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.

I can’t say precisely when, so by “soon” I mean within two years at most. My reasoning is below; I’d be curious to hear feedback.

Given that the:

1. Price of oil spiked to $147 per barrel in 2008
2. Current oil price is $80, even though we’re in the worst recession since the Great Depression

I reason that:

1. The price of oil remains ~$80 per barrel because demand is keeping it there.
2. The U.S. is in recession with oil at that price, no recovery is coming. We are in a permanent recession.
3. With oil at those prices during a recession – four times that of just a few years ago – indicates we have hit the limits of supply at this price. That is, oil producers cannot pump more to get the price down, even if they wanted to (which most don’t).

However, demand in China continues to grow, and we continue to burn far more oil than we’re finding, so this means another oil price spike is almost certain within two years. The U.S. economy may find a way to recover somewhat, too; perhaps another bubble can be found. And the Americans are starting to drive more, again. That will push demand up.

Demand is going to push on supply, and price is going to go up fast, followed by a crash to a lower level than we are now. We have to reach a level of recession where we are consuming considerably less oil, or are considerably less dependent upon oil.

As we’re not doing anything serious about consuming or being less dependent upon oil, there will be another spike and crash.

Don’t wait for your federal government or even state/provincial government to provide leadership. They will at best respond too late, once we’re mid-crisis or beyond. Make your town a transition town.

Peak oil is that point in time at which we have burned half or all the available oil. After this time, there is progressively less oil, it is harder to get, and the price trends up – likely with nasty, recession-causing price spikes. However, the realization that the oil supply is running down is even more important, because with this awareness will come some significant changes in behaviour.

Oil exporters (Dealers)

Oil exporting nations waking up to the fact that the world oil supply is diminishing, and acknowledging the reality that their own country’s supply has peaked, are almost certain to reduce exports. To do otherwise would be suicidal in most cases. Let’s take Saudi Arabia as an example:

• Population: 28 million
• Oil: 90% of exports and 75% of government revenue
• Country: mostly desert; only 2% arable

This is not a recipe for domestic tranquillity when the oil revenues stop, or even drop. Less revenue means less services, like roads and hospitals and pensions, and that will make the masses restive. It also means fewer imports, and for a country that has far too many people living in the desert, a shortage of food imports will quickly make the masses violent.

Saudi Arabia is an oil exporter. As acceptance of the idea of peak oil sets in, whether that date is now or simply soon, exporters know that:

• They must get off oil themselves or their economy will collapse, people will starve and/or riot, imports will stop, and they will go back to being nomads in the desert. If they survive the riots.
• Oil is only going to go up in price. Repeat that, and think about what it means: Oil is only going to go up in price. That means that every barrel you sell now could have been sold for more – maybe a lot more – within a few years. So what’s the rush to pump it and ship it?

I should point out that this is a predicament, not a problem for Saudi Arabia and many other countries; there is not necessarily a solution. They may have overpopulated their country to the point that they are reliant upon imports for necessities like food and even water. Once they have no more oil to export, the following are likely outcomes but hardly “solutions”:

1. Mass starvation down to a level that the land can support (a die-back)
2. Mass exodus into neighbouring countries, destabilising them
3. Wars for access to water and arable land
4. All of the above

Responses to the Peak Oil Predicament for Exporters

Leaders, as intentionally obtuse as they have been about peak oil, once they ‘get it’ they will work to ensure that they are protected. It is important to think about it from this point of view, as it is the closest to the actual motivation felt by leaders. Their primary motivation will not be you or your lifestyle. They will want to protect (and continue enhancing) their position, power, and money, and that of their cronies. If you are fortunate, your Dear Leader will choose a way that also helps the masses. They have some options:

• Massive force and a police state to keep the masses in check, as the Soviet Union, North Korea, and any number of other dictatorships have done or currently do.
• “Ethnic cleansing,” or any other excuse to reduce the population and provide a target for people’s anger.
• Continue subsidising an unsustainable lifestyle until it all comes crashing down – people are starving and/or rioting, parts of the country are seceding, the centre has lost all credibility. This happened to the U.S.S.R. and has happened to many empires. It is predicted for the United States on its current course.
• Use remaining oil to build a non-oil-dependent, regionally sustainable economy. So far, only the Scandinavian countries are serious about this, although Germany and some of the other European countries, and Brazil are heading in that direction.

