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What do we mean by transition?

As if climate change was not enough, the very cheap energy which we have come to depend on for economic growth may soon no longer be available.  So we actually have two major problems that are the result of our dependency on fossil fuels, and some solutions to one will only make the other worse - for example: expansion of coal-fired power stations to "keep the lights on" will almost certainly push us over a dangerous climate threshold.  So what are we to do?  What ideas can help us find a more sustainable yet abundant future?  

New ideas in economics and transitioning to a more sustainable society are coming forward to tackle both challenges, but let’s first take a closer look our energy future, and particularly at Peak Oil.

What is Peak Oil?

Since the beginning of the Oil Age in 1858, this incredibly energy-dense substance has become absolutely essential to the most basic functions of everyday life. A single gallon of petrol contains roughly the equivalent of 500 to 750 hours of hard human labour, making our modern society capable of far more work than at any other time in history.  Being a liquid, it is easier to extract and transport than coal and natural gas, and it provides the raw materials for many chemicals and most plastics.  Unfortunately for us, however, its very usefulness means that we have now arrived at a point where most of our economic activities, not to mention our living arrangements, are built on the assumption that oil will always be readily available at affordable prices. Modern transportation systems have become reliant on it.  Over 90% of our transportation uses oil in the form of gasoline, diesel or kerosene (jet fuel). Aside from the ecosystem services provided by nature, oil is probably the single most important economic resource on the planet.

Global crude oil production now stands at nearly 75 million barrels a day but there are increasingly glaring signs that it can't go on for ever.  Unlike the petrol in the tank of your car, it is not precisely when we use the last drop that matters. Things get difficult when we reach the maximum rate of global extraction, which occurs when approximately half of all the oil that is in the ground has been used up.  From that point onward there will always be less of it extracted, year-on-year.  After this "Peak Oil" moment demand will continuously outstrip supply (unless there is a severe global recession) and prices will escalate.  The prices of natural gas and coal, the most accessible alternatives to oil for power generation, would quickly follow suit.

At current rates of consumption we will most likely pass global peak oil sometime between 2010 and 2015.  Some say that, in fact, it has already happened -- crude oil production has been on a bumpy plateau since 2005 and the export rates of oil producing nations are beginning to decline faster than their production rates as more of their oil goes to domestic consumption (they only pay 25c a gallon in Saudi Arabia after all).  All the indications are that Russia, one of the top oil exporters, has hit peak production this year, and despite increasing international pressure and record prices, OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has continued to state that the market is well supplied.  Even the major independent oil companies have acknowledged that there is a problem: the CEO of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer, issued a statement in January 2008 to his employees which stated "Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy to access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand". An influential investigation for the US Department of Energy stated that "without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented".  It recommended that efforts to make the necessary changes should begin 20 years prior to the peak. We will only know the exact date of the peak in hindsight; it looks like we may be a little late already (see figure below).

(source: Energy Watch Group)

This all must sound bleak but there is much that we can and should do right now, especially in the absence of inspiring leadership from government and business.  Does the exact date of peak oil really matter?  We know that it will be soon and that its effects could be ‘unprecedented’ so we need to start thinking about what our response should be right now.

How did we get here?

Perhaps before we ask what we can do about all this, we need to ask the question, how did we get here?    The answer could be very important because it may be difficult to solve our problems using the same way of thinking that created them in the first place.  This is the piece of the puzzle which always gets overlooked: our economic system does not recognise some fundamental biophysical limits.   Modern economics is based on the assumption that it is possible to have infinite growth, yet we only have one planet spinning in the dark void of space to live on.  Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, so, whether we like it or not, the size of the economy is ultimately limited by either the stock of fossil fuels, of which there are finite amount, or the renewable energy of the sun, which reaches the earth at a finite rate of flow.  We are rapidly depleting fossil fuels (at the cost of dangerous climate change) and make minimal use of solar energy.

We also need to consider the ecological limits.  Ecosystems have largely been viewed only as a source of food and raw materials but their structure (which emerges from their biodiversity) and their biological processes also provide the ecosystem services which benefit us all.  However, our economic system currently doesn't place a value these ecological gifts. Nobody can own a stable climate, or fresh water from forested watersheds, or the biodiversity which generates thee ecosystem services which sustain life and absorb our industrial waste products, so they are outside the market, which means there is no price signal which goes back to the market when these things are in trouble.  

We are, in effect, spending the natural capital of the planet, including finite resources like oil, and calling it income.  But when these things are in trouble it actually represents a cost to every living thing which depends on them.  Economic growth as we presently measure it is in fact very often uneconomic growth because we don't count the costs of those activities which pollute or degrade those benefits (ecosystem services) in the prices that we pay.  These costs are simply passed on to the rest of us (including other species) and to future generations (and of course, future generations don't get to vote).

We need solutions that address Peak oil in the context of climate change

At this point it is usual for claims to be made that substitutes can keep business as usual going. However, substituting for oil is not an easy matter, and certainly not at current rates of consumption. For an energy source to be useful to society it must deliver more energy than it takes to find, harvest and distribute it (known as energy return on energy investment, or EROEI). Our economies have become addicted to energy sources like oil with EROEIs of 100:1 to 20:1, whereas biofuels, tar sands, and many biofuel technologies range from about 10:1 to 1:1 or less. To fuel the American vehicle fleet using corn ethanol would require about 1.8 billion acres of corn grown year after year.  This would use a land area equal to 4 1/2 times that currently available.  If a fuel has an EROEI of 1:1 it may be effectively useless because as much energy goes into producing the fuel as the fuel itself delivers.

