A coalition of Nebraska residents joined the fight against Keystone XL.

In modern life, a David versus Goliath conflict rarely ends as neatly as the story—especially when the Goliath is a $7 billion energy project backed by major oil-industry multinationals.

But this year, a broad coalition of environmental activists, citizens from conservative ranch and farm communities, Obama supporters, and celebrities (such as Daryl Hannah, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Mark Ruffalo) shot down the Keystone XL pipeline.

The proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would have carried unrefined oil bitumen to the Gulf of Mexico from the tar sands of Alberta.

Standing up, fighting back

In late summer, in one of the largest civil disobedience actions in the environmental movement’s history, more than 1,200 pipeline opponents got arrested in front of the White House. In the fall, President Barack Obama faced anti-pipeline protesters at stops along his re-election fundraising tour. And several thousand people surrounded the White House at a protest in November, including some major Obama campaign donors.

After months of such pressure, the administration changed course. The State Department announced in November that it would delay a decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Republicans forced matters by attaching a rider to the payroll tax cut extension that required Obama to rule on the pipeline by February. The American Petroleum Institute warned he’d face “huge political consequences” if he didn’t approve Keystone XL.

But Obama had already felt enough heat from his base. In January, the verdict was “no”—though TransCanada, the Canadian company that would build the pipeline, is invited to propose a new route, and at time of press, Republicans are pursuing legislative means to take the decision out of the administration’s hands.

In the six states that the pipeline would cross, communities grew angry that a Canadian company wanted to seize their land—their frustration drew them to unlikely partnerships with local environmental groups.

Still, the activists’ win is monumental. Oil giants such as ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and Royal Dutch Shell have major investments in Alberta. According to ­ThinkProgress, oil and energy companies spent about 37 times as much on lobbying on Keystone XL as the citizen groups that opposed it.

Moreover, administration officials have close ties to TransCanada. The company’s top lobbyist was once a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, and this fall, Obama hired a former TransCanada lobbyist for his re-election team. The State Department ran the project through cursory environmental review, which it outsourced to a company that listed TransCanada among its clients. In mid-October, 70 percent of the National Journal’s “energy insiders” thought Obama would approve the pipeline by year’s end.

But then activists and citizens intervened.

Unlikely allies

Ben Gotschall of Bold Nebraska: “A lot of people have come to the conclusion that leaders are … not going to take action, and it’s up to the citizens to make them do what is right.” Photo by Alex Matzke for YES! Magazine.

In the six states that the pipeline would cross, communities grew angry that a Canadian company wanted to seize their land—their frustration drew them to unlikely partnerships with local environmental groups. In Nebraska, rural landowners, concerned citizens, and the state farmers union formed a coalition with advocacy groups and environmentalists to fight the pipeline.

Prominent NASA scientist James Hansen also took notice: He observed that Canada’s tar sands were the second largest carbon reserve in the world. He called Keystone XL “game over” for the planet.

His assessment alarmed activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.

McKibben led the coalition to fight the pipeline.

The oil industry had money and influence, but activists had their own weapons—voting power, legal rights (which allowed them to sue over concerns that the project violated endangered species protections), and the power of numbers. They had a good (and true) story, with something for everyone. Tar sands mining not only has a massive carbon footprint; it is a show-stopping environmental disaster that guzzles city-sized portions of water, annihilates forests, and leaves behind carcinogens and a decimated landscape.

And a pipeline full of corrosive, toxic tar-sands bitumen is risky business for small communities that rely on irrigation and untreated well water. A major oil spill in the Yellowstone River and a pipeline rupture near Kalamazoo, Michigan, left communities doubtful of claims that TransCanada could safely pump bitumen across major rivers and groundwater supplies.

The Nebraska Legislature held a special session to pass new environmental regulations in response to heated public debate and polls that showed significant opposition to the pipeline. Allen Schreiber, a Nebraska Republican who has been active in the anti-pipeline campaign said,

The most precious asset we have out here is our groundwater supply. We don’t take the Ogallala Aquifer for granted. And I think TransCanada has this attitude that we’re a bunch of ignorant rubes out here—we won’t know any better.

