What Would a World After Oil Look Like? (Page 1 of 1)

December 13, 2007
By: Knoxville Voice

By Geoff Trowbridge

In 1956 the oil geologist M. King Hubbert first made the prediction of a timeframe in oil production and supply, which became commonly known as ”peak oil.” He predicted the maximum rate of domestic oil production in the United States would happen in 1970 and the worldwide peak would be around the turn of the millennium. He was spot on about the first production — American production of petroleum did peak in 1970 — and the next year, the supply of petroleum being pumped from the ground started going down slowly, year by year. By most accounts, he was off about the second prediction. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 caused people to make conservation efforts that mitigated rapid consumption and somewhat slowed down the international course to peak oil.

But only somewhat, by most accounts. In 2005 the Worldwatch Institute found oil production was in decline in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing nations. Many leading oil analysts, like former geologist Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, or Matthew Simmons, a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, are saying this peak has either already happened or is most definitely coming sooner rather than later.

What does any of this have to do with us, here, now in Knoxville? Well, just about everything. We know virtually all our cars run on petroleum, but they’re far from the only thing. Petroleum is the basis of our plastics industry, as well as the basis for many amenities we take for granted, ranging from petroleum-based agriculture fertilizers, paint brushes, ink, tooth brushes, sunglasses, detergent, shoes, umbrellas… the list just goes on and on and on. Our entire transportation and goods shipping system is almost entirely dependent on the use of cheap fossil fuels.

Any of us who got the basics of geology in middle school knows petroleum is a finite resource, and everyone’s been awakened to the extreme hazards faced by climate change, of which petroleum usage is one of the main contributors. But what would a post-oil, post-carbon human society actually look like? How would we organize our food sources, our power sources, without petroleum, or coal and the quick, dirty, and easy energy they provide?

A growing movement of people has developed just in the past five years or so to try to answer and deal with these enormous challenges. In 2003 the Post Carbon Institute was founded, initially based out of Vancouver, B.C. It’s overseen multiple projects, but the biggest one is the facilitation of The Relocalization Network, now made up of approximately 170 local community groups, all around North America and beyond, which are pushing the citizens of their communities and their local governments to prepare and plan for a future without oil. In the past several years, municipal governments have started to take the threat of peak oil seriously, most often due to the efforts of these citizen groups. Last year, both the city councils of San Francisco and Portland, Ore., passed official resolutions recognizing the challenge of peak oil and called for task forces to review how oil depletion would affect their cities and their abilities to function in a future with much less oil. Portland was quicker moving; it organized a task force — not dissimilar to the Energy and Sustainability Task Force currently afoot in Knoxville — in the fall of last year, and by March of this year, had a full plan to present to the City Commission. The city then approved and passed a resolution to implement it and use it for future decision-making on the municipal level.

In the United Kingdom, a similar movement has been growing, called Transition Towns, which has gotten an enormous amount of support and has been quite successful in spreading its message. The essential message of these movements: We will have less energy to use in the future than what we have now. A conservation-minded society that sources many of its goods necessary for survival from far more local sources is the best route towards success in an energy-constrained future.

Of course no one group has the only solution for what a sustainable future world will look like. Human beings are endlessly inventive and creative, and we may yet be able to find enough biofuels, renewable solar technologies and whatever else we need to continue powering the energy-intensive infrastructure that currently keeps our global economy going. But for the sake of resilience and general community well-being, the groups mentioned above are taking into account what writer and journalist Richard Heinberg said in a talk at the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, Calif.: “The overwhelmingly likely consequence is that it will be impossible to fully replace the energy from fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. We must instead adapt to a lower-energy way of life. It certainly can be done: We in industrialized nations use energy thoughtlessly and profligately and could easily cut back substantially.

“But doing so will still require coordinated effort on a scale not seen before in human history. This means reshaping transportation, agriculture and urban design — just for starters. Ecological thinkers have been proposing transformations along these lines for decades. Now such proposals are no longer just good ideas; they are survival strategies. Nature has given us two options: adapt or die. The sooner we choose the former path, the better the outcome.”

How Knoxville might adapt to a post-oil existence is anybody’s guess. But in my opinion, we’ll need as much creativity, enthusiasm and cooperation from as many people as we can get. Hopefully we, too, as individuals, as a collective citizenry and as a city can join the growing movement that chooses adaptation to a very different, and certainly better, healthier and happier future, instead of continuing to race toward the cliff of planetary and human disaster. I hope the discussion on how we can adapt to these challenges only grows in Knoxville and East Tennessee. A world after oil is coming, one way or another. It is up to us to work together to plan how that world looks for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

Geoff Trowbridge is a native of Knoxville and currently working toward his Bachelor’s degree through Gaia University, an innovative program geared toward independent learning and social and ecological sustainability.

* The views expressed in Commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Knoxville Voice.

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