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The Energy Descent “Reader” Compiled by John Foran June 27, 2020 Note: I pulled the following off the top of a Google search for “Energy Descent.” They should give readers a basic introduction to some of the history and current meanings of “Energy Descent.” Contents Three videos 2 Rob Hopkins, “What is ‘Energy Descent’?,” https://www.transitionculture.org/essential-info/what-is- energy-descent/ 3 Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins, “Transition in Action: Totnes & District 2030 – an Energy Descent Action Plan (2010), https://www.dropbox.com/s/0qgbi16b51jhcua/Totnes%20EDAP %20%28c%29%20Transition%20Town%20Totnes.pdf?dl=0 4 “Energy Descent for Beginners: A journey into community, creativity and can-do-ability,” https://energydescentforbeginners.wordpress.com/what-is- energy-descent/ 5 “Energy descent,” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_descent 6 Samuel Alexander and Joshua Floyd, “The Energy Descent Future” (January 3, 2019), https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019- 01-03/the-energy-descent-future/ 8
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Page 1: Energy Descent for Beginners  · Web view2020. 6. 27. · Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins, “ Transition in Action: Totnes & District 2030 – an Energy Descent Action Plan (2010),

The Energy Descent “Reader”

Compiled by John Foran

June 27, 2020

Note: I pulled the following off the top of a Google search for “Energy Descent.” They should give readers a basic introduction to some of the history and current meanings of “Energy

Descent.”

Contents

Three videos 2

Rob Hopkins, “What is ‘Energy Descent’?,” https://www.transitionculture.org/essential-info/what-is-energy-descent/

3

Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins, “Transition in Action: Totnes & District 2030 – an Energy Descent Action Plan (2010), https://www.dropbox.com/s/0qgbi16b51jhcua/Totnes%20EDAP%20%28c%29%20Transition%20Town%20Totnes.pdf?dl=0

4

“Energy Descent for Beginners: A journey into community, creativity and can-do-ability,” https://energydescentforbeginners.wordpress.com/what-is-energy-descent/ 5

“Energy descent,” From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_descent 6

Samuel Alexander and Joshua Floyd, “The Energy Descent Future” (January 3, 2019), https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-01-03/the-energy-descent-future/ 8

Adam Fenderson, “Energy Descent Action Plans – a primer” (June 7, 2006), https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-06-07/energy-descent-action-plans-primer-0/ 12

Brendan F.D. Barrett, “Energy Descent from Peak Oil: Collapse or Evolution?” (November 13, 2009), https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/creative-energy-descent 19

Carlos Cuellar Brown, “Energy descent” (April 11, 2014) https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openeconomy/energy-descent/ 23

“Energy Descent Action Plan Primer,” taken with thanks from Adam in Australia, “Eat the Suburbs,” https://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Solutions/EDAP.htm 27

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Three videos

1) The Great Energy Descent (trailer#1 2020) with David Holmgren - permaculture

Nov 4, 2019 • 2 minutes

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCFmUX21pXI

Subscribe to http://www.unitednaturesmedia.com The Great energy Descent ( trailer #1 2020) with David Holmgren - permaculture. Documentary features over 40 interviews on the inevitable collapse of industrial civilisation, how to create resilience to adapt and transition to a low energy relocalised future.

2) David Holmgren Interview on Permaculture, Energy Descent & Future Scenarios

Dec 9, 2015 • 87 minutes

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqwWdranB5A&vl=en

David Holmgren is the co-originator, with Bill Mollison, of permacuture. This is the full interview we shot with him for our film “A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity”. We can only ever fit in a few minutes’ worth of the amazing interviews we get to shoot, so here’s the whole thing for people who want to get into the nitty-gritty! ** Useful info ** Watch A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwLA... David Holmgren: https://holmgren.com.au Simplicity Institute: http://simplicityinstitute.org

3) What is ENERGY DESCENT? What does ENERGY DESCENT mean? ENERGY DESCENT meaning & explanation

May 5, 2017 • 2 minutes

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ry8dKi-4o

Energy descent is the post-peak oil transitional phase, when humankind is predicted to move from the ascending use of energy that has occurred since the industrial revolution to a descending use of energy. Energy descent refers to retraction of oil use after the peak oil availability. Planning and preparing for this peak oil energy descent period has been recently promoted by David Holmgren, Rob Hopkins of the Transition Towns movement, and Richard Heinberg in the 2004 book Power down. That oil reserves are dwindling is now becoming acknowledged more widely, especially after the International Energy Agency released the 2008 World Energy Outlook report. Between 2007 and 2008 the IEA changed its figures for projected rate of decline in world energy supply from 3.7% a year (2007) to a projected rate of decline of 6.7% a year (2008). In 2008 several major companies including Arup, Yahoo and Virgin created the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) and released a report, The Oil Crunch, which calls for ‘collaborative contingency planning’ by government and

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industry in the face of dwindling oil reserves. An Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) – is a local plan for planning and preparing for energy descent. It goes well beyond issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of health, education, economy and much more. Energy Descent Planning is a process developed by the Transition Towns Movement. Some techno-optimists, such as Julian Simon, have disputed energy projections such as this, arguing that as oil becomes more expensive, humanity will tend to diversify its energy sources away from a reliance on oil, thus avoiding undesired global reductions in energy usage.

***

Articles

What is ‘Energy Descent’?

Rob Hopkins

https://www.transitionculture.org/essential-info/what-is-energy-descent/

Much has been written about the geological and economic aspects of the Age of Cheap Oil, or what we might call ‘energy ascent’, as well as the peak oil concept, but very little which looks beyond the peak, into the period this paper will refer to as ‘energy descent’. Despite this term being a relatively new one, it is used increasingly by an emerging movement which focuses on solutions to peak oil. The concept of energy descent was put forward by ecologists Odum and Odum (2001:4);

That the way down can be prosperous is the exciting viewpoint whose time has come. Descent is a new frontier to approach with zeal … if everyone understands the necessity of the whole society adapting to less, then society can pull together with a common mission to select what is essential. Presidents, governors, and local leaders can explain the problem and lead society in a shared mission. Millions of people the world over, if they see the opportunity, can be united in the common quest for a prosperous way down. The alternative is a world of selfish battles for whatever resources remain.

The term was further developed by Holmgren (2003b.); “I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.

It has been refined and promoted by subsequent authors to describe a period of contracting energy supply. This website defines energy descent as;

“the continual decline in net energy supporting humanity, a decline which mirrors the ascent in net energy that has taken place since the Industrial Revolution. It also refers to a future scenario in which humanity has successfully adapted to the declining net energy availability and has

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become more localised and self-reliant. It is a term favoured by people looking towards energy peak as an opportunity for positive change rather than an inevitable disaster.”

***

Note: the following contains a link to the original Energy Descent Action Plan, or EDAP

https://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/groups/building-and-housing/energy-descent-action-plan/

’Transition in Action’ is the UK’s first comprehensive Energy Descent Action Plan designed for and by a local community. It sees the changes necessitated by climate change, peak oil and the UK’s debt problem not as a crisis, but as a huge opportunity for enterprise, creativity, community, enhanced resilience and a greater quality of life. In these pages you will find not just a vision of a more resilient world, but practical steps to reach it, key research, inspired ideas and a glimpse into the town’s recent past and what we can learn from it.

Here is the link to the 308-page pdf!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0qgbi16b51jhcua/Totnes%20EDAP%20%28c%29%20Transition%20Town%20Totnes.pdf?dl=0

Transition in Action: Totnes & District 2030 – an Energy Descent Action PlanScripted by Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins

***

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Tag Cloud2012 2030 airports Angmering awareness-raising backcasting bouncing back calendar car boot sales cars cartoon climate change comics community countryside CSA DIY Earth Summit economic growth EDAP EDAP outline edaptation elders energy descent evolution farm films food future Geography growth guerrilla greetings haggling idiocracy infrastructure Joanna Macy land low impact living meaning of resilience oral histories parenthood peak oil petrol from air poem Post Carbon Institute power of now projects punk resilience richard heinberg schools smallholding South Downs stories streets The Beatles timeline Totnes traffic transition transition findon transition town trees TTW UK Energy Policy vision world cafe Worthing

Energy Descent for Beginners

A journey into community, creativity and can-do-ability

https://energydescentforbeginners.wordpress.com/what-is-energy-descent/

Home

About me About this blog What is Energy   Descent?

