Peak Everything (7 page)

Again, my thesis: many problems rightly deserve attention, but the problem of our dependence on fossil fuels is central to human survival, and so as long as that dependence continues to any significant extent we must make its reduction the centerpiece of all our collective efforts — whether they are efforts to feed ourselves, resolve conflicts, or maintain a functioning economy.

But this can be formulated in another, more encouraging, way. If we do focus all of our collective efforts on the central task of energy transition, we may find ourselves contributing to the solution of a wide range of problems that would be much harder to solve if we confronted each one in isolation. With a coordinated and voluntary reduction in fossil fuel consumption, we could see substantial progress in reducing many forms of environmental pollution. The decentralization of economic activity that we must pursue as transport fuels become more scarce could lead to more local jobs, more fulfilling occupations, and more robust local economies. A controlled contraction in the global oil trade could lead to a reduction of international political tensions. A planned conversion of farming to non-fossil fuel methods could mean a decline in the environmental devastation caused by agriculture and economic opportunities for millions of new farmers. Meanwhile, all of these efforts together could increase equity, community involvement, intergenerational solidarity, and the other intangible goods listed earlier.

Surely this is a future worth working toward.

The subtitle of this book, “Waking Up to the Century of Declines,” reflects my impression that even those of us who have been thinking
about resource depletion for many years are still just beginning to awaken to its full implications. And if we are all in various stages of waking up
to
the problem, we are also waking up
from
the cultural trance of denial in which we are all embedded.
¹⁵

This awakening is multi-dimensional. It is not just a matter of becoming intellectually and dispassionately convinced of the reality and seriousness of Climate Change, Peak Oil, or any other specific problem. Rather, it entails an emotional, cultural, and political catharsis. The biblical metaphor of scales falling from one's eyes is as apt as the pop culture meme of taking the red pill and seeing the world beyond the Matrix: in either case, waking up implies realizing that the very fabric of modern life is woven from illusion — thousands of illusions, in fact.

Holding that fabric together is one master illusion, the notion that somehow what we see around us today is
normal.
In a sense, of course, it
is
normal: the daily life experience of millions of people is normal by definition. The reality of cars, television, and fast food is calmly taken for granted; if life has been like this for decades, why shouldn't it continue, with incremental developmental changes, indefinitely? But how profoundly this “normal” life in a typical modern city differs from the lives of previous generations of humans! And the fact that it is built on the foundation of cheap fossil fuels means that future generations must and will live differently.

Again, the awakening I am describing is an ongoing visceral as well as intellectual reassessment of every facet of life — food, work, entertainment, travel, politics, economics, and more. The experience is so all-encompassing that it defies linear description. And yet we must make the attempt to describe and express it; we must turn our multi-dimensional experience into narrative, because that is how we humans process and share our experiences of the world.

The great transition of the 21
^st
century will entail enormous adjustments on the part of every individual, family and community, and if we are to make those adjustments successfully, we will need to plan rationally. Implications and strategies will have to be explored in nearly every area of human interest — agriculture, transportation, global war and peace, public health, resource management,
and on and on. Books, research studies, television documentaries, and every other imaginable form of information transferal will be required to convey needed knowledge in each of these areas. Moreover, there is the need for more than explanatory materials; we will need citizen organizations that can turn policy into action, and artists to create cultural expressions that can help fire the collective imagination. Within this whirlwind of analysis, adjustment, creativity, and transformation, perhaps there is need and space for a book that simply tries to capture the overall spirit of the time into which we are headed, that ties the multifarious upwellings of cultural change to the science of global warming and Peak Oil in some hopefully surprising and entertaining ways, and that begins to address the psychological dimension of our global transition from industrial growth to contraction and sustainability.

This book was conceived during a brief stay in a tiny village in west Cornwall in late 2006. Perhaps the bleakness of the countryside at that season is reflected in the title. However, I hope also that Cornwall's rugged beauty and its people's remaining connections with down-to-earth, pre-industrial ways of thinking and of doing things are also somehow represented, if only indirectly, in these pages.

The chapters herein are self-contained essays and while I have made every effort to put them into a helpful and logical order, readers who like to savor a book's last chapter first or to read chapters out of sequence will find that this approach works reasonably well here.

Each chapter has a story attached to it, which I will relate briefly.

