Follow-up discussion on Stoneleigh Talk - 12 April

Over a hundred people came to hear Nicole Foss's key presentation Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil at the URC on 25 March. Under the pseudonym Stoneleigh, Foss has been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch and the economic climate that has allowed it to happen both on the blog The Automatic Earth, and in her compelling public presentations.

Her focus brought together finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. She held our total attention for the entire hour and forty minutes and provoked several deep and wide-ranging questions.

For those who would like to follow up this talk (without Nicole), as well as discuss the challenges of climate change, economic recession, rising fuel costs, and the real value of houses and food, do come along to this meeting. Mark Watson

April 12 6pm Aladdin's Cafe, Magdalen Street. Contact: Christine Way training@transitionnorwich.org for further information.

Transition Norwich in Triangle

We have negotiated a brief monthly article in Triangle in order to raise awareness among the wider community about the issues which have lead to the development of the Transition movement. These are primarily climate change, peak oil and economic recession.

If you would like to be involved in writing these articles please contact training@transtionnorwich.org Christine Way

Book Reviews and Previews

Half Gone by Jeremy Leggett reviewed by Mark Watson

At the end of the first Carbon Conversations meeting Christine spread a selection of books and videos about peak oil and climate change on the floor for us to borrow and I picked this one, partly due to TN’s May meeting about solar PVs with Solarcentury (see report in this bulletin), which is the author’s company.

If you want a solid, accessible reminder of (or even introduction to) the facts about peak oil, global warming and the energy crisis, this is a good book to consult. Before starting up Solarcentury, Leggett worked as a geologist for Big Oil in the 80s, and was chief science advisor for Greenpeace in the 90s.

From the five geo-physical requirements for finding oil in the first place (fascinating) to the link between oil depletion and global warming to possible energy solutions via renewables, Leggett combines hard data with his extensive personal experience in the (literal) field. His analysis of the geo-political problems of oil filled in several gaps in this reader’s awareness in a personable book which still resonates five years after its publication.

Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis by Jeremy Leggett (Portobello Books 2005)

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Lord Stern reviewed by Chris Hull

(Lord) Nicholas Stern became a household name as the author of the Government review, 'The Economics of Climate Change' (2006). This later book - published a few months ahead of the Copenhagen summit last year - is less well known yet much more accessible and useful.

Nick Stern is an economist, a former Chief Economist of The World Bank, and a strong advocate for poor countries on the world stage. In this regard the book has its roots in a drive to focus on economic management in the richer countries, in order to alleviate the worst effects of climate change on those who are least responsible for it - the poor countries.

It is solid, rather than emotive, particularly when it comes to addressing 'the deniers'. Stern explains just how complex the science is, and where deniers fall into traps by confusing cycles with trends, sea temperatures with land temperatures, short term risks with longer term more serious risks.

Having said that, I personally love the image conjured up here: Stern illustrates the dry science of probabilities of change by pointing out that the 24% probability of a 5 degree temperature rise on earth by the turn of this century (latest Hadley Centre modelling), would be simply unknown territory for a heavily populated earth. " The last time the world was 4 -5 degrees C above where we are now was 30 - 50 million years ago, in Eocene times, when much of the planet was swampy forest and there were alligators near the North Pole" .


Enough said.

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet by Nicholas Stern (2009)

Transition Books: Local Money & Transition in Action

Just out are two essential Transition reads (to be reviewed in the next bulletin). Local Money by Peter North (Transition South Liverpool) is an inspiring and practical book about local currencies, as well as an overview of money itself and how it works. As Rob Hopkins says in his introduction: "What is key is that as humanity begins its inevitable shift away from energy-intensive, globalised, corporate economics to a more human-scale, localised version, the way we ‘do’ money will need to catch up. This book identifies a number of possible tools, and doubtless there are many more yet to be thought of."

Transition in Action by Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins is based on the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan and is the first community-based guide to reducing local dependence on fossil fuels, covering 15 key sustainability areas. The EDAP is the 12th step of Transition (known as the Resilience Plan in TN) and engages the community in the creative process of preparing for resilience and facing the biggest challenges civilisation has ever had.

Local Money, £14.95 and Transition in Action £19.99 (Green Books, 2010)

REVIEWS: Tipping Point, The Last Oil Shock and The Shock Doctrine

The Tipping Point by David Korowitz
Many peak oil commentators anticipate a gradual decline in our economy, echoing a reduction in oil supply of a few percent each year. The long-term effect might be similar to the end of the Roman Empire and other past civilisations, playing out over decades and centuries.

In this new report, available from www.feasta.org, David Korowicz argues that we should expect a much more sudden collapse. He suggests that many of the things we take for granted – from running water to computer chips to the rule of law – are hugely interdependent on each other. He explains why the financial system will break down following peak oil, followed closely by manufacturing, services, government and so on.

