Peak Oil is You
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Page added on March 15, 2015
Sadly, fossil fuels are about as sustainable as my chocolate supply
WHAT exactly is Transition about? asks Sally Elias.
“No, I still don’t get it,” said a good friend, exasperated. “What exactly is Transition all about?”
We Dorking Transitioners have always struggled with the challenge of a succinct explanation – a lift-pitch.
If you say “We are trying to save the planet”, you sound “boring and worthy” (not my words). If you mention post peak oil, people glaze over or say, “Well now they have discovered fracking we don’t need to worry”. Or if you mention global climate change… well, we all know how that goes down with some people – apparently it’s NOT HAPPENING.
The big challenge here is that we are addicted and we all know how hard it is to break an addiction – cigarettes, alcohol, anti-depressants, chocolate. We will come up with any number of excuses for continuing: “I’ll stop next month. It’s not really doing that much harm. Everyone else does it.”
Of course now it is not only us, the so-called developed nations, using non-renewables, polluting the atmosphere as we mine, manufacture and transport with them. Now we have the BRICs and the MINTs – countries with rapidly growing numbers of people who quite rightly look at us and think: “I would like some of that (cars, air travel, manufactured items with built-in obsolescence, chocolate).”
So, Transition tries to encourage people to live as lightly as possible and to join with others in developing ideas that will increase our children’s chances of enjoying the planet in a sustainable way.
To that end, the guest speaker at our annual meeting on Monday, March 16 is world-famous scientist Keith Barnham, who proposes that an all renewable electricity supply is possible sooner than the government and fossil fuel industries want us to believe.
For tickets, go to Eventbrite or call 07787 566212. It is a 7.30pm start for local food and, who knows, perhaps even chocolate! Oh and by the way we aim to make it all fun.
12 Comments on "Sadly, fossil fuels are about as sustainable as my chocolate supply"
Bandits on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 2:55 pm
Transition was for a time, before the people of Earth went into overshoot.
There is no “transition” for seven and a half billion fossil fuel addicted humans, supportive herds and infrastructure.
Hydro power, solar, wind turbines, electric transport and industrial food production and harvesting, rely on an infrastructure built and maintained by FF’s. Transition is a meaningless word when applied to the now matured human situation.
Although in overshoot the year 1960 I would argue was about the time, humans collectively should have commenced a “transition”. Much was known then about limits to resources and population growth.
Then as now though, the reliance on engineering as a way around acceptance of limits is pervasive. The so called “green revolution” and a trip to the moon clouded normal reason.
Humans and ancestors of humans have been “engineering” since before we controlled fire. It (engineering) is exactly what got us into this mess. Now to expect us to engineer a transition to sustainability is for the gullible to believe. And the most dangerous people on Earth will continue to provide their denial “advice”, on everything from global warming to over population.
Daddio7 on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 5:26 pm
People don’t want to hear,”No you can’t”. People transitioned away from horse drawn wagons because cars were more convenient. They transitioned from wood burning stoves because they ran out of wood.
The transition away from FF will be because we run out, substitutes will not be more convenient.
penury on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 6:10 pm
I totally agree with and support the statements of Bandit. wish I had something intelligent to add.
Its coming sooner than most expect on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 6:34 pm
Almost every day there is another news article about a possible break-thru in solar energy, wind power or batteries. Now most of these supposed break-thru will not happen. However eventually one these break-thru will really happen and the world will change. Of course knowing which one will be the game changer is almost impossible to know. So instead, the way it will happen is if enough things are tried, then something will happen to change our world. So I am hopeful. Whatever changes the world will only look easy to see after it happens. That is the way things happen in life.
Apneaman on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 6:52 pm
I agree, no “transition”. We have had more revolts and revolutions than history has recorded, but they have always been about MORE. More for the oppressed. Share the wealth. Spread it around. There has never been a revolution for LESS. We want less! We want less! No we will not go to war against our evolutionary programming. We will not go to war against ourselves.
Makati1 on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 8:32 pm
Some appropriate quotes from a favorite author:
“A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!”
“You wait for the war to happen like vultures. If you want to help, prevent the war. Don’t save the remnants. Save them all.”
“There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.”
““Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
And finally:
“Babies are the enemies of the human race. . . . Let’s consider it this way: by the time the world doubles its population, the amount of energy we will be using will be increased sevenfold which means probably the amount of pollution that we are producing will also be increased sevenfold. If we are now threatened by pollution at the present rate, how will we be threatened with sevenfold pollution by, say, 2010 A.D., distributed among twice the population? We’ll be having to grow twice the food out of soil that is being poisoned at seven times the rate. ” (1977)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
Apneaman on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 9:08 pm
Isaac Asimov global warming 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSqdklAux-c
Poordogabone on Sun, 15th Mar 2015 11:09 pm
Forget about transition. I would like to know the secret of how to keep your teeth clean while eating chocolate like the lady in the picture.
gdubya on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 12:02 am
That’s no lady, that’s my wife.