The first three options make oil supply unstable. The final option means there will simply be less oil available for export.

Oil importers (Junkies)

Oil importing nations waking up to the reality of oil shortages and price increases are going to be in a world of hurt. The current recession is very likely permanent, and another oil spike will only deepen it. Let’s take the United States as an example:

• Consumes 25% of the global oil supply; possesses only 3% of world oil reserves
• Imports 60% of its oil needs
• Every economic recession in the past 40 years has been preceded by a significant increase in oil prices
• More than 40% of total U.S. energy demands and almost 100% of transportation fuels are oil-based

Any crimp in the oil supply, or any significant increase in prices, and the U.S. is in recession. Industrial-scale farming is also wholly dependent upon oil, so oil price increases mean food price increases. I have previously suggested that the current recession is permanent because the price of oil does not appear to be returning to levels of recent years; it is now ~$80 per barrel versus the $20 per barrel it had been for many years before, even though we are in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The United States is an oil importer, and as the idea of peak oil becomes accepted, importers know that:

• They must reduce their dependence upon oil very rapidly or their economies will suffer severe setbacks
• Food and transportation prices will increase, leading to poorer and unhappier people
• Oil is going to go up in price from this point forward, and this will only cause further economic contraction

As for exporters, this is a predicament: there are responses but not really solutions. The solution was to ‘get off oil’ starting 20 years ago, but that path was not taken. Leaders will know that people are going to be very angry as living standards decline. They will be looking for someone and/or something to blame, and U.S. leaders from Congressmen to oil company executives will be likely targets.

As oil prices spike and wreck oil-dependent economies, some possible outcomes are:

1. Mass starvation down to a level that the land can support (a die-back)
2. Population decline as recent immigrants leave
3. Wars for access to oil
4. Breakup of the nation into smaller, more self-reliant pieces
5. All of the above

The first is unlikely but not impossible. The second and third are happening now in the U.S., and the fourth, once unimaginable, now seems at least possible given the division within the country – and hard times haven’t even hit yet.

Responses to the Peak Oil Predicament for Importers

Importers can either reduce imports or find a way to keep the oil coming regardless of declining supply. The most recent U.S. overthrow of Iraq was arguably an attempt to keep the oil flowing; certainly the U.S. has overthrown governments in the past to keep the oil flowing. The United States has a large military presence in the Middle East for just that purpose.

Importers, interestingly, also have the same possible responses to peak oil as exporters:

• Massive force and a police state to keep the masses in check, as the Soviet Union, North Korea, and any number of other dictatorships have done or currently do.
• “Ethnic cleansing,” or any other excuse to reduce the population and provide a target for people’s anger.
• Continue subsidising an unsustainable lifestyle until it all comes crashing down – people are starving and/or rioting, parts of the country are seceding, the centre has lost all credibility. This happened to the U.S.S.R. and has happened to many empires. It is predicted for the United States on its current course.
• Use remaining oil to build a non-oil-dependent, regionally sustainable economy. So far, only the Scandinavian countries are serious about this, although Germany and some of the other European countries, and Brazil are heading in that direction.

The first three options don’t “solve” anything, at least not for you and I. Unfortunately, many ‘democracies’ have put in place laws that allow the federal government great power in the event of an “emergency,” especially anything that can be defined as “terrorism.” My friend recently had a rude awakening about this when the police showed up at his door to ask about an email he had sent that mentioned blockading the Canadian tar sands; how they got the email they would not say.

The final option is not being pursued or even seriously considered in countries like the United States, as the third option is flogged to death. This makes the first two options more likely in the long run.

Awareness is a Powerful Thing

We do not have to actually hit the ‘peak’ of oil for the previously mentioned things to start happening. All that has to happen is for enough people – especially those in power – to realise peak oil is coming and what it will mean.

The responses to oil supply concerns so far by importers have destabilised world peace and the world economy. There is no reason to believe that the current crop of world leaders will take serious action to ‘get off oil,’ making a crash progressively more likely.