Petroleum will continue to rise in price as I have consistently predicted in this column. We are most likely going through peak oil and when we accept responsibility for contributing to global warming we realize that all fossil fuels and the burning of them has incredibly dire unintended consequences. In addition we are a debtor nation with a crumbling and in need of repair infrastructure. Where is this leading us?

I have long been a fan of James Howard Kunstler’s book ‘The Long Emergency’ and have recommended it to many people. [In addition his blog is one I recommend in conversation and have recommended on my links page since the inception of Evolution Shift.]  This best selling book details in a persuasive manner the coming deconstruction of American society due to the converging crises mentioned above. Having read this non-fiction book from a novelist, it was no surprise to find that Kunstler was writing a novel about €˜post long emergency’ America. It is called ‘World Made ...]]> The magnitude of the energy crisis we now face in the U.S. cannot be overstated. It is not just about cutting the emission of greenhouse gases, the increasing price of petroleum or the fact that we are dependent for oil on countries that only hold us in high regard as customers. It is about the fact that our entire physical landscape and a large part of our social and economic interactions are predicated on the assumption of cheap petroleum, an assumption that is no longer valid.

Petroleum will continue to rise in price as I have consistently predicted in this column. We are most likely going through peak oil and when we accept responsibility for contributing to global warming we realize that all fossil fuels and the burning of them has incredibly dire unintended consequences. In addition we are a debtor nation with a crumbling and in need of repair infrastructure. Where is this leading us?

I have long been a fan of James Howard Kunstler’s book ‘The Long Emergency’ and have recommended it to many people. [In addition his blog is one I recommend in conversation and have recommended on my links page since the inception of Evolution Shift.]  This best selling book details in a persuasive manner the coming deconstruction of American society due to the converging crises mentioned above. Having read this non-fiction book from a novelist, it was no surprise to find that Kunstler was writing a novel about €˜post long emergency’ America. It is called ‘World Made By Hand’ and I have just finished reading it.

As the title implies, the post petroleum America has devolved into a landscape of local communities getting by through a return to the handmade world of the early 1800s. The decline of oil production, the effects of global warming, the destruction of Washington D.C. and LA by terrorist nuclear bombs and large, deathly epidemics that swept through the population have reduced society to living locally, acting locally, no electricity, getting by with the social fabric always placed at risk by anarchic elements. This picture of the future is made entirely plausible by Kunstler with a prose that is atmospheric and very humanistic. It is a beautifully written novel that creates the feeling of a town that remembers the past and is struggling to hold that memory with the present day reality of a much reduced way of life.

As a futurist, I am always looking at patterns, trends and forces to get a sense and vision of what lies ahead. I do not think that the picture lyrically presented in ‘World Made By Hand’ will occur. I think that the ever increasing focus on and investment in alternative energy sources, the constant innovation of technological invention and the threats to human survival now looming to which we must respond, will all cause us to narrowly escape the future Kunstler paints in his novel. That being said, there is a possibility that this picture could prove to be the correct one of the future.

The hope here is that this book gets a wide readership as it should be a cautionary tale as to what our continued lack of governmental leadership, complacency relative to conservation and energy, addiction to wasteful, destructive lifestyles and land use might let happen. While the bucolic life described in the town of Union Grove in the book may be attractive to some, it is not one that most of us want forced upon us. Reading this book points out how fragile our way of life might actually be if we continue to live it as we have.

I have heard a number of relatively environmentally aware people speak about their cars with a MPG reference.  People speak about ‘doing their part’ by driving a car that is rated as a 30 mpg vehicle, or that they just bought a hybrid to help cut down on harmful emissions and to save on gasoline.  That is great, no question.  What is needed now is for those people, and all of us, to not rest on our laurels based upon what we have purchased, and move to how we use what we have purchased.

The question should be “What is your carbon footprint?” not what is the mpg rating of your car.  For example, let’s assume a green thinking consumer has just bought a car with a 30mpg rating, having shed her big SUV that only got 15 miles per gallon.  That’s great, but she should ask herself what her carbon footprint is before she wears even a scarf of self ...]]> We are all more aware of global warming than we were years ago.  As a country we passed through the tipping point of awareness in the last year.  We have a better understanding of what it is that we each do to contribute to global warming, and a number of us have taken action to lessen those contributions as much as possible.  We now need to change some of the language we use in this area as it will help us to continue to change our thinking and perhaps our behavior. 

I have heard a number of relatively environmentally aware people speak about their cars with a MPG reference.  People speak about ‘doing their part’ by driving a car that is rated as a 30 mpg vehicle, or that they just bought a hybrid to help cut down on harmful emissions and to save on gasoline.  That is great, no question.  What is needed now is for those people, and all of us, to not rest on our laurels based upon what we have purchased, and move to how we use what we have purchased.

