Jeff Rubin "Why your World is about to get a whole lot smaller"

Post Carbon Man — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:05:32 +0100

Jeff Rubin "Why your World is about to get a whole lot smaller"

ISBN 978-0-7535-1963-9. "Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller - Oil and the end of globalisation" by Jeff Rubin was published by Virgin Books in 2009. This paperback boasts 286 pages including Intro, two main sections, 8 chapters, a conclusion, acknowledgments, notes and index. Rubin is a new name for many us used to the works of Hopkins or Heinberg. He was the Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets and claims to have been one of the first economists to predict the 2008 Oil price spike as long ago as 2000. They call it "the dismal profession" and one might be a tad wary of reading what an economist has to say about peak oil. Indeed, as the old adage goes, if you believe infinite growth can continue on a finite planet you are either mad - or an economist. That would make Rubin a very different sort of economist. Not for him the cheerful ignorance of the Chicago School. In short, he is "OUR" sort of economist, much as Lord Stern. This work stems from Rubin's research conducted alongside fellow CIBC World Markets employee, Senior Economist Peter Buchanan. Together they looked the growing trend for oil supplying countries to start "cannibalising" their own supplies. In English that means that the people in oil exporting nations start to use their own petroleum in the same fashion as it was used in the countries they used to sell it to. Outrageous behaviour.

Clearly Rubin is a man who understands from the get-go that none of us will perpetuate western lifestyles if EVERYBODY has a western lifestyle. In order for poor people to become rich the rich will become poorer. Two other colleagues ...

Andy Reynolds "Wind & Solar Electricity" (LILI)

Post Carbon Man — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:04:36 +0100

ISBN 978-0-9549171-6-6. "Wind & Solar Electricity - a practical DIY Guide" was published by the Low Impact Living Initiative in late 2009. Your £10 will buy you 187 pages which includes Introduction, ten chapters, appendix and index. There are a large number of illustrations throughout but, other than the front cover, nothing is in colour which reflects the non-profit nature of LILI. The LILI mission is to "help people reduce their impact on the environment, improve their quality of life, gain new skills, live in a healthier and more satisfying way, have fun and save money" all of which is totally laudable. We must pay them a visit sometime as they are based in Winslow not far from us in Buckinghamshire, UK. No doubt many a Transition Towner has been through their doors. Andy's book is a perfect result of the "gain new skills" part of that mission. Indeed the "practical DIY guide" subtitle is the real clue here. This is the second LILI book we have reviewed and the second by Andy. Although duty-bound to 'cheer-on' LILI we expect the most useful skills (that many of us will be learning) would center around the garden and chicken-raising. A glance through the many services supplied by LILI we can spy such topics as making biodiesel, composting toilets, rammed earth building, sustainable sewage, building yurts and pig keeping......

....so it is largely aimed at the converted. Nothing wrong with that as long as we don't all come over as too esoteric and start reinforcing prejudices. Sustainable living has to become the predominant paradigm if it is to sustain everyone all of the time. Since the tide has largely surged in the other direction most of us have been dragged under without even knowing. Some of ...

Howard Friel "The Lomborg Deception"

Post Carbon Man — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 20:39:32 +0100

ISBN 978-0-300-16103-8. "The Lomborg Deception" by Howard Friel was published by Yale University Press in 2010. The 258 pages include a foreword by Thomas F. Lovejoy, fourteen chapters, some notes and an index. The large font makes this a relatively quick and easy read. Friel is a new name in the climate change quagmire charading as "debate". He normally writes on political issues such as the future of Palestine, the news media and international law. He never originally intended on writing a book on Lomborg - instead he had started as a work on how the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have reported climate change. Bjorn Lomborg's 2007 book "Cool It" coincided with the IPCC's synthesis report of that year. The two stood in stark contrast. One was the work of 2500 scientists and reviewers whilst the other was an entirely contradictory book by the Scandinavian economist. Clearly common sense dictated that no one would give Lomborg the time of day. His work was utterly irrelevant and it would be entirely irrational to have even published it. Yet it was published - much to the plaudits of the US press. It was THIS that so interested Friel. Beyond the enthusiasm of the press came the support of the right-wing politicians who hold so much control over US Climate Policy (for what its worth). Sadly, the American public too swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

The coup was complete, Lomborg was wielding power way beyond his station. It was enough to make you wonder what he knew that the IPCC did not? Friel decided to find out by painstakingly taking apart Lomborg's assertions in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It" reference by reference. What he reveals in this book depends largely on ...

The E:Mail at the End of the Universe

Post Carbon Man — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:16:29 +0100

You must have seen this: you get an E:Mail with the words "Please consider the environment before you print this email" at the bottom. It's a fine sentiment but one suspects it rarely has any bearing upon the reality of the motivation of the sender. It is a token. It is "doing our bit". You can feel good sending that E:Mail. So good you have a licence to go out and maim defenceless orphans. You get the idea. Worse of all it simply doesn't work. Just can't work. If you need to print an E:Mail then you will. You do. Period. I have seen dozen of such pages lying around at work. Knowing the people putting this platitude into their autosignature mos of us probably also know they they have no intention of doing anything really material to help the environment. Will they walk to work and stop flying? Will they forsake the Supermarket and double their insulation? Probably not. THAT is just too far. That is just too expensive. We can't be bothered with that today. Nor tomorrow....

Then there is the question is to just how much harm printing the email actually does to this thing called the "environment". Ironically of the many things we do in this life printing an email is one of the least harmful things you can do. The "environment" doesn't need protecting from your emails at all. Your emails will not slash and burn. They will not emit carbon, use up valuable resources, invade small countries or do anything bad whatsoever when made physical. If you are going to need it in your grubby paws (maybe to save battery time on your laptop computer) then print it on recycled paper with water-based inks using recycled printer cartridges - and feel genuinely ...

Soylent Green

Post Carbon Man — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:15:15 +0100

My wife borrowed the movie "Soylent Green" from Library last week. I have seen it many times over the years and my other half had watched it with me on one previous occasion. I am not sure precisely why my beloved decided to borrow it although it is probably because of Soylent Green's iconic status in our culture. You need only watch a few episodes of The Simpsons (pictured!) to see how often it is referred to. Everyone has heard of it - probably more people are familiar with the words 'soylent green' than know what it means or where it comes from. (It is much the same as with 'big brother' and George Orwell's dystopian vision "1984".) What is remarkable about the movie is how old it is considering the content and theme. If you think concerns about Global Warming, resource depletion, over-population and loss of bio-diversity appeared in the 1990's you would be wrong. Soylent Green was made in 1973.

Imagine: it is 2022 in Manhattan. The population there has grown to 40 million souls. Global Warming has devastated the planet. New York is polluted, over populated and 50% unemployed. The pollution that envelops the city causes oppressive temperatures and humidity. Each day is a struggle to find enough food and water to survive. Food riots are a regular occurrence and dealt with in a draconian fashion. Only the very-rich live in separated luxury concrete fortresses/apartments (with women as part of the rented furniture) enjoying the last vestiges of the late 20th century, fresh meat, salad, strawberries, cigarettes, Scotch. Police investigator Thorn (Charlton Heston) is assigned to investigate the assassination of a high ranking member of the Soylent corporation (which feeds the masses with sea-food-derived Soylent Red, Yellow & Green). Thorn seeks information from his researcher ...

A Sunny Investment

Post Carbon Man — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:14:07 +0100

Now that interest rates on many savings accounts have dropped to about 0.1% would you be interested in a return of £25,000 over 25 years for an investment of just £12,500? If you've got an unshaded, south-facing roof, you can earn a 7%-10% tax-free return, index-linked, if you fit solar panels that generate electricity (Photovoltaics). This new Government scheme is called “Feed-in Tariffs”. Investors in Photovoltaics will be largely insulated from price rises that Ofgem warn could see household bills reach £2,000 pa by 2020. A typical 2.5kW well sited Photovoltaic installation could reward a homeowner with up to £900 per year and save them £140 a year off their electricity bill. Householders making this investment will get a further payment for any electricity they feed into the grid. Could you say that about a new car or fitted kitchen?

Don't be deterred by the idea that the UK doesn't get enough sunshine - the sun here is more reliable than you think and only around one-third less powerful than that in southern Spain. The technology can work on south-east or south-west facing roofs too. Most of the electricity generated is consumed by the householder so virtually no energy is lost in transmission. More distant power stations can lose over a third of their energy generated in such a way.

