powerdown

Social Scientist and petroleum depletion writer, Ted Trainer, gives his views on a way forward that does not involve growth. Most of you out there are working three times too hard, and going down with depression and obesity, as your social cohesion crumbles. How about trying a different, simpler way?

So much of the discussion of the human predicament takes for granted a uni-dimensional view of development, wealth, progress. For example many people (especially of the red-left variety) argue that there must be much more economic growth and therefore energy use to increase production so that the poorest billions can rise to satisfactory living standards. They therefore criticise the many green people who are saying that there is already far too much producing and consumption, production, energy and resource use going on. Many red left people argue for redistribution but many green people say that wouldn’t change the amount of consuming so it wouldn’t reduce resource and environmental pressure. So it looks like an insoluble dilemma.

Another way

The way out is to take The Simpler Way. I first put it in Abandon Affluence, Zed, 1985, and have detailed a more elaborate case in The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World, Envirobook, 2010. The first point is that the big global problems cannot be solved unless there is dramatic reduction in the resource consumption, GDP and “living standards” we have in rich countries, probably to one-tenth of their present levels. Several lines of argument within the general “limits to growth” analysis should now leave no doubt about this. For instance the Australian per capita “footprint” is 8 ha of productive land but by 2050 the amount available in the world will be at best .8 ha; so we are 10 times over a level that it would ever be possible for all to have. ...and these numbers totally ignore the absurd commitment to economic growth. Anyone who thinks 9 billion can rise to the “living standards” Australians expect by 2050 given 3% economic growth is assuming the planet can sustain 30 times the present global volume of producing and consuming.

Logistics

It follows that we must move to ways of living, institutions and systems that allow us to live well on a small fraction of the our present rich world affluence affluence, and indeed of the present world resource production levels. The Simpler Way argument is that this could be done, easily and quickly, thereby defusing all the big problems...if enough people saw the sense of it. TSW involves mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies processing local resources to meet local needs, via intensely participatory and cooperative ways, with no economic growth, in economies that are not determined by market forces...and value systems in which there is no interest in competing or gaining.

Ecovillage and Transition Towns movements

Many of us in the ecovillage and Transition Towns movements live in very resource-cheap but quality of life rich ways. I live way under the “poverty line”, never travel, never watch TV, almost never buy new clothes, and could build you abeautiful small earth house for under $5000. My quality of life is high, but nothing like that in some of the communities I know. Meanwhile most of you out there are working three times too hard, going down with depression and obesity, as your social cohesion crumbles. Why don’t you come across to TSW and devote most of your week to your arts and crafts, conversation or just sitting in the sun (…working three hours a week in the remnant offices and factories we’d need)?

Prospects for Transition

Now you might think the prospects for such a transition are remote. My view is that the transition will not be achieved. But that’s not central here. What matters is that you are going to move towards TSW whether you like it or not. We are entering the era of intense and irremediable scarcity. The resources are already inaccessible for most people, and becoming scarcer, especially if you attend to declining EROI (energy return on investment) rather than price. (EROI has halved for oil in a couple of decades.) Only 1.5 billion are using the resources now...just wait until another 8.5 billion go after them. And we few in rich countries are losing our capacity to hog all the available resource wealth as we have for 500 years The Chinese are racing past us and Uncle Sam doesn’t seem to be able to win the necessary resource wars any more. You are in for a rocky road down to getting by on something like your fair share of the world’s resources for a change.

Exercise choice now because there may be no option later

So you might be wise to join us in trying to work out how to run very frugal and self-sufficient communities well, because the most likely alternative will be a nasty feudalism as the rich and the middle classes call for repressive state power to secure their property and privileges against the accelerating scarcity, discontent and breakdown.

Marxism and Capitalism both rooted in growth

My main point is that TSW represents a rejection of the uni-dimensional way of thinking, i.e., that the only way development can be thought about is in terms of moving up the slope of progress towards more jobs, production, income, GDP, wealth and development. No group has been more trapped in this mind-set than one of the teams I belong to, the Marxists. They adopt the same capitalist conception of development as the neo-liberals; development involves investment of capital to increase production for sale...how else could it be conceived? (Marxists just don’t want the capital to be privately owned.) So 3-4 billion Third World people are trapped in hopeless squalor waiting for trickle down from capital invested in the most profitable ventures ... when most of them have all around them the soil, rainfall, forests, traditions, networks, knowledge and labour that could quickly develop the simple but sufficient housing, cooperatives, chicken pens, permaculture gardens, swales, schools, woodlots, sheds, clinics etc. they need to meet most of their basic needs. Appropriate development needs little monetary capital.

