Yesterday, I re-nailed my colours to the Peak Oil mast.  I am firmly of the opinion that a huge change in our energy use patterns is coming, this will be a result of the end of our access to cheap energy.  To be honest, I believe that this will bring about the end of our car-centric society.

The question that this occurred to me the other day was “From the perspective of a Secular Buddhist, what is my view here?”.  I specifically say “Secular Buddhist” because in non-secular Buddhism offerings may be made to various Buddha’s, all of which is magical thinking and not at all secular.

Well, the first thing to say is that we need to evaluate things without our wishful thinking getting in the way.  This is the whole notion that some super technology or untapped energy reserve is going to save us, it’s highly unlikely because if was, we’d have needed to start developing it and building the infrastructure before now.  The alternate energy sources on offer will give us a future, but they can’t provide anywhere near our current energy needs.  This shoots down the electric car right there, where do people think all the extra power will come from to run a fleet of these vehicles?

As I said yesterday, part of the wishful thinking is that the world should change to accommodate us.  This, or course, isn’t happening and never has.  It amounts to asking that the laws of nature be annulled on our request.  Let’s be very clear, we are on a finite planet, with access to only some of the finite stock of resources in the crust.  We’ve been going through those resources like it’s going out of fashion, there are no more resources coming to the Earth unless somebody makes a huge development in asteroid mining.

So we need to accept the reality, until we do, we can’t see clearly.  If we can’t see clearly how do we expect to be able to navigate any kind of path through this situation?  Once we accept this, we can how Annica (impermanence) meant this was always coming.  Situations change, the world is impermanent and we must change to suit the situation, because the situation can’t change to suit us.  Or did we really think the Earth’s stock of oil and the minerals would last forever in the face of constant depletion?  We can then consider Karma, our actions and our heedlessness led us to this point and if we don’t smell the coffee then worse is coming.  We can consider our future Karma (and that of our descendants) and start making the changes we need to in order to boost our (and their) chances and make this transition only as painful as it needs to be and no more.

Canal Locks

The weather has perked up recently and I took the opportunity to get my trusty mountain bike back into operation.  This morning I went out for a couple of hours and broke it back in properly, while I was out I noticed the number of other people doing the same thing has increased recently.  I snapped this photograph of the canal locks along my route and was pleased with the resulting photograph, you can see the full size by clicking it.  You can also find a couple more that I took on my Flickr account.

While out and about I exchanged greeting with other tow path users and noticed the waterfowl were pairing off ready to nest.  Ducks watched me warily as I cycled past them and I watched male Geese chase off competitors on more than one occasion.  Once the Geese nest, this will make the tow paths a slightly more hazardous place as they will be on their guard against tow path users.  Watching other cyclists led me down a few new stretches of tow path and made me aware of new ways around the old routes I was using.  All of this is nothing spectacular, but what struck me again was how much of this world we miss when cocooned inside a car.

I’ve nailed my colours to the Peak Oil mast already, but to reiterate things, I’m of the opinion that the age of the motor car is entering its twilight.  The cost of Oil extraction is rising, the Oil we are getting is more expensive to refine and more expensive to transport.  The era of cheap energy is over and it will mean the slow end of our car-centric society.  I am seeing much commentary on this, but a lot of it seems to be along the lines of “somebody should change the world so that I don’t have to change my lifestyle”.  When you think about that, it doesn’t make much sense as the world isn’t going to change for us and there is little we can do regarding the underlying reality of this situation.  The only question is how we manage the decline of cheap energy.

Well, I do need to post more often than monthly don’t I?  It’s been a busy few weeks and mental energy has been slowly flowing back after a few changes.  Hopefully this will mean more to say on my part and also bring forward some planned changes to my SitQuietly software.

I was thinking of commenting on the unfolding situation in Greece, the Greek parliament is in emergency session tonight and the stakes are high. But there is nothing to add, nothing further to say.  Sometimes all you can do is watch silently, I’ve said everything I have to say on this.