The Feed-in Tariff has been introduced via the passing of the 2008 Energy Act. It’s intended to boost the use of domestic renewable energy and kick-start the UK industry. You can learn more at www.fitariffs.co.uk or www.ownergy.co.uk.

Life after the Rat Race

Post Carbon Man — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:21:24 +0100

A year ago we contemplated about exactly who is in Transition. Now let's drill down further. How do Transitioners think? What motivates them? Why would anyone wish to get involved? Afterall, most of us would fail to get excited about the very idea of working on a long term project designed to turn around a globalised economy into a local-focussed community. Most would wonder: "Can't somebody else do it?", "Isn't it someone else's problem?", "Is this even a problem?", "What can I do?" or "It seems an insurmountable problem so why bother?". We can respect these points of view but we still do what we do. Is there something just a little bit different about Transitioners? Are we all, for want of a better word, a bit odd?

Well, we certainly are different. Few people know of, or understand, Peak Oil. It is an issue that you have seek out and study to understand it. It is not a topic of popular television. Even fewer of the people who know of it fully understand the profound impact it may have on advanced industrialised societies. Most don't want to know or assume everything will be fine. Afterall, if it was something to be genuinely concerned about we would hear more about it wouldn't we? So, firstly we must realised that the Transitioner has identified an issue of great social importance and recognised it as such. This suggests that Transtioners are forward thinking. They follow a story to its logical conclusion. They see how it will end. They have, for want of a better word, 'vision'.

Some of this is true with Climate Change - although this is far better known. Whereas Economists may discount the future a Transitioner does not. It is a different philosophy. Transitioners assume that there ...

What Bertrand Russell knew

Post Carbon Man — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:19:59 +0100

"Men fear thought more than they fear anything else on earth - more than ruin, more than even death... It is fear that holds men back - fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect that they supposed themselves to be." Bertrand Russell (Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916)

"Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realise you are wrong." Anon

Adaptation is something we all aspire to. The sort of adaptation we mean here is simple the ability to absorb new information and act upon it - even if it means having to change your mind about a position you had taken earlier. We all have to be open minded to the idea that situations change. Most of us pride ourselves in being adaptable but the reality is that most of us are quite stubborn. This cuts both ways with such topics as Climate Change and Peak Oil. Cynics will have to face up to reality one day in this Century of declining resources. The Government is not going to handover a techno fix on a silver platter. There isn't another five planet Earths out there for us to inhabit. Something has to "give". On the flip side of the coin 'peakists' & 'warmers' have to accept that there is more than one way to skin a cat - and they may not even have the right cat. The more you learn the more you understand how complex the issues are. Human society is complex and chaotic. It isn' easy to know what will happen next. We can only speculate. No one will believe you if you keep crying wolf. Credibility ...

Back to the Future - It's Stagflation again!

Post Carbon Man — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:17:22 +0100

Although the newsreaders dare not speak its name (unusual for them - probably too busy fermenting real or imaginary divisions in the new coalition Government) it looks as if a spectre of the 1970's Oil Price Spike has returned - Stagflation. Despite inflation hovering around 1% for a while it jumped to 3.7% in April. The two main culprits? Fuel (25% increase) and fruit (10% increase). No doubt the volcano in Iceland stopped a lot of flights bringing in non-seasonal fruit from some corner of the planet. Oh dear. Somehow "I told you so" has a hollow echo. Maybe that is the beauty of Transition. Sooner or later you will be undeniably right.

Oddly enough nobody seems to be asking the obvious question: why is fuel costing so much right now? The simplistic answer is 'peak oil' - which is correct - but in a sophisticated kind of way. Demand for oil has dropped below production capacity so the floor should have dropped out of the market. Indeed this briefly happened in 2008. However our friends in OPEC turned the taps off to bolster price. There is an irony in this. The costs of production for the Saudis is next-to-nothing. However the price has been set at the level to make long term investments in dirty-oil (tar sands) worthwhile. Why would OPEC deliberately reinforce the price so as to help competitors? Altruism?

In the 1970's the Saudi's turned off the taps for political reasons and the era of high-price oil began, if only then to falter during the 1980's when OPEC couldn't get its act together. It wasn't until the first Gulf war that OPEC got properly back in control. Of course OPEC isn't just Saudi. Venezuela is in OPEC and they also have tar sands. The other simple reason ...

Stuff You May Have Missed

Post Carbon Man — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:13:57 +0100

With events in the British Election dominating the Headlines you will be forgiven for having missed a couple of other recent events. On Wednesday 12th May the 987 page American Power Act was unveiled. This is the latest incarnation of Barack Obama's much hoped-for Climate Change Act. Note that they couldn't come to call it "Climate Change". "American Power" sounds so much more like Arnie Schwarzenegger is delivering it with an Uzi. Indeed it is a Climate Change bill unlike anything else. In fact it is utterly remarkable and only could be the result of the American Political system. Imagine launching a new Bill designed to cut your dependence on Fossil Fuels but then use the opportunity to authorise MORE drilling for Oil. Yup. Welcome to the crazy world of Stars-and-Stripes Realpolitik. Not only will they drill for more oil to fight climate change but they will also levy import tariffs against any Country out there who dares gain an economic advantage by decarbonising their economy first. Yes, you read that right. The mind boggles. Ironically Schwarzenegger actually came out AGAINST the new powers to drill for oil. You just can't trust anyone these days. But there you have it. Progress, of a sort. Andy Revkin in the New York Times describes it as "a classic piece of American legislative compromise, with multi-billion-dollar incentives and investments and favours". Quite.

Meanwhile, one day earlier (and a heck of lot closer to home) the Hartwell Report was launched. That's "Hartwell" as in Hartwell House - the grand Hotel and Conference Centre just out side of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. This remarkable report suggests we need to completely rethink our approach to tackling Climate Change. It should be of no surprise that Professor Mike Hulme (School of Environmental Sciences, University of East ...

Kingsley Dennis and John Urry "After the Car"

Post Carbon Man — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:56:26 +0100

ISBN-13 978-0-7456-4422-6. "After the Car" written by Kingsley Dennis and John Urry was published by Polity Press in 2009. The paperback has 212 pages including preface, notes, index and 7 chapters. The authors are social scientists from Lancaster University rather than technologists. This could be a really good thing or a really bad thing. It would be good if it gave us a fresh perspective on the future of personal transport - in this they are reasonably successful. It would be bad if they were to underestimate the difficulties of developing hi-tech solutions in a low-energy world. This they also do. However it would probably be a mistake to think of this book being just about cars. Taken in its totality this book is far better than the failings within its individual components. Never before has the consequences of Peak Oil and Climate Change been applied and analysed for just one technology. The car would be an obvious starting point, we guess, but only as a by-word for almost all the technology that we take for granted in wealthy, industrialised, over-fed, northern/western countries. This book largely comes into its own when it isn't talking about cars. When it considers the wider aspects of technology in general and their inter-relationships with society, this book is on solid ground. However the authors' failure to understand the profound problems of a post-oil world is their greatest failing.

The authors accept the traditional orthodoxy of man-made climate change without question - but, heah, they are social scientists not climatologists. Their approach is less about understanding risk and more about examining systems. They describe climate change as the result of "enormously powerful systems" accelerating towards a precipice. It needs an equally powerful system to avert the abyss. What is needed "after the ...

David Boyle & Andrew Simms "The New Economics - A Bigger Picture"

Post Carbon Man — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:01:44 +0100

ISBN 978-1-84407-675-8. "The New Economics - A Bigger Picture" was written by David Boyle and Andrew Simms and published by Earthscan in 2009. (You get 192 pages including acknowledgments, eleven chapters, appendices and index.) The "New Economics" describes itself as being about "changing the rules by which economics works [...] about making things happen locally...". It all sounds reasonable until the authors too easily shift into describing it vaguely as something to do with "people and planet". We have become so used to the near-scientific certitudes of conventional economics that when somebody takes such nebulous concepts as 'ethics' and 'ecology' and describe them in economic terms it all sounds... Well, woolly. The new economics has found mainstream success. For example the European Union has a task force looking at redefining GDP whilst the growth of the Transition Towns movement is testimony to how everyone from politicians to ordinary people can embrace these exciting new concepts. Oddly enough neither example appears anywhere in this book.

