and hope that we can make a difference locally, as our federal and state governments are not leading.

The final book is about growing your own vegetables year-round in a solar greenhouse, something we might all want to look into.

Peak oil has been explained in great depth in many places with solid supporting information. I have referenced some of those books and websites at the end of this post. Here, I will do my best to explain what peak oil is and what it means for you and us, in a dead simple manner.

What is peak oil?

The concept of peak oil is very simple: The earth has a certain amount of oil (and other fossil fuels). No more is being made. Peak oil occurs when half of this oil has been used.

It is a peak because, from that point forward, there will be less oil available. We appear to have hit the peak.

What will be the effects of peak oil?

The effects of peak oil are quite deadly and easy to understand once you realise how dependent our society is upon oil:

1. Our entire society is built on readily available and inexpensive oil. Essentially every car, transport truck, train, ship, and aeroplane runs on oil. (Or gasoline, diesel, or some other derivative of oil.) Almost all farming requires oil for fuel and for agro-chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers. All plastic is made from oil. All mining requires oil-fueled machinery, including tar mining to get more oil.
2. Demand for oil is increasing as countries like China develop.
3. As the demand for oil collides with a decreasing supply, oil prices will spike. These spikes cause recessions.
4. In addition to oil price spikes, oil prices will trend upward, causing a permanent recession, or more likely, a depression.

There you have it; peak oil is simple and deadly.

What about substitutes?

There are no substitutes available for oil in the quantities our modern economies require. Period. Remember all those vehicles, from tractors to trucks to mining equipment? None run on electricity or hydrogen or anything except oil.

Further, nor will any substitutes become available in time to replace declining oil supplies. (There is some debate whether this would be correct if a crash program was undertaken to radically cut oil demand, such as by rebuilding the rail system, moving to local, organic farming, and so on. At the current time, we are moving very slowly indeed; there is no crash program in sight, so the point is moot.)

But, but…the market?

A special word here is needed about ‘the market.’ Many believe that the market will produce non-oil-fueled ways to mine ore, to create pesticides, to run a global economy where items commonly travel thousands of kilometres before reaching their final destination. Do not put too much faith in the market.

First, it is not magic, it is simply a rough aggregation of our desires, and those are influenced by everything from advertising to legislation. Second, there is no such thing as a free market. It has been warped by corporations seeking advantage for their business. This is why General Motors bought and ripped out streetcar tracks, why GM had an electric car twenty years ago and scrapped it, and why GM received a multi-billion-dollar bailout recently.

Even without this corruption of the market, simply living in a complex society is going to result in distortions, intentional or not. Building the interstate highway system in the United States put railroads, which are far more fuel-efficient at transporting goods and people, at an economic disadvantage from which they have never recovered. Building all those roads also enabled the rise of subdivisions, now being foreclosed upon.

As oil prices increase, this will certainly drive non-oil-fueled methods of getting things done. However, remember that oil price increases also cause recessions, resulting in less money available for research and new programs. In addition, those who benefit from high oil prices will continue to resist alternatives and demand higher subsidies for themselves. Worse, unemployed and hungry people are likely to be angry, leading governments to take the easy route and subsidise the old way as long as possible, rather than doing what must be done: abandon it and move quickly to a conserver, zero waste, renewable energy economy.

Suggested resources if you want to learn more

Lester R. Brown has proposed a detailed plan to survive peak oil and stop climate change. It is available for free download or can be purchased.

The following sites are excellent on the subject of peak oil:

• The Oil Drum: Discussions about energy and our future
• Future Scenarios: Mapping the cultural implications of peak oil and climate change
• The Archdruid Report: Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society

A word of warning: To many, the Mobilisation Plan given here will seem extreme, even ridiculous. It calls for a radical restructuring of our economy, how we use energy and where we get it, how we transport things, including ourselves, how we grow our food, build our buildings, and even govern and educate ourselves. Radical it may sound, but necessary it most certainly is, and the sooner we implement something like it the more of civilisation we get to keep.