What is Energy Descent?

Energy descent means that rather than expecting there to be an ever-increasing quantity of energy resources available in the future, we may be facing a future with less energy.

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Many commentators believe we have reached peak oil (the point at which oil production reaches a maximum level before beginning a terminal decline). Other fossil fuel resources that we currently take for granted, such as gas and coal, may also be facing a peak during this century. That doesn’t mean they are going to run out in the near future, but once production starts to decline, all the things we depend on from these resources is thrown into a very different context. Modern humanity has never faced this prospect of a decline in energy availability.

Added to this unique 21st century challenge, we must add climate change. This is the flip-side to peak oil. Burning vast quantities of fossil fuels have created the greenhouse gases which have contributed to climate change. As the world faces an energy crisis based on a decline in crude oil and other fossil fuels, our predicament revolves around whether we continue to use whatever last dregs of fossil fuels we can find, whilst toasting the planet in the process, or whether we accept that we need to work towards a future which uses less energy than we do now.

Energy descent is a future scenario that has been outlined by permaculturist David Holmgren on his excellent website and the book, Future Scenarios (2009). Energy descent was given further attention by Rob Hopkins in the Transition Handbook (2008). The idea was further developed by JohnMicheal Greer in The Long Descent (2008) and Shaun Chamberlin in The Transition Timeline (2009). More recently, Richard Heinberg has written The End of Growth (2011), which links energy descent with the idea of a post-growth future.

As a future scenario, energy descent is widely ignored by the mainstream media as it deals with a very different future path to those generally regarded as acceptable (bigger, faster, better, more growth).

The positive approach taken by Transition initiatives in working towards developing Energy Descent Action Plans (EDAPs) accepts energy descent as inevitable, and attempts to set out steps needed to plan for a managed energy descent, specifically geared to a local community. A few examples:

Transition Sunshine Coast (Australia) Kinsale (Ireland) Totnes (UK) Lampeter (UK) Dunbar (UK) Forest Row (UK)

Cartoon by Spencer Hill

***

Energy descent

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_descent

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A 1956 world oil production distribution, showing historical data and future production, proposed by M. King Hubbert; it has a peak of 12.5 billion barrels per year in about the year 2000

Energy descent is a process whereby a society either voluntarily or involuntarily reduces its total energy consumption.

Energy descent can be understood in relation to peak oil, in which case there is a theoretical post-peak oil transitional phase characterized by a descending use of energy. The peak oil energy descent model has focused mainly on resource scarcity leading to an involuntary contraction of energy use.

The phrase “energy descent” has also become increasingly associated with the voluntary and deliberate choice of a society to reduce energy consumption in response to the global climate crisis.[1] The basic premise of energy descent in this latter context is that a simple replacement of fossil fuels with renewable and cleaner energy sources won’t be feasible in the time frame required by an effective response to the global climate crisis. That is, those who call for a voluntary energy descent doubt that clean and renewable energy sources can simply replace the total quantity of energy currently in use while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Summary

Energy descent refers to retraction of oil use after the peak oil availability or voluntary energy use reductions in response to the global climate crisis.

Planning and preparing for the peak oil energy descent period has been recently promoted by David Holmgren, Rob Hopkins of the Transition Towns movement, and Richard Heinberg in the 2004 book Power down. Many who have planned and prepared for peak oil now see the climate crisis as an equally important -- or greater -- near term concern as compared with energy resource scarcity brought about by peak oil.

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That oil reserves are dwindling is now becoming acknowledged more widely, especially after the International Energy Agency released the 2008 World Energy Outlook report.[2] Between 2007 and 2008 the IEA changed its figures for projected rate of decline in world energy supply from 3.7% a year (2007) to a projected rate of decline of 6.7% a year (2008) leading to a peak in oil supplies in 2020.[3]

In 2008 several major companies including Arup, Yahoo, and Virgin created the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) and released a report, The Oil Crunch,[4] which calls for ‘collaborative contingency planning’ by government and industry in the face of dwindling oil reserves.

An Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) is a local plan for planning and preparing for energy descent. It goes well beyond issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of health, education, economy and much more. Energy Descent Planning is a process developed by the Transition Towns Movement.

Criticism

Some techno-optimists, such as Julian Simon, have disputed energy projections such as this, arguing that as oil becomes more expensive, humanity will tend to diversify its energy sources away from a reliance on oil, thus avoiding undesired global reductions in energy usage.

See also

The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era (book) Malthusian catastrophe Societal collapse Transition town

Notes and references1. Holmgren, David. “ “ xyz ” “ . Future Scenarios. Holmgren Design Services. 2. 2008 World Energy Outlook 3. George Monbiot (December 15, 2008). “When will the oil run out?”. The Guardian. 4. “The Oil Crunch” . October 29, 2008.

Further reading

The End of Energy Obesity (book) De Young, R. (2014). Some behavioral aspects of energy descent: How a biophysical

psychology might help people transition through the lean times ahead. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1255.

***

The Energy Descent Future

By Samuel Alexander, Joshua Floyd, originally published by The Ecologist

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January 3, 2019

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-01-03/the-energy-descent-future/

The transition to renewable energy will entail a period of economic deintensification or ‘degrowth’ that could benefit wellbeing.

The present age of globalised industrial societies organised by market capitalism is historically unique.

While there are many indicators that mark this time as particularly unusual, the scale of energy use stands out as an especially significant anomaly. Stripped back to its essentials, energy is what does the ‘work’ of physical transformations – changes in form and movement of matter.

On that basis it should be clear that energy availability has both enabled and constrained the types of societies that have arisen throughout history.

Fossil fuels

The world as we know it is shaped in the image of fossil fuels. Indeed, the extent of this influence  extends further still, encompassing even individual and cultural identities.

Fossil sources account for around 85 percent of global primary energy supply, but more importantly, the institutions and infrastructures, the plant and equipment, the ways of organising human relations, all have oil, coal and gas embedded at their core.

When everything with which we’re familiar is so fundamentally steeped in fossil fuels, climbing out of the valley of established expectation to envisage life beyond them poses a formidable challenge. It is hardly surprising then that post-carbon futures are overwhelmingly portrayed with levels of energy abundance that have arisen only with carbon civilisation itself.

But we must climb beyond this default assumption of abundance. As a matter of biophysical inevitability, fossil fuels will become increasingly costly to produce in environmental, financial, and – very importantly – energetic  terms.

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One way or another, in coming years and decades, human societies will have at their disposal ever decreasing quantities of these foundational energy sources. The rate and shape of decline is subject to wide-ranging economic, technical, social, cultural and political influences. There will be twists and turns along the way, no doubt. But perhaps paradoxically, the further ahead we cast our thinking, the more certain we can be of where this trajectory must lead.

Physical transformations

These geological constraints would be challenge enough for the re-evaluation of what it means to be human. But to this we must add the diabolical task of now removing carbon-based fuels from our economies altogether, at the fastest possible rate, by choice.

Not just to maintain climate stability – a hope still widely held even recently – but now with fingers crossed that the instabilities already locked in through our past infractions can be contained sufficiently to avoid overwhelming human prospects altogether.

In our new book, Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future, we step through the case for why it is foolhardy to pin humanity’s hopes on maintaining ‘energy abundance’ through alternative energy sources and technologies.

The new IPCC report has brought to mainstream attention just how fast changes to the ways we source and use energy must be implemented. Nuclear power will scale neither far enough nor fast enough.

The heavy lifting will need to be done by renewables, principally photovoltaic and wind-generated electricity. But even with the luxury of a more relaxed timeframe, there are very sound reasons for expecting that renewably-powered societies will be dramatically different to those we know today, in terms of both the scale and the nature of energy services available, but moreover, the physical transformations that shape daily life.

Knowledge humility

The high-profile model-based renewable energy transition studies that garner widespread public attention tend overwhelmingly to feed the expectation of continuity between life as it’s currently known in the rich world, and post-carbon futures. They mesh neatly with modernity’s energy abundance, even if the worlds portrayed are leaner courtesy of belt-tightening efficiency measures.

This plays a central role in their political palatability, and likely also in their often enthusiastic media reception. Dig a little deeper though, and the research literature in this area tells a different story. Yet, at the other extreme of an often polarised discourse there is outright refutation of the possibility that technologically-sophisticated societies with long-term prospects can be powered by wind and sun alone.

