A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

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Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com A “global energy revolution” is needed yet there is no evidence of any Peak Oil contingency plans. George Monbiot’s article Cross your fingers and carry on, published in the Guardian, 14 th April 2009, is extremely worrying. He reported his interview with the Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), who said that global conventional oil would plateau in 2020 and a “global energy revolution” is needed. George Monbiot quoted the conclusions of Robert L Hirsch, commissioned by the US Department of Energy, who warned that “Without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented” and that to avoid global economic collapse, we need to begin “a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking.” That makes us nearly ten years too late. From conversations with UK government officials, he could find no evidence of any contingency plans to avoid disaster. Imagine the situation at the end of the 21st Century when oil and natural gas supplies may be largely exhausted. Imagine the scale of the change needed in a world economy based on fossil fuel and nonrenewable resources. Imagine the impact on construction and farming. There will have to be a complete change in the way we live. If we do not adapt soon enough, there is a real possibility of global collapse, widespread unemployment and starvation. The global economy, and our unsustainable lifestyles, based on abundant cheap oil, will be transformed. The recession, keeping down oil, gas consumption and CO2 emissions, is the calm before the storm. We need to completely rethink the global economic system. The case for “free trade” and global sourcing, the basis of the global economic system, must be re-thought. Nations and regions will need to be free to work out their own policies and become far more self-sufficient. This will be a problem for countries like UK who have lost most of their manufacturing capacity and a substantial percentage of their agriculture. Our whole global economic system - based on global sourcing for lowest cost, and on global and national distribution systems are dependent on cheap fossil fuel. Electric power for vehicles and trains will not offer a sustainable solution whilst electricity continues to be mainly generated by using fossil fuel. Oil is embedded in almost everything we consume: fuel, power, heating, transport, plastics, fabrics, packaging, food and utensils. Oil, especially, needs to be treated as a precious resource to be used sparingly and increasingly heavily taxed at source to discourage its unnecessary use and provide funding for the green revolution and measures to ease the transition. Our supermarket and superstore system for distributing food, household essentials and other goods is unsustainable and may not survive. Local food production and distribution may supersede it for many reasons. Could we see supermarket buildings converted into market halls for small producers and traders and a resurgence of local shops and businesses? Food – the implications of peak oil for food Food security is at risk. As a result of this oil based industrialised and globalised food production and distribution system, we are now a net importer of food, heavily dependent on other countries. Our self – sufficiency is estimated at 60%. Other data gives a UK self-sufficiency figure of 49%. That overall figure hides much larger gaps, such as 94% of all fruit and over 50% of vegetables consumed in the UK are imported. 70% of animal feed used in EU is imported. Another threat to food security is the domination of food production of by a few very large global corporations and the small number of food crop varieties that has resulted. One owns 23% of global seed production. That makes us vulnerable to business collapse and exposes us to famine. 56
Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only. www.brucenixon.com In UK, without cheap oil, we will have difficulty feeding ourselves. Oil is a major component of agriculture. Intensive agriculture is dependent on oil. Present day methods of farming depend on large machines, including some absolutely enormous ones guided by satellite navigation systems, and on the use of oil based pesticides and herbicides. Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas which is not yet peaking but will do in time. Potash and phosphorus, coming from phosphate are mined minerals in plentiful supply but their application and their distribution to farms depends on oil (Nitrogen fertilizer releases nitrous oxide which is three times more damaging to the environment than CO2). Clearly, we shall not be able to continue using machines on the current scale or herbicides and pesticides based on fossil fuels and we’ll need to cut back on artificial fertilisers. We’ll need a lot more farmers, preferably with organic farms. Yet, only 150,000 farms are left in UK; the average age of farmers is 60; hill farming is in danger of dying out within ten years; 95% of our food is totally dependent on fossil fuel; we have lost much of our knowledge about how to farm without it and how to farm sustainably. Our 125,000 farm workers are amongst the lowest paid workers. Many young people, who might choose to be farmers, can no longer afford to live in the villages they were brought up in because of the unaffordable prices of homes, inflated by the influx of affluent people, many of whom are downshifting or choosing to retire to the countryside. It would not take much to provide more houses for young people who wish to stay where they were brought up and contribute to the rural economy we shall depend on more and more. We need more food production to be locally or regionally based to save oil. Yet, of all Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) money, 80% went to only 20% of farmers and mainly to the biggest and wealthiest ones. It is likely that we’ll need to grow far more in allotments, community allotments and our gardens. Oil based agriculture has degraded our soil and killed the microorganisms that create healthy soil. We have destroyed much of the living eco-system including hedgerows and woodlands that are an important part of the wider ecosystem that provides fertility and controls pests. We need to return to old wisdom about agriculture, learn from Permaculture and forest gardening, adapting it all to a vastly larger need. We have degraded our soil and microorganisms that create healthy soil. Again, we need to eat less meat because it requires much more oil, than vegetable sources of nutrition. Worldwide the problem is far more serious than in UK and Europe. Latest estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that another 40 million people have already been pushed into hunger in 2008 as a result of higher food prices resulting from higher oil prices. Growing cash crops for rich nations makes poor countries even more vulnerable. They too have been encouraged to industrialise their agriculture and use oil based chemicals. The system of Western nations sourcing vegetables and flowers, whatever the season, from poor countries has resulted in their growing cash crops for us on a large scale. This has undermined their own local food production and their traditional wide range of crop species and their traditional expertise and methods adapted to their climate and soil conditions, making them even more vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation. The free market has put many local farmers and market traders out of business, unable to compete with imports from Western countries. 57
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