Thursday 16 October 2008

oil (chap 1 - sustainable retreat section)

'...in 2006 mankind's thirst for oil crossed the milestone rate of 86 million barrels per day, which translates into a staggering 1,000 barrels a second! Picture an olympic sized swimming pool full of oil; we would drain it in about 15 seconds. In one day we empty close to 5,500 such swimming pools.'
Peter Tertzakian (2006) A thousand barrels a second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy-dependent world. New York McGraw Hill

In his work on Transition Towns, Rob Hopkins (2008) suggests that the whole concept is underpinned by a simple premise: 'that the end of what we might call The Age of Cheap Oil (which lasted from 1859 until the present) is near at hand, and that for a society utterly dependent upon it, this means an enormous change.' (p.18) Whilst this may initially seem difficult to take in, and perhaps the idea seems unreal as we busy ourselves in our daily routines, it is not necessarily the case that such a change would be negative, if we 'plan sufficiently in advance and with imagination and creativity' (ibid). In Hopkins work, the challenge is clear - we need to build resilience, or more accurately we need to rebuild resilience. This is something we have slowly lost in our oil-dependent society, but which is abundant in many parts of the world where oil plays a smaller role in the functioning of daily life. Clearly the transition needed in Hopkins work is considerable, but it is realisable. What emerges in his work is the view that action at a local level is fundamentally important, it is not enough for us to wait for others to solve this challenge for us we have to act ourselves.

The alternative is stark: as George Monbiot says

'Our hopes of a soft landing rest on just two propositions; that the oil producers figures are correct, and that governments act before they have to. I hope that reassures you.' (Monbiot, G. (2005) Crying sheep: we had better start preparing for a decline in global oil supply.' The Guardian, 27th September 2005)

We are at, or perhaps have just passed what is called Peak Oil production. This is where the peak in oil discovery (which was some 40 years ago) is caught up by peak levels of production (we now extract more oil than ever before) - we are now entering a period where less and less oil is being discovered and more and more oil is being extracted from existing known sources. The only places where it is still being discovered are in smaller and smaller oil fields, so simple economics suggests the age of cheap oil is well and truly over. In 1940 the average oil field found over a five year period was 1.5 billion barrels, yet in 2004 it had shrunk to 45 million barrels and it continues to fall (Energy Watch Group (2007) Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook). We are now at a point where fall in discovery is not matching growth in consumption - we now consume about four barrels of oil for every one we discover (Strahan, D. What Stern really got wrong,' Prospect, 16th May 2007).

So resilience emerges as a centrally important theme in the context of our response. I come back to the definition of resilience: earlier I suggested that resilience refers to:

the ability of a system, from individual people to entire economies to hold together and maintain their ability to function in the face of change and shock from external sources.

I think that there is a very important characteristic implicit in this definition - that of adaptability. Whilst it might appear that there is really very little that we might do on a personal level to influence the actions of major multinational corporations in their ongoing quest for oil, we can, I think, begin to explore quite legitimately and with integrity, the ingredients of resilience that will enable us to survive in a time of sustainable retreat. Simon Levin (Levin, S.A. (1999) Fragile Dominion: complexity and the commons. Reading MA, Perseus Books Groups - see also Levin, S.A. 2003. Complex adaptive systems: Exploring the
known, the unknown and the unknowable. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 40:3-19.) identifies three features that make ecosystems resilient: Diversity, Modularity and Tight Feedback.

Let us take a look at each.
Diversity: concerns the number of elements that compose a system - this may be people, species, different businesses or schools. Resilience arising from diversity is related not only to number of participants/members - so the more diverse the more resilient, but also from the number of different types of connections that exist between the different participant/members. A second line of diversity is in the form of difference between systems, so the idea of exact solutions being taken from one place and dropped into another is not a way to build resilience. Instead we would anticipate a more resilient approach to the use of successfully identified practices being to locate them into new systems and adapting them according to local configuration and need - each community for example, will nurture and generate its own solutions even when it connects with systems elsewhere. Overall, diversity demonstrates resilience through lots of niche responses and subtle changes to locally defined needs, in effect - local matters.

Modularity: this is concerned with how connections are made. In particular I think this is concerned with networks and the sharing of information and know how. A resilient system is one that self-organises in the event of a shock. In Robert Axelrod and Michael Cohen's work (Harnessing Complexity (2000) New York. Basic Books) they cite the example of apprenticeships as a good way of thinking about how ideas are passed, developed but do not remain dependent upon any one source. There are many other examples, but the main point is that social networks can generate resilience through their shared protocols and acceptance of diversity.

Tight feedback: Where the consequences of action is quickly recognised there is less likelihood of inappropriate and continuous adoption of poor solutions. Tight feedback brings home the effect of what we do in any given situation. The selected level of feedback will relate to the types of connections we make with others, and the number of connections we establish - thus the three themes feeding into resilience are themselves interdependent,without each other the system breaks down and is weaker than with them all acting as a coherent whole.

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