To those people who think this plan too ‘radical,’ I would suggest two things: First, what you or I think is entirely irrelevant in the face of reality. If the reality is that declining oil supplies will wreak havoc on our civilisation, then no amount of scoffing will prevent it. I would suggest you acquaint yourself with reality before deciding upon a sensible course of action. I will admit that it was only a few years ago that I would have considered this plan extreme, but I have been busy educating myself about the truth of our situation. This article assumes that you have done some research already and are aware we face multiple crises; you know I am not scaremongering, but simply confronting reality.

Second, if you are willing to think sensibly about our current economic model, that is what you will find to be ultimately insane. And you will realise that one reason such ‘radical’ changes are needed now is because we did not make smaller changes earlier. We are like the smoker who has ignored doctor’s warnings for a long time, and now faces radical surgery and possibly even death as a result.

Here are the things that must be done in developed countries, particularly Canada and the United States; you can see why we’re unlikely to do them – there will be great resistance from vested interests and the majority of unaware people. As a result, we will likely suffer greatly.

Energy

• Redirect all oil subsidies to conservation and renewable energy
• Immediate 10-year plan for energy self-reliance; no more imported oil, even from “friendlies”
• Redirect a portion of existing energy to create renewable energy; eg: take 10% of hydroelectric and dedicate it to making wind turbines

Our entire civilisation is built on “cheap oil.” This cannot be overemphasised. Oil is in virtually everything, from food to pharmaceuticals, from cars to houses. As the price of oil goes up, and it is, so will the price of virtually every single thing we need or want.

We should have been ‘getting off oil’ years ago. Back then, when the warnings first started coming in about peak oil and climate change, we had decades to make a gradual transition to an economy that used much less energy thanks to conservation, and where that energy we did require came from renewable, clean sources. Now, we are in trouble and must move very rapidly.

Transportation

• Passengers, mail, and parcels: high-speed electric rail
• Redirect all road and automaker subsidies to electrified local rail (light rail, streetcars) and long-haul rail; develop high-speed on/off loaders for freight trains
• Ban private jets; ban short-hop flights; phase out medium haul flights; ban air freight
• Overseas and long-haul flights must be off oil in 5 years or they’re grounded
• Shipping, from cruise ships to freighters, must be off oil in 5 years

Every single one of our transportation choices is entirely dependent upon oil. The recent oil price spike (up to $147 per barrel just before the recession) started to get people thinking about the cost of commuting everywhere, but it was nothing compared to what is coming. Because we transport everything by oil-fueled means, and because so little is produced locally, oil price increases will drive up the price of everything from food to iPods.

Government

• End all subsidies for anything that uses fossil fuels, including farming
• Completely open government up to scrutiny; no need for Freedom of Information requests
• Ban all lobbying; end the revolving door between government and business
• U.S.: withdraw entirely from the Middle East (including Israel) over the 10 year ‘get off oil’ plan; downsize the military to strictly national defence; use demobilised personnel to rebuild the national rail system, net-zero housing, etc.

Government is not the problem, but it is a big part of it. Any business subsidy favours that business and distorts the market. Had we never subsidised oil (in the form of tax breaks to oil companies, free roads for trucking companies, and foreign occupations), we would likely be driving electric cars and riding electric streetcars now. We would be eating organic foods. And we would not be dependent upon hostile nations for energy.

However we did, and we also did not forbid pollution; we allowed companies to use the atmosphere (and everywhere else) as a dump. In doing so we dug ourselves into a big, dark hole, and we do not have time for ‘the market’ to figure a way out. That is why I have called for subsidies to renewable energy and conservation, because we now need to overcome years of going in the wrong direction.

Government must be made entirely transparent. Every report, minutes from every meeting, budgets – all must be made immediately public (and readily searchable). Corporations must also be brought to heel; many are so large that they have more power than our elected representatives. Only by doing these two things do we have a chance of keeping these new subsidies from becoming as big and permanent a problem as the ones they replace.

Economy

• Move to a stable and sustainable economy – abandon the growth economy to the trash heap of history where it belongs
• Stabilise population now; more people need more resources
• Break up large companies; replace organizations that must be large with co-operatives with strict rules on size and influence; no business can be allowed to become To Big To Fail or large enough to influence government
• Ban advertising aimed at children; make all advertising non-tax-deductible
• Re-localise as much as possible, from decision-making to farming; decisions should be made by those affected, not remote capitalists or bureaucrats

The whole idea of a continuous growth economy on a finite planet is insane. Unchecked growth in the body is a cancer; in a segment of the economy it is a bubble. When the entire economy must grow constantly, then the entire economy is a bubble. This includes population, which must be stabilised in every country as quickly as possible. In developed countries, where population is only growing because of immigration, population can be stabilised immediately.

