Survivalist Green: Parents, Do Your Kids Know Where You'll Be Living In Ten Years?
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 02.12.08
Much of what we read about 'green tech' or 'green lifestyle' trending heads toward a slightly modified version of Business/Life As Usual. If we project this ahead a decade, it assumes rather small cumulative changes in human culture: a bit more E85, more hybrid cars, more Alberta Tar Scam (Mini-Me Style), somewhat better insulated homes on 1/4 acre cul-de-sacs, not-so-supersized meals, no severe climate change impacts, and so on. And, of course, everybody uses compact fluorescents. STOP
An equally plausible scenario is what we're calling Survivalist Green. Yes there's a Hippie back-to-the-lander aspect to this; and, an NRA membership in good standing ring to it. But don't be fooled: it's an entirely new cultural direction; a direction led by an earlier-than-you-think shift from cheap to very expensive oil.
Let's explore Survivalist Green, the transformational lifestyle era. Just for fun.
First review this summary of peak oil impact over the next 8 years, courtesy of an interview with Charles T. Maxwell, via Energy Blog/EnergyTechStocks.com.
Some key points from the first of four posts in EnergyTechStock.Com:* There is only about 1.2% more oil available each year, not enough to keep up with 1.5% annual demand growth.
* Between now and 2010, this supply shortfall will be made up through a draw-down in inventories, helped out by a slowdown in demand in 2008 and 2009 due to a recession or near-recession in the U.S.
* In 2010, the shortfall will become greater than can be made up by what’s still in inventory, thus beginning a period of global oil scarcity that will lead to a “peak” in conventional oil production in 2012 or 2013.
* It gets even worse in 2015, which is when he expects a peak in the production of all liquids, a category that includes condensates, tar sands oil and biodiesel.
* By 2025, “We can create some answers.” He explained that both plug-in electric vehicles and cellulosic biofuel are “wonderful ideas”; however, given that it takes 10 to 15 years or longer to turn over the world’s vehicular fleet, such technological breakthroughs won’t happen quickly enough to prevent the nightmare from happening.In part 2 he forecasts $12 to $15 dollars a gallon gasoline "in a few years" with oil at $180 a barrel in 2015 and $300 a barrel in 2020.
Survivalist Green has three beginning faces. The beginning is all we have time and ability to cover for now.
The most prominent face of Survivalist Green is that of the city dweller; the second is of the suburban or exurban dweller. (Covers everything from apartments along the rail line to Mega-Mansions in the exurb zone.)
The third face of SG extends to the house trailer next to Mom & Dad's farmstead and on to the Off Griders and Climate Doom Cultists.
Common to all three faces of Survivalist Green lifestyles are:
A boom in kitchen gardening and, community gardening/husbandry - in urban areas, look for extensive membership in community supported agriculture.
A dramatic fall off in per-capital solid waste generation rates: as in developing nations now, an empty container of any sort is caught on the first bounce and put to good use. Recycle/re-use rates increase very dramatically across all three facets of society.
Hunting and fishing will experience a major resurgence. Appointment to a State fish and game management commission is a coveted political opportunity.
Existing suburban tract-home developments filled with 5+ bedroom mansions will be converted to multiplex condominiums and mixed use communities with combined heat and power (CHP) units to provide electricity and heat to all residents.
Single family homes without thermal solar panels, as a minimum icon of energy independence, will be thought of as undesirable - out of fashion. A "green'er upper."
Condominiums located in old industrial areas near sources of water power will be retro-converted into industrial uses, leading to social conflicts over zoning.
Acoustic music, with a chamber component, experience a resurgence in popularity.
Bike and walking trail networks everywhere, of course.
Obesity rates in young people will drop dramatically.
Railroad stations in metro areas will be re-transitioned to urban market distribution centers - as the were in the early 20th Century.
Individual non-business overseas travel becomes rare - and typically is constrained to high school or university experience.
Business travel shrinks to that which is offset and, even then, much more of a rarity.
Supply chains for raw materials shrink dramatically. A much higher proportion of raw materials come from recycling or local extracted raw materials. As a result, consumer goods become less commoditized, designs more varied.