The question should be “What is your carbon footprint?” not what is the mpg rating of your car.  For example, let’s assume a green thinking consumer has just bought a car with a 30mpg rating, having shed her big SUV that only got 15 miles per gallon.  That’s great, but she should ask herself what her carbon footprint is before she wears even a scarf of self righteousness.  If someone drives 30,000 miles a year in a 30mpg vehicle they consume 1,000 gallons of gas.  If someone drives 6,000 miles a year in a 15mpg vehicle, they consume 400 gallons of gas.  That means that, loosely speaking, the person who drives the less efficient vehicle has an automotive carbon footprint that is 40% of the person who drives the fuel efficient car.  If one can say that a car is a ‘transportation tool’ the question is how one uses the tool.

A Toyota Prius, the current automotive poster child of the green set, generates about 3.4 tons of carbon emissions a year.  This compares quite favorably to a Honda Accord, which generates 6-7.8 tons of carbon emissions a year, or worse a Dodge Ram truck at 9.7-12 tons per year.  If the owner of the Prius drives more than twice as much as the owner of the Accord, then she is contributing more to global warming.  Of course it is always better to drive a lower mpg car, but the real question is what is the carbon footprint of one’s behavior

I have a car that I love to drive.  It is a twelve year old Mustang convertible, with a large V-8 engine that has 84,000 miles on the odometer, so it is powerful and in relatively good shape.  I haven’t made a car payment in over six years.  The problem with it is that it seems to get an in city mpg in the mid teens, so it is not a very fuel efficient form of transportation.  Therefore I have taken two steps to lessen my carbon footprint.  The first step is to not drive a lot.  I live in the city, work at home, and therefore put around 3,000 miles a year on the car.  I walk around the neighborhood to do most of my errands and I take public transportation a lot.  So my contribution to global warming is lessened by driving less.  The second thing I have done is to purchase carbon offsets to offset both my driving and the energy I use to live in my home.  I purchased my offsets at www.planktos.com because I know the CEO and love the fact that the money they take in goes to grow plankton blooms in the ocean.   

So start to think about your activities in terms of what your ‘carbon footprint’ is, what your total contribution to global warming on an annual basis might be.  There are many web sites that can help you in this regard. Thinking about this will possibly lead you to purchase ‘carbon offsets’, so that your entire lifestyle is ‘carbon neutral’.  It must be stated that carbon offsets should be looked at as a short term solution until we are all driving electric cars, consume only renewable energy and have started to reverse global warming.  The carbon offsets I purchased, help to restore the oceans, so while it makes me feel good about being carbon neutral, it is also helping the earth, in my case by growing plankton in the oceans.

Another term to use and think about is ‘food miles’, as in how many miles your food has traveled to get to the store where you purchased it.  If you live in Chicago and like to think you are conscious because you eat ‘organic’ food, you are not helping things if that organic food is flown in from California, as the emissions for all that transport is contributing to global warming.  This is why there is such a growing movement to buy ‘locally grown produce’.  Not only does it tend to be fresher, but it has not been transported over long distances using fossil fuels.  Ask your store where the produce comes from.

So, what is your carbon footprint?  Have you purchased carbon offsets where the money you spend goes to help reforest the earth?  How much of your life have you made carbon neutral?  How many food miles do you have in your refrigerator?  New language can lead to new thinking which can lead to new behavior.

Up until a year ago, this was cause for great alarm.  Most countries in the world, with the U.S. being at the top of the list, have, in the last 50 years, allowed economic development, urban planning, real estate development and transportation issues to be made within the context of always having cheap oil to allow us to construct a society around the internal combustion engine.  If you were to look at a time lapse photographic history of the U.S .landscape from 1900 to 2000, taking one photograph a month for 100 years, the changes will be almost entirely based on an automotive culture.  This culture, while transforming the countryside, has basically been using the same mechanical invention, the internal combustion engine the entire time.  It has been as though once we fell in love with the car and the cheap gasoline that powered it we decided that we arrived at the highest point of civilization and our infatuation blinded us to any kind of consequence other than some nasty smog and ever lengthening drive times.  These were judged to be small prices to pay for an American Dream that gave us 300 horsepower ...]]> In the prior post I gave a general definition and overview of peak oil for those that have yet to track this development.  Until recently, the brightest minds unencumbered by vested oil interests have strongly suggested, and with good documentation, that the world could well run out of extractable petroleum sometime around the mid twenty-first century.

