It seems pretty clear that the price of oil is not coming down any time soon, and peak oil is getting to be more of a mainstream concept and less of the world of conspiracy theorists and the sort of nuts who stockpile gold bars and guns under their beds. And for the record, I think we probably are at (or have just passed) peak oil production world-wide.
That does not mean, though, that the sky is falling and we is all doomed (doomed, I tells yous). Nor does it mean we need to run for the hills with survivalist equipment and a stockpile of anything. Some of you might remember the vegan who took issue with me a few months ago and called me a troll (in a deliciously ironic move, as she was leaving trollish comments on the blog at the time)? She's written a
post about peak oil, and since I can't comment on her blog because of aforementioned disagreement where I asserted that I didn't need to read a book about diet written by a vegan to know I disagreed with it (just like I don't need to read a book by a scientologist about psychiatry to know I disagree with it, or a book by a hard-line Catholic about women's reproductive rights to know I disagree with it, or a book by a terrorist about politics, etc etc), as she now just deletes my comments, I am going to comment on it here.
But first, yes, oil has gone up in price, and yes, I think it will continue to go up. But we haven't run out, and we're not likely to run out in the near future. We have other options. Biofuels made of waste products rather than food crops are not that far off commercialisation. There are other technologies. Humans are really rather clever, and although I think there will be a period of transition, and although I think that we will have to stop living such ridiculously wasteful lives, I do not think the world is going to go to hell in a handbasin because of this. Cluttercut, on the other hand, does. And she's fleeing the big city, because everyone else dying off doesn't have to be grim news, as long as you're one of the ones who gets saved. Charming attitude, I don't think.
First, she says "If you are in a large city (anything above about 200,000 people counts as large in my books), get out of it."
Why?
In short, because there will be riots and crime, we'll all starve, if we grow our own food the government will come and "redistribute" it, we don't know our neighbours, the people down the road, the Mayor, the officials, the police officers etc.
Well, I actually know my neighbours, the people down the road, my councillors (including the Mayor), my four local Labor MPs (quite well, they'd all know who I am, if you aksed them), and I have met my state Liberal MP as well (he'd probably remember me campaigning against him, I suspect). I admittedly don't know any local police officers, and I'm not sure what she means by "officials". What "officials" are there, other than our elected representatives?
She goes on with the doom/gloom "Any burst water mains, problems with sewers etc., may remain unfixed. Correct sewerage combined with germ theory is the real reason human life expectancy increased this last century. Modern drugs and medicine had very little to do with it. Modern cities may soon become disease-ridden stinkholes."
That last point, needless to say, is rubbish - human life expectancy has increased in the last century for a variety of reasons, and modern drugs actually have quite a lot to do with one big reason for the increase - women don't die in childbirth nearly as often since the advent of antibiotics. In many developing countries, childbirth is still the number one killer of women of child-bearing age. Antibiotics (along with better nutrition) is the main reason why that number has gone down in the developed world. And it doesn't take much to work out that childhood immunisations (particularly against smallpox) have reduced the death rate from childhood diseases enormously - although I do think we are now over-immunising.
Yes, if you're in a city and there's an outbreak of disease, you're more likely to catch it. On the other hand, you're also more likely to have access to adequate medical care. If it really did become the case that petrol was completely unobtainable (and I really don't think that's the case for a single second), I'd far rather be within walking distance of a doctor if I (or someone in my family) had a medical emergency, than be somewhere in the middle of the country with a nice crop of food but no access to medical care - or the petrol I needed to get to it.
Which brings us to the issue of food. People in cities won't starve - in Hong Kong, where there are 5 million in a just 1,060 km², they manage to produce 45% of the fresh vegetables, 15% of the pigs, and 68% of the chickens consumed by the population. And that's in an area around 1/8th the size of Melbourne, with an extra 1 1/2 million people. In Cuba, they also grow most of the food they need within city boundaries, Singapore manages to produce a lot of what they need despite having next to no rural land - the lists go on. It would be perfectly possible to produce what we need within the urban boundaries of Melbourne, since we have 8806 km² and only 3.5 million people. Check out wikipedia's article on
urban agriculture.