Brilliant tactics

The activists focused on the idea that one man—President Obama—had the capacity to halt the pipeline. And the activists made the most of the power of media coverage. Friends of the Earth and other watchdog groups investigated TransCanada and sent the results to the national media, which aired reports on, for instance, incriminating email interactions full of praise, party invitations, and emoticons that suggested State Department insiders were cheering on company lobbyists.

Ben Gotschall, a fourth-generation rancher and one of the lead organizers for Bold Nebraska, a citizens’ group that spearheaded an anti-pipeline campaign in the state commented that,

We know that the money talks, and we see closed-door meetings between TransCanada officials and our [state] lawmakers . A lot of people have come to the conclusion that leaders are not going to lead. They’re not going to take action, and it’s up to the citizens to make them do what is right.

A new chapter?

Obama’s rejection of Keystone XL is, of course, not the end of the road for the anti-pipeline movement forged over the last year. At its best, it could be the beginning of a new chapter in the environmental movement—one that is more populist and cross-partisan, that confronts corporate power head-on, that knows better how to capture and leverage media attention, and that engages citizens in ever more courageous and creative acts of civil disobedience and street protest.

These strategies could set the tone for more climate change struggles to come.

According to Hansen’s predictions, the world has only a few years to begin changing its fossil-fuel-burning ways before greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere are too high to avoid catastrophic global consequences, such as large-scale water and food shortages. But transforming the energy economy will require not merely facing down the fossil-fuel industry but removing its chokehold on government.

As McKibben wrote to his supporters,

Blocking one pipeline was never going to stop global warming—but it is a real start, one of the first times in the two-decade fight over climate change when the fossil fuel lobby has actually lost.

The victory reminds the movement that it’s possible to win, even against improbable odds.

–Madeline Ostrander, Transition Voice

Cross posted from Yes! Magazine

There's nothing quite like the joy of fresh baked bread. Photo: SurlyGirl via Flickr.

My husband and I are on one heck of a family resilience bender. When we first got married almost three years ago, we focused on insulating our place from attic to basement, shaving 20% off of our heating and cooling expenses. This really adds up.

But in the past six months our efforts have turned more to homemaker re-skilling. We’ve added a rain barrel and composter. He’s learned to brew beer. And after getting into canning, I’ve also begun the art of real, regular bread baking.

Rising to the occasion

I’ve always been a good baker, of sweets and breads. But I wanted to move from occasional baking to truly regular baking. Everyone in our house loves bread, and we go through about three loaves a week. Because we like crusty bakery bread, that meant about $12-$15 a week on bread. Yes, almost $60 a month. We were spending $600-$700 a year on bread!

So I ended up getting Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day after my dearest friend’s husband took it up and said his experiments with bread making were going well.

Sure, my skeptic’s radar went up over any title telling me I could do something in only five minutes a day! It sounded like a gimmick, but still, if it worked, that sounded better than hours per day on rising, kneading, resting, and baking. Or — easier but more expensive — just continuing to keep up with our heavy bread costs even as food prices were rising more.

Getting started

Yes, I had to make an initial investment in some of the supplies.

While the dough can be made with simple hand stirring until just combined, I already had a Kitchen Aid mixer, my most treasured kitchen appliance, given to us by my in-laws as a wedding present. If you’ve been waiting to buy one, go ahead and get it if you plan to make bread regularly, even if it does mean a semi-large initial investment. (They’re great for pie crusts, cake & muffin batters, pizza dough, you name it.)

As to the rest of the main supplies I got for the project, they were a baking stone (I asked for it for Christmas, again from my in-laws, and it doubles as a pizza stone), a broiler pan for doing in-oven steam, a pizza peel for loading the dough into the oven, and an oven thermometer. There was an expense of about $75 total. An investment, as they say.