While we’re not inclined to simply dismiss these views, of greater interest is the very substantial middle-ground between the ‘easy’ and ‘impossible’ poles. These are the many investigators who

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recognise post-carbon futures as subject to deep uncertainties, and who recognise the limits of future-oriented inquiry that employs inherently fallible and incomplete models of the world.

A critically open reading of this literature, and an interest in the foundations of human knowledge claims more broadly, leads us to the view that this is an area particularly demanding of what we term ‘knowledge humility’. To the extent that there is any present certainty here, it is that the worlds actually realised will surprise us with their differences from what is envisaged today.

This leads us to the view – open to change through ongoing learning of which actual experience related to the realisation of post-carbon societies will be central – that humanity’s best course of action is to act in the present as if renewable futures will entail energy descent.  That is, a significant reduction in the energy services (work, heating, lighting, data manipulation), and hence in the physical transformations, with which human social activity is organised.

Economic deintensification

Given the tight correlation between economic activity as measured by GDP, and energy use, this implies also a transformation beyond economic growth as we know it. Energy descent futures are also futures of economic degrowth.

A default cultural narrative says that this implies deprivation and an end to human wellbeing. We say: not so fast. There is enormous scope for supporting high levels of experienced wellbeing while doing things in ways very different from those familiar in contemporary forms of political economy.

We outline approaches to this under the banner of ‘voluntary simplification’ and ‘degrowth’, but the approaches are myriad and go by many other names – for instance, permaculture.

A further example is ‘economic deintensification’ as articulated by the late David Fleming in his book Lean Logic, whereby growth of the informal – household and neighbourhood – economy is encouraged at the expense of the formal economy, so much of which serves its own bloated and distended production needs, as distinct from fulfilling the immediate wants of the people for whom it purportedly exists in the first place.

Do we see such comprehensive shifts in culture, identity and ways of life as presenting easy or painless paths? No. But we also recognise that throughout human existence, people have lived well under conditions far less energetically and materially favourable than today.

In fact, on the basis of this we might ask just how favourable these energetically and materially intense ways of life have turned out to be. The potential exists for energy descent futures to be meshed with stories of renewed hope for humanity.

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Note: This long read is from 2006. “Peak Oil” plays a prominent role, and this is a current issue for Transition: are we ready to drop it as a pillar of Transition? My view is yes!

Energy Descent Action Plans – a primer

By Adam Fenderson, originally published by Eat the Suburbs!

June 7, 2006

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-06-07/energy-descent-action-plans-primer-0/

The concept of Energy Descent Action Plans isn’t a widely known or discussed one. Even the issue which forms the EDAP’s main inspiration – Peak Oil – may not be widely appreciated. So I’ve written a background briefing below. It’s a work in progress, and being adapted from a document written for the Melbourne Food Network, so there may be some regional assumptions. But I hope that it might be a useful source document for others. –  Adam 

Introduction 

An Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) is a local plan for dealing with Peak Oil.  It goes well beyond issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of health, education, economy and much more.  An EDAP is a way to think ahead, to plan in an integrated, multidisciplinary way, to provide direction to local government, decision makers, groups and individuals with an interest in making the place they live into a vibrant and viable community in a post-carbon era.

This document is a primer on EDAPs, designed to help spur on the process of creating them.   Since the concept of an EDAP is inspired by looming Peak Oil, as well as the permaculture design system, and the inevitability of economic relocalisation — I’ve also included a brief introduction to these three topics.  This is followed by information on Kinsale, the small Irish town where the first EDAP was written, an inspiring plan which has now been taken on board as official policy by the town council.  Then a few musing on how to start the process of getting an EDAP off the ground here in Melbourne.    Context for the EDAP: Peak Oil

Oil has fuelled much of the massive population growth and the extraordinary achievements of the last 150 years. It is the single largest energy source of the world economy, the lifeblood of industrial society.   

According to a growing number of experts, within the next handful of years the world will reach the ultimate peak in global oil production.  After this point, production will begin its slow but terminal decline.  ‘Peak Oil’, as this event has become widely known, represents an historical turning point, from an era of growth, to an era of contraction. Peak gas won’t be far behind.

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The most widely respected Peak Oil models are being developed by Colin Campbell and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO).  They predict a peak of all oil and gas liquids around 2010.  This ‘early peak’ projection has been supported by other researchers.

Most analysts who have carefully studied the problem agree that Peak Oil cannot be solved with ‘supply side’ solutions.  Alternative energy sources simply can’t fill all of the gap that oil and gas will leave behind, at least not without decades of investment. Massive social changes look like a given. We have to learn to make do with less energy.

With less available fossil fuel, we’ll be forced to begin moving back towards living within the annual energy budget provided by the Sun.  While renewables may help, ultimately this means discovering lifestyles less based around consumerism, and better integrated with natural processes and cycles. Given that the health of the planet is in a far worse state than when humankind embarked on the fossil fuel adventure, this is indeed a challenging prospect.

For more background on Peak Oil check out the Peak Oil Primer at Energy Bulletin.

Internalising the implications of all this can take a fair bit of reflection — and can sometimes result in a sense of despair.

However, a small but growing number of people are using Peak Oil as an opportunity to address broader social and ecological issues.  Their best ideas are inspiring, creative and attractive visions of revitalised local economies, visions grounded by a connection to place and the people in it.  Something sets these ideas apart from many earlier approaches to sustainability — it’s a palpable desperation to be realistic and viable, to involve everyone in the community, to capture the imagination, and to succeed.

Peak oil and permaculture

The phrase ‘energy descent‘ was first used by Australian permaculture co-orginator David Holmgren.  He wrote in 2003 that “I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.”

Okay, you say, but permaculture — that’s just a system of organic gardening, right?

In a short answer: no, well not really.

Permaculture is a “design system for sustainable human habitats that supply human needs in an environmentally enhancing way“.  Permaculture is all about functional design — ways to maximise productivity and abundance, while minimising effort, by working with nature, rather than against it. 

Permaculture can be applied to everything from settlement design, large scale farming, factory design, business practices, kitchen layout, housing, pretty much anything really. Permaculture

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designs are inspired by natural systems, and built on ethical principles — two things which actually contribute to their effectiveness. 

While in affluent countries permaculture is often practised because of environmental concerns, or as a mere hobby, it has been stress tested in difficult conditions all around the globe, where people’s lives depend on successful use of scant resources.  This includes in Cuba, when the country suffered a severe energy famine after the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union. The collapse more than halved Cuba’s oil imports virtually overnight.  The documentary The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, explains how permaculturists were amongst those who helped transform Cuba through this difficult period into a functional, low energy society, where infant mortality and average lifespans are now as good as in the USA. 

In a 2004 interview David explained the relationship between permaculture and Peak Oil:

In a world of decreasing energy, permaculture provides, I believe, the best available framework for redesigning the whole way we think, the way we act, and the way we design new strategies. It doesn’t mean to say that everyone’s going to have a chook tractor, a vegetable garden or some other permaculture technique. But the thinking behind permaculture is really based on this idea of reduced energy availability, and how you work with that in a creative way. That requires a complete overturning of a lot of our inherited culture.  

Famed environmentalist David Suzuki has said “What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.” 

For more on permaculture try the following links:

Permaculture Research Institute of Australia (check out the ‘Greening the Desert’ video) Permaculture International David Holmgren – Holmgren Design Services

 For more on Cuban responses to their artificial ‘Peak Oil’ see:

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil article by Megan Quinn and associated documentary DVD. 

Why relocalisation?

Relocalised economies aren’t an option – they are an invevitability. Oil supplies 95% of the world’s transport energy, so global trade will diminish and we will be left to rely on local resources and skills.

If we resist the transition, considering it a depressing step backwards, the process will be ugly and painful. Fueled by anger and confusion, we may look for someone or something to blame.

A positive vision can go a long way to making the transition enjoyable and dignified. Many public interest groups are already pushing for relocalisation because the many benefits it offers,

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with or without resource constraints.The benefits of relocalisation are as multifaceted as the problems presented by resource depletion and ecological crises:

Healthier food More active lifestyles Greater self-reliance A sense of connection to place and products The re-emergence of local identity An emphasis on quality over quantity A means of overcoming addictive behaviours such as over-consumption A meaningful common goal and sense of purpose.