Very often the proposed substitutes for oil, while they may “keep the current system going at any cost”, have harmful effects on climate and ecosystems.  Increased biofuel production would require huge increases in fertiliser and water use, and in many countries results in the destruction of rainforest.  Similarly, extraction of oil from tar sands is a highly energy intensive process, so adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Building resilient communities in the face of climate change and peak oil

Let's take a look at how the era of cheap energy – and more specifically oil – has shaped our communities and the wider economy.  For the last 50 years we have seen the expansion of globalisation, where the production of goods and services has been progressively outsourced to countries where the costs, especially of labour, are cheapest. Long-distance transport of those goods was never a major problem with cheap fuel prices, but it has resulted in the progressive dismantling of the ability of our communities to provide the basic requirements of everyday life.  The food system is perhaps the most immediate example of the vulnerability that is now locked into the way we do things. Modern conventional agriculture has become overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels. According to one study, approximately ten calories of fossil fuel energy are needed to produce each calorie of food energy in modern industrial agriculture, without even taking into account transportation and food preparation. Many agricultural regions are overly specialized to serve global markets with one main product, a system which relies totally on both cheap transport (and a stable climate) - the average piece of food in the U. S. has to travel 1500 miles from its point of origin.  In effect, modern economies have indeed become addicted to oil, but they now find themselves in an energy trap.

If our society is to have a viable future, how can communities respond to the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil?   We may not be able to change the global economy to reflect the true costs of what we do just yet, but we can start to borrow some insights from ecology right now. A particularly useful concept is that of resilience. In ecology, the term resilience refers to an ecosystem’s ability to recover from external shocks and to absorb disturbance.  In the context of our communities and settlements, it refers to their ability to not collapse once oil shortages begin, and to their ability to adapt in the face of escalating energy prices, shortages of raw materials and climate change.

The problem is that for many places a great deal of resilience has been lost due to globalisation and the wastage of our natural capital.  If oil was to run out tomorrow, would our landscapes be able to provide us with food, water, timber, and medicines?  What ecological services used to exist which have been lost because we had a cheap energy substitute to hand? Instead of working to keep a system going that has no future, that is unsustainable - which means that it cannot be sustained - we need to develop means of livelihood that reduce oil dependency, promote local and regional economic stability, that pollute as little as possible and that can restore our natural capital.  

Much of our oil dependence and pollution results from the distances goods travel. The UK tanker drivers’ strike of 2000 offers a valuable lesson here. To protest against high fuel prices, drivers refused to deliver oil and petroleum from refineries.  Within the space of three days major supermarkets started to ration bread and milk, while vital services were under threat.  Sir Peter Davis, Chairman of Sainsbury’s (one of the largest supermarket chains), sent a letter to Tony Blair saying that food shortages would appear in “days rather than weeks”. It became clear that there was no longer any resilience left to fall back on, and that the nation was in reality a week away from hunger.  Does it make sense (economic or otherwise) to rely so totally on the unreliable?

Re-building more balanced local economies that emphasize securing basic needs such as the local food, energy and water systems will create resilience. We can shorten distances between production and consumption by producing what we need as locally as possible and by substantially or entirely removing fossil fuels from our food production, as practised in organic farming in all its various forms, such as biodynamics and permaculture. This transition represents one of our greatest challenges as in many places nearly every aspect of the process by which we feed ourselves and provide for our communities must be redesigned.  However given the likelihood that global oil peak will occur soon, this is a challenge we must meet quickly.

Here Dave Holmgren, the co-originator (with Bill Mollison) of the permaculture concept  talks about the recognition that dwindling oil supplies inevitably mean a mandatory 'energy descent' for human civilization across the planet. He argues that permaculture principles provide the best guide to a peaceful societal 'powering down."

The Transition/Relocalisation Movement

Recognition of the vulnerability of our food supply and every other aspect of our lives that peak oil and climate change represent is rapidly gaining ground.  Much can also be learned from those places where resilience has not been sacrificed to so-called economic efficiency.  They share a focus on community action for local self-reliance and a healthier environment, as well as an increased quality of life.  These values and ideas are being developed by groups such as the transition network (www.transitiontowns.org) and the relocalisation network (www.relocalize.net).  As summarised in the Transition Handbook:

1) life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and it’s better to plan for it than to be taken by surprise.

2) our settlements and communities presently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.

3) we have to act collectively, and we have to act now.

4) by unleashing the collective genius of those around us to creatively and proactively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognize the biological limits of our planet.

The future with less oil could, if enough thinking and design is applied sufficiently in advance, be preferable to the present. There is no reason why a lower-energy, more resilient future needs to have a lower quality of life. Real economic growth should be defined in terms of an improved and sustainable quality of life, not merely an increase in the quantity of material consumption.  We are citizens, not consumers, and it is time to get serious about what we want our future to look like.

Here is the founder of the Transition Network, Rob Hopkins,  talking about Transition Town Totnes moving towards a post-peak oil society. His book The Transition Handbook gives an account of the founding of Transition Town Totnes, and the global spread of Transition towns. He shows you how to start the Transition process in your community, and why it is important that communities are resilient to the coming decline of oil as an energy source. He also includes the facts about peak oil, and puts a persuasive argument for acting now, rather than later.