I’ve been doing the Great Bread Baking Project of 2012 for almost two months now and our bread expense has gone down to about $10 a month. That’s only $120 a year! We’ve seen no significant rise in our energy bill because of it. And it’s fun.

Yes, the book’s method really works. They’re not kidding when they say that your actual daily investment is only about five minutes.

The basics

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking, 2007, Thomas Dunne Books, 242pp.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it, this book focuses on a kind of wet dough technique that relies on continual rise of the dough over days in the fridge. You just pull out a hunk when you want to bake, let it rest, pre-heat your stone, and bake. (They also have a website for more bread tips and a bread online community and all that good stuff.)

Since I work at home anyway, this is a breeze for me. But folks who travel to a workplace during the week could readily integrate this into an early morning routine or after work and seriously find it easier than easy. I kid you not.

In just two months I’ve achieved a perfect crusty crust and a mostly perfect crumb (the interior), though I am working on making it a little less dense and not quite so moist, with a few more holes throughout. Still, it tastes great and has an awesome texture. My husband compliments me on it like crazy, and my bread-happy kids are just happy with all the bread.

I started by just doing the book’s master recipe. Um, trying to master it. I did, and am now onto whole wheat, rye, herb-infused, and seeded crusts. To all I add an ancient strain of sourdough starter I received from a fellow Permaculture fan.

My kids want me to do a sweet bread, a French-inspired pain au chocolat, and for Easter, a braided loaf. Sure, why not? I’m not intimidated at all.

Fresh, crusty, tasty, perfect artisan bread may seem like an exotic offering that’s beyond the scope of the average person. Let me emphasize that that is simply not true.

People used to bake bread all the time. Daily. This is as basic to human life as anything in the past couple millennia.

I was initially intimidated, too. Sure, I was great at making bread a few times a year, and loved the whole kneading, rising, and baking process of what was otherwise an out-of-the-ordinary experience. My pumpkin, zucchini, banana and cranberry loaves were also fun every so often. But doing more than that seemed like a lifestyle shift that I wouldn’t or couldn’t make.

Phooey.

I can do it

The truth is I can bake bread, regularly, as part of daily life. The benefits are many, including:

• I know exactly what my ingredients are.
• I create nearly zero waste (minimal flour packaging can be composted).
• My bread expenses have been cut by roughly 80%.
• Fresh bread right from the oven? No brainer!
• Family resilience increased significantly.

If you were or are also put off by the prospect of bread baking, take it from me: you can bake bread. And you’ll love the results.

–Lindsay Curren, Transition Voice

What's our Plan B when oil is scarce and costs too much for the average consumer? Image: Liyen via Flickr.

Peak oil. What changes might it bring and what mind shifts may we have to make to prepare ourselves to face these challenges, both in a practical sense and psychologically? This is the basis for Peak Moment TV Conversation’ 351 with Energy Bulletin co-editor Bart Anderson.

With the possibility of such dramatic change to how we live, how we interact with the world, and even how we think and view things, what do we need to do to make this transition easier?

School’s in

Anderson urges others to start learning more about the reality of peak oil now.

The shock of running into limits and people getting panicked is the real danger, and the way to avoid that is by learning about it first- about Peak Oil and all the implications that brings up.

Anderson recommends reading works from Post Carbon Institute founder Richard Heinberg and Australian permaculturist David Holmgren as two of his favourite sources of reliable, useful information. But, hey says, there are many others out there who all have pieces of the truth concerning the peak oil story.

Remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them

Anderson also feels very strongly about women writers having a voice.

They bring an entirely different view about what’s going to come and how to deal with it, that I think brings a real whiff of sanity.

Green for all

He also voices concern over a lack of diversity in those taking part in the peak oil discussion, whether listening or sharing. He argues that much more diversity is needed, with different nationalities, socio-economic, and ethnicities having input.

America’s a great culture, but we’ve got our blind spots, our narrownesses and we need those other viewpoints.