Imagine the feeling when that first tomato ripens in Summer. Imagine the pride you feel about the shed you and your friends built from mud and straw — to your eyes, it looks more stunning than any prefab from Bunnings.

Imagine the excitement of using your ingenuity to solve real problems: surveying the tools and resources available and mobilising them to repair, refurbish, rearrange and invent.

Imagine being able to go to bed — perhaps for the first time in our lives — with the sense of a job well done, knowing our livelihoods did not come at the expense of distant workers, polluted ecosystems, or our own children’s future.

Converging conclusions

We need to be urgently investing what remains of our cheap energy into long term infrastructure for an energy descent culture. So we need as much support as possible from policy makers.  

When faced with Peak Oil, many people from vastly different backgrounds and political persuasions come to similar conclusions — that a ‘technofix’ is both unlikely and undesirable — that radical societal changes will have to take place, of which relocalisation is central. For example, see this recent quote from energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, former energy advisor to George Bush:

So we really have to adopt a big conservation plan: liberating people to work wherever they want to, and when they want to, and pay by productivity, could be one of the really great sort of social revolution things that we do in the next 5 years and basically eliminate all the people in places like California and Texas, for instance, who are spending upwards of 4 hours a day crawling to work in traffic and crawling home so they’re mad when they get to work, and they’re mad when they get home, and they were mad when oil was free. Eliminating our kind of compulsive obsession with having exotic food from all around the world in our supermarkets every place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year – it’s too energy intensive. Growing stuff at home and canning it. And what we really need to do is ultimately reverse this concept of globalization and go back to actually living in what are euphemistically called villages close to where we work, which can be downtown, but it’s just not 3 hours commute.

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You can also hear veteran conservative US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett explain the importance of humus (the organic part of topsoil), to the US congress in a speech about Peak Oil.  

When an issue relating to the global energy supply has everyone from permaculturists to republican politicians talking about the same type of solutions, we know that something is going on.

Given both the tangible fear of Peak Oil, as well as the potentially non-partisan nature of solutions, there seems to be some emerging opportunities for otherwise ‘unrealistic’ or ‘idealistic’ approaches to be both heard and rapidly deployed.

Enter the EDAP

One of the most useful visioning and policy guiding tools we have available to capture and direct these positive potentials may be the local Energy Descent Action Plan.

Essentially an EDAP is a local plan for dealing with the period leading up to and following Peak Oil. It is not a plan for how to live in a sustainable world. It is a plan for the transitional period of decreasing energy — how to get to that sustainable world. The first EDAP was written in 2005 by permaculture students at a further education college in the small Irish town of Kinsale.

The document broke down the issues which arose locally from peak oil into sections, such as health, education, transport, housing, youth and community, food and energy. Each chapter presented an attractive vision of the town in relation to that issue, followed by a timeline of steps

on how the town might get there.

The plan ‘Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan’ is available for download at www.FuellingTheFuture.org

It includes ideas like turning the town supermarket carpark into an eco-centre, new ecologically sensitive housing development legislation, permaculture studies as part of school curriculum, community gardens, a youth council, a community currency and trading network, and lots more.

As testimony to the way the plan, while visionary, retains a feeling of practicality, late last year the Kinsale town council officially adopted the plan.

Of course visioning and planning is just the begining, but it’s useful to reflect on how the authors of the Kinsale plan developed it and won widespead support.

Kinsale: So how did they do it?

You can read about it here, in editor Rob Hopkins’ ‘Lesson from Kinsale’ posts. Rob’s a great writer, so I highly recommend these:

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Lesson One – Avoiding “Them and Us”Lesson Two – Creating a sense that Something is HappeningLesson Three – Creating a Vision of an Abundant Future Lesson Four – Designing in FlexibilityLesson Five – What Could Have Been Done Better

Also check out this article by Rob Hopkins from Permaculture Activist and interviews at Global Public Media of Rob and Catherine Dunne.  Catherine is involved in Transition Design, an organisation set up to continue the work started with the Kinsale EDAP.

Rob’s blog Transition Culture is a great place to keep up with developments and inspiration and ideas on a number of fronts.  

There are similar projects happening the world, some directly inspired by Kinsale. The efforts in Willits in California represents another successful approach.  The Post Carbon Institute, a primarily North American organisation, has educational toolkits and other methods of supporting local groups working on Peak Oil education and relocalisation efforts, and have a couple of outposts in Australia.  

Breaking down the process

If we were to embark on a similar process, here are some steps which might be involved.

1) Community education, consultation and networkingTo write an effective plan and to bring the community on board we would need to embark on a dual education and consultation process. This might involve film screenings, or presentations on Peak Oil in the local context, followed by facilitated sessions of feedback and ideas. Groups to approach might include various ethnic and religious groups through neighborhood houses and churches, industry groups such as health professionals, food workers, community workers, teachers, police, etc, and any other interest groups we can think of, including of course, council. It should also include public events. This represents a large effort.

But what an amazing process – by the end we could be the most connected group in the region, with a remarkable sense of the character of the local communities, and probably a lot of new friends from each! We’ll need their support, energy and ideas to make it really happen.

2) ResearchFood mapping, researching wind flows, solar radiation, incomes, local skills, current energy mix and vulnerability, existing groups and their potential to aid organisation etc. etc. We need to audit the region as best we can, to figure out what skills and resources and opportunities are available and what are lacking. This step could happen simultaneously with step 1 and inform the consultation and education process. Creating a better sense of posibilities means inspiring as many projects as early as possible. So hopefully this is a dynamic process!

3) Community projects and having funBuilding on the ground projects, community exposure and trust.  Finding fun ways of building

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skills and investing in the future. Like the permablitz concept, community gardens, community skills education, and where ever your interest or opportunities may lie.  We should tie in with existing efforts and networks, and get inspired to start new ones.  The EDAP might seem to be just a piece of paper, a plan.  But the process of creating it must also a process for tying our efforts together, working on some publicly appreciated projects, testing our own abilities, and learning first hand what is possible.  These are the practical projects which get people interested and inspired.  They make this awkward acronym  begin to filled with meaning.  For the plan to have support there must be the base in reality and community support these projects lead to.

4) Producing the planCreating a visionary but grounded document condensing all the best of the feedback and our own, no doubt brilliant, ideas. Editing it into a cohesive whole.

5) Gaining council supportBy this stage we should be unstoppable and any council which resists would be foolish indeed! But a strategic approach to gaining support would be well advised. In addition to Catherine Dunne’s reflections on Kinsale mentioned above, check out the many reflections on a successful attempt in San Francisco to get the city to recognise and support mitigation efforts about peak oil at Global Public Media, and David Room’s (also US focussed) practical guide, How to Pass a Peak Oil Resolution. Council support and advice will be necessary throughout the process, and council should have a sense of joint ownership over the project.

6) ImplementationAn essential factor in whether or not we can have a relatively successful preparation and adaptation to Peak Oil, will be whether or not the community has a sense of excitement and agency in the process. How do we facilitate this exactly? Awards and prizes, continuing consultations, newsletters, inter-community activities such as permaculture backyard blitzes … really, I don’t know, but a lot of potential for creativity.  The plan really doesn’t have to be followed step-by-step, its value is showing us that a prosperous post-peak community is possible.  But it will be a reference point, and stimulous to a great many outcomes.

Structures, partners and funding?

How could such a project be organised and funded? Questions I’m not particularly good at answering! I imagine that a fairly close knit crew of 3-4 people with complimentary skills and styles and a good working relationship would be a good number to handle central organisational and editorial tasks. But the project would need to involve a great deal many more people than that at various levels, with similarly small crews formed for the purpose – or partner organisations – handling the various sections of the plan. Small goals must be set along the way. Plus we may need people acting as facilitators, researchers, translators, fundraisers and in other roles. Does a project like this need to be associated with an incorporated body? Can it work under the auspices of another incorporated group? What partner organisations can take on responsibilities? Eg. renewable energy and conservation organisations, sustainable transport advocates, green urban planners and architects, etc. It would help if whoever is approached has or gains a solid foundation in the problem of Peak Oil, and a can take an holistic approach to design. An understanding of permaculture design principles or natural ability to think in similar

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ways would be a plus.  Writers of the plan do not need to be relevant professionals, indeed an amateur’s fresh eyes and ideas may indeed turn out to be a plus.

Many questions to answer!

But also an inexorable drive onward… onward… to suburban glory.

Now what?

Thanks for making it this far.  I hope that these ideas excite you. 