Unregulated capitalism is as much as disaster as the so-called socialism that led to the Soviet Union. As history has clearly demonstrated on more than one occasion, capitalism sooner-or-later devolves into crony capitalism, where one or a few companies control large market segments – and exert far too much influence on government cronies.

As corporations and governments increase in size and centralise power, people become pawns for profit. Decisions must be made by those who are affected by them, not just those who profit from them.

Food and necessities

• Relocalise farming starting immediately
• End all farm subsidies except those transitioning small, local, family farms to organic
• Enact trade protection for necessities; limit food imports to luxury items

Almost all our food is grown on massive factory farms. Every piece of farm machinery runs on oil or a derivative. Irrigation pumps run on gasoline. Fertiliser is derived from natural gas, also in decline. Pesticides and other agro-chemicals, without which industrialised farming cannot exist, are petrochemical based.  All transportation – trucks, trains, ships, and aeroplanes – run only on oil products.

Oil price increases will ripple through the system raising food prices dramatically. The only food that is immune from this effect is locally grown, small-scale organic, and we know how much that costs. We are ‘eating oil,’ and as the price of oil increases, so must the cost of our food.

There is no advantage to international trade in food, except to the multinationals receiving subsidies to do so. The United States has a population in excess of 300 million; is there really any economy of scale for food that is not possible in a market of this size?

Any country not self-reliant for necessities is vulnerable and prone to war: see: current U.S. involvement in the Middle East; any empire in history.

Shelter

• Change building codes effective immediately to net-zero energy; use current best practices until we develop more ways to build sustainably
• Plan to abandon cities like Phoenix

We can build houses and office buildings right now that require no net energy to construct or heat. It is also true that building codes favour current, grossly inefficient methods of construction. We should end this favouritism immediately.

Some cities, particularly those in the American Southwest, are completely unsustainable without a reliable supply of cheap oil. Phoenix is the poster child for this; it essentially consists of 4 million commuters living in the middle of a desert. All food, water, and energy must be brought from far away. Mass transit is not even possible because the city is so spread out. We either begin a planned rampdown of cities like Phoenix or oil shortages will do it the hard way.

Education

• Launch major research programs into sustainable building
• Educate people, rather than indoctrinate them

Our current educational system is dysfunctional, to be kind. It is really designed to train children to be obedient factory workers and unquestioning consumers, and in that it has succeeded all too well. A glance at the number of intelligent idiots (and many not so intelligent) who unquestioningly believe Fox News tells the story. Here we have a supposedly advanced society where citizens allow themselves to be rebranded as consumers, where they believe talking heads rather than scientists on matters of science like peak oil and climate change, and where economic ideology is still taken seriously despite decades of being just plain wrong.

Suggested books if you want to learn more

Lester R. Brown has proposed a plan in much more detail. It is available for free download or can be purchased.

The first two books discuss peak oil and its consequences. The second two books are plans to at least mitigate some of the crisis we face.

We are likely at or near peak oil. The effects will be devastating, including a permanent recession/depression and a major scaling back of civilisation-as-we-know-it. The current recession may well be as much due to high oil prices – now ~$80 per barrel, or quadruple the price of just a few years ago – as to the banksters.

Note: This article is aimed at people with some awareness of peak oil. (It has been increasingly in the news lately.) For a frightening and well-sourced look at expected outcomes, check out Life After the Oil Crash. If you don’t want to ‘believe’ that site, there are plenty more where that came from; I’ve sourced a few reputable sites at the end of this post along with some good peak oil books.

The key points are these:

• Our economy requires continuous growth. Our economy runs on oil. Oil substitutes are nowhere near being ready in sufficient quantity to take over, if that is even possible. Therefore, a reduction in oil supply/increase in prices means an economic contraction.

• Because oil is used for virtually every single thing in our society, from factory-farmed food, to our entire transportation system, to even building alternative energy systems, price increases will ripple through the economy and bankrupt countless people and companies.