Written as it was during the crash of 2008 it has an air of "I told you so" even if there is no triumph in any of this. Indeed, the more you read the more you understand that tackling Climate Change, monetary reform and Peak Oil conventionally all seems easier than trying to implement the theories of the new economics. It all seems like so much hardwork. And complicated to-boot. There are no certainties, only new theories. Those of us who lived happily through the new certainties of the neo-liberal economics of the Thatcher years will know how easy it is to get caught up in new economic panaceas only to see them crumble to dust in our hands. Why should the theories of the nef be any different? Of course there is a ...

Welcome to No-man's Land

Post Carbon Man — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:21:33 +0000

I have gotten to the point of being so bored by the same old platitudes about climate change. They say the devil has all the best music. So it seems that Climate Change deniers had all the best arguments. Why was this? We were told again and again that the debate was over and that all the deniers were in the pay of oil companies. Clearly neither were true and the opinion polls revealed increasing public disbelief. Maintaining either fictions had not convinced the people who matter. Something far more sophisticated was going on and the simplistic exultations were not doing the trick any more. What to do?

So we resolved to actually do what 99% of people do not do, we read something about it. And we don't mean some Press Release from Greenpeace nor a column in the Daily Mail. No, we went shopping on Amazon. We came back with David Archer's "The Long Thaw", Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth", Peter, Taylor's "Chill", James Hoggan's "Climate Cover Up", Mike Hulme's "Why we disagree about climate change", Nicholas Stern's "A blueprint for a safer planet", Anthony Giddens' "The politics of climate change", Stuart Sutherland's "Irrationality" and "Ted Nordhaus's "Breakthrough". And a lot more beside over the years. What did we learn? Well it certainly didn't change our mind about human-induced climate change but we have become aware of the high-stakes game that the IPCC is playing. Since the human signature could be between 20% and 95% to blame then there could well be times when our imprint might get over-whelmed by natural influences and cycles. The simplistic believe that the actual temperature will just go up and up in a linear fashion is not realistic. We all know about tipping points but there is also the reverse - times when the temperature will go down as well as up. Such cycles could last ten to forty years. The ever popular graph by the CGU clearly shows a trend downwards since 2006. These kinds of dips plus a few bad winters give the deniers a field-day and delays action. We could find ourselves with an enormous credibility gap unless we are careful how we phrase the argument. Mankind is fragile and we have so harmed our biosphere that it is fragile too. Hence Climate change cannot be shrugged off like it use to. This time it will hurt. It doesn't matter if we caused it. It doesn't matter if it is cooling or warming. We have to get off fossil fuels if we are to build the resilience our communities need to withstand the shock.

This generation can do very little about the climate change stored up. Nothing we do now matters in our lifetime. It has to be done for our grandchildren's lifetime. And it has to happen anyway if we are to build a better life. So we find ourselves in no-man's land with the likes of Peter Taylor and Lawrence Solomon. Probably not in the same shell-crater. These two are ideologically opposed to Climate Change being used as an excuse for wind farms and nuclear power. I enjoy no such baggage as long as solutions are cost effective and safe. Nuclear power is not, wind turbines are. Solomon is a journalist and former anti-nuclear campaigner. Taylor is a scientist and former science adviser to Greenpeace. Hence when the latter speaks we probably should listen. His views are reasonable. He knows that the decarbonisation of our economies is inevitable. He would prefer no IPCC driven stampedes. Judging by Copenhagen 2009 no such stampede is likely to happen.

The archetype script for the passionate Climate Change believer is to start screaming about tipping points and "time running out". However true it might be it isn't going to work. We learn this from Nordhaus, Giddens and Hulme. To continue to use this same tired old methodology is the group-think described in Sutherland's book. We must breakthrough to an inspiring vision of a post-oil future. It may well be expensive but we have to think of it as ensuring our long term economic competitiveness. The driver is, and remains, Peak Oil. It is the clincher. No matter how you look at it. We know what has to be done. Stern and Tickell can only get us a small part of the journey. We have to break out of these knee-jerk reactions. A million WWF "Earth Hours" won't make any difference. Having us sit in the dark is only thought provoking to the minority of aware people for whom this appeals to.

So, here we are in no-man's land. There are very few of us here. The Climate Change deniers claim that we have been duped. The true believers label US "deniers". We are the enemy of both sides just for pointing out the bleeding obvious. Climate change is a pragmatic problem. Dogma is not a solution. Appealing to people to cut their carbon is a turn-off message. We need a vision of the post-carbon world as a place far better than the here-and-now. In the transition from the stone age to the bronze age there were no people preaching to the citizens their moral duty to "cut their stone use". We simply found something better. Let's face it, stone has numerous advantages over bronze. It wasn't an easy transition and no doubt a few flint nappers lost their livelihoods along the way. Maybe even a few people in "big stone" cast a few doubts about how effective bronze would be. Indeed we had to wait until the iron age for the deficiencies of bronze to be made good. Now here we are in the Petroleum Age and things are a little different. Population is completely unsustainable without oil or some massive change in diet. We were not addicted to stones or bronze for humanity's survival. But we are addicted to oil. No amount of wind turbines will make the soil nutrient rich. There is more at stake this time than ...

Vandana Shiva "Soil Not Oil"

Post Carbon Man — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 09:30:05 +0000

ISBN 978-1-84813-315-0. "Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity" by Vandana Shiva was published by Zed Books in 2008. The paperback has 144 pages consisting of introduction, four chapters and a conclusion but no notes, index or bibliography. Foot notes can be followed up at www.southendpress.org/images/cms/SoilNotOil_Endnotes.pdf so that saves some paper! The author was one of India's foremost Nuclear Physicists before giving it up for moral reasons to focus of sustainable development issues. She has become Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy as well as a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation. As rough guide you can consider Shiva to be at the opposite end of the scale from Nicholas Stern and Ted Nordhaus. Not for her the fixes of the free market. She is more closely aligned with the writings of Richard Heinberg and Rob Hopkins whom she quotes. The reason for this is clear - she sees the world through the eyes of developing nations of the majority south. If you expressed the sort of views that Shiva does in the western sphere then you would be dismissed as being out-of-touch and patronising. Many would argue that there is no way that all those wealthy westerners could go back to some agrarian existence. However this is almost exactly what Shiva proposes - at least for India.

Shiva praises the traditional Indian way of life, ie, a simplistic low-carbon way of life personified by the life of Gandhi. When those in the western liberal elite write about "poor" people they are often described as people in urgent need of 'development'. We are told that the poor can only care about Climate Change when they are as rich as Americans. It is thus assumed that they must have roads and cars. If they do not then they are "backward". This paradigm is so ingrained into everyone's way of thinking that even Indian Governments perpetuate this myth. It must comes as a hideous shock to find one the majority world's leading intellects contradicting them flatly. Maybe that does make her a romantic but she is far better placed to speak for a billion of her fellow country men & women than anyone in the north. Shiva quotes Gandhi who said "God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. [..] If an entire nation of 300 million (India) took to similar economic exploitation (as that of Britain) it would strip the world bare like locusts."

In Soil Not Oil Shiva lumps together what she views as the three crises of the modern world: Peak Oil, Climate Change and Food. Through western eyes we tend to define these slightly differently. We assume the triple crunch is Oil, Climate and Money. Food is often relegated to becoming a victim of the crises in the other three areas. Shiva promotes food up as front runner in her vision for a sustainable, "people-centred", fossil-fuel-free world. This is because she tends to focus on food production as an area of unequal globalisation which exploits the poor and dispossess them of their land. Transnational Corporations are accused of dumping commodities onto Indian domestic markets and destroying them. The profits of Cargill and Monsanto climb while in India thousands of poor farmers kill themselves. The solution is to reclaim food sovereignty. We get a swingeing critique of what Shiva dismissively calls "development". Trade liberalisation isn't the solution, it is the problem. She condemns western thinkers and their pseudo solutions of 'markets' and bio-fuels. To her these only perpetuate both the problem but also the inequality. Instead she calls for radical relocalisation and a return to local small scale food production. She argues passionately that bio-diverse farming is the only way to solve her triple crunch as they store carbon, produce crops resistant to disease and deliver a livelihood resilient in the face of drought and flood.