I want to go a different way tonight, a way that cleaves (I hope) nearer to the middle path.  A lot has been said about energy in the last couple of years.  The oncoming peak in our civilisation’s available net energy supply (also known as “Peak Oil”) has been playing in the background of the current clutch of crises like a pianist in a dingy backstreet bar.  The common scenario seems to be that we return to a pre-industrial existence, almost like the wild west but with a little electricity and a few lightbulbs along the way.  Set against this is the hope that some sort of “Star Trek” style technology will save us and let us carry on as before.  To be frank, I think both viewpoints are a little overplayed.  So I’ll stick my neck out and say what I see, everyone else seems to be doing it, so I’ll jump in as the water seems to be fine.  This is a general flavour of the direction my thoughts are running in.

So, what do I see?  Change for sure, we can’t go on as we are, that much is certain.  But I see a different future, industrial society and high technology are still here, but they look very different.  I see technology being more expensive, scarcer, and not disposable any more. We will have to repair, to mend and make do more.  More things will be done manually, private cars will be scarcer, cities walkable and public transport will be forced to improve.

Industry will still be here.  We will still be able to smelt metals, produce solar cells and silicon chips.  We have the beginnings already, solar furnaces can produce solar cells and silicon chips of superior quality to our current ones[1].  Part of the changes I see is the migration of these sort of industries to hot equatorial countries to take better advantage of the stronger sun.

Of course, energy will be an issue and energy efficiency will be the name of the game. As I said above, the power use of labour saving devices will be a no-no so we will return to doing a fair few things by hand.  No tumble drier or dishwasher, and the electric mixer will likely be replaced  by a hand whisk!  Newer technologies are emerging that allow power to be drawn from our movements, there are wearable solar cells, kinetic chargers and hand or foot cranked chargers for devices[2,3,4]; this could be a lot more common.  In addition, we will make more use of walking and cycling.  The huge supplies of fossil fuels that power our cars and planes will not be anything like as available, and the alternatives don’t have anything like the juice to fit the bill; at least not until we eventually get fusion online.  I’m not holding my breath for that one, in case you hadn’t guessed.  I can see the biodiesels and power dense liquid fuels being used in construction machinery and other applications that need that sort of horsepower.  Our power needs will be met by a diverse range of technologies; solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, nuclear and no doubt others.  Let me be clear, there is no single magic bullet, how you are powered will likely depend very much on where you are and what you are doing.

Raw materials will likely be recycled, or mined from landfill [5].  Given that our cars and many aircraft will be largely redundant by this time, recycling them will free up a significant amount of raw materials.  I do have more to say on this subject, but am out of time for now.  I’ll try not to leave it so long next time!

References

[1] – The Bright Future of Solar Powered Factories.

[2] – Engineers Create First Motion Powered Nano Device.

[3] – 15 cellphone chargers that harness kinetic energy for a clean recharge.

[4] – Freeplay Energy. See FreeCharge 12v and Clamp Charger, but all products are good examples.

[5] – Landfill mining (Wikipedia).

I’ve been watching the news in the last day or so with a sense of foreboding.

It seems our economy has missed its growth target, cue various politicians and media pundits talking earnestly about growth.  This is the mantra that has underscored the last few decades, and I recommend Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff” if you want a little background to our fixations with growth and consumerism.  It’s 20 minutes long, and I highly recommend it.

There is a lot of talk of getting back to growth and not much mind room being given to the question “What if we can’t?”  I’ve talked about this before, but let’s make one statement: “Within a finite system, infinite growth is not possible.  Sooner or later, you will hit the edges of the system and stop”.  That’s not politics, it’s not economics, it’s basic unalterable mathematical fact.  We have finite space and resources on Earth, and we have to make do with what we have.  We must live within our means.

Given that the rest of the world is growing, what happens then?  Well, we in the west will inevitably see a lowering of our living standards.  Though that’s a very negative way of looking at things, it is maybe fairer to say that living standards will begin to balance out globally.

