Powerdown: The Solution to Peak Oil

MonteQuest · Last edited by MonteQuest on Fri Jun 20, 2008 11:26 pm; edited 1 time in total

Richard Heinberg has gained a fair bit of notoriety from the use of the term; powerdown. And rightly so. As Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute remarked, "Powerdown is the only sane response to the world's increasingly grave problems of energy depletion, environmental degradation, and over-population."

As anyone who is well-read in the sciences knows, we have already trod down a path of no return on many fronts and have foreclosed on many options and possibilities that we would all have preferred to chose from and embrace. By the time mankind had a grasp on science/ecology and realized there were limits, he was already past many of them. Our “special nature” and uniqueness came a little too late.

Like Heinberg, I take overshoot as a given and that a re-balancing by nature of some degree is cast in stone.

As I have written before, history tells us that collapses usually occur over a period of decades or centuries. Collapse is an economizing process in which a society reverts to a level of complexity that is capable of being sustained. What is different this time out is the complexity of our society, globalization, and the fact that this “carrying capacity” we have taken for granted is a phantom based upon a non-renewable resource and we know not the rate in which it will decline.

The decline rate of oil and other fossil fuels will dictate the degree of powerdown required, if global warming doesn’t trump it.

Will mankind listen to any plan that implies a constriction of its addiction to creature comforts? Perhaps the destiny of man is to have a short extravagant life in a constant flux with its environment, rather than a long introspective one in harmony with it.

Can we power down all aspects of our modern way of life? Can we accept a restriction on per capita consumption? Can we move to reduce our population to sustainable level? Or are we like lemmings and destined to follow the Pied Piper of asset inertia and cultural direction to a bitter harsh end? However it ends will be determined by the actions of the present generation.

Over the last few years on this site, I have focused on what Heinberg calls Waiting for a Magic Elixir — Wishful thinking, false hopes, and denial. I have pounced on many of these proffered solutions, as, like Heinberg, I think they are distractions from the real things we need to be focusing on, namely:

1. Stop trying to enlarge our carrying capacity. Stop trying to meet demand.
2. Learn to live on renewable resources consumed no faster than what is sustainable. Let nature set supply, not market demand.
3. Powerdown all aspects of our lives to ease the load on our ecosystem and global climate change.
4. Restrict per capita consumption and do away with certain wantonly wasteful uses of energy and resources.
5. Reduce the existing population to a sustainable level based upon an adequate lifestyle, not one of over- consumption and greed.
6. The establishment of sustainable, localized production of food and energy which is universally shared.

Reducing the existing population is fraught with hurdles of ethics and distaste, and has been hashed to death already, so let’s not go there in this thread. However, having said that, few options, are, therefore, left for consideration in order to reduce our ecological footprint from 6.7 billion to 3 billion without reducing our numbers.

That is a huge undertaking and will require draconian cuts.

Our high standard of living, and many things we take for granted, must go. This doesn’t mean we go back to the caves, as is often remarked. To me, it means a transition from a high quantity of life to a high quality of life and a re-marriage of production with consumption and our own productive skills for the necessities of life.

Continued dependence upon the marketplace for these necessities is a dog that will no longer hunt. As Kunstler would say, “the days of the 1,400 mile Caesar salad are over.”

First on the list is that carrying capacity must veto economic growth. The environment comes first, always, no exceptions.

The first wantonly wasteful use of energy I would like to see go is ICE (internal combustion engine) racing of any kind.

I have a long list, but let’s see what others have in mind, first.
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wisconsin_cur · Moderator Joined: May 10, 2007 Posts: 2918

We are facing the challenge of a era, the European Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Copernician revolution. The transformation of Rome from a pagan to a Christian social understanding. This is the size of the social transformation that we are talking about, when we talk about PowerDown, probably larger.

I confess that I am not optimistic. I also recognize that I would have bet against all the other revolutions also. I hope that it can happen...

with as little tragedy as possible.

To the point of the thread, where to start:

1. Ration the number of days a family can visit the grocery store. One visit a month should be fine. This would accomplish two things. First it would cut out needless trips.
Second it would encourage local markets between neighbors. Milk spoils in less than a month. If people want it all of the time I guess they will need to buy it from a local producer, not one 1000 miles away.

2. Make 80 acre farms (or smaller) tax free for the next 20 years or so. Have a land tax system that taxes at a greater rate the more land you own. The virtues of a republican society and responsible stewardship begin with local ownership and management of resources. A small scale farmer has less need of large implements than the factory farm. He could get buy with animal labor or home brewed biodiesel or ethanol. All on-farm sales would be free of the rationing system mentioned above.

3. Shame those who waste food or fuel.

It would be a start.

These won't happen until we are both really desperate and have real political leadership.
_________________
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller

grommit

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
John Kenneth Galbraith

Narz · Last edited by Narz on Sun Dec 02, 2007 3:18 am; edited 1 time in total

dub_scratch

MonteQuest

dub_scratch

...and on top of everything, the economic "ideal" of growth has to be the first thing to be thrown into the massive landfills of post-peak garbage.