The author knows her stuff and gives good concrete examples of where so much 'development' is simply not working. She levels her guns at the "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM) that she demonstrates is subsidising polluting industries such as 'sponge iron plants'. Why is it (she asks) that the CDM doesn't offer support to the humble farmer in the field who is genuinely working to sequester carbon and generate wealth? "A shift to ecological, non-industrial agriculture from industrial agriculture leads to a two- to seven-fold energy savings and a 5 to 15 percent global fossil fuel emissions offset through the sequestration of carbon in organically managed soil. Up to four tons of CO2 per hectare can be sequestered in organic soils each year." claims Shiva (page 98). If true then you can see what she means. Is it that we do not define food production as even part of the "modern" economy? Is it that we only understand that "modern" means "fossil-fuelled". Farming is clean development. "For farmers, soil is not a prison from which they need to escape to an industrial job." writes the author on page 38. Farmers are in peril because their traditional methods have been undermined by the green revolution and the transnational corporations and their GM Seeds and agrochemicals. The solution to climate change is not an energy shift, it is a paradigm shift. Indians do not need roads, they need soil. Shiva has no time for roads and accuses the World Bank and Indian Governments of promoting road and cars in the same manner that Adolf Hitler did in Nazi Germany in the 1930's. Likewise she destroys the case for biofuels with some carefully cherry-picked statistics that no doubt would cause uproar and much debunking in western circles.

There is much here that could be considered controversial. Indeed you must ask yourself how many of us can survive on organic food produced on the small/local scale? Certainly all of us if we eat lower down the food chain. However Shiva has the answer and ...

Anthony Giddens "The Politics of Climate Change"

Post Carbon Man — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:32:48 +0000

ISBN 978-0-7456-4693-0. Anthony Giddens' "The Politics of Climate Change" was published by Polity Press in 2009. Giddens is a prolific author with at least another 28 titles to his name plus another 12 edited works to his credit. He is a former Director of the London School of Economics, a Fellow of Kings College and a Member of the House of Lords. By the sound of things there is nothing about modern political philosophy that he doesn't know. This is his first venture into the murky world of Climate Change but his work is largely original and desperately needed. Giddens argues that the very reason we are failing to tackle Climate Change is that we are failing to understand its connection to international energy geopolitics and the power of oil. This is probably the first good book since Kunstler's "Long Emergency" to focus on the interchange between Peak Oil and Climate Change. The added dimension of politics is what has been missing and explains why, despite all the fine words of Tickell and Stern, the attempts to replace Kyoto have been such a miserable failure. It may sound as if this 264 page book (including acknowledgements, introduction, nine chapters, afterword, notes, references and index) might be really boring but you would be wrong. If anything this is one of the most accessible books on the topic that we have seen.

It is also far more useful and believable than Mike Hulme's "Why we disagree about Climate Change" that, although enlightening, offered little in the way of solutions. Where these two authors do agree is that a Kyoto-style agreement cannot be reached because we fail to understand the problem. Hulme assumes that this is some vague and ill-defined issue of philosophy suggesting we don't know what we want and are generally quarrelsome. Hardly helpful. Giddens is more to-the-point in his analysis. It is the Realpolitik that gets in the way. Political power is the problem. He goes further in arguing that as most past, present and future emissions only come from 6 countries (if you include the EU is one nation) they should get together and agree targets. Hulme had come to a similar conclusion in saying that multiple local agreements are best. Although finding Stern's approach naive (on page 201 "...there is no mention of politics in Stern's discussion, no analysis of power, or of the tense nature of international relations."), Giddens appears to agree that what is needed is a long-term central body to over-see and enforce multiple multi-lateral and regional Climate Change agreements. Stern suggested such a body at the level of the WTO and this, again, appears a reasonable way forward, if only because we haven't tried in and we need something, anything, to break the deadlock.

The first Chapter on Risk is pretty much standard fair for this kind of book but we don't have to wait long before Chapter 2 kicks in with the Peak Oil argument. In this he aligns with Stern in suggesting that decarbonisation is economically inevitable although he doesn't dwell on the matter much. Giddens' view is simply that the world map of politics is being drawn up as a race for the last of the planet's fossil fuels. Since decarbonisation challenges the status quo of the role that Russia, the Central Asian Republics and OPEC play then this is the pivotal point for world affairs the lens through which we must look to understand why climate change negotiations are on a road to nowhere. Agreements that were reached were as a result of backroom political trade-offs rather than any real desire to tackle the problem. It is all just political posturing which achieves little or nothing. Since the passing of the Bush Jnr years in the Whitehouse, and the arrival of Barack Obama, there is now more chance of getting the USA to take a leading role via multi-lateral action. This clearly illustrates that actions are at the whim of global politics and we have to understand what is driving world affairs before we understand how to tackle such a global issue. In Chapter 3 Giddens lays into the "green movement" and largely dismisses them as irrelevant because he perceives them as a political group that contest the existence of the very institutions that we need to create and enforce the policies to combat Climate Change. In fact he dismisses the role of such organisations for the rest of the book and just generically refers to "NGO's". He sees their contribution as less than useful as they do not engage geopolitics on the world stage nor do they understand it. In this he is both partially right and probably wholly unfair. He is thinking and describing mostly the "Green Party" and doesn't give credit for how diverse the NGO's are in this area. The "Greens" (big 'G') are but one element. Giddens probably focuses on them because they are a political party so he is aware of them. Since they are unlikely to gain much real power this is all rather a moot point anyway.

By Chapter 5 Giddens talks about the roles of Carbon Taxes which he seems to prefer of Carbon Trading, although he leaves room for both. Like the rest of us he is waiting for Carbon Markets to work rather than act as a political fig leaf. As they remain unproven he prefers Carbon Taxes which Stern was largely dismissive of. Even Stern accepted they had a role on a national level but he didn't have much enthusiasm for them. By Chapter 7 we have moved on to Climate Change Adaptation. This is a most peculiar section of the book as Giddens appears to take on the role of insurance salesman and devotes most of the chapter to discussing financial insurance. This is not what most of us think of when we describe "adaptation". This chapter stands out as an oddity as being the only section where the authors goes off ...

On the panel - just what is "freedom" anyway?

Post Carbon Man — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:36:51 +0000
I took my seat alongside Rob Hopkins at EcoBuild in Earls Court this year. We were presenting on "Sustaining Transition Town Initiatives". I got a slot on "Lessons from a Transition Town" whilst Rob presented on "Transition Towns today and in the future". Other presenters were Liz Cox (head of Connected Economies, New Economics Foundation) and Alastair Donald (Urban Designer).
I digress.... Back to our somewhat smaller (but very well attended) event: Alastair's presentation spawned controversy (see Rob's response at http://transitionculture.org/2010/03/04/genuine-resilience-results-from-expanding-the-human-footprint-discuss/) when he suggested that sustainable development somehow was an artificial constraint upon human (and specifically) architectural development. Although the criticism was not aimed specifically at Transition Towns (and the debate was good humoured) Alastair's assertion that "genuine resilience results from an expanding human footprint" met with the Rob's ire. I think most of us would scratch our head with disbelief that anyone could imagine the exponential expansion of resource usage can be sustained on a finite planet. It beggars believe but is the reflection of the same sort of logic that drove Ian Plimer in "Heaven & Earth" (ISBN 978-07043-7166-8 Quartet Books 2009) when he stated that mankind's existence was personified by our triumph over nature. For Plimer nature is darn-right nasty and out to 'get us'. He believed it is our right to overcome nature and tame it if we are to remain alive & free on this planet. This view comes from a very different view of life. One as mankind as victim rather than nature.

I recall a vaguely charming Tweet from Rob several months ago when he said he was off to the cinema to see "Star Trek"(2009 Paramount Pictures). Having subsequently seen this movie myself I can't help but think that the future vision created by Gene Roddenberry (or let's say reinterpreted by J.J. Abrams) is at the meeting point of Rob and Alastair's views. What is missing is time and technology. If we live long enough to develop a technology that gives us access to unlimited clean and renewable energy then much of our problems disappear IF we also undergo a cultural transition. If we know how to change matter into energy then back to matter again we can create whatever we need to create and leave mother nature well alone. The future vision of Star Trek has often shown astounding technology alongside people's and culture leading a simple "transitiony" existence. These future people have learnt harsh lessons so have rejected wars and urban sprawl in favour of a more sustainable relationship with the planets they live on. Urban nightmares are only found on "backward" planets with people who have not transitioned. The way WE live today would simply be viewed as barbaric to these imaginary future cultures. Transition is a cultural curtailment where people find a happier place with less stuff. It doesn't mean they live in mud huts, leading a miserable short life and chewing berries to survive in the woods. In such a future world the architects can build whatever fantastic city-scape they can imagine. But would anyone want to live in them? Your freedom is only defined by what people want, it is only confined by what people need.