Respect for our elders

One of the points Anderson made, which has reverberated strongly with me, was his suggestion that we look at how our ancestors lived and incorporate many of their values into our lives.

Go back and see what people did before us.  We can learn from them.  It’s fun and it’s a very deepening experience.

To me, honoring and embracing the knowledge and wisdom of the elders of our tribes is one of the most important clues to our way forward. This is particularly true for our indigenous elders, whose cultures existed for thousands of years with respect for, and in harmony with, the earth and all its creatures. We can certainly learn a lot from them.

Less is more

So what else does Anderson suggest?  A couple that particularly spoke to me were:

Don’t try to think too big.  Start from where you are.  We can all do something.  And if you start doing something you feel empowered.

He also advises an unusual experiment, that we live “poor for a while and learn(sic) how to do it well. That’s a valuable skill.”

Living as a student offers great practice, he says, when you don’t have much money but live within a walkable campus community. The many wonderful experiences that go with that—meeting others, working together, joining clubs and activities, sharing art, stretching a dollar, making music, and focusing on personal interactions and a sense of camaraderie, rather than on amassing physical possessions.

Anderson has so many gems of advice and thought provoking comment to share in this episode, from practical ways we can prepare, to creating a mindset which will support us through the times ahead. Watch the episode and you’ll come away with so much to think about.

Changes are coming soon, Anderson says. Maybe even within the next few years.

So, we should be prepared for that.  Right now people think that things will never change, the government will never wake up, people are always going to be consumers.  No.  This could come very quickly, and with a degree of intensity that we can’t dream of.  So- fasten your seat belts.

Are you ready for the ride?

–Anthea Hudson, Transition Voice

Still from 1973's Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston.

Admit it: you love Soylent Green.

Whenever it appears on any late-night television schedule, fans of the cult film have to watch. Not because it’s a good movie. With its cheesy “futuristic” music and leading man Charlton Heston’s faux tough-guy dialogue, Soylent Green is an easy target to lampoon. But its impact – and its message – continues to be surprisingly durable.

Apocalypse bites

The year is 2022. Scarcity – of every resource – is a fixed fact of life for the 40 million souls trapped in New York City. The film makes no direct reference to oil or other fuels, but it’s clear that whatever resources are left belong to the politicians and other privileged people.

The police patrol and control the mobs of hungry, desperate people. With no gas, cars are permanently marooned in the streets and, with little housing available, become de facto living quarters for whole families.

Soylent Corporation controls the global food supply, manufacturing Soylent Yellow, compressed soylent-lentil wafers that constitute the world’s major dietary staple.

Fresh fruit, meat and vegetables are distant memories. The corporation is currently touting NEW! Soylent Green, made from high-energy “plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.” Never mind that the oceans themselves are off limits to ordinary citizens.

People line up in endless queues for their weekly soylent ration. In the recurrent riots that ensue when supplies run out, the city Waste Disposal Units – huge vans with scoopers – lift up the mobs and speed them away to – where? The destination, and their fate, reveals the central mystery of the film.

Getting to the bottom of things

Soylent Green Movie Poster, 1973.

Charlton Heston plays Thorn, a police detective investigating the death of William R. Simonson, a high-level Soylent executive. He shares a decrepit apartment with Sol Roth, who is drawn into Thorn’s investigation.

Sol, played by the great Edward G. Robinson, is a link to the past, a learned man and one of the few with first-hand experience of the world as it used to be – verdant, beautiful and giving. Robinson, in his last movie role, provides the movie’s soul, as well as the film’s tiny allotment of humor.

At the time of Soylent’s release, sci-fi movies were the most dispensable of Hollywood film genres, with risible scripts and “aliens” outfitted in lamé jumpsuits. (It’s perhaps no accident that this is the decade that unleashed both the Village People and the leisure suit on an unsuspecting public.)

But the 1970s also were a turbulent time of anti-war turmoil, an oil embargo causing panic at the pump, and acid rain signaling growing environmental disorder.