Yes, petrol's going to get more expensive, but that doesn't mean we're all going to starve - it means that as it goes up, and food prices go up as a consequence, we'll have more motivation to grow our own, and more people will start doing it. I've read than an area 6 m² can actually feed a couple of people year round, if planted intensively, and most people in Melbourne have that much. With better management of our water (and the projects that the government is currently doing to cover over irrigation channels etc is a very important part of this), a desal plant (run entirely on green energy) to saveguard our supplies (and yes, I think it should be a recycling plant, but I know how politically unpalatable that is at the moment), and more and more uptake of water tanks and grey water systems, it doesn't seem particuarly necessary for anyone in Melbourne to starve.
She continues: "What we did: We did what I'm suggesting, trading a large city (nearly 4 million people) for a small one (120,000). We've left friends, family and two careers behind to do it. I'm that certain things are going to get rough."
Leaving friends and family behind means you've left your support networks. You've left the very people who won't let you starve if times really did get that tough. We're walking distance from my PUs, my aunt, and in a pinch my brother and SIL and their kids (long walk though!) and my grandmother. Any one of them would take us in. We'd have a roof over our heads, heat and people to share the burdens. Why you'd leave that behind is beyond me - and conversely, why you'd abandon the people closest to you to flee and save your own skins, also beyond me.
Cluttercut goes on to talk about how essential it is to have a supply of water that's not dependent on the mains. Since Melbourne actually has extremely good water infrastructure, I'm not so worried about this, although we'd certainly put in a tank if we had room. She seems to think it's likely that "town water supplies are an obvious and easy target for terrorist groups and war tactics." Not really. I don't know if she's ever been to see any water infrastructure, but from that comment I'd say it's unlikely. I, on the other hand, have a father who worked from Melbourne Water for 30 years, and in my childhood was dragged around just about every resevoir, water catchment, sewage treatment plan, pumping station etc in Melbourne. Believe me, it's not that easy to disrupt Melbourne's water supply. Most of it's very well secured indeed.
She says "most of Australia's cities are rationed" - actually, they're not rationed, uses are restricted. There's a pretty big difference. If something is rationed, you can only use a certain amount. If something's use is restricted, you're not allowed to (for example) wash cars or water lawns with it, but you still get as much as you need to drink and to use inside the house.
Unfortunately, we can't predict with any degree of accuracy what climate change is likely to do. I could move to England, where there's much more rainfall than here - H & I both have British passports - but it's possible that Europe might be plunged into an ice-age if the gulf stream stops, er, streaming. Then we'd be screwed. We could move somewhere with high rainfall - as she smugly admits to doing - only to find that it became a desert. There are no guarantees.
Growing your own food, I'm all for, so I'm not going to argue with that. I'm all for a sense of community, too.
She thinks banks will start calling in people's home loans - that's a ridiculous bit of paranoia. Our banks are reserve-bank backed, the whole country would have to be so entirely screwed for that to happen - and in those circumstances, the banks wouldn't have a reason to call in debts anyway, because they'd get two-thirds of bugger all for their trouble, as the homes would be worthless.
But the bit that really, really made me shake my head was this:
"I think we're headed for a die off of massive propertions. That could be grim news, but it doesn't have to be, if you plan and work towards making sure you're not one of those who goes down when the sun sets."
Basically, she's arguing that as long as SHE isn't one of the ones who'll die, the whole thing's fine - doesn't have to be grim news that all those other people are dying. The words "I'm all right, Jack" spring to mind. What an incredibly selfish attitude.
I think climate change is one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced, if not the biggest. To me, the challenge is how we address it without screwing people over. We need to raise the price of energy - how do we do that without the poorest in our communities disproportionately bearing the burden? What can we do to encourage reduced consumption without the economy going bung? How do we make sure we use our resources rationally, so that everyone still has access to good-quality medical care, so that some people are not driving round in Hummers while other people have no access to public transport (actually, let's just stop anyone from driving round in a Hummer, fuck them), so that everyone has enough to eat and our water supplies are secure? To me, heading for the hills is not the answer - we shouldn't be aiming for a world where some people get to sit smugly by thinking they're ok, and with enough to eat, not caring if there are food riots elsewhere and people starving in our cities. What sort of a vision is that?
If I did believe we were all screwed, I'd still be right here, making sure that I did as much as possible to keep our city, our state, our country and our world on the right track. I don't believe we're all screwed, but still.