So go on, build your gas guzzling unsustainable buildings and feel 'free'. But they will become the definition of failure when people evolve to find what true freedom really means. As one member of the audience pointed out in the ensuing debate at EcoBuild: where is the freedom in nuclear energy when the uranium is ripped from the soil of Tibet and those who exploit it ride roughshod of over the freedoms of the indigenous peoples who live there? With every freedom come a responsibility. Out of sight is not out of mind. Once we realise the costs of our perceived freedoms then then are no longer classified as freedoms. They become the bars that hold us back.

Brace! Climate Change Backlash starts here

Post Carbon Man — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:27:41 +0000

It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong hasn’t it? Aggressive Climate Change Deniers hacked into the Climate Research Unit’s E:Mails and downloaded thousands of inter-personal notes covering millions of words. What did they find? Well, just about nothing. Just like the Bible – if you look hard enough you can find something that backs whatever distorted belief system you wish to reinforce. They found no evidence of conspiracy and no lack of evidence for man-made climate change. But what little they did find they milked for all it is worth. Meanwhile the American Petroleum Institute quietly pumped $52million dollars into the American Political system to ensure that Obama does precisely NOTHING at Copenhagen – let alone go to it.

No wonder the public are confused. Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll on the American public’s attitude to Climate Change. Belief that Climate Change is occurring had declined from 71% in April 2008 to 56% in October and the belief that Climate Change is human-caused declined from 47% to 36%. This gets more bizarre by the second. At precisely the same time 100 scientists who worked on the IPCC 2007 report released a 2009 update in time for Copenhagen. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided.

We have not had a greater divergence between what the public believe and what science knows. The internet is abuzz with the furious blogging and comments of what seems like a thousand amateur Climate change Deniers. Amazon’s best selling science books are all on Climate Change Denial. It seems that collective madness has crept upon us. Pretty soon we’ll be condemning midwives to drowning for being Witches. It is all very depressing. Maybe it is the darkest just before dawn? Maybe we are on the verge of a breakthrough? The coincidence between public doubt, scientific certainty and Government action is NOT coincidental. It was all very well blaming each other when we thought nothing would actually get done. But as soon as something IS about to get done we chickened out of the deal. Good Lord! The Government may actually enforce a Carbon Budget! Outrageous Orwellian nightmare! It seems people would support action on climate change as long as no action was actually taken.

Only a few years ago it looked like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has smashed its way into the public consciousness. The debate was over. Although the debate was over and the science settled it seemed that the public attitude is fickle and easily swayed into disinterest as soon as economic recession headed their way. Afterall – who cares when Governmental Leadership clearly felt it necessary to pump trillions into a banking sector (that wasn’t allowed to fail) whilst barely passing a few pennies towards greening the economy?

So we are clutched grimly in the jaws of history with neither victory nor defeat quite at hand. The inconvenient truth is that the public just wish the problem to go away so they can get on with their lives. They will vote for whoever makes it go away. There are enough politicians out there who will do just that – not by agreeing to strict emissions caps at Copenhagen but by doing the far easier thing – simply saying the problem does not exist. Problem solved. Case closed. We’ll just find a million pounds here or there to bail out the flood victims in north-England villages. We’ll adapt. Well, for a hundred years maybe. But then....

So here we are in the midst of an inter-generational civil war. If we choose now to do nothing then we have declared this war upon generations yet unborn. Cos I'm alright jack. Until now it was nothing more than a few skirmishes but how long until the war catches up with THIS generation? How long until the computer hackers turn into assassins? Of course it is the wrong war. Since we have, at best, 20 years in which to enjoy fossil fuels (at current levels of consumption and cheapness) then we will have to transition to the post-carbon world anyway. And that will take 20 to 40 years at best. So we may as well roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Mitigating the risk of climate change comes free with the package.

Buy one - get one free.

Vegetarians

Post Carbon Man — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:46:12 +0100

Isn't funny how everyone with an agenda jumps on the Carbon Cutting bandwagon? There is now a growing chorus of noise from the Vegetarian community. This chorus probably has an element of smug 'told-you-so' about it. Apparently, not eating meat has a lower carbon footprint than a regular diet. In fact this is true. So, 'hear-hear; I hear you cry? Well, all is not as it seems.

Although superficially correct there is more to it. Our futures will be more localised. Our choices will be far more limited and we will still have to eat healthily. You will still need a mix of Vitamins and Minerals and these will need to be sourced from a much closer locale to your home than is currently possible. Hence your location will effect you diet. Rich agricultural areas will enjoy variety and a balanced diet. Other human locations may be more marginal or better suited to certain forms of monoculture. So where is this going?

In a world of cheap food in enormous variety available from the supermarket we have become used to near infinite choice. These choices allow us to make lifestyle decision based upon ethical and fashionable considerations. These choices would be unimaginable to our grandparents. When these choices are removed the room for fashion, fad and ethics becomes less and less. We will all ending up eating whatever we can afford to eat for our location. This will largely be locally grown fruit and veg. The meat lovers will find their choice restricted. However, it works both ways. The vegetarian may find that their choices are also restricted. Hence, if they wish to maintain their lifestyle choice then will have to go somewhere where it can be maintained. Otherwise vegetarians may find themselves having to eats fish in order to maintain a healthy balance. The message is this: your choices will become more restricted. hence your survival may mean that your lifestyle choice is no longer a matter of choice at all. You will eat whatever is available.

Some will argue that their choices will be maintained by trading for the foodstuffs that sustain them. True, but remember that long distant food-trade may well be a distant memory one day. There will also be far less to trade with. As our population has over-shot the carrying capacity of our landmasses then there will not be much food to go around. Hence we will be growing the foodstuffs that support our desired levels of population. Hence you may find that, unless you grow these foods yourself, then your exotic foods may never be seen again where you are.

The Two Survivors

Post Carbon Man — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:44:59 +0100

Anyone familiar with a ‘Mad Max’ Movie or the work of Kevin Costner in “Waterworld” or “The Postman” will be aware of one Hollywood truism about post-apocalyptic worlds. There are only two types of survivor: “Communities of Builders” and the “Criminal Parasites”. One will farm and produce a sustainable existence through the combined strength of people coming together. The other will just steal everything it needs from those Farmers. They farm Farmers.

One of these Survivors has a Future. The other does not. Sadly, this will remain the reason why the Communities of Builders will also be a Community of Soldiers. Maybe “soldiers” is a strong word. Maybe “guardians” is better. There is no point trying to build sustainability if someone will just steal it from you. That is no future for anyone if it perpetuates a cycle of self-destruction.

Hence the idealistic utopian future of some environmentalists is nothing more than a fantasy. The future probably lies in fences. The sustainers cannot build unless they can keep the gangsters out. There is no future in serfdom. It is here that the ridiculous and scary right-wing US cult of 'survivalism has a point. These guys may be nuts living up there in a shack in the mountains, but their love of guns probably mean they will keep what is their's. Of course, it isn't that simple. Evil begets evil and guns only lead to killing. A sustainer cannot defend just himself. He must build a community of likeminded people and then defend that community with everything in their arsenals.

How do sustainers sustain their lives without armed fortification and conflict? Indeed, for every sustainer there are five reckless thieves out there quite happy to use the fossil fuels you didn't. Demoralising isn't it? The more we build a sustainable future the more short term resources are left for the thieves. The sustainers have the moral high-ground at all times. You see the thieves everywhere, in the 4x4’s or in positions of power. Protect yourself from these parasites and don't be down-heartened. YOU have a future, they do not. But don't live with your head in the clouds. The future is not all peace and love man. Resource scarcity means doing without. Many people don't like doing without. Many people can't do without. Many will be envious of your ability to cope with that crisis in a way that they can't. So, one day they will knock on your door. At first they will ask you. Then they will demand. Then they will take. There are too many people for what little there is left. Maybe the only answer is to remain well hidden and preserve your knowledge and your humanity for a future when all the wars are over and we are left with a much quieter planet. Something resembling the world of Roman times maybe? They lived well.... But they fought wars and had an empire. They had slaves. It is the human condition.