Waterthrush

Immediately ban any middle-school travel sports. It's absolutely ridiculous that 11 year olds and their families are traveling to play sports. Actually, now that I think of it, some elementary schools travel as well. This travel is supported by strapped school systems. The children will suffer no loss of happiness if they compete in intramural sports. As an alternative, more sorts of activities, including non-team and non-competitive activities could be offered.

Next, I'd set my sights on high school sports. I'd like to end them now - the children could still compete intramurally - but I know that's not going to happen barring a plague or a doubling of gas prices (either of which would do the trick). Assuming a more gradual rise in gas prices, I'd force school systems to provide a public accounting of the true costs of travel sports. Hopefully there would be a public outcry. Then I'd start whittling them back. What we used to call junior varsity could be restricted either in number of games or distance traveled. I'd make cuts explicitly linked to the increase cost of travel - cheerleaders and band at home games only, drop JV altogether. And then I'd do the same with the varsity teams. Restricted to a certain radius at first, then cut them back more and more.

This would be an example of how quality of life of most involved would INCREASE. Dead-tired parents would not have to drive to some 45-minute distant location and spend 2 or 3 hours dutifully watching their child play (or sit on the bench) at some game that the child is going to drop at age 17 if not before. (A number of friends of mine have described how mind-numbingly boring the routine is.) Desperate school systems would gain some breathing room. Everyone's pocketbook would benefit.

And the environment would see one less mass assault.

manu · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 747

Tanada

You have absolutley GOT to be kidding me! Auto racing, even counting all the fans going to and from events is so trivial an energy consumer as to be a micro-blip on the graph of use.

How about something that actually makes a difference like zoning laws that discourage sprawl in every direction?

Or eliminate all freeway systems inside city limits. That disincentivizes commuting long distances into city centers by forcing commuters onto surface streets.

As for your thousand mile ceaser salad I was shocked to discover that the jar of peaches I got out of the cupboard the other day from Dole stated on the lable, Peaches from Greece, packaged in Thailand. That means they were grown in Europe, shipped to East Asia (probably by air), processed in East Asia and shipped to the USA (probably by cargo ship), delivered to the west coast of the USA and then shipped via rail or semi 2/3rd of the way across the country. That small jar of peaches probably consumed 50 times its weight in fossil fuels to reach my house. When I was growing up we had a small orchard and grew our own northern fruits, Peaches, Plums, Pears, Apples, Cherries and Grapes, plus we grew Strawberries in the garden. We grew enough fruits and vegetables on an acre of land to replace all the fruit and most of the vegetables for a houshold with 7 -11 residents! We also grew poultry and rabbits on the same acre to provide that portion of our protien (two entres' per week) and beef on my uncles farm just down the road.

99% or more of the people on here have no clue what you can grow for yourself with a few hours of labor a week on a small plot of land. Of course the city objects if you try and garden too much, which cetainly doesn't help matters any.
_________________
Oxygen: - An intensely habit-forming accumulative toxic substance. As little
as one breath is known to produce a life-long addiction to the gas, which addiction invariably ends in death.--Isaac Asimov

manu · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 747

The govt doesnt want people to grow their own food, they would rather they just go to the store and buy some cardboard noodles from China!

topcat

Tanada brings up a great point.

This summer, we considered downsizing/selling our home and went to a few open houses. In this day and age, can you imagine these stupid HOA restrictions:

No clothes lines!
No gardens!

These two restrictions were in 75% of the small developments we looked at.
_________________
"...the problem is today we have unknown unknowns."
Dominique Strauss-Kahn; IMF chief

Ludi

inculcated

I'm powering down as we speak. I no longer replace electric gadgets. When this machine dies, so does my home internet access. Choice one for society? All forms of personal motorised transport should go. Air, ground and sea. Here comes the reality...

Just as I am sure that there were a small and vocal portion of the population in each of the civilisations that have overshot and disappeared in the past, we are that fraction today. They failed to make a difference before, just as we will fail now. I've never had a prejudice before in my life, but the last six years of study into the relationship between humanimal and energy use has led me to understand one thing: 99% of any population are truly an ignorant lot.

I no longer have any hope that a sane reasoned approach will be attempted with respect to our conundrum. The whole simply lack the capacity to do so. Rather, the majority will be lulled into complicity by those who believe that consumption is supportable. At the head of that pack would be the current set of individuals who have matriculated to almost every facet of every level of government along with their handlers in the realms of finance and mercantilism.

Once we stopped roaming, lost our ability to protect, then reached back out to the still nomadic and made a contract to trade protection for leadership, we cemented a path of destruction. Wholesale was our allegiance bestowed. It remains to this day. Those in a position to actually effect change are the descendants of Kings, mostly figuratively mind you. It is good to be King. Powerdown would require that even the King sacrifice. When did they ever except to the extent they could use subjects to prevent a decline in position and comfort?

Our fate is locked in respect to the amount we can actually change the course of history as a whole. The only effective use of our time at this point is to create a loci of like minded individuals in whatever place we deem possible to promote a lifestyle that is pre-industrial in shape and scope. The rest of the world should be left to go their own way. That and meditate on the chance that the kings do not decide that pushing the shiny red button is indeed a viable option in attempting to maintain their status...

TheDude

MonteQuest