Globalisation works against self-sufficiency

Of course the rich countries work hard to prevent the available resources being devoted to such purposes; they must be kept free for use by transnational corporations, and devices such as deb t and the Structural Adjustment Packages ensure that they are. (And any country foolish enough to still deviate is likely to find itself invaded on some pretext.) But the main factor preventing appropriate development is the mentality that can’t deviate from the development=growth dimension. It’s as blindingly dominant within NGOs as within the IMF.

Scarcity will undermine the centralisation dreams of Marxists and Capitalists both

The main reason why I don’t think we will make it is because the commitment to affluence is now so deeply entrenched. No one wants to think about moving to any alternative to it. It has a firm grip on academics in general and Marxists in particular. Their classic statement is that the revolution will take the factories off the capitalist class and then everyone can have a Mercedes. The left has no idea about, and evidently no interest in living simply in highly self-sufficient communities. It is still focused on getting control of the state to organise utopia from the centre. Scarcity rules that out; from here on there can be very little centralisation, heavy industrialisation, globalisation, transport , travel or tourism. Now a satisfactory society all could share can only be organised and run by small towns, suburbs and regions via political systems directly involving all in the decision making and implementation. Sorry but the Anarchist have the right vision now. (There will still be a remnant role for centralised “state” bureaucracies...which are given no power...see Chapter 10.)

The Transition book argues that both red and green people urgently need to take these simpler way themes on board.

The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) has recently put out an 'alert' about peak oil and the existence of a group it has formed called the MAV Transition Community Working Group. It talks about the need for local governments to lead the adaptation to peak oil.

"To the Council CEO and Councillors (all Victorian Councils).
August 2009, LG ‘ALERT’ from the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) Transition Community Working Group

This ALERT is predicated on four factors:

1. The human race is facing its greatest challenge.

2. Individual communities need to collaborate to address the challenge and transition to a reduced-carbon, sustainable future. The time to act is now.

3. Local government needs to support communities in planning to address this challenge. Local government is likely to bear a significant proportion of the brunt of climate change, peak oil and other related impacts, and the sector is most effective when it collaborates to address major challenges.

4. The Transition Community approach is an empowering local response to crisis situations and offers the hope of achieving an improved local economy and improved social cohesion."

Editor: It will be difficult for local governments to lead people in a polity where all the power is being taken from local communities and they are being plugged into state and national power systems which have been commercialised and which have no obligation to their 'customers' except to submit to some vague 'competition' in prices. The cost of land and resources makes it very difficult for people to act locally as well because corporate style business is the only kind that can survive with those kinds of costs. For this reason we see our corporatised government helping big business to take over farmland. And housing developers are taking over suburban land with high density. This will prevent people from making the best of backyards to produce food and other needs locally. And the supermarkets and transport companies have stakes in preserving the current energy intensive food production and distribution system. Citizens have few remaining rights and no way of reaching a monolithic style government block which is barely, if at all distinguisable from a commercial finance, property and infrastructure development company with State and National branches and outlets in local areas to market projects and population growth.

Still, we folk have to work around this commercial system that has supplanted our self-government. See also this article by Dr Ted Trainer: The Transition Towns Movement; its huge significance and a friendly criticism. He writes:

"It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn’t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs."

More on the MAV Transition Community Working Group

The MAV Transition Community Working Group, comprised of interested Councillors and officers, was formed to assess the Transition Community framework, developed in the UK and now spreading rapidly around the world, and its relevance to Victorian local government and communities. The Working Group has now considered the matter and has determined to issue an ‘ALERT’ to Councils across Victoria. The ‘alert’ refers to the need for Councils and their communities to be aware that:

1. communities will face an unprecedented number of significant (global) challenges in the relatively short term and need to develop the necessary resilience to cope with these issues, which include:

a. water shortages/drought (increasing cost)

b. more expensive energy (including global demand for oil exceeding supply). CSIRO modelling has forecast petrol prices of up to $8 per litre by 2018. Also please see (attached) the recent comment from the International Energy Agency (IEA), a division of the OECD, which is warning that oil prices could reach $200 per barrel within the next 2-3 years.

c. more expensive food

d. the impacts of climate change

e. economic constraints in the wake of the global financial crisis

2. living in a carbon-reduced world will inevitably result in significant changes to the way communities live, including:

a. moving away from a dependency on oil

b. reducing greenhouse gas emissions

c. using resources more efficiently

d. a greater development of the local economy, including more local food, local energy generation, and self-sufficiency in many ways.

