Post Oil #
There is an interesting passage in
‘English Farmhouses’ where the author notes that iron bolts or nails were
uncommon in the (xxth) century due to their high cost. Instead ‘heart of oak’ ‘xxxxx nails’ were used. X hundred years on, with basic steel prices
running at £200 a tonne, the circle is nearly complete – a resurgence in the
use of wood for construction and a corresponding decline in the use of metals
is inevitable.
The end of oil will profoundly
impact every aspect of our lives. Oil
literally and metaphorically lubricates the wheels of most modern
‘industry’. Modern industry in turn
supports a vast infrastructure including “logistics”, banking, advertising,
insurance, legal services, accounting and a host of ‘service providers’ and
‘professionals’. The basic essentials of
living – food, shelter, education and culture are thought of as being made
possible by employment provided by ‘business’.
Post oil this will inevitably be reversed. There will be little or no ‘business’ to do. Life will focus instead on the core human
needs: shelter, food, companionship, culture and entertainment.
The ‘new localism’ that will result
from the extreme difficulty and cost of long physical journeys will bring about
a renaissance in all things small: community and family will be the focal
points of life post-oil. The factory and
the office will be found in our grandchildren’s history books. The farm will be inseparable from life. Farming will be synonymous with living.
I’m not against the use of oil based
materials like plastic, or even against ‘consumer goods’ per se. In fact these goods perform a valuable
service by locking up large amounts of fossil-based carbon for hundreds of
years, thus preventing it from being accessible for use as a fuel. This simultaneous carbon consumption (meaning
the material is removed from the ‘fuel chain’) and sequestration are in fact
excellent news for one who longs for the world to change positively ‘post-oil’. I NEVER bring my own carrier bags!
Wooden objects are a brilliant
example of human-utility and carbon capture.
Buy or make the very best that you can.
Aim to pass objects down to your children and grandchildren. Reduce your consumption. Embrace the inevitable and position your
children to thrive in a world post-oil.
Provide them with the skills they will need to survive and succeed.
Centralisation is always wrong. 300m^3 of good Welsh rainwater fall on my
roof each year. I currently buy 200m^3
treated rainwater from a giant, inefficient, capital hungry ‘utility provider’
which owns a large tank (reservoir), pipes and pumps. Mini-rainwater storage and treatment plants,
either at individual home or small community scale will be the norm in the
future. As an important aside, having
mentioned pumps, a staggering fact is that pumps consume 25% of the world’s
electricity. Driven I guess very much by
centralization of water supplies, the oil and gas industries, and domestic
applications.
Centralisation is always wrong. We currently use 5000kw of electricity each
year. Due to centralization and indirect
generation, a further 10000kw are wasted, approximately 50% through conversion
and 50% through distribution. A
staggering fact. The economies of
home-scale external combustion engines (e.g. Stirling
or steam engines) (probably combined with wood boilers for space and water
heating) for electricity generation should be explored.
Centralisation is always wrong. Centralisation drives large scale. Large scale drives engineering complexity
exponentially. A 3kW wind generator can
be made easily, at home, using largely found or cheap materials and human-scale
technology like hand tools. A mW scale
turbine requires an army of engineers and workers, usually abroad, consuming
vast amounts of energy (almost certainly not itself ‘sustainable’), and then
proceeds to waste 50% of it through distribution losses!
Travel in the cheap and easy form
that we currently know it won’t exist post oil.
Pre-industrial revolution people still traveled globally, just without
the use of fossil fuel. Sailing boats
circumnavigated the globe in xx weeks (compared with xx weeks for a container
ship today). Intra-country land based
travel, where it continues to be necessary, will be human or animal powered or
via a revitalized canal system.
As Schumacher observed, small is
beautiful.
Large transformations can be
achieved through the combination and integration of many small things!
Global brands with their ubiquity
and homogeneity succeed because of the basic human need for comfort and
reassurance. When you’re far from home
some familiarity can be a nice thing.
That makes sense to me, and in my former career, when I had to travel to
distant places, just like everyone else I sometimes breathed a sigh of relief
when I saw a McDonalds, or drank a glass of Carlsberg. However, what is more interesting is why, as
a native of the South West of the UK, I think of McDonalds or
Carlsberg (or any one of another 100 brands) as reminiscent of ‘home’. This is the true genius of the global
brand. Instead of choosing something
genuinely from ‘home’, and genuinely delicious, we choose alien, generic,
value-engineered, transported, warehoused, often tasteless, often expensive
alternatives because they are familiar, habitual, and (I have to admit),
usually adequate. These ‘incumbent’ brands,
which have become automatic choices through constant exposure and habit, are a
great target to focus on when we think about the ‘new local’ paradigm. These are the first and easiest habit which
we must give up if we are to survive and thrive in the future. Even more interesting than the brands
themselves is the products. Why do I
automatically choose to drink beer for example, when no grain is produced
within 50 miles of my home http://www.adas.co.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=5wPvBHWxBXg%3D&tabid=268, and any beer which is
produced in that area must necessarily be imported from further afield? A better alcoholic choice would be cider,
which was historically produced on our farm, and probably all the farms in the
area.
