Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "oil"

Life Without Oil: by Steve Hallett and John Wright, Amherst New York, Prometheus Books, 2011.

I awoke one morning recently realizing how this “old” book mirrors The Archives of Varok, my 1970’s attempt (updated this decade) to explain why we “Must Shift To a New Energy Future.”

My dad saw it coming in the 1960’s--this need to pull back on our runaway economy and population bomb--when he could not find, anywhere in the world, matched rosewood to build a xylophone.

In Life Without Oil, the authors (writing before 2011) tell us that “The party’s over.
Technology will not save us, that “…globalization accelerates our destruction and deepens our vulnerability…” so we had better make “…communities and nations…more resilient to the coming collapse and more able to recover thereafter.” They make a detailed, well-documented case with extensive reference notes and Index.

The authors’ suggestions are just as valid now as they were eight years ago: sustainability must replace the current “…ethos of growth, where people share and conserve, rather than compete and consume.” I.e. don’t send food; support local production and “sustainable ecology.” Manage the commons. “Allow immigration” to solve problems of declining populations.

Europe is a good example of how population growth can reach a “rate near zero.” This world does not need to be another Easter Island, where ten communities competed for resources until the land was stripped bare.

We need to “…forego short-term economic needs” and invest in alternative energy technologies, “replace fossil fuels” while protecting the land and maintaining the wilderness, productive farmland, clean air and water.

Industry must be required to pay “…the economic price and the ecological price for the materials they use and the goods they produce and distribute…” . How? With careful planning. Remove subsidies “from polluting industries.” Increase their taxes when they pollute, trade emission permits and enforce regulations in the financial industry, especially where the natural environment can be protected.

The authors recognize that all situations can differ, but it makes sense that the pros and cons of various regulations can be balanced--just as we balance the right of way at a four-way stop on our highways. We all honor the rules: the car on the right goes first if two cars get to the intersection at the same time. Otherwise we simply take turns--first one there goes first.

Life Without Oil--Why We Must Shift to a New energy Future by Steve Hallett with John Wright, Prometheus Books, Amherst, 2011.

Note the publication date! 2011!! This book should have been entitled “The Beginning of Our End.” It begins with a historical overview of humanity’s use of Earth’s resources and the failed example of Easter Island, in which the first resource to be exploited was the bird life, then the big trees. The authors make the point that “Creeping environmental degradation such as this is occurring around the world today.”

Why didn’t Easter Islanders see their problem? Why don’t we? They were divided into territories that competed-- as we are divided into nations.

The impressive Mayan example of disaster is summarized next. Its “…colossal pyramids and stairways were gradually destroyed by 800 CD.E., as they fought over resources.” Their real…enemy was their own exploitation of the environment.”

The Fertile Crescent is a similar, more current example. Questions about the fall of the Roman Empire have arisen. There is good evidence that it depleted its landbase by its “…overuse of wood and clearing trees for agriculture.” The Dark Ages came next.

The authors state that now there are signs that the world is full. Like the “demise of past societies,” we have “over-exploited our sources of energy, [done] environmental damage, [and strained] agricultural productions.

Are we too blind to the evidence from previous civilizations? The author argues in 2011 for a shift away from our addiction to oil. Coal, oil and natural gasses are finite resources. The special constitutional rights of corporations, their limited liability and their shareholder mandate for “wealth increase…to deliver…high levels of productivity” mean they may not be able to respond to the long-term historical dangers this book outlines. The next century will see the “decline, demise, and disappearance of oil.”

During this “petroleum interval… of glittering progress “we have tripled our population, destroyed forests , turned farmland into wasteland or urban sprawl, filled our oceans with plastic and vacuumed them for fish, emptied freshwater aquifers, shaved mountains, sent untold species into extinction (and culture too)….drained lakes and rivers, and stuffed the atmosphere with climate altering gases.”

We need to reduce, reuse, repair and recycle. Now! Maybe that should have been the title of this book. And I’m only referencing up to page 115. The details fill the rest of the book--the false assumptions we keep making: 1)that human well-being requires continued economic growth and all that implies, 2) that the marketplace and its competition will provide the energy, resources and competition to keep it growing, and 3)that resources are unlimited and our “life-supporting processes” cannot be damaged. These are all “false assumptions.”

The author concludes by saying that we can recover from “the coming depression” by replacing sustainability for growth and by sharing , conserving, and NOT competing