I find Korowicz’s analysis persuasive, and useful in thinking about what resilience really means. We ought to be planning a water supply that doesn’t depend on mains electricity, and an electricity supply that doesn’t depend on microprocessors. And we ought to be preparing ourselves for difficult times ahead. (Read Tully on the TN Blog 1-3 April)( Tully Wakeman/Core Group)

Abandoned house in Detroit by Kevin Bauman

The Last Oil Shock by David Strahan
"30 billion barrels. This is the number you need to remember from this talk," said David Strahan speaking about Peak Oil in Framlingham in March. These 30 billion barrels of oil are what the world uses each year. That’s about 82 million barrels a day. When the media reports massive new oil finds these are the numbers we need to measure them against. (In 1999, for example, Britain’s North Sea oil output ‘hit its all time high’ at 2.9 million barrels a day.)

The Last Oil Shock is the book to read for everything to do with oil discovery, production and decline, and contains not just the facts and figures (which are excellent) but interviews with those in the field, from geologists to Shell’s senior vice-president for the (Canadian) Oil Sands. Strahan reports his visits to the luminaries of the oil world in an accessible and often humorous way, and he writes as clearly about the link between oil and the present economic system as he does about the problem of biofuels. This book is for anyone who wants to understand more about peak oil and its implications for the (very near) future. Strahan's articles and updates can be seen here (http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog). (Mark Watson/TN2)

The Last Oil Shock – A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man by David Strahan (John Murray, 2007)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
There are only a handful of books that I would recommend as ‘must read’, and apart from the Transition Handbook, this is the first non-fiction on my list. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is about disaster capitalism. The thesis is in a nutshell, that devastating actions will only be tolerated when people are too disoriented and traumatised to resist.Examples are given of personal breakdown (psychiatry, torture), coups in Chile and Burma, land grabs in Palestine and communities hit by Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Not all of these are caused by the military industrial complex, but all are taken advantage of by it.

The outcomes of these disasters are seen from this perspective not as failures, but successes. They have allowed wealth and power to concentrate in ever fewer hands – currently ‘the richest 2% of adults in the world own 50% of global household wealth’. Klein lays the blame squarely on the dominance of Chicago School economics (Milton Friedman) that preached the privatisation, deregulation and government cuts that the IMF and World Bank imposed as a condition for getting credit. Many of the individuals are now in jail or facing criminal charges from which they expected to be immune.

It's the last chapter which makes the book a real must read. 'The shock wears off' describes how communities have come together to share insights, develop independence of thought, social solidarity and economic resilience... Sound familiar? (Lesley Grahame/Communications)

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (Penguin 2008)

The Oil Crunch

"The Oil Crunch - A wake-up call for the UK economy" is the second report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security. This Taskforce is a self-appointed group of 6 companies - Arup, Foster and Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group and Virgin Group (www.peakoiltaskforce.net).

The report argues that an "oil crunch" will occur within 5 years. Whereas we failed to prepare for the credit crunch, we do have time to prepare for the oil crunch: "we must plan for a world in which oil prices are likely to be both higher and more volatile and where oil price shocks have the potential to destabilise economic, political and social activity."

The report gives a good explanation of what peak oil is and why it is likely to happen. An expert opinion from Chris Skrebowski compares new oil projects coming on stream with declining output from existing production. He suggests that oil prices will continue to rise gradually until about 2014, alongside a recovering economy. Around 2014 the world's increasing demand for oil will exceed supply: prices will spike as they did in 2008, pushing the world back into recession. Thereafter oil production will continue to decline, with the economy repeating this "downwards oscillation".

Dr Robert Falkner of the LSE considers the impact of this supply crunch on the British economy. He believes that the oil crunch is unlikely to have a "catastrophic" impact on the UK in the next 5-10 years. But he does agree that the transport sector, in particular, will be hit hard by rising fuel prices and the lack of any viable alternatives. This in turn will disrupt the just-in-time distribution we rely on for our food, and will also disrupt other businesses. "Continued dependence on oil...will cost the UK economy dearly."

Finally the authors make a number of policy recommendations. These include a shift from private to public transport as well as to electric vehicles; policies to protect disadvantaged people from rising food and heating prices; and a shift to renewable electricity generation, while recognising that this can not happen quickly enough to offset the imminent energy crunch.

The most positive aspects of the Oil Crunch report is the press coverage it has attracted - due in part to Richard Branson's celebrity status. All the quality UK papers ran prominent stories, and even the Wall Street Journal covered it. My issue with it is its lack of radicalism. It comes from the business world, and it seems to suggest that life will continue pretty much on its current trajectory, provided we can deal with some significant obstacles. Next month I'll review another report that reaches very different conclusions.

Picture: Tully speaking at EAFL's second End of Oil Conference, UEA, March 2006