When the OPEC oil embargo hit in October 1973, Rosenfeld did a little math. He discovered that if Americans used energy as efficiently as the Europeans or Japanese, the United States could have been exporting oil in 1973, rather than sitting in rationing lines at gas stations. The solution, he realized, was not to bend the Arab oil regimes to America's will but to end America's thralldom to them by wasting less energy.
[Link: OpEdNews.com]
I remember those days after the OPEC Oil Shock. Gasoline rationing, everybody trying to figure out how to save energy, Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech, all of those things. I did my part. I added insulation and bought some double paned glass for my house, even bought a cool little gas-stingy car from Detroit which is the worst car I ever owned, by the way. The double paned glass in particular was a direct result of the realization that, as the author notes, conserving energy is every bit as good as finding new energy or, more importantly, not using imported energy. My purchase was subsidized by my power company, acting on that logic. That is all good and society has used it to save a lot of energy in the intervening time period. I am sure there is much more savings to be made in that way. I think that to really deal with the energy problem that we have, however, we are going to have to take energy conservation to a another level.
Peak Oil, or more correctly oil depletion, by definition has one principle cause. Excessive consumption of hydrocarbons and the products that depend on hydrocarbons. Global warming is really just a symptom of that same excessive hydrocarbon consumption. Both of these issues have come to crisis even with the great improvements in energy effciency that have been introduced since the energy crisis in the '70s. Clearly a more drastic reduction in consumption is needed if we are to have a chance of dealing with these two problems. Consumption is the product of the number of consumers and the average level of consumption of those consumers. With that in mind, it is my personal opinion that nothing will be accomplished until there is real population reduction. I don't have any idea how society will deal with this reality but I know that somewhere down the line mothers need to have many fewer babies, and they need to teach those babies to consume less by consumming less themselves. I am going to leave that one there. There is almost no common ground in our society where that discussion might be held. Which leaves us with the other factor, consumption itself.
Like it or not we live in a society that promotes consumption. Consumption is jobs. Consumptions is sales. Consumption is the preferred social activity. Consumption is the economy, stupid. I am old enough that I was raised by parents who became adults during the great depression. Consumption, for them, was painful. Things were precious and needed to be protected. The less consummed the better. Somewhere along the line that philosophy has gotten stood on its head. My children do not consider anything permanent. If a new trend comes along, they chuck the "old" to make room for the new. This is not a knock on them. Society has driven that behavior down their throats. If you have the resources that is the way you do it. It is not just my kids. Our friends kids act that way as well. I will admit that, as a consumer, I am somewhere in the never-never land between my parents and my children. I tend to turn over my stuff and pursue the latest toys, but it hurts.
Is there a way to get out of the consumption-as-a-way-of-life mode of operation? Maybe. What would have to change. First, we would have to start looking at our stuff a little differently. We would have to put a premium on durability. The best stuff would last forever and come with full instructions for maintaining it with that in mind. If it didn't last forever it would have to be easily repairable and the replacement parts would have to be readily available, forever. And it wouldn't go out of style. Technical improvements would be slowly introduced after thorough testing and would really be improvements. Ideally, the old stuff could be upgraded. Hey, you might even be able to make it yourself. Taking care of your stuff would be important so you would only have stuff you really needed. In a best case scenario, the big stuff would be pooled with neighbors and family. Everybody doesn't need everything all the time. Specifically, since we are ultimately trying to eliminate hydrocarbon consumption, we would buy our stuff to minimize hydrocarbon depletion. The best stuff wouldn't require hydrocarbons to run it, or produce it. No plastics. Low energy, sustainable production methods. Recycled supplies. The best stuff is produced and sold locally. No global supply networks. In a word the best stuff is not much stuff.
Doesn't sound like a very good economic model does it? That is the rub. For most of history that is the way things worked, you know. It is only when the hydrocarbon wind-fall came along and allowed us to imagine there were no limits that this consumptive economic model could really take off. Maybe we can get back into that old pre-oil frame of mind. One thing is certain. The people in the yellow pages aren't going to like it at all.