If you live in Melbourne you should most definitely get in contact. (If you don’t, you could check out the Post Carbon Institute’s Relocalisation Network which might list any existing groups in your area.)  We’ve got a chance here to avert the worst case scenarios, create something of beauty, strength and character, and have a lot of fun in the process.

***

Energy Descent from Peak Oil: Collapse or Evolution?

2009•11•13

Brendan F.D. Barrett Osaka University

https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/creative-energy-descent

Photo Nozoomii.

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There is an unhealthy tendency to categorise environmentalists and members of the peak oil community as ‘doom and gloomers’ predicting the end of the world.

Most recently, Alex Steffen at World Changing jumped into the debate, claiming that the leaders of the Transition movement talk “cheerfully about passing peak oil, widespread food shortages and the idea of globalization crashing suddenly” or about expecting to see “a big population die-off”.

While there are comments to such effect sprinkled amongst peak oil literature and found in some of the recent documentaries on the topic (End of Suburbia, Blind Spot, etc.), it is unfair and incorrect to associate such ideas primarily with the Transition movement. Indeed, this kind of doom and gloom seems to dominate popular culture via Hollywood today, with a series of end-of-the-world or post-apocalyptic movies about to fill our screens — The Road, 2012 and the Book of Eli.

Rather than criticising the Transition movement, Alex Steffen should perhaps have reviewed the new documentary, featuring Michael Ruppert and entitled Collapse, and used it as the focus of his critique. This documentary is certainly a no-holds-barred, alarm-sounding look at peak oil and other topics, portraying “an apocalyptic future“.

If anything, the movement’s focus is the exact opposite of the world envisioned by Ruppert. Transitioners talk about human ingenuity and creativity, and argue that they will not disappear in the face of adversity and resource scarcity. Rather, ingenuity and creativity will remain the core human qualities guiding and shaping our transition to a better, post-fossil fuel world.

Four future scenarios

I think you really have to look at the work of one of the originators of permaculture, David Holmgren, to get a clear idea of why this “collapse scenario” can at times get associated with the Transition movement. In his recent book, Future Scenarios, Holmgren outlines four potential ways in which our global society could respond and adapt to peak oil and climate change.

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He begins by presenting the idea of a technological explosion, where we find some fantastic new energy source, continue on our current trajectory and go forth to colonise space. This is also described as the Star Trek scenario.

Next, he describes the techno-stability scenario where we shift over to green, renewable technologies and somehow manage to retain pretty much the same quality of life that we enjoy today in the industrialized world. This is by far the predominant scenario in the minds of most of our greener leaders and environmentalist friends.

The third scenario is really at the heart of the Transition movement and is called the energy descent scenario. It involves the reduction of economic activity, complexity and population in some way as fossil fuels are depleted. That “some way” is not a mass die-off in a short period of time. Rather, the timescale of the energy descent could be over decades or indeed centuries, so it could include naturally decreasing birth rates (much like we find in Japan, Russia, Italy and many other countries today).

The fourth scenario is the headline grabber and the one, it appears, that gets the attention of Alex Steffen. It is the collapse scenario (also known as the Mad Max scenario) and it implies that our existing societal and industrial systems breakdown. The collapse is rapid and continuous, there is no time for society to stabilize, an inevitable major die-off of human population occurs, as does the loss of our modern knowledge. No one in the Transition movement, or anywhere else, wants this scenario to visit our future. It should remain in our imaginations, not our reality.

The question here is why Steffen does not give a more measured discussion of the Transition movement and does not discuss the merits of energy descent, the preferred scenario of many in the movement? The answer may be because this scenario is largely ignored. To use Holgrem’s

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own words, it is a scenario that is seen as “unrealistic, defeatist and politically counter-productive.”

What the Transition movement has done, or is trying to do, is to turn this perception around and view energy descent as a positive process whereby people are freed from the “strictures and dysfunctions of growth economics and consumer culture.” Following this path, what awaits us all is a better world.

The long goodbye to growth economics

The use of emotive language like “collapse” or James Howard Knustler’s “Long Emergency” is designed to try to awaken people to the new reality of a world altered by peak oil and climate change. Most of us are in denial and actively seeking to be further disconnected from this reality.

But as Steffen rightly points out, “collapse is not a social change”. In response, I would say that a global energy transition — a global energy descent — is exactly that and it starts wherever people are aware and active.

Of course, it would be ideal if global energy transition starts with binding international agreements, national energy and climate plans and local action, but why wait for the snail-paced global climate negotiations to deliver? Now is the time to act. Today’s actions could have the benefit of extending the time period over which the descent needs to take place, thereby giving us more to time to adapt and as a result lessening the pain of changing and increasing our opportunities to be creative.

In many respects Jeff Rubin, former chief economist and chief strategist at CIBC World Markets, seems to have captured the spirit of the transition we are all involved in. In his book Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, he suggests that the market will make a lot of decisions about how the transition will occur. As oil prices rise again to triple digits, it will be the market driving social changes, not the environmentalists.

For as long as possible, we will continue to exploit the available and expensive-to-extract remaining oil. We will employ as much alternative, renewable energy as we can, as quickly as we can. Then our priorities will shift to using what energy we have in the most cost effective and efficient ways. This will be followed by greater efforts to do more with less energy and so on.

The longer term could see a kind of reverse globalisation as everything is grown and manufactured closer to home, which in turn would help reduce our carbon emissions. This might not be a smooth transition and could be characterised by recessions like the current one, followed by recoveries, and if we still have not figured out the mess we are in, followed by new recessions mainly triggered by rising energy costs.

The earlier we wake up to this new reality and the quicker we start pulling in the same direction, the sooner and easier we may be able to ensure a soft-landing in a low carbon, post-fossil fuel world. Hopefully, it will still be a world where we have oil, but treat it carefully and do not use it in the wasteful, mindless way we do today.

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This is a matter of evolutionary change that we are talking about. Isn’t evolution something to strive for?

Brendan F.D. Barrett is a specially appointed professor at Osaka University in the Center for the Study of Co*Design. He teaches and undertakes research as part of the Co-creation Design Division. His core areas of expertise include urban transitions, ethical cities, sustainability science, and science/research communication.

Brendan worked with the United Nations in Japan between 1995 and 2015, with the UN Environment Programme and the United Nations University (UNU). At UNU he was the Head of Online Learning and Head of Communications where he oversaw the development of interactive websites and video documentaries on complex social and environmental concerns. As a result, Brendan has extensive experience in science communications and launched the Our World web magazine in 2008.

***

Energy descent

These new value systems do not mean we will adapt to less, but rather we will return to core essentials, empowering individuals and local communities.

Carlos Cuellar Brown

11 April 2014

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openeconomy/energy-descent/

The concept of energy descent usually refers to the progressive reduction of fossil fuel energy and material consumption as society retracts from oil and gas, particularly as supply approaches its limits or ‘peak oil’. Cheap oil and easy drilling have become a thing of the past; today the technical difficulties of offshore sea-drilling and the devastating ecocide produced by the fracking industry, do not give humanity much choice but to consider the reduction in dependence on fossil fuels as a necessary adaptation for the future.

If you added up all the other sources of energy available today including solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and kinetic, plus other fringe technologies, they would not amount to 20% of the energy requirements to run the world. I am excluding atomic energy as an alternative solution to this energy conundrum altogether, because of its incredible toll on the environment and toxic track record. Concurrently our oil and gas prices will continue to rise because of high demand as less production pushes the entire global economy to gradual adjustment.

In the west we take forgranted that this dependence will continue to provide our local needs forever. Agribusiness for example depends on fossil fuels for all of its operations; consider that food distribution is dominated by giant transcontinental cartels that fuel commercial trading with petroleum. If oil stopped pumping tomorrow the paved highways, container routes, air couriers, freight trains and parking malls would stop distributing goods.

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On the other hand fossil fuel has motored industrialism; this resource has been responsible for the explosion of technology, population and all features of modern societies. The energy of fossil fuel put to work and raised the capacity of humanity past the industrial revolution into the information age, introducing us to the convenient carousel of gadgets and machines of modernity.

Petroleum products and derivatives invented the modern market values that have created unprecedented wealth in the general population but also disproportionate wealth for energy corporations that self-service their own markets.