This isn’t optional long term, and will not only mean less plastic junk to buy and fewer expensive luxuries.  It will mean a return to mending and making do, we might even see the return of television repair shops, we certainly won’t be throwing the old sets away!  Speaking as someone who is refurbishing an old laptop and installing Debian Linux, rather than buying a new one, this sort of thing is deeply satisfying to do!

This will, ultimately, see the dawn of the Steady State Economy, I can’t see much of an alternative no matter how much I look.

One final thought that occurs to me comes from a time when I expressed the above opinions in a forum.  I was quickly met with the comment “It’s funny how everyone wants to force people to do things”.  I feel I should preemptively clear up a possible misunderstanding here.  The above isn’t about what anyone “wants”, we can argue and protest; shout and rage; scream and fume; reality simply is.  You can’t beat the maths, but if accepted in good grace, things could still be pretty good.

One of the big demons facing us is the threat of “Peak Oil”.  Of course, this would be better stated as “Peak Net Energy”.  Put simply it means that our society will require more energy to run then we can get from our increasingly stretched reserves.

There are arguments to and fro on this, but some very serious people and organisations on both sides of the Atlantic are starting to take it very seriously.   My view is that it’s not all doom and gloom and predications of our collective demise are somewhat over egged.

There are number of new techs coming forward, refinements are being made in wave power and further to this newer designs of wind turbine are ever more interesting.  There is even a prototype for a high altitude kite generator which is seemingly quite promising.  Only this month, a team of scientists unveiled a method of using carbon nano tubes to greatly increase the effectiveness of solar cells.

Of course all of this is great, but the fly in the ointment is transport, we simply can’t build enough electric cars for everyone, though I do think that some such vehicles (e.g. light goods) are going to be present.  I believe that the solution to this comes back to walkable cities and effective metro and intercity rail systems, designing cities for the non commercial motor car simply won’t do anymore, the age of the personal car is entering it’s twilight years.  Some cities here in the UK are starting to get it, I hope this is the beginning of a trend and that we can keep the momentum going.

I’ll veer away from Spirituality with this one and wander towards a different direction, it’s time for a change.

I’ve written before about my views on Peak Oil and the other bogeymen that stalk our collective near future.  It might have come across that I was a doomer, with a bearish outlook.  The comments on my last post have made me think more mindfully of how I came across on this and I feel a correction is due.

I’m watching a few developments and realising that the  future isn’t as gloomy as the doomers might have us believe, though I do think that the pace of things will slow down as we become more energy constrained.  We will become more local, but I don’t see that as such a bad thing though if you’re a fan of globalisation it’s bad news.

We seem to seek out the negative and fixate on it, enthralled by the feeling of impending doom.  But what of the effects on our psyches?  Unbalancing toward the negative is damaging and I found that out to my cost recently.  So, I’m thinking of looking up some more “good news” sites  as it’s been a while since I did that.

So, I’m going to embark on a little journey to rebalance, let’s see what I can find.

I have to say that I believe that an awareness of our society’s problems with Peak Oil and the end of growth is creeping slowly further into the mainstream consciousness.  The assumptions that our Western way of life is based on are being called further into question over time and the voices doing the questioning are growing more numerous and louder with the passing of time.

With each problem, each speed bump along the way, more people get bumped onto the road towards waking up and people already on the road get moved along.  With that said, I know that many people have a colossal investment in Business As Usual, there are many who will fight the coming changes fanatically; even though their position in that of King Canute, their belief in the status quo is almost religious in it’s intensity.

For their part, the Vested Interests; the powers that be, are deploying every while and weapon in their not inconsiderable arsenals to fight this.  Every person whose consciousness is raised and who starts thinking freely is a loss for them, a body blow, and the more people that awaken to our situation the easier it is for others to do so.

For my part, I think the VIs are fighting a losing battle.  Once a person awakens, it’s impossible to unawaken; a consciousness raised cannot truly be lowered.  You may have denial and suppression but that’s all you have, consider that a religion knows that once the conditioning is broken that person is lost to them, it’s the same here.  This is a secular raising of consciousness that goes far beyond anything we’ve seen in religious terms.

