A Call For Action

by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
A Planet in Crisis

The world's scientific community has issued an unprecedented series of warnings over the past decade1. They have worked feverishly to assess the state of the planet, and have found that all of the Earth's ecosystems are suffering, with many near the point of collapse. They warn us that we have one generation, or at most two, to remedy this situation. Yet even they do not understand how little time we have left. They tell us that business as usual cannot go on. And their assessment goes unheeded.

We are warned that the planet is threatened by global climate change and by ozone depletion. Ice masses in the Arctic and Antarctic are beginning to break up, and species vulnerable to increased UV penetration are diminishing. Skin cancers and eye cataracts are on the increase, as is desertification the world over. Northern species are retreating as warm-loving species expand from equatorial regions to high latitudes, bringing with them diseases once termed tropical. And plant species the world over, including many of our important crop species, are stressed by increased ultraviolet penetration3.

We are already in the middle of the third greatest extinction event in the history of the planet. The extinction rate is from 100 to 1,000 times in excess of the natural rate of extinction4. The diversity of life on this planet, which is a clear indication of the health of the biosphere and its ability to adapt to change, is severely diminished. Humankind has appropriated fully half of the incipient sunlight on this planet available for photosynthesis, and has put into cultivation virtually all of the arable land on this planet5. The rest of the biota is forced to make due with the marginal lands which are left, or to scavenge from our refuse.

Modern agriculture is draining the soil of nutrients far faster than they can be replaced, while soils are being eroded wherever they are exposed. Surface water is being diverted to the point that in many riverbeds barely a trickle remains, and groundwater is being pumped out for agricultural and industrial use at rates exceeding the recharge rates many times over6. The world's fisheries are collapsing. Everywhere, supplies of vital resources are being depleted.

At the other end of the entropy scale, garbage dumps are overflowing. Pollution, heavy metals and manufactured chemicals are tainting the atmosphere, the water, and the ground, entering into food chains everywhere. It is doubtful that there is a person alive today who is not storing manufactured poisons in her or his body.

This is but a sampling from a myriad of problems associated with conducting business as usual. The world scientific community is warning us that we must deal with these problems now, while there is still time, or these problems will deal with us. Yet few of these scientists know how very little time we have to deal with these problems. We do not have a generation or two. In all likelihood, we have at most a few years.

Within the next 5 to 10 years, our energy base will begin to contract irreversibly. This shrinking energy base will be due to the inevitable peak and decline of global oil production. We currently live in the opulence of the oil age. Each of us has the energy equivalent of some fifty slaves to do our work for us, and to pamper us with all of the latest technological comforts. Hydrocarbons are used as feedstock for over 500,000 different products: fertilizers, medicines, plastics, insulation, computers, asphalt, inks & toners, paints, glues, solvents, antiseptics, golf balls, CDs, trash bags, nail polish, detergents, and chewing gum - to name but a few. And virtually all of our industrial processes are run by the energy of hydrocarbons.

Hydrocarbons have provided us with a treasure trove of high-quality, easily obtainable energy, from which we could draw at an unlimited rate for so long as the supply lasted. And it is that abundant energy store which has powered all of our technological advances, including the green revolution, making possible a nearly logarithmic growth in human population. When it comes to the bang for the buck, there is nothing to equal oil. One liter of petrol holds as much energy as 1,000 liters of natural gas, 3 kilograms of firewood, or 24 solar panels working all day in sunny Brisbane11. Oil provides 1.3 to 2.45 times more economic value per kilocalorie than coal1.

Yet we are fast approaching the day when we will have produced all the easily obtainable oil. From here on out we must invest increasing amounts of energy to produce oil. In short order, we will reach a day when it will take as much energy to produce (i.e., extract and, ultimately, refine and bring to market) a barrel of oil as we will get out of that barrel of oil. Past this point, the net energy of oil production will fall into the negative range. We will never run out of oil; there will always be some oil in the ground. Oil wells are not abandoned because they dry up - they are abandoned because the net energy production has reached zero.

Nothing has the bang for the buck of oil, and nothing can replace it - either separately or in combination. Ethanol has a net energy value of zero (not accounting for soil and water damage and other costs due to unsustainable agricultural practices) - it is subsidized as a boon to agribusiness14. Solar energy produces marginal net energy, and solar photovoltaic cells (PVC) are built from hydrocarbon feed stocks. Wind turbines do have an appreciable net energy profile - but the wind is intermittent at best15.

