Preparing for energy descent

It's going to get worse before it gets better. With the cost of petrol continuing to rise in Australia and around the world, which also increases the price of food and everything else made and delivered using oil, Hanno and I are looking for more ways to cut our use of oil based fuel and products.

Here where we live, we're trying to ready ourselves as best we can for a world with far less oil. Energy descent. I know a lot of the readers who come here every day, like Hanno and I, are learning as we go. I've been reading about the concept of Peak Oil for a few years now and nothing I've heard from any politician or oil "expert" has convinced me there is nothing to worry about. To the contrary, their reluctance, until recently, to acknowledge there is a problem has made me even more convinced the problem is a big one. But finally the elephant in the room could be ignored no longer - world wide oil prices spoke the truth, oil supplies are dwindling.

In preparation for this new world we are trying to create as much as we can at home. We grow some of our own food in an organic vegetable and fruit garden and get eggs from our chickens. We harvest rainwater from our roof. We make our own soap and cleansers, bread is baked here, clothes are mended, dishcloths knitted, seeds sown, old products modified and recycled for another life. We squeeze as much from each dollar spent as we can. In the past five years we've cut our living expenses to less than a quarter of what they used to be. We did that by being mindful of our place in this fragile ecosystem and by reskilling and making do with what we have.

At the moment we aim to reduce our trips in the car, stop buying anything plastic or wrapped in plastic and not use the airconditioner to heat our home in Winter, but we need to do more. In his wise article, Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability, David Holmgren states:

"So what do we have to do to make it work? Basically, the answer is “Just do it!” Use whatever space is available and get producing. Involve the kids – and their friends. Make contact with neighbours and start to barter. Review your material needs and reduce consumption. Share your home – by bringing a family member back or taking in a lodger, for example. Creatively and positively work around regulatory impediments, aiming to help change them in the longer term. Pay off your debts. Work from home. And above all, retrofit your home for your own sustainable future, not for speculative monetary gain. In an energy-descent world, self-reliance represents real opportunities for early adopters of a permaculture life style:

• Rises in oil prices will flow through to all natural products (food, timber, etc);
• Higher commodity prices will be a stimulus for self-reliance and organic farming;
• Local products will be more competitive than imports;
• Repair, retrofitting, and recycling will all be more competitive than new replacement;
• There will be rising demand for permaculture as life-skills eduction; and
• There will be a resurgence of community life, ethics and values."

In keeping with what David is advocating, one of the things I will be doing soon is to help reskill people in our community. There are many people who need to learn the skills of baking, soap making, gardening, sewing and knitting. We are already teaching some of these skills at the Centre where I do my voluntary work. I hope to teach all of them soon. I will also work with my local groups that are working towards building stronger local communities - communities that are able to sustain themselves during the coming years when the oil we have relied on all our lives is no longer cheap and freely available. I encourage you to seek out your local sustainability or relocalisation groups and see what is happening in your area.

Whether you believe the Peak Oil premise or not, you can't deny the price of fuel and food now. I encourage all of you to change your lives in ways that will help you live well in the future. Learn all you can about providing for your own needs, connect with your community and support or implement new and innovative sustainable ways for your region to cope with energy descent. And read what you can so that you'll be prepared. David Holmgren's Future Scenarios is a good place to start.

I am not trying to scare anyone I am encouraging you to prepare yourself and your family for change. It's still small steps, it's still doable and it's nothing to panic over, but you need to start now. Gone are the days of listing what we are doing and thinking it's enough. We need to move it up a notch and make sure that what we are doing is working for us now and will continue to work in the future.

There was a very good interview on this subject on the ABC's 7.30 Report last night. The transcript of the interview with Richard Heinberg is not up yet but check during the day and read what he said. It's very interesting. I just checked and the transcript is still not there. Hopefully it will make an appearance tomorrow. In the meantime, I found this BBC article.