What I want to talk about here is the expected response of various governments, especially mine (Canada) and the U.S. Given a serious depression brought on by spiking oil prices and a shortage of supply, what will governments do?

Ignore the problem

Up till now, they have largely ignored the problem, but reality is about to rear its ugly head and become quite unignorable. Still, so-called ‘conservative’ governments have a solid track record of ignoring the suffering of millions of their own people, and there’s no reason to believe that they will not try to do so again. The Great Depression was a perfect example, in which right-wing governments in Canada and the United States believed that ‘the market’ would correct itself given time.

When that didn’t happen, those governments were replaced with more activist leaders, but by then millions were utterly destitute. And now, unfortunately, all the major parties in Canada (Conservatives and Liberals) and the U.S. (Republicans and Democrats) are essentially ‘conservative,’ which in practice means in service to the wealthy.

Token gestures

This is really a variation on ignoring the problem, in which a leader pretends to take something seriously but does not actually take realistic steps to address it. Token measures may be taken, often announced with great fanfare, but the problem continues to worsen because nothing is really being done about it.

In fact, the token measures usually make the problem worse, because the powers-that-be squander money and other resources that could have been used to combat the problem. Case-in-point is the recent Canadian ‘economic stimulus,’ in which the Conservative (in name only) government handed out billions for paving driveways and adding decks to houses. A sensible response would have been to insist that all stimulus money be used for conservation, say insulating one’s house, or for alternative energy generation. This would have had the effect of saving people money and energy and slowing climate change and reducing the impact of peak oil. However, that contradicted ‘conservative’ ideology so could not be done, and as a result Canada now has billions of dollars less and continues to increase energy usage.

Baby steps

The masses are getting, restless, so Something must be done. Token gestures are no longer adequate; too many people are losing houses, going hungry, turning to crime, and otherwise making the government look bad. If Something is not done, the current government may actually be replaced.

The Obama administration’s recent announcement of a few billion for nuclear power is a baby step. It will help a tiny bit – or it may hurt. Either way, a few nuclear plants will not get the U.S. ‘off oil’ any time soon.

Alternate endings

After all avenues of non-action have been exhausted and there is real threat of political change, even insurrection, somebody may get serious about addressing the root cause of the problem – or they may claim to do so in order to seize power.

In the United States during the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt became President and his government took serious steps to end the Depression and to make sure it couldn’t happen again. In the first case, for example, FDR put people to work through civic improvement programs, and in the second the Glass-Steagal act was passed to keep the banksters in check. (Its repeal is a big part of the reason the current crop of banksters again crashed the economy.)

On the other side of the ocean, a madman used the German depression to seize power.

There is another possible ending for us. It could be that no realistic actions are taken and no megalomaniacs attain power, but things just fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Let’s go through each of these scenarios.

The Madman

Nobody wants to take this possibility seriously; I suppose we like to think we’ve ‘evolved’ past this stage of allowing such evil. Realistically, it has happened within the lifetimes of people alive today and the conditions are ripening for it to happen again, especially in the United States.

There are a very large number of seriously unhinged people in the United States, and some of them have achieved quite high levels of power. That Sarah Palin would seriously be considered as a vice-presidential – and now even a presidential – candidate is truly frightening. That tens of millions of Americans think she’s just the ticket is insane. That Rush Limbaugh has 25 million ‘ditto-heads’ speaks to the debasement of the American people.

The U.S. has only two parties, and one has allowed the other to wage a ‘culture war’ for the purpose of dividing the nation and making it easier (for them) to conquer. They are abetted by a sniveling, corporate media that has fought in court for the right to not tell the truth when reporting news. The other party (the Democratic Party, in case you were wondering) is little better, and Obama is, in practice, little different from his predecessor. Many people elected Obama thinking him to be another FDR, not Bush-lite.

All of this sets up the conditions for a strong leader to sweep into power and take control – all that is needed is a crisis. A peak oil-induced depression will be a very serious crisis indeed.

The centre cannot hold

It is quite possible that our political parties are so corrupt that they will dither and hand-wave and make token gestures until the country simply falls apart. If federal governments remain ineffectual and lose sufficient credibility, and if people are suffering greatly, then the federal government may become obsolete.