The highly touted hydrogen fuel cells are not an energy source at all, but are more properly termed a form of energy storage. Free hydrogen does not exist on this planet. It requires more energy to break a hydrogen bond than will ever be garnered from that free hydrogen. The current source of hydrogen is natural gas - that is, a hydrocarbon. In the envisioned system of solar PVC & hydrogen fuel cells, every major component of the system, from the PVC to the fuel cells themselves will require hydrocarbon energy and feedstocks. The oil age will never be replaced by a hydrogen fuel-cell economy16.

Coal is abundant, but its net energy profile is poor compared to oil, and will continue to diminish fast. Coal production is extremely harmful to the environment, and burning coal is far dirtier than oil17. Nuclear power plants are simply too expensive to build, uranium is rare, and the wastes (including decommissioned plants) must be stored and guarded virtually forever18.

Industrial, green revolution-style agriculture is particularly energy intensive. Every calorie of food produced today requires 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy19. This includes the energy of packaging and shipping to the store, but not the energy of consumers traveling to and from the store, nor the home energy costs of cooking the food. Without hydrocarbons, this planet can only produce enough food to sustain a population of 2.5 billion. The current world population is in excess of 6 billion. In the US, without industrial agriculture, we will only be able to feed 2/3's of our current population20.

Our energy base will soon begin to contract. The planet's resources are being depleted, and we are being faced with a planet in crisis. Business as usual cannot go on.

Business as Usual

Instead of focusing on these critical problems, which threaten to undermine the quality of life on this planet, we have chosen to ignore them. Instead of looking for and implementing answers, we put the bulk of our efforts into denying the very existence of these problems or, failing that, denying that anything needs to be done about them. At most, we shake our heads before continuing with our conspicuous consumption and our push for a global free market.

Neo-classical economists tell us that the market will solve all of our problems. They assure us that pollution, resource depletion, the collapse of ecosystems and the failure of agriculture will produce economic stimulus which will spur the discovery of new resources and the development of new technologies. The market, they say, will maintain equilibrium no matter how much people and the environment have to suffer as a consequence. But we must avoid any impetus towards regulations which might restrict economic growth. They have no clue how economic growth can be maintained with a shrinking energy base, so they blithely deny any possibility of the latter.

The neo-classical economists believe that free market capitalism has proven its supremacy through the collapse of authoritarian communism. Globalization is the endgame of capitalism, pushing for open access to resources throughout the globe while driving down labor costs to provide cheap products and maximum profits. All we have to do to share in the benefits of this supposedly benevolent system is to consume, consume, and consume more.

Yet the power disparity upon which this system is based has been exaggerated to the breaking point. The royalty and the robber-barons of previous eras never dreamed of such a concentration of wealth as that experienced now by the Waltons, the Gates, and the Eisners of the world. In the United States as of 2002, the average CEO made 282 times as much as the average worker. And the average worker today in the US is actually making comparatively less than 30 years ago, though worker productivity has increased.

Outsourcing has given corporations the ability to move jobs to wherever workers can be paid the least, and where their operations will be subjected to the least regulation and the least taxation. White collar workers are no less vulnerable to outsourcing. Even service sector jobs are moving out of the US whenever possible. And to fill the poor paying jobs that remain, corporations are bringing in tens of thousands more immigrants every year. As a result, globalization has become a race to the bottom for the working class, for communities, and for ecosystems throughout the world.

Not only are people in the working class working harder for less pay, they are also receiving fewer benefits than comparatively 30 years ago. In the US, consumers are maintaining a record level of personal debt, and personal bankruptcy now exceeds the divorce rate. Meanwhile, our social safety net is being dismantled and our infrastructure is being allowed to decay, where it is not being privatized. Public education has to go begging while the prison industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the country.

Rugged individualism is the standard of the day, forcing all of us into direct competition. The basic human instinct toward cooperation has been all but forgotten in the mad rush to push everyone else aside. Our society has become atomized; the village green has been replaced by the shopping mall. Open debate and the free communication of ideas and news can now only be found in cyberspace.