These monopolies are the big bosses of business that rule the world. Most modern economies and nations depend on this oil-based geopolitical asset to keep on functioning. The spread of the fossil fuel grid has made us mono-dependent, clumsy and huge, unable to maneuver past ‘peak oil’ as we slam into ‘peak food’.

If we had the technology ready to provide the world with all its energetic needs - perhaps if we had cold fission all figured out and ready to go - we would still truncate our time available and need at least ten years to reconfigure our standing power grids and switch boards.

With the development of agriculture, regional comparative advantages made some states and communities more dominant than others. These dominant states imposed economic grids on the rest of society, making way for the dominance of robber barons and trade agreements. With its parameters of growth at all costs, men of capital in dark suits commandeered the advantages of the topdown modern corporate state take over, relentlessly depleting planetary resources with mono-crop farming and GMO’s.

These forces destroy biodiversity, denature soil and erode land and sea. The systematic elimination of diversity and variety will sterilize and wipe out pest-resistant poly-cultures of perennial bio systems, regional crops and heirlooms, leaving us with irreparable collateral damage to survival value.

Unaware of this cost, the structural power grabs in Big Agro stand to lose great economic wealth in readjustment. Humanity’s energy consumption reality check is here and can’t be postponed.

Returning to the essentials

The assumption that fossil fuels will continue to provide the increasing demand for energy is falsely based on dwindling resources and declining availability of petroleum. The consumption of more and more of this same energy will inevitably collapse the monolithic oil-based energetic grid structure of western industrialism. This reality should be our calling card for radical change of consumer ways.

The ascending use of fossil-fuel-derived energy for everything will transition to oil-independence as we move towards much more diverse use of energy resources. This new economic model includes innovation and synergistic diversity centered around efficiently designed, independent and abundant systems.

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These systems and innovations will reduce to having almost no imprint on the environment and in some cases retroactively give back wealth to its systems; improving on the value of available resources. Our future assets are pristine forest, clean water, healthy oceans, pure air, bio-dynamic rich soils, diverse flora and fauna.

To this new set of stock options and commodities, we can add community relationships, scientific know-how, information technology, family values, art and bio-rich cultural enterprises. The preservation of wild systems of nature in ecological flux will prevail over reckless human intervention.

These new value systems do not mean we will adapt to less, but rather we will return to core essentials, empowering individuals and local communities, designing new efficient resources that are dynamic, rebuilding perennial systems that are high yield low maintenance, profiting from our recycled waste products, and redefining consumerism; transforming the worlds’ output of fabricated obsolete clutter into a renaissance of sustainable communities with locally generated goods and services.

This new gamut of design services and products will have regional scales plugged into a world wide web of information solutions. The resulting growth will diversify and empower humanity bringing unsought abundance and co-creation with planet Earth.

The senseless consumption of useless, mindless and pointless stuff is the sociopathology that will be left behind in this energy descent.

Designing comparative advantage

The age of energy descent does not have to be a scary thing. Rather it’s our greatest opportunity to mature and resolve our primary issues. The new paradigm will empower the local scale of governance, with all the technological advantages readily available to every individual, in a very open system of human empowerment and voluntary exchange with an explosion of innovation, peer-to-peer transactions, local time shares, financial cooperatives, cryptic currencies and community swapping.

This empowerment will be the new fuel that will inspire diversity and abundance. This kind of empowerment will deploy multiple regional resources and centres; in this new paradigm, regional diversity is about designing comparative advantages for local consumption with shorter perimeters, that do not involve trans-continental shipping, where the food to the plate process is carried out within a small radius and relies on less fuel. Shipping food across the world’s oceans is inefficient, expensive, fuel dependent and comes with huge externalities. Specialization of single advantages can put a system under a lot of stress and frailty. Unlike global food distribution-dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, self-reliant systems are intrinsically robust to global disturbances. If the container ships and trucks of this world, loaded with food and comestibles, suddenly stopped their freights we could approach a peak population horizon that will not be pretty.

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The owners of factories and assembly lines full of labour specialists trade among themselves; they parcel up the world and keep us in domination. These giant economic consortiums control single resources and impose economic models; they sold us the idea that the supply of oil would be multigenerational. The truth is we have not only become mono-dependent contaminating the environment, but we have also cheated and limited future generations of this non-renewable energetic resource and the planet’s ability to heal.

We have the opportunity to change this oil dependence and avoid peak food and peak population. Some nations have begun to do it, in the realm of regional needs, with the aid of the information age with new technologies and energy alternatives.

Community talent and skill swapping will supply the regional niches with peer-to-peer trading. These new economic shares will dominate the rare product panoply of alternative markets, measured from the point of view of an informed consumer who makes ethical decisions for the earth and their community. The exchange of goods and services will be dominated by honest needs that endure and are intrinsically essential, practical and good for the environment.

The kind of trade we will have in this energy descent will be characterized by unique, personalized, built to last, robust enduring products designed with care and sensibility.

Such systems of low maintenance/high yield are possible and are inherited from natural systems and perennials already in production. Permaculture and other natural design initiatives are carrying out these principles blossoming everywhere.

The west has been co-opted into believing in a world of scarcity, enclosed in a field of limitation, in a universe of diminishing resources with diminishing returns. This could not be further from the truth.

Just look at the unprecedented wealth of the information age. This giant resource and playground for ingenuity will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. This display of creativity and invention will ignite and motor society into a golden era of knowledge and plenty. Necessity will once again prompt society to action, with our needs as our key to understanding, only this time we have the magnificent tool of information left behind by our petroleum age. Unlike the petrodollars that ran the engine of over-industrialism, the new currencies of the energy descent will thrive within resource economies and permaculture design.

It is a revolution of inputs where we will increasingly leave to the earth the perennial role of providing us with its high yields.  These new currencies are already revolutionizing the flourishing goods and services of community exchange. In communities of surplus and self-reliance, the exchange value of goods and services becomes a secondary by product. In a market of abundance and surplus, wealth is not based on middle men and the accumulation of treasury notes and money but rather in the act of giving and sharing all goods in surplus.

Because society monetizes everything today, it is hard to see a different relationship; because of this skewed value system we equate money with happiness, money with wealth. This distortion extends to having expensive cooling, warehouses and refrigeration, when we find value in

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hoarding perishable goods: when we give value to real estate and paved highways instead of nutrient rich top soil; pollute a pristine river in search of gold; give value to manufacturing sweat shops instead of pure clean air; to Big Pharma and allopathic medicine instead of nutrition and holistic living; our sprawling cities and senseless consumption habits over the undisturbed jungles and forests of this world - when we value celebrities and mass media instead of family and community values.

We have become blinded to the real wealth of our existence. In this new value system, the new petroleum will be the top soil as people and communities restore and find pride in their new black nutrient richness. The new gold will become the reservoirs and restoration of all the pristine waters and oceans; the new real estate will become organic perennial food systems and markets along with alternative energies.

In this new value system big bank accounts will disappear and instead we will bank on forest gardening, edible landscapes, urban permaculture and family businesses. The adolescent mass culture mentality of the twentieth and twenty-first century with its “only me counts generations” will have to evolve and be replaced by an empathic social model.

In this energy descent we must come together on voluntary grounds of cooperation. To solve this shift in energy consumption, I am not advocating the return of the rugged agrarian individualism that characterized much of the pre-industrial era, but rather a coming together of interdependent town and country, micro regions, provincial wisdom and self-reliant city states, all communicating with information technologies. And I don’t suggest a scenario of scarcity either where you don’t have access to essential needs, but on the contrary I would like to invite you to the age of abundance and surplus beyond anything we have seen in the modern era. As society matures and adapts its needs, we will come together in a common mission to build the perennial and permacultural elements of design needed for this transition.

***

Energy Descent Action Plan Primer - taken with thanks from Adam in Australia, “Eat the Suburbs“

https://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Solutions/EDAP.htm

Introduction

An Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) is a local plan for dealing with Peak Oil. It goes well beyond issues of energy supply, to look at across-the-board creative adaptations in the realms of health, education, economy and much more. An EDAP is a way to think ahead, to plan in an integrated, multidisciplinary way, to provide direction to local government, decision makers, groups and individuals with an interest in making the place they live into a vibrant and viable community in a post-carbon era.

This document is a primer on EDAPs, designed to help spur on the process of creating them. Since the concept of an EDAP is inspired by looming Peak Oil, as well as the permaculture

 

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design system, and the inevitability of economic relocalisation — I’ve also included a brief introduction to these three topics. This is followed by information on Kinsale, the small Irish town where the first EDAP was written, an inspiring plan which has now been taken on board as official policy by the town council.