The film reflected a new environmental sensibility, especially among youth, that flowered into the first Earth Day in 1970. And Soylent Green eerily prefigures current trends of corporate control, overpopulation, and a stark wealth/poverty divide.

The film shows how ecological crisis can deepen anti-democratic tendencies in society, in which thuggery and force rule, and official secrecy keeps citizens powerless and abject. Even the religious institutions become mere warehouses for the poor and dying, their sanctity regularly invaded by violence.

The plot thickens

Thorn visits Simonson’s murder scene in the victim’s luxury apartment building. Not above a little petty thievery, he indulges in a shower – hot water is a premium in his world – stealing soap and scoring food for the meager larder he shares with Sol. Thorn finds clues that Simonson may have been assassinated because of his knowledge of some unsavory facts about the Soylent Corporation.

Meanwhile, Sol’s own research into the Simonson case leads him to a shocking discovery. In despair, he finds his way to a Resolution Center, where people can voluntarily turn themselves in for euthanasia. For the masses, the Center is the only reliable sanctuary of repose, cleanliness – and air conditioning! – as they experience a Technicolor death ritual with music effects.

When Thorn pursues him there, Sol, on his deathbed, shares with Thorn a vision of the earth as it used to be. Thorn’s eyes are literally opened to the beauty of nature, awakened to the sentiment we inherently feel as creatures of nature. The vision transforms him and his relationship to the world.

With his dying breath, Sol whispers the secret of Soylent Green. Thorn then decides to follow Sol’s body through the Center’s labyrinth to its final destination, where the horrific secret is confirmed.

Suspend your disbelief

It’s fair to note here that there are enough implausibilities in this film to drive a truck through. For example, no city could sustain 40 million inhabitants: starvation and epidemics are only two of the factors guaranteed to decimate such a huge population. Also, it’s highly unlikely that the apparent platoons of laborers at the Soylent manufacturing facility could keep their work secret from the general populace for very long. And any alert viewer would have figured out the source ingredients of Soylent long before dim-bulb Thorn tumbles to it (Hint: they’re bipeds and have faces.)

No matter. Soylent derives its power from its bluntness, which delivers an immediacy perhaps less attainable in a more artful film. It also accounts, I think, for the film’s staying power.

Because it hits you over the head, it forces you to focus — to think and feel, “Hey, I wouldn’t want to live in a world like that.”

Soylent Green’s retort, and ultimate challenge to us is: Then don’t let this happen. Seen in this light, Soylent Green is more than just a cautionary tale; it’s really a love song to the earth, a valentine cannily disguised as a science fiction detective thriller, and a call to action.

–Gerri Williams, Transition Voice

Soylent Green is based on the 1966 novel, Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

Lighting a candle for the apocalypse. Photo: Roger Glenn via Flickr.

You may have noticed that The Happy Hoarder has a thing for being able to see in the dark.

I’d hoard solar if I could afford the dang stuff. Ironic, then, that the sun is free. Well, I’ll get me some panels one of these days because it’s like that fancy-pants finance guy Chris Martenson says; in the post peak oil world the difference between no energy at all — say, no electric lights and all that — and even 10% energy is like the difference between the stone age and civilization.

I think he’s got a point. And The Happy Hoarder don’t cotton with the Fred Flintstone thing.

So I hedge my bets with candles.

First off, candles are romantic and Mrs. Happy Hoarder likes ‘em. If my little lady is in any kind of foul mood — say the chickens wouldn’t get rounded up come nighttime, or the kids got sassy — then all I have to do is pluck a blue bell from the garden, plunk it in a vase, light me some candles and I’ve got her smiling in no time.

She’s a romantic. And you don’t cross Mrs. Happy Hoarder.

Dipping my wick

Well as you can imagine, acquiring and storing candles ain’t entirely a straightforward affair.