This could happen in various ways. Regional leaders may arise who provide an answer – perhaps not one that works, but that appears to work long enough. These leaders may push for secession of their region.

Or, things could just disintegrate into something like James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand, where even provincial/state governments fade away and everything reverts to the local level. Communities live or die individually according to the leadership shown therein.

Given that rising oil prices have a strongly localising effect, this ending is quite possible. As oil prices rise, for example, so do transportation costs. That favours local manufacturing, local farming, and individual conservation over giant, remote generating plants. As communities come to rely on their own resources more-and-more, and as the higher levels of government continue to extract taxes that provide less-and-less value to people, there will be a strong pull away from federalism. Nobody likes taxation without representation….

Half-assed action

Both of these outcomes are non-solutions to our current predicament, which is that the price of oil is going to keep going up while the supply diminishes, progressively rolling back technology and civilisation. The final possibility is that a strong leader who ‘gets it’ somehow attains power and takes some action, but not likely enough to get us to a sustainable way of living. Keep in mind that this person could be a Hitler or an FDR.

Let’s think this through from the point-of-view of this strong leader (could be national or regional).

• He (for convenience I’m using the masculine) recognizes that the oil supply is dwindling and there is nothing he can do to prevent that.
• Insufficient action has been taken to prevent many of the worst effects, and so there will have to be a significant change in living standards; in particular, there are many things the government will no longer have the money to do.
• The market did not and will not solve the problem.
• Localisation will be driven by increasing costs of transportation, and this is a threat to national/regional unity.

What to do?

Realistically, the only choice is to redirect remaining energy supplies to building a sustainable society. This sounds simple and even appealing, but in reality it means a huge change in how we live and will be strenuously resisted by everyone from CEOs to commuters. As a result, any leader will almost certainly take a ‘half-assed’ approach to get us through the worst of the crisis, thus permitting a partial recovery and setting us up for the next crash.

For example, fuel economy standards will be raised, school buses may be pressed into service as commuter buses, growth of suburbs may be curtailed, building codes will be revised, and quite possibly a large-scale build-out of alternative energy will begin, with wind and nuclear in the lead.

Conservation will be strongly encouraged, and governments may no longer be able to give plum deals to heavy industrial consumers, for example the aluminium industry. Recycling could take off. Sports teams and rock stars will no longer be able to jet around the country in order to make millions. Local agriculture will revive somewhat. There will be a lot of people who have to find new ways to get by as cubicle jobs evaporate.

All of this may get us to a point where we can plug along for awhile at $100 per barrel oil, or $200, or wherever it settles briefly. John Michael Greer suggests this first crisis period will last 10-25 years, and this seems reasonable. However, the continuous growth economy will still be in place, the supply of oil will continue to diminish, and competition for the remaining oil will increase, so at some point there will be another collision between the two and another step down.

The only way to prevent this is to move to a sustainable way of living. The means exist to do this, but, as mentioned already, there will be very strong resistance, so most likely we will not go all the way there. Unfortunately, the longer we wait, the less resources (primarily oil and gas) we will have to fuel the transition, and the closer will be other, very serious problems like climate change. If you’ve been following the latter at all, you know that the cost of mitigating climate change now is vastly less than the cost of attempting to adapt to it later – and we’ll have less resources to to do.

I’ll detail the steps we really need to take in the next article.

Suggested books and sites if you want to learn more

There are several excellent websites that discuss peak oil.

• The Oil Drum: Discussions about energy and our future
• Energy Bulletin: Peak oil primer
• ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas): Understanding peak oil

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book (from left-to-right) inspired the movie Collapse, currently in the theatres. The book pulls no punches about what we can expect in a post-peak oil world.

James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century has been a big seller and quite influential. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The third book is Kunstler’s World Made by Hand, which essentially describes the outcome of “The centre cannot hold” scenario. The U.S. reverts to a very local ‘economy’; life is shorter and more brutish.

The next final book describes the outcome of an experiment that took off and became wildy popular: The 100-mile diet. The authors attempted to live only on foods grown within 100 miles of their home. They were motivated by concerns about climate change, but in reality peak oil is going to strike first and make the 100-mile diet a necessity rather than an option. (I discussed some serious concerns about this even being possible today in Why Most Food Could Never Be “Local” – What this means in a peak oil world to your food choices, to the 100-mile diet, and to vegetarians.)