Context for the EDAP:

    Oil has fuelled much of the massive population growth and the extraordinary achievements of the last 150 years. It is the single largest energy source of the world economy, the lifeblood of industrial society. But according to a growing number of experts, within the next handful of years the world will reach the ultimate peak in global oil production. After this point, production will begin its slow but terminal decline. ‘Peak Oil’, as this event has become widely known, represents an historical turning point, from an era of growth, to an era of contraction. Peak gas won’t be far behind.

The most widely respected Peak Oil models are being developed by Colin Campbell and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). They predict a peak of all oil and gas liquids around 2010. This ‘early peak’ projection has been supported by other researchers. Most analysts who have carefully studied the problem agree that Peak Oil cannot be solved with ‘supply side’ solutions. Alternative energy sources simply can’t fill all of the gap that oil and gas will leave behind, at least not without decades of investment. Massive social changes look like a given. We have to learn to make do with less energy.

With less available fossil fuel, we’ll be forced to begin moving back towards living within the annual energy budget provided by the Sun. While renewables may help, ultimately this means discovering lifestyles less based around consumerism, and better integrated with natural processes and cycles. Given that the health of the planet is in a far worse state than when humankind embarked on the fossil fuel adventure, this is indeed a challenging prospect. For more background on Peak Oil check out here.

Internalising the implications of all this can take a fair bit of reflection — and can sometimes result in a sense of despair.

However, a small but growing number of people are using Peak Oil as an opportunity to address broader social and ecological issues. Their best ideas are inspiring, creative and attractive visions of revitalised local economies, visions grounded by a connection to place and the people in it. Something sets these ideas apart from many earlier approaches to

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sustainability — it’s knowing that we now have little time left, it’s a palpable desperation to be realistic and viable, to involve everyone in the community, to capture the imagination, and to succeed.

     

Peak oil and permaculture

The phrase ‘energy descent’ was first used by Australian permaculture co-orginator David Holmgren. He wrote in 2003 that “I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.” Okay, you say, but permaculture — that’s just a system of organic gardening, right? In a short answer: no, well not really.

Permaculture is a “design system for sustainable human habitats that supply human needs in an environmentally enhancing way”. Permaculture is all about functional design — ways to maximise productivity and abundance, while minimising effort, by working with nature, rather than against it. Permaculture can be applied to everything from settlement design, large scale farming, factory design, business practices, kitchen layout, housing, pretty much anything really. Permaculture designs are inspired by natural systems, and built on ethical principles — two things which actually contribute to their effectiveness.

While in affluent countries permaculture is often practised because of environmental concerns, or as a mere hobby, it has been stress tested in difficult conditions all around the globe, where people’s lives depend on successful use of scant resources. This includes in Cuba, when the country suffered a severe energy famine after the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union. The collapse more than halved Cuba’s oil imports virtually overnight. The documentary The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, explains how permaculturists were amongst those who helped transform Cuba through this difficult period into a functional, low energy society, where infant mortality and average lifespans are now as good as in the USA.

In a 2004 interview David explained the relationship between permaculture and Peak Oil:

“In a world of decreasing energy, permaculture provides, I believe, the best available framework for redesigning the whole way we think, the way we act, and the way we design new strategies. It doesn’t mean to say that everyone’s going to have a chook tractor, a vegetable garden or some other permaculture technique. But the thinking behind permaculture is really based on this idea of reduced energy availability, and how you work with that in a creative way. That requires a complete overturning of a lot of our inherited culture”.

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Famed environmentalist David Suzuki has said “What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.”

Why relocalisation?

Relocalised economies aren’t an option - they are an invevitability. Oil currently supplies 95% of the world’s transport energy, and all the alternatives proposed have severe limitations. Biodiesel competes with crops for food, hydrogen depends on other primary energy sources, and so on. Global trade will diminish and we will be left to rely on local resources and skills. If we resist the transition, considering it a depressing step backwards, the process will be ugly and painful. Fueled by anger and confusion, we may look for someone or something to blame. A positive vision can go a long way to making the transition enjoyable and dignified. Many public interest groups are already pushing for relocalisation because of the many benefits it offers, with or without resource constraints.The benefits of relocalisation are as multifaceted as the problems presented by resource depletion and ecological crises:

* Healthier food* More active lifestyles* Greater self-reliance* A sense of connection to place and products* The re-emergence of local identity* An emphasis on quality over quantity* A means of overcoming addictive behaviours such as over-consumption* A meaningful common goal and sense of purpose.

Imagine the feeling when that first tomato ripens in Summer. Imagine the pride you feel about the shed you and your friends built from mud and straw — to your eyes, it looks more stunning than any prefab. Imagine the excitement of using your ingenuity to solve real problems: surveying the tools and resources available and mobilising them to repair, refurbish, rearrange and invent. Imagine being able to go to bed — perhaps for the first time in our lives — with the sense of a job well done, knowing our livelihoods did not come at the expense of distant workers, polluted ecosystems, or our own children’s future.

     

Converging conclusions

We need to be urgently investing what remains of our cheap energy into long term infrastructure for an energy descent culture. So we need as much support as possible from policy makers.

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When faced with Peak Oil, many people from vastly different backgrounds and political persuasions come to similar conclusions — that a ‘technofix’ is both unlikely and undesirable — that radical societal changes will have to take place, of which relocalisation is central. For example, see this recent quote from energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, former energy advisor to George Bush:

“So we really have to adopt a big conservation plan: liberating people to work wherever they want to, and when they want to, and pay by productivity, could be one of the really great sort of social revolution things that we do in the next 5 years and basically eliminate all the people in places like California and Texas, for instance, who are spending upwards of 4 hours a day crawling to work in traffic and crawling home so they’re mad when they get to work, and they’re mad when they get home, and they were mad when oil was free. Eliminating our kind of compulsive obsession with having exotic food from all around the world in our supermarkets every place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year - it’s too energy intensive. Growing stuff at home and canning it. And what we really need to do is ultimately reverse this concept of globalization and go back to actually living in what are euphemistically called villages close to where we work, which can be downtown, but it’s just not 3 hours commute.”

You can also hear veteran conservative US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett explain the importance of humus (the organic part of topsoil), to the US congress in a speech about Peak Oil. When an issue relating to the global energy supply has everyone from permaculturists to republican politicians talking about the same type of solutions, we know that something is going on. Given both the tangible fear of Peak Oil, as well as the potentially non-partisan nature of solutions, there seems to be some emerging opportunities for otherwise ‘unrealistic’ or ‘idealistic’ approaches to be both heard and rapidly deployed.

Enter the EDAP

One of the most useful visioning and policy guiding tools we have available to capture and direct these positive potentials may be the local Energy Descent Action Plan. Essentially an EDAP is a local plan for dealing with the period leading up to and following Peak Oil. It is not a plan for how to live in a sustainable world. It is a plan for the transitional period of decreasing energy — how to get to that sustainable world. The first EDAP was written in 2005 by permaculture students at a further education college in the small Irish town of Kinsale.

The document broke down the issues which arose locally from peak oil into sections, such as health, education, transport, housing, youth and community, food and energy. Each chapter presented an attractive vision of the town in relation to that issue, followed by a timeline of steps on how the town might get there.

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The plan ‘Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan’ is available for download at www.FuellingTheFuture.org. It includes ideas like turning the town supermarket carpark into an eco-centre, new ecologically sensitive housing development legislation, permaculture studies as part of school curriculum, community gardens, a youth council, a community currency and trading network, and lots more.

As testimony to the way the plan, while visionary, retains a feeling of practicality, late last year the Kinsale town council officially adopted the plan. Of course visioning and planning is just the begining, but it’s useful to reflect on how the authors of the Kinsale plan developed it and won widespead support.

Kinsale: So how did they do it?

You can read about it in Rob Hopkins’ ‘Lesson from Kinsale’ posts on his “Transition Culture” blog website. Rob’s a great writer, so I highly recommend these:

Lesson One - Avoiding “Them and Us”

“...It is very easy to fall into blaming others for not doing anything, but often when we take the time to sit and listen to others, we find they share many of the same concerns but lack the skills, time, resources or motivation to do anything. To alientate people through criticism is ultimately self defeating. Beginning this process elsewhere, this always strikes me as one of the most important principles, creating a process which is inclusive.