3. the good news is that the Transition Community framework provides a positive mechanism for communities to be able to become fully aware of the nature of the challenges to be addressed, and to work together to produce plans to achieve the desired transition to a better future at the local level. The common element of the many Transition Plans that have been produced to date around the world is that they focus on what can be done by acting locally. While much of the discussion around climate change and ‘peak’ oil can be quite depressing, the Transition Community approach offers the prospect that members of a community can connect and plan for a fundamental vision of a healthier, more resilient local community.

4. this focus on ‘local’ revitalisation represents a major opportunity for local government to assume a key role in supporting communities to plan for a transition to a more sustainable future. While individuals may feel powerless in relation to climate change and more expensive energy, communities can act collaboratively and creatively to generate a real sense of hope and commitment.

5. The Kinsale (UK) Energy Decent Action Plan (access via Google) is a good example of a community plan that describes the proposed actions that will take place on an annual basis to enable the Kinsale community to transition from the ‘status quo’ to a reduced-carbon, more sustainable future. The plan includes modules for food, energy, transport, recreation, health, employment and other relevant areas.

6. The Maribyrnong Council has taken a lead position in planning for a reduced carbon future by developing a Peak Oil Policy and Action Plan, as well as Australia’s first local government Peak Oil Contingency Plan. This Plan uses various scenarios to assess the likely impacts on Council operations, and the next step is to assess the community impacts. The Maribyrnong initiative is attracting national and international attention.

Darebin Council has taken a different approach and integrated Peak Oil related issues together with Climate Change adaptation to develop a Climate Change and Peak Oil Adaptation plan which is currently out for community consultation. There are large confluences between the two issues identified in this plan.

7. The MAV Future of Local Government Program has identified the role of local government as being to facilitate the development of strong and successful communities. This is entirely consistent with the need for Councils to be pro-active in these challenging times and support their communities to address the global imperatives. The MAV also convened a Peak Oil Conference in 2007, which highlighted the fact that the demand for oil will exceed supply in the near future.

8. There are now over 500 community plans in place across Victoria. These ‘bottom up’ community planning processes provide an excellent platform to integrate with the Transition Community planning framework. Both planning processes are very similar and it makes sense to link them together rather than operate discrete processes simultaneously. They both aim to improve community sustainability.

Next Steps

All Victorian Councils need to ask themselves a number of questions in relation to the challenges referred to above:

a. Are you aware of the implications of climate change and peak oil for your Council?

b. Does your 4 year Council Plan adequately address the challenges of climate change, peak oil and more expensive resources/goods? There is little doubt that the world will be a different place by 2013 and that those Councils and communities that have planned for that future will be significantly advantaged.

c. Does your Council’s risk management plan/process take account of these issues?

d. Are your communities doing anything to plan and prepare for a carbon- reduced future?

The MAV Working Group is proposing:

e. that each Council nominates a ‘champion’ Councillor and a champion’ officer who can be ongoing contact points in relation to these matters. These nominations are sought before the end of September 2009, by emailing [email protected]

f. Councils work together to agree on a sector-wide approach in support of Transition Communities, and to link existing community planning processes to Transition planning processes.

g. Training and awareness sessions be made available to Council representatives in the near future.

h. Councils act to positively support, via advice and knowledge-sharing, communities that wish to embark on a Transition Community initiative (eg. prepare an Energy Descent Action Plan).

In conclusion, it is worthwhile noting the words of the Maribyrnong Council: ‘whatever you can do to prepare for peak oil, you should do, because you will be glad that you did’.

If you have any queries in relation to the above, please email [email protected]

John Hennessy (on behalf of the Working Group)

Attachment

The IEA warns of shortages - "The next oil crisis is coming" 27/2/2009.

A shortage of oil could trigger another global recession around 2013 – says the IEA. By 2010 the price will reach new highs. The IEA in Paris is warning of a new, much more severe global economic crisis around 2013. The reason is that investments in oil from new projects are being cancelled by large oil companies. If demand starts increasing in 2010, the oil price could explode, fire up inflation and put global growth at risk.

"We are concerned, that oil companies are reducing their investment levels. When demand returns a supply shortage could appear. We are even predicting that this shortage could occur in 2013." said Nobuo Tanaka, head of the IEA in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

He is alarmed, because he has data that shows that the global oil supply capacity is declining and that oil reserves will likely be markedly reduced by 2013. The stronger oil demand will be in a recovery starting in 2010, especially in the US, China and India, the sooner the shortage will appear and strangle global growth.

According to the IEA, the oil price could then exceed the records achieved in the summer of 2008 and reach $200 per barrel. "We could be steering into a new crisis, which could be greater than the current crisis", said Mr. Tanaka