(This article makes more sense if you read the first part: Why don’t more of us conserve more? I’m looking at you…and myself.)

Given the challenges we face – climate change, peak oil, etc – why don’t I reduce my lifestyle further, even below that of ‘developed world middle class’? Why shouldn’t everyone who calls him or herself ‘environmentally aware?’

• I am not saying I am entitled to this lifestyle, only that I have it, it’s good, and it would be foolish to give it up unless forced;

BECAUSE

• It is possible to create a middle class lifestyle that is carbon-neutral, sustainable, doesn’t exploit people, and so on;

BUT

• We allowed corrupt people to take advantage of imperfect systems to make doing the right thing very difficult and expensive.

The best known way to get people to behave according to social norms is – peer pressure. I’m working hard to push us over the tipping point where it is normal to conserve, normal to live within your ecological means, and shameful to waste.

Whether I succeed or fail in creating this, some of my journey must on roads rather than rails. Solar houses are not commonly built, so I must build my own, and in the meantime I will endeavour to live in comfortable, but not excessive, surroundings. 

A New Definition of Middle Class

I should make clear that I define ‘middle class’ as a standard of living, not a collection of things, but to make it simple, middle class means to me:

• Owning your own home (or renting if preferred)
• A home that is largely passively solar heated, maximum size 200 square metres (~2,150 square feet), durable (built to last 1,000 years), beautiful, and comfortable
• No need for a car
• The ability to buy necessities like food, clothing, and furniture as needed
• Working an average of four days per week, 9 months per year

To me, middle class means freedom from fear of doing without the essentials of life like food, shelter, clothing, and so on. Note I include much more time off than we currently get, but not necessarily the ability to jet around the world on tropical vacations. Middle class means you can buy what you need, you have savings, you have security; to be poor is to lack all of these. (To be rich is to have much more than you need for security; to have excess.)

Note that my definition of middle class does not include a McMansion in the suburbs and SUVs for each driver. I also make no mention of electronic geegaws, although if you can afford furniture comfortably, then there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to buy some of them.

Some will argue that houses should be considerably smaller, but I disagree. This is a lesson from Colombia, where my wife is from. Houses and apartments there commonly have three or four bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms, and are decently spacious. Small houses work well for small families, but extended families need more space. Houses should have room for grandparents, visiting relatives, even boarders.

What Could Have Been

This level of middle class was readily achievable during the age of oil. It will be more difficult in a time of declining oil supplies and rising concerns about the damage we’ve done to the ecology, but it is still possible. There are houses that are close to sustainable and will last for hundreds of years. Had we been building these since, say, the 1970s when scientists sounded the first serious warnings about environmental damage and limited resources, most of our buildings would be now be good for another several hundred years. That relieves a huge burden – and means much less work in the building trades.

Eliminate our disposable society and we eliminate much waste – and many jobs. If few cars are required and houses last essentially forever, the four-day work week is well within reach.

We need to change how we live and I am willing to do so – I see the necessity, and I can see how the world could be better in many ways. I know the fault is as much with the crooks who have corrupted our system as with the meek remainder who let them, even willingly ignored inconvenient contradictory evidence because we gained some benefit ourselves.

It would be stupid for me to live as a peasant unless I have to. Which, if we don’t do something about peak oil, becomes a distinct possibility. And there’s the predicament. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my lifestyle and quite possibly life expectancy are about to be greatly curtailed. Therefore, I must learn to control circumstances.

There is no shortage of evidence that we have the technology we need to ‘green’ our energy supply. From Pacala and Socolow’s Stabilization Wedges to 100 Miles of Mirrors, we have what we need to drastically cut carbon emissions and get off oil. The cost of acting now is vastly less than acting later – an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure – and there could even be a huge net savings. The United States, for example, would no longer need a military ‘presence’ in the Middle East. So why aren’t we taking serious steps in that direction?

Why aren’t we moving? The answers, I believe, are denial and vested interests.