Main problem is, stores are always trying to charge an arm and a leg for a candle, wrapping ‘em up in all kinds of excess packaging and doo-dads and what-nots. Sometimes I go in for these hopped up hotties if it’s off season and there’s some kind of big sale. But only if they’re not bathed in all kinds of synthetic smelling scents. Those don’t store well (their smells often sour over time), and the last thing I’m going to want after a hardscrabble day in the low energy future is to come home and smell some soured version of what some freakish corporate sort thought wafted out a nose of “pumpkin pie.”

No, I like to keep it simple. If it’s scented with all natural oils or essences, fine, I add it to my collection. But my expectations of long-lasting scent aren’t high. What I’m interested is light. Glorious light.

In the end, I shoot for two things. I want my candles to cost less than two bucks and be in pretty good condition.

My number one source for candles is yard sales, where 25 cents is essentially the going rate. I’d buy almost any candle for two bits, though I’d rather spend a dime if it’s a taper.

My number two source is thrift stores. There they can get upstart and charge a whole buck for a small pillar, which rubs me the wrong way. These things should only be  half a buck, tops. I mean they’re used most of the time. If it’s a little bit more costly I just remind myself of how expensive and potentially scarce candles are going to be in the future and I pony up an extra quarter or two and call it a day.

While you’re rustlin’ up some waxworks, don’t forget the candlesticks, candelabra and them tall jar-candles with the Virgin of Guadeloupe or the Archangel Michael. You’ll want enough to put ‘em all around the house, so’s you can have light in every room. Yard sales and thrift shops sell ‘em all at affordable rates.

The Happy Hoarder aims to get one or two candles a week, more if the price is good. This means a minimum of 104 candles collected a year. That gives me a sense of security when I think of long nights in brownout conditions with nothing left to do but gaze at the lovely Mrs. Happy Hoarder or read me a good book.

The other thing I look for is real beeswax. If I score beeswax at a tag sale or thrift store, I’ve even been known to up my willing price.

Sometimes folks are eager to unload a whole box of old candles because they’ve lost their color, or they just don’t use ‘em. Well I do use ‘em, and I will use ‘em. So I swoop in and make my score.

I aim to live the good life in the apocalypse, and I shudder to think what it will take to get ahold of some candles when the cow patty has started flyin’ fast and furious.

Going pear shaped

So let’s say you get yourself a decent supply of candles, all shapes and sizes. The thing you want to watch out for in candle storage is them going all melty, or else getting brittle. The key is temperature control. Now, most of us don’t have museum-quality climate control, so we have to do the best we can.

Don’t put them in the barn or the attic, for gosh sakes!

This young lady blogged about how she got an idea from that industrious Martha Stewart for using paper towel holders to store tapers. Now I’m no fan of paper towels (I only got ten fingers to count how many ways they’re wasteful, and ten fingers ain’t enough) and I hope you’re not buying ‘em. But if you’ve got any of those tubes, well sure, wrap your candles in paper and stuff ‘em in there, why not?

But my best advice is to

• Store tapers flat
• Keep all candles in a sealed box
• Store ‘em in the coolest place in the house

Necessity is the mother of invention

Don’t get caught in the coming brownouts without a source of light, friend. In the end, I think it could be a much more charming time to know where our light sources come from, and the energy required to get it. And I don’t want to be the one high and dry.

If you’re one of the many unemployed, or one of those college kids that they say can’t get a job, here’s a tip: lots of your friends are becoming farmers; so why don’t you become a candle maker? Sure, people got to eat. But they damn well like to stay up at night, too. This is a career with a future. Master it now to get the jump on one of the power jobs of the future, my friend.

Here’s a good book on candle making, another that calls itself the encyclopedia of candle making and one that calls itself a companion to candle making.

And you stay tuned to the Happy Hoarder, because I aim to talk about oil lamps too.

– The Happy Hoarder, Transition Voice

Occupy World Street: Global Roadmap for Economic and Political Reform by Ross Jackson, Chelsea Green, 315 pp, $19.95.

Though there’s been a flurry of books about the Occupy movement in the last few months, few of them have said much about energy and the environment. Predictably, writers have largely focused so far on the core issues that originally filled Zuccotti Park last fall, an unfair economy and politics corrupted by corporate lucre.