Apneaman on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 12:23 am
The Twilight of Our Tale: Part One
“It is so easy to blame the system. It’s just a word, and it is a stand in for the pieces and the whole of everything we see that is wrong with the way human society is behaving. Poverty? Blame the system. War? The system. Racism? The system. But what is the system? If it is just rules, expectations, and essentially stories that we tell each other, then why is the system so hard to change? Why is it so seemingly immutable? Why are we so damn helpless and ineffective at altering something so fragile, so simple, so made up? Could all of us really be so captured by something invented, something spoken into being and jotted down on flimsy pieces of paper? It’s as though we all began playing a game, only to realize that the game was playing us, and once begun there was no way to stop playing, even as we watched our movements destroy the world.”
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2015/03/15/the-twilight-of-our-tale-part-one/
Davy on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 5:45 am
Ape Man as usual comes up with thought provoking links. The problem is we are a species never meant to be globalized. Being capable of it does not mean it is our nature. Our nature for the bulk of our species history was anything but global with high populations. Before the advent of city states supported by unsustainable intensive agriculture man had a modulating stability in small groups within a natural modulating ecosystem. In the past our numbers were managed by a system with true sustainable complexity and that system is Nature.
We modern humans rejected Nature to pursue knowledge and technology to instead control and manipulated nature at the expense of the support and guidance of Natures complexity. That is where we are at now with global BAU. We have gone to the peak of our species complexity and energy intensity separating ourselves with a maximum of distance from our real nature and support that is Nature. What could be further from natural then global BAU for man? I would call this a species defect like a Peacocks tail.
What good is the above description of our predicament of being a globalized delocalized group of locals at the end of growth in diminishing returns with population in overshoot? Well, about all that is good for is telling us to be honest and quit denial. What got us here is not what is getting us out of here if we can even get out anymore. We can dig the hole deeper or we can quit digging. The trap we are in is when we stop digging the dirt will collapse on to us. IOW we are in a red queen situation with an unknown but surely deadly outcome when we stop the digging and begin to decouple from BAU.
The honesty and the end of denial is admitting there is no future in BAU and we must admit there is no other BAUtopian future green, brown, or any other color. There is only the unknown of descent in a generational crisis with population loss, scarcity, and decaying infrastructure. It is simple really accept reality, enter crisis, begin adapting, and mitigate the resulting carnage.
I am not sure entering crisis sooner is better. It is likely better for the possibility of survival but there is no guarantee either way. We know digging just makes adaptation worse. Yet, many have a good life now. The good life has value. BAU has some life left and BAU provides milk. Who here is ready to suffer. All will suffer some pain many here will die. Are you ready to pull the trigger on that? This is scary shit.
At some point the momentum of BAU will end. BAU cannot slow to a halt. This will happen because it is part of the laws of nature. Exceptionalist will tell you technology, knowledge, energy intensity, and complexity will allow us to substitute are way through this through innovation. They fail to see we are at the end of the line with substitution. Limits and diminishing returns are clear evidence of this.
I see an adhoc adaptation of locals driving a crisis inadvertently from the bottom up. As the global system sputters locals will turn local and the BAU’s machine will seize up. BAU may be global but vast locals support BAU. This BAU global of locals is a symbiotic codependent relationship. TPTB will not initiate a healing crisis. TPTB are incapable of change. They are driven by an unholy psychopathic pursuit of power, control, and growth. Manipulation, corruption, and wealth transfer have begun indicating terminal illness. Who in power has ever willing yielded power except by old age of force? Few.
I say to you in your local reject denial and honestly accept there are no futures green, brown, or rainbow. There is only descent ahead in the end of BAU. Begin your local preparations however small and hope for the best. Some locals will survive the mega drought. Giving up hope increases the likelihood of failure. Yet, there is always dumb luck. Who wants to chance survival to dumb luck? The alternative is to friggen enjoy life to the fullest right here right now. Say grace at every meal and love your family. Enjoy the sounds of spring. Enjoy the warm sun on your face. The shit storm is on the horizon with no place to hide.
Cloud9 on Mon, 16th Mar 2015 8:03 am
We know what happens after the collapse of western civilization. We have been here before. First there is the chaos of a dark age when the complex systems break and supply chains fail. Then things go medieval. Local strong men gain control of local populations and resources. Then there is a renaissance when some of the knowledge of the past is rediscovered and utilized. And then there is the rise of nation states.
What is different this time is that so many billions are utterly dependent on the grid and complex supply chains. I suspect our near future will be dominated by unparalleled death and destruction.