“Tools with a Life of Their Own” was written in response to a penciled letter from the representative of a radical anti-technology magazine asking for an article. I wrote the requested article and sent it to the e-mail address noted in the letter. Then, when no reply was forthcoming, I sent a printout of the essay via “snail mail” to the return address on the envelope. Still no reply. To this day I do not know whether my article was rejected, whether my messages were intercepted by Federal agents, or whether the magazine's editors' ambivalence about technology rendered them unable to
manage their communications responsibly. The essay was later published in the anthology
Living a Life of Value,
edited by Jason A. Merchey.
¹⁶

“Fifty Million Farmers” is the edited text of a speech delivered in November, 2006 to the E. F. Schumacher Society (which has published the full version).
¹⁷
Over the past few months I have offered essentially the same message to the Ecological Farming Association in Asilomar, California, the National Farmers Union of Canada in Saskatoon, and the Soil Association in Cardiff, Wales. Each time I discussed the likely impacts of Peak Oil and gas for modern agriculture, and emphasized the need for dramatic, rapid reform in our global food system.

“Five Axioms of Sustainability” came from many years of frustration over the widespread, careless use of the terms
sustainable
and
sustainability.
The words would not have gained so much currency if many people were not worried that our society is in some sense
un
sustainable — i.e., that it cannot survive in its current form. Yet the terms are frequently tacked onto practices and programs (e.g., “sustainable yields” on investments) that can have no substantial impact whatever on society's ability to survive into the future. This chapter represents my effort to help refine our working definitions of these key terms. It is somewhat tougher reading than the rest of the book, and I had thought of making it an appendix; however, it is not an afterthought, but goes to the heart of every other significant discussion in the text.

Three chapters were inspired by creative works: “(
post-
) Hydrocarbon Aesthetics” came from a visit to an Arts and Crafts museum exhibit; “Parrots and Peoples” followed my viewing of the documentary film
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill;
and “Population, Resources, and Human Idealism” was my response to the Broadway musical,
Urinetown.
In each case, the result was not a review in the usual sense, but rather an exploration of ideas relating to the theme of this book.

“The Psychology of Peak Oil and Climate Change” arose from scores of conversations with people about their experience of the awakening process. Clearly, humanity is addicted to fossil fuels, and
this essay offers some suggestions on what sorts of group therapy might help us kick the habit.

I was inspired to write “Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism” after participating in two days of meetings in San Francisco in the fall of 2006, in which prominent Climate Change and Peak Oil activists attempted to form common strategies. It was my impression that the discussants often did not understand one another well, hence my effort to sort out the issues and point toward potential paths for better communication and coordination of efforts.

“Boomers' Last Chance?” is both a personal
mea culpa
and a plea to the other members of my demographic cohort. We may belong to the peak generation, in that we will have consumed something like half the world's nonrenewable resources during our lifetime. We have enjoyed an unprecedented party, but the privilege of having a place at this greatest banquet in history implies an enormous responsibility to future generations.

“A Letter From the Future,” originally published in 2000, is of the genre of the classic novel
Looking Backward: 2000-1887
by Edward Bellamy, which imagined, from that writer's perspective in the late 19
^th
century, life in our time. Bellamy's vision inevitably proved myopic: while
Looking Backward
was popular and influential (it sold over a million copies and inspired many Progressive reforms throughout the next two decades), it did not successfully anticipate the world of the early 21
^st
century. Bellamy saw our era as one in which government would control the means of production and divide wealth equally between all people and in which all citizens would receive a college education and be given freedom in choosing a career, from which they would retire at age 45. In short, Bellamy foresaw a socialist utopia and entirely missed the realities of globalization, sweat shops, and environmental devastation. My own effort is likely to be just as inaccurate — though while Bellamy's failed by being too sanguine, I hope mine proves too dire.

“Talking Ourselves to Extinction” is a meditation on the power of language — a tool whose development and use has shaped us as a species. Cultural evolution occurred primarily because language
enabled us to coordinate our efforts to respond quickly to environmental challenges and opportunities. Words have given us power over nature, and have given some human groups power over others. Today, if we are to survive, we must change our collective behavior radically and swiftly; only our species' unique linguistic talent is capable of orchestrating such an evolutionary shift. This book is a testament of hope that words can help us recognize the limits of nature, and the limits of power itself, before it is too late.

N
EARLY EVERYONE complains from time to time that our tools have become Sorcerer's Apprentices; that we have come to serve our machines instead of the other way around; and that, increasingly, our lives are regimented as if we ourselves were mere cogs in a vast mechanism utterly beyond our control.

We are not the first people to feel this way: criticism of technology has a history. The Luddites of early 19
^th
-century England were among the first to raise their voices — and hammers! — against the dehumanizing side effects of mechanization. As industrialization proceeded decade-by-decade — from powered looms to steam shovels, jet planes, and electric toothbrushes — objections to the accelerating, mindless adoption of new technologies waxed erudite. During the past century, books by Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, Kirkpatrick Sale, Stephanie Mills, Chellis Glendinning, Jerry Mander, John Zerzan, and Derrick Jensen, among others, have helped generations of readers understand how and why our tools have come to enslave us, colonizing our minds as well as our daily routines.