Self sufficiency and hard work replace workouts.
We could go on...and on. But first we must ask. Does this sound so bad?
Others have written well about overcoming the un-named, prospectively much darker outcome.
For me, peak oil is our personal and collective call to power. This is the time when we truly find out what we can do when we collectively apply our genius and brilliance. I don’t believe that our collective response to crisis will be violence and disintegration, I believe our collective adaptability, creativity and ingenuity will come to the fore.
What do you think? Is there a more plausible scenario midway between Survivalist Green and the Dark Side? Or will it be closer to Business/Life As Usual?
Via:: The Energy Blog, "Oil Shortages Start in 2010; Peak Oil Hits 2012-2015" AND Transition Culture, "Why the Survivalists Have Got It Wrong" Image credit::Kid Scientist, The Truth About Cavemen
It's post apocalyptic but quite apealing Waterworld/Mad Max. I've got my bow :)
let's hope there will be enough game and fish left to go hunting and fishing...
Even more scary if you believe the people that say peak oil was reached in 2006 or 07.
I think Survivalist Green, with that photo, is a very unproductive way to characterize this movement.
Relocalization describes everything that you are talking about, in a much more positive way.
Please check out Transition Town Totnes
http://transitionculture.org/
Depletion and Abundance
http://depletion-abundance.blogspot.com/
and the Post-Carbon Institute
http://www.postcarbon.org/
=== author's response follows ===
Fair point. How best to approach the subject graphically though?
As it happens I spent way to much time laboring over finding the right image and then, frustrated, chose the path of self deprecating humor...was hoping it would be obvious what I was driving at: that we don't have to go back to cave man days, as our own parents lived in a world much like the points I have outlined!
Thought it also might offset the wise guy remarks that are sure to be let from dittoheads on talk radio about hippies on the left 'wanting to take us back to stone age' by preventing drilling in the ANWR, etc.
That said if you can suggest some really good images I'll append them to this post or a subsequent one!
Hmm, I don't have to wait a decade for a good deal (11 of 14 points) of that scenario...it's happened to my life already. Never want to go back.
I'll actually pitch an idea for a book right here, I call it the "Currency Convergence." There's a lot of talk of fiat currencies, like the dollar crashing, and therefore a need to invest in "real money" which most people consider to be gold. But you can't eat gold. It’s not as practical as palladium or platinum, either. Therefore, IMHO, gold is actually a fiat currency as well.
I believe there's going to be a huge slide into a post apocalyptic scenario much faster than we think. When it begins to happen, and someone comes to my house to use some of the energy being generated by my PV array or turbine, I’m not going to be trading it for gold doubloons. But I would trade it for food. (The “currency” convergence is a play on words, where currency as in paper money is replaced by electric currency, or more broadly, the ability to be self-sufficient.)
At the end of the day, the only things of value will be solar panels, wind turbines, arable land to grow food, food, and the means to make and harvest food. Louis Vitton purses, Porsches, Rolex watches, plasma teevees and sony playstations will be worthless.
One of the biggest pitches in the book is for “reflation” rather than the hyper inflation we are about to face in the US. I have a plan for relation. It is genius. And absolutely politically impossible to implement.
And thus, the real burst is going to happen in my lifetime. We can’t keep going from a bubble economy to another bubble economy, and the world can’t support the mass commercialization of technologies that make the planet worse off (like the Tatas in India). When the final bubble bursts, the whole ship is going to sink. The book I want to write is about giving people a life preserver now, but getting them to value self-sufficiency rather than fashionable consumer brands.
It will be far more similar to the great depression. The loss of jobs will be catastrophic. Very little buying, will kill off huge sectors of industrial labour in the cities. Apocalyps, no not so dramatic. Eating rats and racoons from the ravines here in Toronto, more likely.
Hmm...
The model in the article seems, if anything, a rehash of the society proposed by Callenbach in his string of Ecotopian books or even any of the innumerable Future Primitive works of the seventies and eighties.
Still, a Peak Oil induced social collapse seems more likely a spark to this reorganization than a collective embracing of ecologically sound policies, but that's just my pessimism flaring up again.