Bottom-line - survival is a community project. Expect to have to learn how to plough and to fight.

True Sustainability: Cutting Out the Oil

Post Carbon Man — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:40:24 +0100

Everything we see needs oil in our ‘modern’ lives. Even our ‘sustainable’ bangles. Every Nuclear Power Station, every wind turbine, every solar panel, every house, every power cable, every GHP, every CHP, every wood burner, every hybrid car, everything. Made of oil, transported by oil, created through releasing oil energy. NONE of it has a future. None of it.

Nothing is truly sustainable until Fossil Fuels are taken out of the equation. Oil has to be replaced at every stage of production. Oil has to be completely banished from our economy. Our economy must be decoupled from oil.

The Tragedy of Offsetting

Post Carbon Man — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:34:00 +0100

Those poor offsetters – haven’t they had a bum rap recently? Every man and his dog has waded in to condemn offsetting as our next big crime against nature. Is it justified? Almost certainly not. Sure, there are a cynical minority who will seek to maximise their profits unscrupulously with unethical or counterproductive Carbon Offsetting schemes – a few rotten apples do not a barrel make. However, most of the criticism is aimed at the philosophical problem that people should be cutting-back/powering-down and not using offsetting as an excuse for ‘business as normal’ (BAN).

The problem with all this is that the vast majority of people who offset are the kind of conscientious people who are already bolting on the solar panels and changing their energy suppliers to green energy. Those who don’t give a damn will not have voluntarily spent money on tree planting anyway. So who are these minority of people who are trying to buy themselves out of carbon debt? Well, politicians, big business, marketing folk - the usual suspects mostly. However, if you read some of the anti-offsetting polemic (at such places as www.planestupid.com) you would think that any person thinking of offsetting some aspect of their lives (that they haven’t been able to forego) are guilty of poking the eyes out of Pandas. Some of the dogma now bandied around defies all rational thinking. The Ecologist Magazine now actively discourages its readers from Offsetting and now wants them to invest their money in buying tracts of mature rain forest. HELLO! Mature trees absorb little CO2. What are you thinking? The crazy loons publicised an interesting but irrelevant report that showed that blowing more CO2 over a tree didn't mean it was all absorbed. This, they claimed, showed that tree planting "didn't work". HELLO! CRAZY PEOPLE!! Growing trees absorb CO2. The more CO2 we produce the more trees you have to plant. Unbelievable. They still teach photosynthesis in schools don't they or am I going nuts?

This tars everyone with the same brush. For every high-flyer, who takes pride in their five foreign holidays a year, there is some poor sucker who has to fly for Business or to visit sick relatives. These people may not have a choice in the short term. They may therefore choose to invest some ethical capital in a scheme that counter-acts the harm they are doing. It doesn’t mean that they think that makes it alright. It just recognises that they are on a different part of the path and are working on the next stage.

The big issues with offset-bashing is that it will kill this form of ethical investment just when it needs a massive injection of capital. Once the seeds of chaos and confusion are sown people will do without ethical investments. It will put them off. Let’s face it, where is the damage? Do we starve reforestation projects of millions of pounds of investment because of some childish fears that a few trees might burn down? No, this is terribly dangerous. People should invest now. The concept of “offsetting” may be just the motivation some people need. Once you remove that you remove baby with the bathwater. That is crazy. Just because people make the right decisions for the wrong reasons doesn’t make it wrong. This kind of 'holier than thou' politics just turns people off.

So, what do we do? Certainly we need a major rebranding exercise. If the green-thought-police are so offended by the very word “offset” then let us call it something else. Instead of “offset” let us call it “adjustment”. Henceforth all such schemes are generically “Carbon Debt Negation” schemes. Not “Target Zero” or “Carbon Neutral” but “Ethical Carbon Investments”. These can be broken down into “Carbon Sink Investments” and “Carbon Displacement Initiatives”. These must be governed by strict rules: they must be a net drain of atmospheric CO2. ‘Displacing’ your future carbon growth just means you stand still. OK, better than nothing. This is certainly a lot better then the fraudulent use of Kyoto agreements to get cash simply be threatening to do something to increase Carbon Production. The money must encourage people to move to greener technologies than would have otherwise been outside of their spending power. It must do something new.

What about tree planting? This is a carbon sink. And we need as much of this as possible. It must be in trust, i.e., not temporary to be sold off for logging at some future date. If it burns down then it will need to be insured to make sure it is replanted. A small proportion of all tree stock burns down every year just like a small number of people die in car accidents. However, we don’t react by staying in bed for the rest of our lives. We offset the risk by driving safely and insuring your car.

What about research that says that trees give off carbon? Science can give us information about the best trees to plant and how best to plant them and where to plant them. However, millions of years of trees ended up as coal and there is an awful lot of coal in the ground. So please don’t kid yourselves that trees are not a carbon sink. Lots of them, over a long enough time, in the right place, certainly are. But the more we know the better if we are to make trees an effective carbon sink.

What of the criticism that Trees take 100 hundred years to absorb their Carbon? Yes, this is self-evident. This is a lifetime choice and the golden rule is that you choose any investment for its long term returns. This argument revolves around the concept of keeping Fossil Fuels in the ground NOW to maximise the anti-global-warming effects. A great concept but change will only happen slowly. Too slowly for some. If we burn these fuels now but absorb the CO2 over the next ...

The Awful Truth: Population Over Shoot

Post Carbon Man — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:42:40 +0100

It isn’t easy being green. How can I earn money without my Car? How can I run my economy if I don’t fly? All good questions. Everything must change. It will change slowly. Adjustments must be made. How difficult will it be? Many will be coy about how difficult our future is. Mostly they want to pretend that it will be easy. They pretend that the worst than could happen is that you take a bus rather than drive.

If only it would be that easy. We wish. There is more at stake than just modes of transport or whether the Chinese will every drive cars or own fridges. Human existence is at stake (at worst) and our economic stability is at stake (at best).

Let’s explain: our economies are not steady-state. They continually grow. The fuel that makes them grow is fossil fuel. It is like sunshine & water for a plant. You take it away and it stops growing. Economists talk about ‘decoupling’ only in terms of economic growth not linked to increased energy usage. There is no evidence for this. It isn’t possible. Mankind did not get to this level of sophistication and industrial development without vast resources of cheap energy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is delusional. This is intuitively true. Your pour plant food on a plant and it grows.

If you take that food away, or ration it, something stops growing. The economy stops generating more wealth. It stops growing until another source of energy is found. For it is not Oil that fuels the economy it is energy. The only decoupling we should be concerned with is decoupling our economy from Fossil Fuels. It is energy we need. Energy is required for a steady state non growth sustainable economy. The level of economic activity is directly related to the amount of energy that can be captured and utilised. This is directly proportional to other natural resources such as food. (Biomass is essentially organic materials, food, that is turned into energy.)

So if all this energy comes from the sun what level of economic activity is possible? Well, if you measure economic activity as GDP then the desirable level is relative to your population size. Herein lies the problem. Our ability to generate food from finite resources is directly related to our supply of energy. Energy can supplement the amount of natural energy would be normally consumed in the manufacture of our food. Currently it take nine times as much energy to make our food than it actually delivers as calories into our bodies. This is a frightening statistic. Nine time. Nine Calories of Oil energy to yield one calorie of food energy. If you remove the other nine calories just how much food energy can we sustain?

Our amount of food is also directly related to population growth. Energy = economic activity = food = population. Reduce the energy and everything else falls like a pack of cards. When the collapse comes the economy will meltdown and no-one will have a job. Then people without jobs will have no money. Property prices will collapse. People lose their homes. Homeless people with no jobs and no money soon find that they have no food either. Quickly follows social collapse.

Our only parachute promising a soft landing it to ensure that the collapse is handled as a gentle slide. Economic progress must halt. Food production will slow down. Birth rates plummet. This will be hard if you are a politician and used to perpetual growth. How do you sell this? The answer is you don’t. You will continue business as usual until the collapse will be it most damaging. Nothing you can do will stop the collapse but you can be ready. You can have your lifeboat ready.

