Tools

You want to reduce your energy consumption, but what's the most effective way of doing it ? Here's some tools for working out what to do:

Also, do you know how much space you are taking up on the planet ? Use the Ministry for the Environment's ecological footprint calculator to find out.

Peak Oil

Urban Sustainability

What is Peak Oil?

We'll get straight to the point - the phenomenal growth and prosperity that has marked the last 150 years of human civilisation on this planet has been fueled almost totally by fossil fuels, most recently oil and natural gas. We've used up just about half of this non-renewable resource and this is when things will start to get interesting.

The phenomen, known as Peak Oil, will completely change our world and very soon, perhaps the next few years. We hate saying this because it instantly puts us in the end-of-the-world nutter camp in most peoples minds. The best answer we have to this is, read what this guy has to say, have a look at his credentials, then tell us if you think *he* is a nutter. Mind you, he does like George W. Bush !

What impact will it have?

After Peak Oil will come rapid increases in energy prices, energy shortages and increasing global competition for increasingly scarce fossil fuels. A careful study of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America should convince you that this is already happening and will only accelerate in the coming years.

All sectors of our society will be hit by increasing energy costs because energy drives all economic activity. Economists will happily tell you that western economies' GDPs have become less dependent on energy in the last decade because of technology and our transition to "service" based economies. What they neglect to tell you is that this has happened almost solely because we have outsourced energy-intensive manufacturing activities to third world countries. They will tell you that *we* are less oil-dependent while bemoaning the fact that the third world (that actually makes the things we buy) are becoming *more* oil-dependent.

The truth is that we, that is to say mankind, are more dependent on oil than we have ever been and we continue to use more of it every year, roughly 3% more. Without this increasing energy consumption, we would have no economic growth. Technology doesn't create energy, it consumes it. At best, it has allowed us to mine our planets stores of non-renewable energy at ever increasing rates, but only up to a point - and that point is now.

As energy supplies dwindle, the ecomonic activity that depends on it will dwindle. The post-Peak Oil economy will increasingly be one of survival, but it is a situation we can survive if we recognise the trends and make changes to our lifestyles now.

What can I do?

Learning about Peak Oil for the first time is a sort of grieving process. It's very likely that you will move through (at least some of) the grieving stages of:

  • Denial - We'll just spend more money on exploration, the scientists will think of something, etc.
  • Fear - Oh my god, it's the end of the world!
  • Anger - Why didn't they tell us about this sooner?
  • Acceptance - Well, goodbye plasma tv and annual tropical holiday ...

and start thinking about what you can actually do to improve your situation. However, let's make one thing clear now - in a world where energy is declining, you only improve your situation at the expense of others. When the pie was only getting bigger you could justify your having a bigger slice because everyone elses was biger, too. Now that the pie is shrinking it will become a lot more obvious if you have a bigger slice than your neighbours.

And the oil situation will be no better in Australia, or Europe, or Asia. Peak Oil will be a truly global catastrophe and there will be nowhere to hide.

So, whatever you do, you need to do it as a community, not as an individual. The key is to recognise that everything you do consumes energy, directly (when you turn on the light) and indirectly (through the goods and services that you purchase). After Peak Oil the energy available to us will *decrease* by around 5% per year, so we will have to think of ways to reduce our energy consumption by that amount *every year*. Some of that reduction will come from increased energy efficiency, typically through changes to the way we do things rather than more efficient technology, but most of it will have to come from simply doing less.