But that’s a thought, and I will swing towards religion as my final thought in this post.  Religions hold views that are in some cases counter to the coming reality, those faiths are in for a shock.  For example consider Catholicism and contraception.  The coming population issues will challenge and break that teaching, the faithful believe the Pope is infallible, they are about to see both their leader and their faith shown to be in error.  Where does that lead?

I received the link to this Carl Sagan video in my RSS today and in light of what’s been happening in the Gulf of Mexico, I thought this was something I had to share.

In common with many people of late, I’ve been watching unfolding events in the Gulf of Mexico with a sense of growing foreboding.  The plight of the families and communities caught up in this cataclysm is heartbreaking and  images of seabirds covered in oil are distressing.

I’ve been pondering this tragedy and am wondering at the scale of it, a dark stygian cloud seeping beneath the water.  Some say it will spread up the Atlantic coastline, indeed, some rumors say it has already begun to.  This has been likened to an American Chernobyl, I think that’s an entirely justified comparison.

The cost in terms of both the environment and economy is well covered elsewhere, the political row echoes across the Atlantic, and reading newspaper website comments I wonder if many people in the UK can empathise with Obama.  I find myself feeling a deep sympathy for the man, and hoping that he can use this to break the stranglehold of Big Oil and move the US towards an alternative energy policy that includes walkable cities and clean efficient rail.

I was also pondering the effects on the mental level.  We’ve been caught out in our greed, as Peter so accurately puts it over at The Buddha Diaries:

“We have known for at least forty years that this dependency was a threat to our well-being and to the natural environment, but have done nothing to address it. Indeed, the reverse, our demand has only increased, our addiction deepened.”

I agree wholeheartedly.  This has been brought on by our greed, grasping for the things we feel entitled to, without realising that our sense of entitlement will be our undoing.  We have grasped and hoarded with no thought and our “solutions” to the World’s financial mess have seen us grasping at the resources of the future, impoverishing future generations to sate our own appetites.

So, are we Preta, hungry ghosts (speaking psychologically) with an insatiable appetite for a substance or object?  Our greed is forcing us recklessly onwards, as evidenced by internal emails from BP.  I’ve observed that the drive for profits, and damn the consequences, has stored up some pretty alarming trouble for us.  But I plan to cover that another time.

Or can we rise above that?  I believe that answer is “yes, we can”.  We will need to rediscover our humility in the face of nature, we have pushed too far thinking we could beat the odds; we couldn’t, you don’t beat Mother Nature.

I can only see only one solution.  That we must grow into a stewardship of this planet, and learn to use it sustainably; after all, it’s not like we have another.  Some vested interests are going to be severely inconvenienced, and will have to learn to restrain their greed but either we do this voluntarily and get a say in how it goes, or we sleep walk into another catastrophe.

Whats our Karma?

I’ve been watching this whole Iceland volcano story with interest, indeed as a resident of the UK, I could be said to have very little choice in the matter!

I’ve noticed in the coverage that, aside from the airlines, there have been other people and companies hit by this.  People are low on medicines they need to control medical conditions, among many other stories.  This could have been avoided.

I am coming to think that our reliance on just in time methods has been shown to be an achilles heel, as has our reliance on imports and air freight.  I’ve talked about balance before, and I believe that what we are seeing here is that our situation is unbalanced, a wheel out of kilter.  I’m an advocate of local goods, and when the business is being poached by artificially lowering currencies, I also consider that the appropriate level of protectionism is a reasonable response.

If I take a lesson from this it is the importance of diversifying, making better use of local sources and building in redundancy.  We need to stimulate local jobs and protect local economies and communities, we also need to develop high speed rail as a matter of some urgency.

I also wonder at the unbalanced media coverage.  The BBC, and a lot of the UK media, seemed to miss the stories of the Finnish F18s and the NATO f16s that suffered damage in this cloud, most of the interest in the news websites seem to come from the commenters, not the journalists!