Rights and Responsibilities

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:41:11 +0100

Few people are yet ready to accept this cost of Carbon in their lives. Yes, they will have to, but if they aren’t ready what will you do? Persuade them that it is in their best interest? Yeah? Oh, we are back to offsetting again. I guess it comes down to how you feel about your fellow human beings. Are they good or bad? Wise or foolish? If you believe only the worst about your fellow man then you believe you must remove their choices and rights. This negates al responsible argument. This prescribes dictatorship. That has no future. People must be willing volunteers so the best we can do it to take action at governmental and international levels to edit people’s choices.

People really don’t like having their ‘rights’ taken away. However, people have strange concepts of what is a right. No one questions that you can’t kill another man. You cannot steal from another. You cannot take away another’s future. However, people only understand these restrictions because they feel it is equitable, i.e., it protects them, AND because they can join up the dots between cause and effect. The trouble with something happening a long way in the future to somebody else is that people can’t join up the dots. They don’t see what it has to do with them. If they fly away on holiday today then come home safe and sound. No one gets hurt surely? It doesn’t hurt them directly therefore it is a victimless crime. We borrow this right from someone’s future. This right does not belong to us. It is stolen. Someone else will never be able to live, let alone travel, because of our ‘rights’. This is pretty shocking stuff. All because we can’t join up the dots.

It used to be said that Property is Theft. In our new reality the truth is that most of our perceived 'rights' are in fact just privileges we stole from somebody else. Maybe it is time to share them a little more widely. We have this false concept that somehow we ‘earnt’ these privileges. Does anyone in a rich Northern minority country work harder than a poor farmer in Africa? Doubtful. His family may well die of thirst or hunger because you earnt the right to his share of global resources – clean air and fossil fuel. Does this mean he didn’t deserve them? Those rights are equal. You have the right to earn more money but no one has the right to consume a disproportionate share to the detriment of another man.

Through ingenuity and hard work should allow to you to exploit resources more efficiently and generate wealth and prosper, this cannot be a tax on another man. This other man should have equal access and opportunity as you. He may choose to not take that opportunity or he may not have the aptitude to exploit it but, no one has a right to take that opportunity away.

The Real Price of Anything

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 10:30:03 +0100

What is the real price of anything? Do you look at the cost of Solar Panels or Organic Vegetables and say to your self “this is all out of my price range”? Hold on a second. Apart from entertaining the ‘false concept of choice’ (that we discuss separately here) this presents a fallacy. It is not that these renewable resources are expensive, it is that everything else is subsidised. Think about it, cheap oil subsidises everything. When the cheap oil is gone THEN what will be the price of everything?

I often look at the success of Fair Trade Coffee and marvel at how some retail outlets ONLY stock such items. I wonder if we will see the final death of non-Fair Trade and non-Organic. What would that mean? If you no longer had the choice and that was the new normal? It would represent the end of a subsidy. The end of the Carbon Subsidy. That is all. The end of one kind of economics and he beginning of a new way of balancing the books. Is this the end of choice? No, not at all. Our choices have always been distorted through the looking glass of oil. Our lives viewed through a lens smeared with oil. And this hid our own future from us.

The next time we look at this ‘choice’ tell your self that the price difference is the cost of having that same thing next year. It is like putting money in the bank. You are saving up for a future. It is an investment in a non-throwaway tomorrow. That extra price is the cost of tomorrow.

The Real Cost To Our Children

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:23:26 +0100

Time was that we thought the end of oil and Global Warming were something that our children’s children would have to deal with. Quickly this became our children’s problem. (I recall studying under a far-sighted Geography teacher in the 1980’s who told us that the end of North Sea Oil would be our problem.) Now it is our problem. Events are catching up with us. Now we realise that actually it was our parent’s problem – but they didn’t know it - so it is too late to do anything about it for them, but not for us.

Where does this all go? The unthinkable. The unspeakable truth of our over-populated unsustainable World. It is no longer a case of discussing whether it is us, our children or our children’s children. It is now a case of how much do YOU wish to suffer? Do YOU want to grow old slowly and die one day in your sleep? Or would you prefer your retirement to be spent in economic misery wondering where the next meal would come from. And this is YOU. What fate our children?

It is not longer a case of a problem being passed on to our children’s children….

It is a case of our children will never have children. They will be lucky if they do. The problem is not their’s to inherit. They will never be born to inherit it.

Peak Oil: Down to the Very Last Drop

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:22:04 +0100

How will mankind use its last drop of oil? How do you think? Write in and we’ll publish your better ideas! Here are two alternatives:

Sustainers: the last drop of oil is used in the crane that fitted the last blade to the last wind-turbine we will ever need.

Parasites: the last drop will be delivered to a F1 car. Hundreds of men in anoraks (who have walked long distances) have gathered for the spectacle. The engine turns over and they all sigh and then cheer. Then the last engine dies. Then everyone looks at each other and ask ‘what do we do now?’. So they all walk home again. They walk home past the unfinished solar power plants and lifeless fields and think to themselves “well, that was fun, what shall we do for a laugh tomorrow?”

Of course, many will argue that we should never extract that Oil. They are right. But, realistically this won’t stop the parasites from taking that Oil anyway. So we must think of using that enormous endowment of nature’s trapped sunshine to build a future sustainable society BEFORE we piss it away of motor-racing, wars and other terrible things. We must use it to build the future and break free from the Fossil Fuel Dependency syndrome. Lets build that future now before we tempted to start extracting all that Coal and Shale Oil – now that is a real disaster. We need to use the remaining endowment with vastly more wisdom that we used the first half.

New Realities = Voting with Your Wallet

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:20:56 +0100

YOU are shifting the paradigm so make sure everyone else understands this is normal and act shocked if they are stuck in their selfish fossil-fuel-driven ways. Act with astonishment if your neighbour drives a 4x4. Act as if they are driving a combine harvester covered in razor blades! Develop your own peer pressure.

When they tell you it is none of your business and it is there ‘freedom’ you are contravening and how hard they have worked to get the deserved little luxuries, blah, blah, blah just act as if they have just told you they have invested in a Death Camp. Just keep that vision in your mind. They are wrong and you are right. Think of the most socially unacceptable thing a person can do next to rape or murder. That selfish act is depriving a man of his food of his livelihood. It is the water he should be drinking. The job he should be working on. Our freedoms come at a price of other people’s slavery, suffering and death. Make the connection and make them see that too.

Why Can't Our Leaders Lead?

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:10:22 +0000

When it comes to the unwillingness of politicians to act on peak oil and global warming you are left wondering – do they know something we don’t? In the USA, as Al Gore perfectly pointed out in “An Inconvenient Truth” the US Administration’s refusal to enforce new automobile efficiency standards not only threatens US Energy Security but undermines their competitiveness. Why would any sane rational human being deliberately do something that is so obviously against the public interest? Why pursue such narrow self-interest even if it is so self-evidently suicidal?

The answer is simple. Politicians do not operate in the Public Interest. They operate in the interests of wealth and entrenched power. What they know is that measures to benefit untold millions on unborn children won’t fatten their pay cheques or bring them the power and prestige they crave. Research undertaken by Noam Chomsky in “Failed States” (2006) revealed how every major policy decision arising in the last US Election actually went in the opposite direction to Public Opinion. He most obvious example was Medicare. The public wanted more but the Politicians delivered less. Why? What do they know?

The truth is, although the public vote for Politicians the actual policies are largely directed by special interest groups. In the US the policy of Free Public Health Care is driven not by the needs of those polled on the street but by the Health Insurance Companies. This is not the democracy you want yet it is the democracy that is paid for. And don’t even get us started on the distortion in the media about the issues. For an appraisal of this read Robert Kennedy Jnr’s “Crimes against Nature”.

Democracy is a little more vibrant on the European side of the pond. However, the result is much the same. The continued inaction of Aviation Fuel Taxation across Europe is another indicator that those in power really seem to know something we don’t. Their message screams loudly from every orifice of Government and it is this: Business as Usual please.

This is why two forms of action are necessary. Firstly grass roots, and secondly, international. There is no future for International Trade so GATT must be scrapped and placed by International accords on Energy Security, Food Security and Energy Taxation. If every country acts in the same way then no country gains unfair advantage over any other. Hence Politicians can point to international needs for why the economy doesn’t grow or there is less choice on the shelves. Of course, no politician wants to be the first to say this unthinkable thing. Sacrifice. Who will step up to the plate? Who will go that extra mile? It is a modern marvel of our western democratic model that it is so able to over-rule the will of the people in the interest of a minority. What does the minority know that we don’t? Why doesn’t his powerful minority act in their own self-interest and seek to protect that planet and the people on it?

