David Holmgren co-founder with Bill Mollison of Permaculture spoke to a large audience on the topic of his book ‘Future Scenarios: how communities can adapt to peak oil and climate change’. www.futurescenarios.org

Future Scenarios started as a web-site discussion to better prepare for the variety of futures to emerge in the next 10-30 years. Four quadrants are proposed:

  • Techno-explosion

  • Techno-stability

  • Energy descent

  • Collapse

The likelihood of each of these scenarios emerging depends on the individual:

Techno-Explosion

Techno-stability

Energy descent

Collapse

David Holmgren

7%

3%

75%

15%

Rupert Murdoch

80%

15%

0%

5%

Al Gore

30%

60%

2%

8%

Jay Hanson

0%

0%

10%

90%

Yourself

Jay Hanson started http://dieofforg

Confusion between our inner human and the outer physical realms of experience and impacts are part of the problem. The inner human realm works on no limits creativity positive belief and growth is always good. The outer physical realm works on limits sensitivity realistic belief and growth always ends. Experience is subjective. Consequences and impacts are objective.

Climate change uncertainties:

  • High degree of uncertainty in rate of global warming

  • Modelling uncertainty & delay in reviewing new data

  • Is global mitigation going to happen in time or at all

  • Risk of tipping points feedback loops

  • Direct impact of drought storms sea level rises (0.5m to 5m)

  • Indirect impacts through global economy and geopolitics

  • More severe droughts & bushfires leading to increased risks & costs

Bioregional opportunities:

  • Urban agriculture using local waste & water

  • Carbon credits stimulating activities for farmers & soil carbon

  • Return of fresh milk dairy production to high rainfall fringe areas

Rainfall reduction leads to much bigger reductions in reservoir storage:

  • Perth 20% rain reduction 50% reservoir reduction

  • Eppalock 10% rain reduction more than 90% reservoir reduction!!!

Peak oil

  • The best quality easily extracted oil is used first

  • Natural gas is the only fuel with high net energy returns that can substitute for oil

  • Britain is in a parlous economic condition

  • Australia is one of the new energy superpowers (John Howard 2003)

  • ASPO Association for the Study of Peak Oil predictions 2002 have turned out to be spot on. IEA International Energy Agency and the Australian Government have turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.

  • We are on the peak oil plateau.

  • Net Energy = energy available to support humanity after all direct and indirect costs are subtracted

  • Net Energy little studied was historically very high but now declining

  • Net Energy is generally measured as a ratio = (What we get out / What we put in)

  • There has been a huge decline in the Net Energy ratio from 17:1 to 6:1.

  • Net Energy :

    • hydro 8:1

    • methane 6:1

    • wind 6:1

    • coal is 4:1

    • nuclear is 3.5:1

    • corn ethanol 0.9:1 (note that this means it in NOT an energy source but an energy sink)

    • solar 0.3:1 to 1.8:1 (controversial)

    • shale oil 0.2:1 (note that this means it in NOT an energy source but an energy sink)

What is energy descent?

  • Mirrors energy ascent

  • Very fast over several decades then tapers more slowly over several centuries

  • Permanent economic contraction so the rate of change appears much greater because of the change of economic direction away from growth

Opportunities for energy descent

  • Higher prices for natural resources

    • Drive energy conservation and renewals

    • Boost primary industry and rural economy

    • Reduce greenhouse gas faster

  • Kick-starts household and local economy

  • Stimulates self-reliance repair and recycling

  • Increases community interaction and exchange

  • Shifts respect and influence to people with

    • Useful skills

    • Able to work physically

Suburban Prospects

  • The End of Surburbia or the Retrofit of Suburbia?

    • Home-based industries

    • Fertile soils water supply infrastructure

    • Recycle stormwater and human waste

    • City farms CSAs farmers markets

    • Transition towns

  • The suburbs are places that can be incrementally adapted in an economy that is falling apart

    • Robust resilient action can happen in scenarios that are severe that can bring people together when central economies are crumbling

  • Big projects don’t happen

    • Governments don’t have the money

    • So much chaos going on

Kick-starting Transition

  • Network for inspiration and information

  • Get producing and support local producers where we live where we’ve decided to be

    • Food is by far the most important thing

    • Think of ourselves and people around us as ‘producers’

    • Involve kids and their friends

    • Barter with neighbours

    • Review needs and reduce consumption

    • Share houses (taking in a boarder is the most radical thing you can do!)