Up until a year ago, this was cause for great alarm.  Most countries in the world, with the U.S. being at the top of the list, have, in the last 50 years, allowed economic development, urban planning, real estate development and transportation issues to be made within the context of always having cheap oil to allow us to construct a society around the internal combustion engine.  If you were to look at a time lapse photographic history of the U.S .landscape from 1900 to 2000, taking one photograph a month for 100 years, the changes will be almost entirely based on an automotive culture.  This culture, while transforming the countryside, has basically been using the same mechanical invention, the internal combustion engine the entire time.  It has been as though once we fell in love with the car and the cheap gasoline that powered it we decided that we arrived at the highest point of civilization and our infatuation blinded us to any kind of consequence other than some nasty smog and ever lengthening drive times.  These were judged to be small prices to pay for an American Dream that gave us 300 horsepower to go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted.

To look at cultures going forward like this at a time of peak oil it is hard not to settle on the image of lemmings rushing toward the cliff in ever increasing numbers and with mindless abandon.  To continue forward with little or no change would, as a reader of this blog has mentioned several times, create a Mad Max landscape where people would end up killing each other for gasoline.  Truly try to imagine living in American suburbia or exurbia and not being able to drive.  We would retreat back to an 1800s image of local towns having to become self sufficient, with the Internet being the only low cost way to connect a nation.

However, the view of peak oil has changed dramatically in the last year.  The first major reason was the historic run up of oil prices in 2006.  All evidence indicates that this price run up has caused more change in behavior than any prior one of the past 30 years.  Even though prices have receded from last summer’s high, oil is still three times as expensive as it was in 2000, so the long term trend is clear.  This price increase has created changes in habits with people thinking more in advance before driving, dramatically increasing use of public transportation and creating powerful market demand for higher MPG vehicles.  Conservation due to cost has been the result. This price increase has also lead to the second major change in the view of peak oil.

Higher petroleum prices means that the harder to extract heavier oil and shale oil now becomes more economically viable resources.  This has led to R&D and then use of newer extraction technologies such as steam flooding which has resulted in the increased output of many oil fields where production has been declining.  This successful use of new extraction technologies has lead many petroleum geologists to project that the remaining extractable oil reserves might in fact be almost double projections of several years ago.  If true that means that the date for the depletion of the oil resource moves from 2040 to say 2075.

The third major reason for the altered view of peak oil is what I have consistently written about in this blog and that is the fact that the US and the world passed through the tipping point in 2006 regarding global warming.  Everyone uses the term, generally understands the term and is looking at it as one of the major issues that exists.  Big business, politicians, and national leaders are all becoming green.  The issue is no longer whether to be green or not, but rather how far can we go in becoming green.  This means that huge effort, and massive amounts of money are flowing toward energy conservation technologies and alternative fuel technologies.  An example of this is General Motors.

Last week GM announced that, as part of its being a volunteer in the EPA Climate Leader program, it would reduce its CO2 emission from North American manufacturing facilities by 40% by 2010 based upon 2000 levels.  This translates to 4.5 million metric tons, or the energy annually consumed by more that 400,000 households. What is interesting is that once a commitment was made, the transformation became easy.  In 2002 GM promised to reduce CO2 emissions 10% from 2000 levels by 2005.  They actually reduced emissions by 11.7% by 2003, one year later. [This can be replicated by many other major global corporations if they commit to do so.  I am using GM as an example as they have opened themselves up to this blogger, so I am aware of their particular efforts.] This addresses global warming concerns and allows the company to promote its greenness.  The underlying truth of course is that petroleum and its waste are now perceived as a problem. So the conservation and efficiency side of the equation has become transformative in the recent past.

What is even more exciting is the rush to innovation to find technologies that will dramatically cut down on petroleum energy usage or replace it altogether.  GM is doing its part by an all out, very public effort to create an electric car for the masses.  Create a car that can theoretically be driven for ten years without a drop of gasoline.  Converting the billions of incandescent light bulbs at use in this country to the new fluorescent bulbs is another effort that will result in the savings of tens of millions of gallons of oil every year. In other words, this global warming tipping point is sparking an unprecedented effort across the board culturally to reduce the use of fossil fuels.  This effort, if the direction continues, and is embraced by the largest energy consuming countries around the world [are you listening China?] will obviously push back the date of planetary petroleum depletion.

It is possible, and this should be the vision of us all, to have the supply of petroleum never get exhausted because the demand for it has dwindled so dramatically that what is left can last for centuries.  However we must continue to act as if massive destruction due to global warming and oil depletion are only a decade or two in the future.