Vested Interests Protect Their Own Interests

Let’s start with the obvious: vested interests. U.S. oil, coal, and auto companies have spent a ton of money ‘influencing’ politicians to ensure that subsidies, tax breaks, and favourable legislation continue to protect their businesses. Favourable legislation includes spending on roads rather than electric trains, for example.

In addition, those same vested interests have given many millions to marketing firms thinly disguised as ‘think tanks’ to promote the theory that the market will solve all problems, and that to interfere with its workings is dangerous and even immoral. Dangerous, because interference will introduce distortions in prices so that actors in the market – buyers and sellers at all levels – will be acting on false information. (This ignores the rather obvious fact that the vested interests have been working very hard to bend the market in their favour in various ways for decades.)

And immoral, because the market has been put on a pedestal. That is, these ‘think tanks’ have been promoting the idea that the market is infallible and to tamper with it is to disrupt something sacred and pure. This is why more objective observers call such market worshippers Market Fundamentalists. Perhaps it should be more properly termed the Market.

It should be quite obvious to even a casual observer that the ‘Market’ is far from perfect. Perhaps they missed all the recent bubbles, the current recession, climate change, the huge executive bonuses for CEOs of companies on welfare? This brings us to the second, much larger problem.

Denial: Ignorance is Bliss…for now

In order to continue to pretend that the magical market will solve all problems, people must come up with all kinds of often insane justifications and must ignore – even attack – contrary evidence. The ‘think tanks’ do plenty of both, and they in turn feed the media and many individuals. Given the sorry state of the mainstream media, much of the time it simply regurgitates whatever press release or trumped-up justification for the market failure-de-jour that the think tanks send, and willing Americans, Canadians, and others lap it up because it fits with what they want to hear.

In order to pretend that everything is rosy, it is necessary to overlook inconvenient facts. For example, yesterday I wrote an article stating we should limit immigration to a level that stabilises the population in the United States and Canada. I have been roundly attacked for this by people who completely ignore facts they don’t want to know.

Some called me a racist, although I did mention in the article that my wife and many friends are Colombian. I guess I’m not doing racism right. Others just called me crazy. Maybe, but I can be crazy and right. The most serious problem, though, is that nobody addressed the main issue: Sooner or later, population growth must stop. Rather than face up to this reality, most people simply choose to ignore it and/or attack the messenger.

The same pattern is repeated with peak oil, the idea that, sooner or later, the oil must run out. Many people simply ignore that reality and pretend that either it never will, or at least not now. Any evidence that the oil is running out now, or that we should prepare for such an event, is ignored or attacked. Climate change has been turned into a political circus by shills – the think tanks and paid marketers for oil and coal companies – despite the rather obvious and growing evidence that yes, humans can and are affecting the climate.

Stop the Insanity

To deny reality is foolish, even insane, yet that is what the majority of our society does, including many so-called ‘leaders.’ Some of these people are highly intelligent, but they are sorely lacking in wisdom. Ignorance may be bliss for a time but reality’s a cold, hard bitch. When the oil starts to run short and prices spike – that’s a bit late to start thinking about converting an economy and civilisation that is totally, utterly built on cheap oil.

When the climate is changing – irreversibly and for the worse for humans – that’s a bit late to stop what’s causing the change. When population turns into overpopulation, it’s too late to think about reducing it; Mother Nature will take care of it, though.

It has been said that humans respond to crisis well, but not to long-term threats. This is one of the reasons we were able to retool our economies so quickly for World War II (after years of denying the evidence of Nazi Germany’s military build-up and Hitler’s stated plans), but seem paralysed in the face of creeping threats like peak oil, climate change, and overpopulation.

Of course, many more people might realise that these things are crises if they were not being told otherwise by the media and leaders, who are saying that because that’s what they’re being paid to say. Ain’t the Market grand?

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Savvy people have used crises in the past – for better or for worse. The Bush administration jumped all over the terrorist attack of 9/11 to launch two wars, enrich their friends, and eliminate many Constitutional rights. Bush and Obama  used the economic meltdown to enrich their bankster cronies. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Great Depression to bring in numerous social reforms that exist – and are cherished by millions – to this day.

Today, we face multiple crises, any of which could be absolutely devastating: peak oil appears to be first in line, with climate change, overpopulation, and resource drawdown not far behind.

What is it going to take before we realise that these crises are just that, and respond accordingly?