    • Car pool

    • Creatively work around regulatory impediments

    • Pay off debt

    • Work from home

    • Retrofit for the future not for speculative gain

Global climate change and energy descent scenarios

Brown Tech

Lifeboats

Green Tech

Earth Steward

The horizontal axis is for the rate of decline in oil supply (slow 2% annual decline – precipitous 10% annual decline). The vertical axis is for the effects of climate change (benign to destructive).

Brown Tech

  • “Security and strength”

  • Slow 2% annual decline in oil supply; destructive climate change

  • Droughts cyclones bush fires

  • Crisis management

  • Governments go into “top-down constriction” – “They’re there to govern us!”

  • World War II approach taken in Britain

  • Australian a strong candidate because of energy

  • Market thrown in the dustbin of history

  • Investment in lower quality fuels

  • Ordinary people don’t get fuel

  • Whole regions abandoned from cropping

  • City centric

  • Facism

Green Tech

  • “A Better World is Possible”

  • Slow 2% annual decline in oil supply; benign climate change

  • Permanent economic contraction though relatively benign

  • Distributed powerdown

  • Agricultural wealth & regional economies become richer

  • Power shifts to regional governance and state rather than global

  • Hard for monopolisation of political power and economies

Earth Steward

  • “Celebrate Nature’s Abundance”

  • Precipitous 10% annual decline in oil supply; benign climate change

  • 2 donkeys and a plough!

  • Bottom-up rebuild

  • Severe discontinuity

  • Hard to imagine how governments could survive

  • All the virtual wealth worthless implodes

  • Money and derivatives lubrication is gone.

  • A collapse but the sun rain seasons still work

  • Permaculture and Transition come to fore

  • Locality or community-centric

  • Huge pain to get to it

Lifeboats

  • ”Hunter”

  • Precipitous 10% annual decline in oil supply destructive climate change

  • Foraging and gleaning

  • Bee-keeping

  • Hunting

  • Salvage

  • Christian monasteries after the collapse of Rome give a model

  • Household communes in a fairly contained sense

There are a lot of other factors but most of them can be summarized under climate and oil: water food health…

Long before people are worried about water lapping into canal estates the values will drop. There will be screams for governments to build sea walls to protect the investment value of property assets.

Massive investment in new infrastructure and stuff emits more greenhouse gases.

New nuclear power stations emit massive amount of greenhouse gases in the first two decades.

Australia is at the very margin of where agriculture is viable because the climate is unreliable.

Relevance of mainstream sustainability to energy descent scenarios

Typical strategies

Fundamental principles

Green Tech

**

***

Brown Tech

*

**

Earth Steward

–

*

Lifeboats

–

–

Relevance of Permaculture to energy descent scenarios

Typical strategies

Fundamental principles

Green Tech

**

***

Brown Tech

*

***

Earth Steward

***

****

Lifeboats

**

***

Permaculture is:

  • A design system for sustainably living for earth systems and land use

  • An empowering response to environmental and social crisis

Biodiversity of food production is very very important. Australia is breaching its obligations under the UN Biodiversity Convention at the moment on protecting biodiversity of food species.

Flexibility to deal with the uncertainty about how energy descent emerges is very very important.

Can the public the media the markets cope with energy descent? We don’t know.

Can the fantasies of endless consumerism be replaced by stories of transition and relocalisation?

Australians have been so affluent for so long that it is difficult for us to cooperate.

Unintentional ad hoc informal community structures can get up much more quickly.

In more severe scenarios the tenure framework might not endure.

We all hit all the limits together under globalisation and push ourselves closer and closer to the precipice.

The Atlantis myth: The great hubris of great central power overcome by nature.

Get back to really basic level connect with where we are and seeing what is going on in the environment living with the seasonal cycles.

In the end every crisis is a local crisis. Celebrate local icons local food trees local government. Throughout the English-speaking world it is local governments who are grappling with peak oil. People at ‘upper levels’ are powerless. They are powerful to do what the system has designed them to do but not what is needed.

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