The more I have been involved in things like this and have met people working in positions of authority, be they planners, engineers, councillors and even politicians, I have seen ordinary people, often with families, just as bewildered by turns of events and which way to go as everybody else. For us to scream “why aren’t they doing anything” does nothing to help, very often they have as little clue as to what to do as the rest of us. For me, coming from an activist background, this has been a very important lesson to learn (clearly it is not always the case, sometimes people are deliberately obstructive for whatever reason, but in most cases it is). Most of the actual techniques for avoiding sinking into ‘them and us’ comes from from the next principle “creating a sense that Something is Happening”...”

Lesson Two - Creating a sense that Something is Happening

[Go and visit this page. Webmistress at GWT thinks this sense that “Something is Happening” grows simply by staying in touch with your highest Visions and Aspirations, doing what you passionately care about, asking what makes your heart sing, tuning into God, the Great Spirit of the Universe, like Peter and Eileen Caddy did around a tiny, almost derelict fishing village called Findhorn.]

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Lesson Three - Creating a Vision of an Abundant Future

“...One of essential things in developing community strategies to peak oil is that of facilitating the community to create a vision of how the future could be. We move from working with peak oil, which is about probabilities (how probable is it that it will be horrendous, how probable is peak in 2007 and so on…) to possibilities. The shift is subtle but illuminating. Through the Open Space event we ran in Kinsale, we gave the community (well those who came at least) permission to dream. It was very powerful to see it happening, people going home excited about how the future could be, and feeling they had met some kindred souls with whom they could do it.

Asking people to visualise a future with one quarter of the fossil fuels available is asking a great deal of them. Especially in Ireland, where the Famine still looms over modern history, and is only 7 generations ago...”

Lesson Four - Designing in Flexibility

“I once did a course with Australian permaculture teacher Dave Clark, who talked about his experiences working doing permaculture in refugee camps in Macedonia. You can read more about his work here, and especially here. He was dealing with large numbers of people moving to places with no infrastructure, all of which had to be created. He did amazing work, building strawbale buildings, food gardens, putting in miles of swales and hundreds of thousands of trees. One thing he said really stayed with me. He spoke of having to work with professional engineers who would design something such as a drainage system, which Dave could see wouldn’t work, but which, because the person was a ‘professional’ could not be questioned. He saw much money wasted through this unchallengable ‘rule’ that the professional is always right. He talked about how in his work he always worked from the premise that he was wrong. This designed into the process the openness to reassessing at any stage.”

Lesson Five - What Could Have Been Done Better...

 Also check out this article by Rob Hopkins:

“...On Saturday February 12th 2005 we held an event in Kinsale called “Kinsale in 2021 - Towards a Prosperous, Sustainable Future Together”, which took place at Kinsale Town Hall. The event was presented as a ‘community think-tank’ in order to hear the community’s ideas about how energy descent would affect the community and what might be done about it. Before the event we sent personal invitations to the people in Kinsale that we had identified as being the movers and shakers in the town... We also left the event open to the public and put posters up around the town. From the 60 people invited, about 35 turned up on the day. The event itself was opened by the Mayor of Kinsale, Mr Charles Henderson, who spoke of the importance of energy as an issue and how it affects all aspects of our lives and our economy. This was followed by a screening of ‘The End of Suburbia’.

After the film, Thomas Riedmuller, who teaches Community Leadership at Kinsale FEC,

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introduced the concept of Open Space Technology as a tool for facilitating such events. Open Space is based on the idea that the most productive discussion and idea sharing at any event happens during the tea breaks. Open Space is, in essence, a long tea break, where groups are formed to discuss certain issues, and everyone is free to move between discussion groups, based on the four principles of Open Space: whoever comes are the right people, whatever happens is the only thing that could have, whenever it starts is the right time, and when it’s over it’s over. Those assembled took to the Open Space model with great enthusiasm, and it was extremely productive. People were invited to identify the specific problems and issues that the film raised for them. These were then recorded on large sheets of paper and pinned up on the wall. These were then collated into subject areas, and each of these became the basis for a discussion group. The groups covered the following subjects, Food, Rebuilding Communities, Youth Group/Education, Business & Technology, Tourism and renewable energy...”

     

Breaking down the process

If we were to embark on a similar process, here are some steps which might be involved.

1) Community education, consultation and networkingTo write an effective plan and to bring the community on board we would need to embark on a dual education and consultation process. This might involve film screenings, or presentations on Peak Oil in the local context, followed by facilitated sessions of feedback and ideas. Groups to approach might include various ethnic and religious groups through neighborhood houses and churches, industry groups such as health professionals, food workers, community workers, teachers, police, etc, and any other interest groups we can think of, including of course, council. It should also include public events. This represents a large effort.

But what an amazing process - by the end we could be the most connected group in the region, with a remarkable sense of the character of the local communities, and probably a lot of new friends from each! We’ll need their support, energy and ideas to make it really happen.

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2) ResearchFood mapping, researching wind flows, solar radiation, incomes, local skills, current energy mix and vulnerability, existing groups and their potential to aid organisation etc. etc. We need to audit the region as best we can, to figure out what skills and resources and opportunities are available and what are lacking. This step could happen simultaneously with step 1 and inform the consultation and education process. Creating a better sense of posibilities means inspiring as many projects as early as possible. So hopefully this is a dynamic process!

3) Community projects and having funBuilding on the ground projects, community exposure and trust. Finding fun ways of building skills and investing in the future. Like the permablitz concept, community gardens, community skills education, and where ever your interest or opportunities may lie. We should tie in with existing efforts and networks, and get inspired to start new ones. The EDAP might seem to be just a piece of paper, a plan. But the process of creating it must also a process for tying our efforts together, working on some publicly appreciated projects, testing our own abilities, and learning first hand what is possible. These are the practical projects which get people interested and inspired. They make this awkward acronym begin to filled with meaning. For the plan to have support there must be the base in reality and community support these projects lead to.

4) Producing the planCreating a visionary but grounded document condensing all the best of the feedback and our own, no doubt brilliant, ideas. Editing it into a cohesive whole.

5) Gaining council supportBy this stage we should be unstoppable and any council which resists would be foolish indeed! But a strategic approach to gaining support would be well advised. In addition to Catherine Dunne’s reflections on Kinsale mentioned above, check out the many reflections on a successful attempt in San Francisco to get the city to recognise and support mitigation efforts about peak oil at Global Public Media, and David Room’s (also US focussed) practical guide, How to Pass a Peak Oil Resolution. Council support and advice will be necessary throughout the process, and council should have a sense of joint ownership over the project.

6) ImplementationAn essential factor in whether or not we can have a relatively successful preparation and adaptation to Peak Oil, will be whether or not the community has a sense of excitement and agency in the process. How do we facilitate this exactly? Awards and prizes, continuing consultations, newsletters, inter-community activities such as permaculture backyard blitzes … really, I don’t know, but a lot of potential for creativity. The plan really doesn’t have to be followed step-by-step, its value is showing us that a prosperous post-peak community is possible. But it will be a reference point, and stimulous to a great many outcomes.

Structures, partners and funding?

How could such a project be organised and funded? Questions I’m not particularly good at answering! I imagine that a fairly close knit crew of 3-4 people with complimentary skills and

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styles and a good working relationship would be a good number to handle central organisational and editorial tasks. But the project would need to involve a great deal many more people than that at various levels, with similarly small crews formed for the purpose - or partner organisations - handling the various sections of the plan. Small goals must be set along the way. Plus we may need people acting as facilitators, researchers, translators, fundraisers and in other roles. Does a project like this need to be associated with an incorporated body? Can it work under the auspices of another incorporated group? What partner organisations can take on responsibilities? Eg. renewable energy and conservation organisations, sustainable transport advocates, green urban planners and architects, etc. It would help if whoever is approached has or gains a solid foundation in the problem of Peak Oil, and a can take an holistic approach to design. An understanding of permaculture design principles or natural ability to think in similar ways would be a plus. Writers of the plan do not need to be relevant professionals, indeed an amateur’s fresh eyes and ideas may turn out to be a plus.

Many questions to answer!

But also an inexorable drive onward… onward… to suburban glory.

Now what?

Thanks for making it this far. I hope that these ideas excite you.

Download document - will make A5 leaflet