Now comes a new title on Occupy that takes ecological overshoot seriously, Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform. Refreshingly, the book also zeroes in on the issue that the energy-savvy find behind all our financial and political woes today: peak oil.

Peak oilers will cheer when Jackson, a good-guy financier who has funded hundreds of sustainability projects in thirty countries through his San Francisco-based Gaia Fund, gives peak oil its due. Scary issues from religious conflicts and the balance of power in the Middle East to unemployment, bank bailouts and sovereign debt and even the scariest of them all, climate change, Jackson writes, “will all pale in significance with what will soon be at the top of the national agenda.”

And yes, folks, Jackson means peak oil. Energy depletion may not be bigger than climate change, but it’s badder, because peak oil will hit us first. And Jackson is realistic about responses. After ably skewering the usual solutions, particularly switching over to unconventional fossil fuels, Jackson puts into strong, simple language the way that peak oil could also doom the energy sources that could actually work, solar and wind.

“A fatal energy trap could condemn humanity to become a permanent subsistence civilization if we are not very careful with how we use the remaining fossil fuel resources,” Jackson writes.

It takes energy to mine the metals and manufacture the necessary inputs in order to build alternative-energy power plants. Today this energy can only come from one source — fossil fuels. Imagine for a moment what will happen when the oil and gas run out in a matter of decades at current usage rates. Not enough fossil fuel energy will be available to build or maintain windmills and solar power plants.

The parent trap

Avoiding this energy trap will be humanity’s greatest challenge in the coming decades, according to Jackson. Maintaining any kind of recognizable civilization after peak oil will require solar power. And until we can build and run solar using only solar, we will need to stop burning fossil fuels to run cars, heat buildings and make plastic junk and instead put all the oil, coal and gas that’s left into installing solar panels.

Since its corrupt political system will likely continue to prevent the world’s most powerful nation, the United States, from taking its rightful place as the leader towards a solar world, Jackson proposes a Gaian League of smaller more politically flexible nations to get things started. Once the nations of Africa and South America start clearly kicking our butts on solar, Jackson hopes the US will finally wake up.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. But it’s a better idea than most we’ve heard so far. And it’s a damn sight more promising than cynical resignation and despair.

So along with Jackson, as a proud American and even prouder fan of human survival, I say Go Brazil! Go Botswana! Go Tuvalu!

We’re counting on you guys to keep us from totally trashing the place.

– Erik Curren,Transition Voice

Still from the film The Grey.

John Ottway has the job at the end of the world. He’s a sharpshooter who protects oil rig workers from animal predators lurking in the wilderness surrounding a remote Alaskan oil facility in the new film, The Grey.
When Ottway (Liam Neeson) and some of his co-workers workers board a light plane for Nome, he finds out quickly that his knowledge of wolf behavior will come in handy. The plane crashes and he and the handful of survivors face an ultimate battle of survival with no fuel, food or GPS signal.

Thrown to the wolves

Worse, they’re surrounded and strategically picked off by a pack of robowolves – huge, smart and deadly. Who will prevail in this elemental test of man against beast?

Well, a different question is, why would humans regularly risk life and limb – not to mention frostbite – to extract black gunk from the ground?

As a fan of the reality show Ice Road Truckers, I might claim some insight into this conundrum. Yes, some atavistic part of me resonates to the sight of heavy machinery hauling rigging and supplies in the trackless, snow-covered void. (A New York  Times columnist reviewing the series’ appeal explains that the “leave-nothing-but-your-footprints, green kind of eco-travelers are too mellow and conscientious to be interesting to watch. Instead, the burly, bearded, swearing men who blow methyl hydrate into their own transmissions…are much better television.”)

But even the most enthusiastic viewer of IRT begins to question the diminishing returns of  fleets of diesel-belching trucks traversing back and forth to remote natural gas exploration and extraction sites. It’s a career choice with a built-in expiration date.