Methinks they have a big rocket ship and all planning to take their money and power to some other corner of the universe leaving the rest of us to burn. Absurd? Of course. But how do sane people behave so irrationally? The Documentary “The Corporation” provided an answer to this. The Corporation’s excuse is that it is legally bound to maximise profit in the present day not sustainability in the longer term. In this way it could be demonstrated that the psychology is essentially that of a psychopath. Well, if Incorporated Business’s have no collective responsibility, but are legally individuals who behave as psychopaths, where does this leave democratic Government? Are they axe murderers? They are meant to be accountable but are not.

Final analysis: the human triumph over energy shortages and Climate Change will be, essentially, triumphs in the reformation of Democracy. Either that, or the people we elect really do know something we don’t.

Please write in with your pet theories as to why Politicians won’t do anything. Here’s an example: Politician’s won’t do anything because they know they have captured Flying Saucers at Area 51. These flying saucers have some wonderful technology that replace all Fossil Fuels. As soon as Fossil Fuels run out it will be revealed to the World. Likewise with Global Warming, they have a special shield they will put around the planet to deflect excess solar radiation negating the Greenhouse Effect. However, if they have all of this why aren’t they using it? For some unnecessarily complicated reason that have to wait for it all to get really bad so that the public will give them a licence to do something about it. In the meantime they can use the chaos caused to enhance their power by going to war over scarce natural resources or blame terrorists for extra security blah blah.

You can be as conspiratorial as you like. We’ll publish the best theories right here! You never know. Some important person might actually read them and start to think that all this secrecy and inaction is really not in their best interest at all. Or we might be spot on and suddenly find that this dot com is suddenly an un-web-site. But conspiracy theories are fun aren’t they? The more you think about them rationally the more ridiculous they are. This only leaves one conclusion.

The Journey to the Future

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:06:08 +0000

What to do? Start a journey with us. We don’t quite know how it will end but we know how it will begin. It starts here. The first day of the rest of your life with a commitment to change something new every day for the rest of your life. Making incremental steps to reduce your footprint to sustainable levels in the hope that we can salvage some of the better features of our modernity. You just can’t do nothing and live with yourself. When your children ask you ‘what did you do?’ can you look them in the eye? If you don’t do anything do you think your children’s children will have children at all? You are fighting a war for THEM. The war is with yourself. A call to arms.

It doesn’t matter if your view of the future is utterly grim (i.e., destruction of the human race kind of grim) or overly-rosy (wind-turbines and hydrogen powered cars). All that matter is that the future will be very different. Energy will be very expensive. Consumer goods will become rare. There will be no more consumerism. There will be no more fossil fuels. Energy will be clean and sustainable. There just won’t be much of it. Hence life will be simpler and slower. The economy will not be an engine for growth. There will be no time or money or energy for ambitious foreign policy, armies, warships, bomber planes or any of this paraphernalia. Things will stay the same for long periods and things will not always get better.

The greatest treasury we leave our descendents will be the contents of our landfill sites.

Free-market dogma suggests that the free hand of the market will conjure up some technological marvel to cure our ills. This is both right and wrong. The free market did indeed conjure up the early oil exploration but that was easy – you just had to drill in the right place. A free market didn’t exactly put a man on the moon. The market responds to price triggers. Technology becomes viable as the substitute's price increases. However, that substitute may require 50 years development whilst the price of oil has just gone up a million%. How quickly can a free market respond? In any changing market there is a time of social adjustment and it will be painful for many. Your economy may completely collapse and your people starve well before the price mechanism conjures up anything other than fuel poverty. Our free markets have done nothing but conjure up greed and the ever speedier gobbling up of finite resources. So we had all better hope that things happen very slowly for the free market to adjust to the new reality. The fear is that the pursuit of short term profit will lead to unwise investment decisions based upon the delusional premise of unlimited cheap oil.

Investment capital needs to be released into our futures and our commons. Not the past and the private. Failure to do so will lead to human suffering. Free markets do not always relieve human suffering if there is profit in that suffering. Hence the pain must be felt by the investment bankers, insurance firms, the WTO and financiers. Business is good. Small Business is good when the individuals running it are personally accountable for the actions of their Business activity. Likewise free markets are ‘good’ and the same is true for ‘democracy’. Sadly much of our ‘free markets’ are not free in the Adam Smith-sense of the word, nor are our ‘democracies’ democratic.

Hence the message is that you cannot wait for other people, either politicians or big business to prepare you for what has to be done. YOU must do what is necessary for YOU. And what you do is not divorced from the community, society and economy around you. Hence the wisdom in your buying power will effect the market and the Big Business. You control them, not vice versa. Likewise with politics. You vote for them. If you don’t like them find someone else to vote for or stand yourself. It is not true to say that you don’t know what to do. You have to look for the answers, and they are here.

The conclusion is that when we are all taking responsibility for our future and we all act to prepare ourselves for the future then the Market and Democracy will also work. They will not, by themselves, do anything useful. WE are the Market and we are the Politicians of this new society. They are not divorced from us. They only appear divorced because not enough people take positive actions. Not enough people care. What has to happen before you care? Do you have to be hungry, jobless or cold before you care? I would prefer to see that day off well in advance.

What will happen? Carbon rationing, i.e., fossil fuel rationing is heading to a gas pump near you. Will you be ready? And when we say ‘gas pump’ we don’t just mean the transport sector. We mean every aspect of the economy from building new homes to the food on your plate. You ration energy and you ration the economy. Hence we will need to find alternatives means of existence. If you are not ready then you will find this painful and you will suffer. If you have spent thirty years in preparation then you will find the change much easier.

How can I stop partying when everyone else is enjoying themselves? I am sacrificing something of mine and they are stealing it from me! Shouldn’t they suffer too? Oh, they will, in the longer term. Well, by doing it slowly day by day. By educating other people. It seems unfair when you have such a good habit in recycling every last item only to see your neighbours bin full to the brim. Why should you bother when they don’t? Because you ...

Illusions of Progress

Post Carbon Man — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:30:12 +0000

It is not your fault, but you are responsible. If you are reading these words you are using electricity. Had a hot shower this morning? Think you will be able to have one thirty years from now? Either through political action or scarcity all Fossil Fuel-based energy is going to be EXTREMELY expensive within 30 years.

So, what did we get for throwing away our children’s inheritance? An epidemic of cancer? Are you happier for the McDonalds you ate today? Unparalleled comforts have bred unequalled levels of obesity, idleness, boredom, unhappiness, drug-taking, crime, social problems, family breakdown and over-population. Everywhere where the cheap oil disease has struck, we see human beings huddling together around the source of energy rather than their source of food. We are like moths to the candle flame. Just look at the shanty-towns of the third world or the global history of peasants leaving the land to work in the city in search of a better life.

In reality we are like an early aviation pioneer who has strapped wings to his arms. He has jumped of a cliff and is falling. The trouble is he doesn’t think he is falling. In fact he thinks he is flying. He thinks he will fly forever. In fact he is about to hit the ground. Very hard.

The Post-Carbon Blog

Jeff Rubin "Why your World is about to get a whole lot smaller"

Jeff Rubin "Why your World is about to get a whole lot smaller"

Andy Reynolds "Wind & Solar Electricity" (LILI)

Howard Friel "The Lomborg Deception"

The E:Mail at the End of the Universe

Soylent Green

A Sunny Investment

Life after the Rat Race

What Bertrand Russell knew

Back to the Future - It's Stagflation again!

Stuff You May Have Missed

Kingsley Dennis and John Urry "After the Car"

David Boyle & Andrew Simms "The New Economics - A Bigger Picture"

Welcome to No-man's Land

Vandana Shiva "Soil Not Oil"

Anthony Giddens "The Politics of Climate Change"

On the panel - just what is "freedom" anyway?

Brace! Climate Change Backlash starts here

Vegetarians

The Two Survivors

True Sustainability: Cutting Out the Oil

The Tragedy of Offsetting

The Awful Truth: Population Over Shoot

Rights and Responsibilities

The Real Price of Anything

The Real Cost To Our Children

Peak Oil: Down to the Very Last Drop

New Realities = Voting with Your Wallet

Why Can't Our Leaders Lead?

The Journey to the Future

Illusions of Progress