Chris Martenson and Peak Oil

I went to hear Chris Martenson speaking at Colston Hall last night - thanks to a tip-off from Yorkshire that this was a part of his UK tour. It was (I found to my surprise) organised by the council - for an exclusive invited audience that probably wasn't quite so exclusive once I'd persuaded them to add my name.

A very good talk. He was stripping down his 'Crash Course' (a three and a half hour video seminar) to a 45 minute summary, so it helped to know a bit of the background. He was careful to deal solely in facts and he avoided emotive issues like climate change or population. The message is that a world in which everything from money to debt to consumption of energy and raw materials requires ever-increasing (exponential) growth simply cannot be sustained - and that we're at or close to the collapse point. Like it or not, things will change dramatically. Better that we should think ahead and develop alternatives than suffer an uncontrolled collapse. Those alternatives would include other currencies (not debt based) to fall back on, and other ways of measuring progress that don't simply rely on economic output; and finding better ways to define happiness than ownership of more and more stuff.

All these things are possible, there are plenty of viable ideas around already; but the initiative to put them into practice will most likely come from the grassroots, not from central governments.

Chris's own history is of a scientist who later became VP of a big US corporation, and in that role learned more about the way the economy and money supply work (or don't work). That shocked him enough to send him on this mission to communicate the news to everyone else - principally through the 'Crash Course' on www.chrismartenson.com/

He's one of many who realize the economic Emperor really has no new clothes - but he's much better than most at articulating it. The audience here was impressed, asked intelligent questions, got intelligent answers.

Full marks to this council for recognising that this is a real issue. Whether they'll be able to integrate it into real policy and action is anybody's guess - but there's a step in the right direction on Thursday when the Cabinet should be adopting a "Climate Change and Energy Security Framework" which will formally recognise 'Peak Oil' as a major factor in the city's future functioning.

[At the following Cabinet meeting, in March, they're set to approve the new traffic-generating South Bristol Ring Road - so let's not get over-confident about things!]

Bristol's Future after Peak Oil

This is worth reading. Not just reading, but following up with pressure on the city's elite to actually lift their heads out of the sand and see the reality out there.

The Peak Oil report spells it out:

"An oil crunch would fundamentally threaten the way our city operates with challenges to transport, healthcare, food distribution, social cohesion, public services and other sectors"

"Peak oil is currently not even considered as a risk for most businesses, yet its effects would make many of today’s business models redundant"

"Major Bristol transport planning schemes do not currently consider the potential impact of different fuel prices"........."Peak oil fundamentally alters the viability of the private car as the leading mode of transport"

"Bristol Council has no statutory responsibility around food and no plan around food security. The city is totally reliant on major supermarkets for food supply."

"It is essential that planning decisions keep sufficient cultivatable land available in and around the city to allow for a low energy local food system. This is already at risk as developers move to buy green belt land around the city from farmers in anticipation of more relaxed planning laws"

"Current Bristol planning strategies, which are guided by central government, do not factor in peak oil as an issue or a risk."

"In order to raise some of the funding for the green space programme the Council is planning to sell some‘low value’marginal land. Changes in priority for land use brought by peak oil are not yet integrated into this strategy."

"Bristol does not have a strategic energy plan."

It wasn't Transition Bristol that produced this powerful, hard hitting, but constructive report. It's the child of that august body, the Bristol Partnership's 'Green Momentum Group', until now known mostly for its 'Green Capital' hype.

But the report's conclusions are in many cases diametrically opposed to the things the city fathers are actually doing - for instance, encouraging more traffic while cutting public transport.

It looks like its time to challenge the council - and the business people - on how seriously they will take this report. Can we hope they might even put its suggestions into practice, not just pay lip service? The consequences of failure are unthinkable.

A Farm for the Future

Saturday's blog post took me from council house racism to peak oil and sustainability by way of Cuba.

Transition Bristol's newsletter brings the peak oil bit back to a more local context, not least by providing a link to 'A Farm for the Future' - shown on BBC2' Natural World the other day.

Excellent film, well worth watching while you still can... especially while thinking about all that's being planned around Bristol without a second thought about fossil fuel reliance.

Self reliance, hard work and determination.....

The Tories chose Jay Jethwa, one of our two Stockwood councillors, to speak up in the budget debate against spending on the Legacy Commission.

Anyone but Jay would probably not have got that disgraceful racist response (well documented on James Barlow's blog) from Shirley Brown, the Ashley ward councillor who now lives in Florida and very occasionally jets back over for the odd meeting. I hope this was the last time she gets the chance. Shirley called Jay a 'coconut' - an insult intended to suggest that she was betraying her Indian roots by taking a 'white' view of the world. Racist, or what?

In fact, Jay was simply coming up with a fairly predictable populist Tory line, aimed at an easy target. Textbook Norman Tebbit stuff about the virtues of self-reliance, hard work and determination, with a sideswipe at 'socialist style handouts'.

Question is, why should Jay think that these virtues and socialism are mutually exclusive? I seem to remember something about 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' in the socialist creed, though perhaps it went the same way as Clause Four. And I don't see that many handouts coming from the present Labour Party (well, not to the poor, anyway).

But the question was brought home to me later, watching a showing of 'The Power of Community' put on by the Green Party and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The film is the inspirational story of how Cuba (the state and the people) responded when faced with their own enforced pre-run of 'Peak Oil', after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the continuing US blockade left them without those modern 'essentials', fuel and fertilisers. This socialist state had to draw on all its resources of self reliance, hard work and determination to pull through. Instead of just talking about sustainability, Cuba had to do it, for real.

And they did. They still managed to enjoy those 'socialist' benefits of universal free education and health care, in spite of all the bullying by the White House; land remained in common ownership, though its stewardship and its produce was shared out more widely; and people managed to live pretty well within the natural limits of the island's resources.

Next, it's our turn. Peak Oil Britain. Peak Oil Bristol. Peak Oil Stockwood. Coming soon. Somehow I don't think traditional left wing or right wing party dogma, much less the present distortions of them, is going to provide easy answers.