This reorganization into a global economy and market place has, can, and will cause pain at the local level.  Industrial Age manufacturing businesses in this country have been moved offshore to lower cost countries.  Call centers open in India and the Philippines. As individuals we have to understand our economic value is increasingly measured on the global stage.  Unfortunately, our political leaders seem to be reactive and pander to those in pain rather than provide new direction. What can local communities do to stay robust, promote community and still be a part of this global trend? 

Great Barrington, Massachusetts has come up with an answer that is creative, fun and sounds like it might actually work.  This town is in the Berkshire Mountains.  A number of local businesses have agreed to accept an alternative currency called BerkShares and to give a discount of ten percent to those who use them.  These alternative bills have different people on them than the dead presidents and statesmen on US currency.  Herman Melville is on the twenty, Norman Rockwell on the fifty, Robyn Wan En a champion of locally supported agriculture is on ...]]> We are now into the global stage of humanity’s evolution.  When viewed over the span of the past 10,000 years it is clear that we have moved from tribe to village to city, to state, to country to planet.  In speeches I give around the country I discuss this “Flow to Global” as one of the forces currently reshaping and restructuring the world.

This reorganization into a global economy and market place has, can, and will cause pain at the local level.  Industrial Age manufacturing businesses in this country have been moved offshore to lower cost countries.  Call centers open in India and the Philippines. As individuals we have to understand our economic value is increasingly measured on the global stage.  Unfortunately, our political leaders seem to be reactive and pander to those in pain rather than provide new direction. What can local communities do to stay robust, promote community and still be a part of this global trend? 

Great Barrington, Massachusetts has come up with an answer that is creative, fun and sounds like it might actually work.  This town is in the Berkshire Mountains.  A number of local businesses have agreed to accept an alternative currency called BerkShares and to give a discount of ten percent to those who use them.  These alternative bills have different people on them than the dead presidents and statesmen on US currency.  Herman Melville is on the twenty, Norman Rockwell on the fifty, Robyn Wan En a champion of locally supported agriculture is on the five, W.E.B. DuBois, a civil rights movement founder is on the ten and a Mohican Indian is on the one. 

Local residents can go into one of several local banks and exchange US currency for Berkshares.  The key is that they get 11 BerkShares for every 10 US dollars.  These BerkShares can then be spent at local merchants who are therefore providing a ten percent discount.  These merchants then turn around and pay their bills with these same bills, thereby getting their ten percent discount.  So many of the local businesses have participated that it a functioning, though closed economic system whereby the concept of buying locally provides residents with a built in discount. 

These BerkShares don’t work at Amazon or at other on-line commerce sites, which of course is the point.  The money recycles within the community rather than flowing away from it.  Evidently businesses that buy goods regionally or nationally can only  have limited participation and some have scaled back after having to take a ten percent hit that they could not recoup upstream with their suppliers.  So, it is an imperfect system and is driven by idealism yet it has been embraced so heartily by the community that it has now become somewhat institutionalized in the local economy in the five months since its inception.. 

I have written a number of columns here about disintermediation and the fact that we are in a historical period of great disintermediation.  The Internet is the greatest disintermediation agent since Gutenberg and his moveable type printing press.  The world is being reshaped by it and by the historically inevitable move to a more global economy and culture.  That being true, people are global citizens and global consumers, but they also live in a physical place, in a neighborhood that has its own unique location and characteristics.  This has given rise to the dual reality phenomenon of today, where peoples’ identities are equally divided yet real, both on-line and off-line.  My son and his friends in college have two, seemingly equal realities: the physical on-campus reality of classes, dorms and social events, and their on-line identity in Facebook or MySpace.  For those of us that are not as into on-line social networks, we still have created an on-line profile, address and presence that we did not have a decade ago.  We may still live in the same place, but part of our identity is now on global cyberspace.  This initial rush has caused a great deal of transitional pain to local, physical businesses, not unlike what mega-stores like Wal-Mart did to local downtown merchants when they opened up at the outer edges of communities. 

Since people do live in places, there needs to be ways to support community in these places as people need to have a sense of belonging and place to some degree.  I think that what Great Barrington is doing with BerkShares is a truly innovative idea that will be joined by other ideas to support localism.  Historically we have always lived in a place, a community of which we, to a greater or lesser degree, have been a part. It is in this community that we experience our face to face transactions and a good amount of our human interaction. We now have this new global community that we are becoming a part of.  Both communities are important for our healthy economic and human survival. 

Norman Rockwell on the fifty dollar BerkShare is so appropriate.  He has become the artist who lovingly documented, with great nostalgia, our recent American past.   I doubt that a rap group will write a song “It’s All About the Normans”, but if one does, it will sell well in Great Barrington, and those buying it there will get a discount.