Yet, at the same time, true individuality and originality has become suspect. People are encouraged to conform. Cultural distinctions are being lost in the homogenization of the cultures of the globe - what Benjamin Barber called "McWorld."

Much of the public is becoming increasingly bovine, unquestioningly following authority. Critical thinking has been replaced by reactionary impulses, response to emotional appeals, and other substitutes for rational debate. Atomized and removed from direct interaction with the world around them, the overworked populace are largely dependent on the cultural fodder which is tendered to them by the marketplace. It's a diet of mental junk food, blended of anxious fantasy, appeals to consume, fear mongering and quietism, promoted by media industry whose paying advertisers prefer an audience of passive spectators, addicted to entertainment and largely unable to govern their own affairs.

The Result of Business as Usual

None of this should come as a surprise. This is all a natural and foreseeable result of business as usual in a capitalist system. In that system, capital generates profit through the exploitation of labor and resources. So, as capitalism approaches its climax on a global scale, it has to result in an unstable power disparity with the concentration of wealth among a small and exclusive upper class, an impoverished and disempowered working class, bankrupt communities, overstressed ecosystems and a depleted resource base. The only way to avoid this is to do away with capitalism.

Capitalism cannot be reformed. Any attempt to regulate it more fairly, any attempt to reform capitalism - be it monetary reform or any other sort of reform - is destined to fail due to the basic unalterable nature of capitalism. Regulations and reforms may help to level out the playing field for a time, but in the long run capitalism will find a way to circumvent or deregulate any attempt to temper it. Capitalism is a system of exploitation which is ultimately unsustainable.

As such, capitalism is antithetical to democracy. A system is democratic only to the extent that its citizens are equal - in their political rights; in their access to participatory social space; in their opportunities to secure purchasing power without the threat of poverty or asset seizure; and in their recourse to the law, whose equal protection must be guaranteed to everyone if the term "democracy" is to meaningfully apply. Genuine popular sovereignty (the literal meaning of democracy) is sustained by an informed citizenry. Yet capitalism is based upon the exploitation of power disparities, and its smooth operation is maintained by a disempowered, uninformed working class.

Here lies the reason for the failure of democracy in the US. And here is the secret of why our founding fathers chose a system of representative democracy, and why the ratification of the US Constitution was resisted by the public in its day. The framers of the constitution were, without exception, rich white males worried about a popular uprising. Under the draperies of democracy, they designed a political system where decision making power was insulated from the general population and easily controlled by the rich and powerful. This disparity was later heightened by granting a protected status and legal rights to corporations.

As a result, every war the US has ever fought, every intervention the US has ever sponsored, and every bit of foreign aid the US has ever supplied was undertaken to support the right of the upper class to exploit labor and resources, all under the guise of democracy.

An End to Business as Usual

Business as usual can no longer be allowed to proceed. To go on with business as usual is to promote the collapse of civilization, the destruction of ecosystems, the death of billions of human beings, untold suffering and impoverishment for those who survive, and just possibly the extinction of life on this planet at a level to match or exceed the end of the Permian Era. And all this to ease our consciences, as we allow the end play of unbridled greed and ignorance.

We cannot trust our elected leaders to do the right thing, much less our corporations. There is very little time left, and it could very well be impossible at this point to redesign our entire civilization. But we can possibly restructure our own lives and our local communities to survive the transition. This is our duty to generations to come, and to the rest of the biosphere.

But we need options and advice. We need practical suggestions which can be undertaken by individuals, families and small communities. We need guidance on what can be achieved at a local level with limited means. And we need advice on how to achieve this in the most democratic and egalitarian manner possible.

To aid in this, I am here soliciting advice from specialists in various fields, such as permaculture, social ecology, progressive labor, and other disciplines. And I am putting out a call for articles from anyone who feels that she or he has some advice to offer. The topic is:
Given the conditions set forth in this paper, what measures can people of limited means undertake to ease their transition into a post-technological world?
The resulting suggestions will be collected, along with this essay, and published. Any profits from this project will be used to educate people about the changes ahead, and hopefully to offer grants in order to help people prepare for the transition.

Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Geologist, Science Journalist, Novelist
Holly, Michigan, USA
April 26th, 2004
http://www.survivingpeakoil.com/articles.php