Just one thing, though: where do the bands of radioactive cannibal scavenger mutants fit in with all this? They're sure to harsh the mellow of the community gardening efforts.
We will kill every last living creature and burn every last bit of oil, coal and gas first before we revert to community gardens and bicycles. And, if need be, I'll kill you to survive.
=== author's response follows ====
or, if resources were perceived sufficient, we could collaborate to survive. That is the cultural dynamic you overlook.
I agree or hope we will collaborate to survive. There was an episode on the CBC radio program, "The Current" about Urban Community gardens and keeping small animals like chickens in ones backyard. except for the solar panels I already do mot of what you have listed and have been since the early nineties when the 3R's first became fashionable. I laughed out loud at you last point -Self sufficiency and hard work replace workouts. :)
I suppose this means i should start farming guinnea pigs?
Doesn't all this stem from overpopulation? Sure, there is gross over use, but the simple fact is that there are just too many people. Population controls - though never accepted as practical or just - would help greatly. Regardless, when all this happens, we will also see a huge increase in murders, both governmental and by individuals, to protect the smaller share of resources for oneself.
I would tend to agree with Craig. High oil prices worsen economic recessions, and with the current state of the US economy, budget, and private debt load, a depression is pretty likely.
But to say that the ship will finally sink (as another poster put it) when the final bubble bursts, well, living bubble to bubble is what free markets do. It's what they've done for the past 200+ years, and nothing has changed that yet. This is merely a sign of how unsustainable growth in the economy really is.
The urban populations will be hit the hardest. The competition for goods and services will be the most severe in these areas. The remote mountainous areas where I live (Arkansas Ozarks) are vast, fertile, and teeming with game. A major depression might set this area back a generation. The control of these areas would revert back to the families that have lived there for generations.Co-op militias would likely spring back up as law enforcement. It would become clanish just like it was when the scots-irish settled this area. Moonshine, pot, cattle, bullets and goats would be currency and no law enforcement agency could handle it. You must remember many of these folks have retained their hill culture and it will be no hard leap back. Liberals and hippies always seemed childlike in their innocent approach to the land and living off it. Value sets will change when necessities become scarce. Urbanites would do well to understand the living methods and culture of the mountian folk.
wow! yes, the people in urban areas will suffer the most and the quickest - here they will descend upon the country side and loose themselves to bands of country folk hanging on to their resources.
governments will be on the verge of loosing power to the people and will claw back food/resources by sheer force (aka 'the children of men')...
I suspect a large number of 'urban types' will be, how shall I put it, 'removed from the gene pool' as they try to migrate "back to the land."
At least here in the USA there is such a mentality of "you owe me" that some folks will decide to try to take what they want from whomever. And that could produce quite a bit of high-nitrogen fertilizer.
Those of us living in the suburban fringe and beyond will not take kindly to that attitude. Teams, tribes, and other social (and cultural) based groupings will occur to keep local order and support the group.
Yes, rural values are different.
I suspect a large number of 'urban types' will be, how shall I put it, 'removed from the gene pool' as they try to migrate "back to the land."
At least here in the USA there is such a mentality of "you owe me" that some folks will decide to try to take what they want from whomever. And that could produce quite a bit of high-nitrogen fertilizer.
Those of us living in the suburban fringe and beyond will not take kindly to that attitude. Teams, tribes, and other social (and cultural) based groupings will occur to keep local order and support the group.
Yes, rural values are different.
I think it is not necessarily urban areas that will be hit the hardest. But the areas where their is an endless sprawl that will have it rough. Urban areas surrounded by farms will do well enough unless they experience large amounts of migrants from areas of sprawl.
their are urban areas that are still surrounded by farmland or wilderness. like they have been for hundreds of years. their are exceptions to the rule is what I am getting at. Areas that were developed based upon gasoline or where the agricultural land is now suburbs are basically screwed. Endless sprawl like southern California will have a hard time. And no amount of wheat grass in the smoothie is going to stop it.
But i think the transition will not be smooth. I think north American govt will use the military/police against its own people more often. Because the only thing we can count on is people will do what they think they need to to survive and this will manifest in a lot of different ways.