A cold day in hell

The Grey benefits from magnificent scenery (which includes Neeson’s brooding, haunted visage) and good character development.

As for the wolves of The Grey, they are a Hollywood fantasy that most zoologists would repudiate. More typical wolf behavior is to flee from human contact.

But with humans penetrating, and despoiling, ever-more inaccessible and dangerous habitats in the quest for the last drops of fossil deposits, maybe the wolves –and caribou, elk, moose, artic foxes, and polar bears –have the right to hold a grudge.

See a trailer here.

–Gerri Williams, Transition Voice

Like Rodney King said, "Why can't we all just get along?"

I’m pretty sure it was history in the making, local history anyway. And who knows? Maybe Mount Shasta, California’s example will encourage other towns around the country to take similar action.

Last week, concurrent with the first snow of the season, a meeting took place between Shasta Commons, the area’s Transition Town movement, and the South Siskiyou Tea Party. While sleet and ice pounded the windows outside the building, warmth and understanding predominated in the meeting room inside.

Strange bedfellows?

Over the years, there have been some misunderstandings between these two groups. Actually, that’s an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that the two groups have been on opposing sides of a seemingly never-ending tug-of-war. It’d be pretty fair to say that the Tea Party people saw Shasta Commons as “socialist, hippie environmentalists,” and the Shasta Commons people regarded the Tea Partiers as “truck driving, Second Amendment rednecks.”

But, getting past all of that and looking at issues from a perspective of common ground, it was obvious that both groups saw our Constitutional rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being eroded by a combination of Big Government and Big Corporate greed and control.

As the dialogue unfolded, it became apparent that both groups agreed that Big Government and Big Corporations were partners in compromising our liberties. All agreed that their personal rights were being violated, whether it was the right to grow and sell their own food or the water and property rights of farmers and ranchers.

The encroaching Corporate State has become so menacing that – tea or coffee preferences aside – we’re now at the point where political lines on the right and left are often meaningless.

We’re all beginning to realize that there are only two real political options – de-centralized local control; or centralized Big Corporate-Big Government control. Everything else is a fictional choice – a distraction.

The rights of the individual

Everyone around the conference table on that stormy night agreed that control belongs to the individual and the communities in which we reside. In other words, they agreed that they were capable of self-governance and taking care of themselves and one another, at the local level, without Big Brother’s interference.

Both groups discovered co-interest in the Constitutional freedoms long-ago guaranteed to them. So much so, in fact, that they decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to facilitate a resilient, thriving local community where people can feel supported as they weather the hard economic, environmental and energy storms that invariably lie ahead.

Oh, sure, both groups could spend a lot of time bickering about political differences. They’ve already done that. And Big Corporate-Big Government interests have capitalized on that fact. The globalists have spent decades, and fortunes, keeping us all annoyed with – and suspicious of – one another. While we’ve been distracted bickering about inconsequential political nuances, those same multinationals have purchased entitlements that have eroded many of our rights.

It doesn’t matter whether we vote blue or red. We can talk about those things later. Right now, we’re all concerned about the storm clouds forming on the horizon – the erosion of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and policies impacting our choices about where and how we may live.

Agreeing to disagree and to agree

So, in Mount Shasta, CA, the People have decided not to bicker about inconsequential political nuances anymore. They’re going to look each other in the eye, fully aware that they are neighbors, and do what is best for one another.

Both Shasta Commons and the South Siskiyou Tea Party have chosen to Occupy their town. They’ve agreed to disagree on certain political issues in order to come together in service to their local community.

They realize that they all live there together and that it’s only through their cooperative effort that they can keep their little town strong and sturdy during hard times. They are people who recognize the importance of individual freedom and the value of a functional, working community.

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

Coffee and tea, anyone?

 –Sherry L. Ackerman, Ph.D., Transition Voice

Smith and Strobel maintain a blog at http://rowdykittens.com.

Peak oil isn’t all about Saudi Arabia depletion curves and what’s for lunch at the annual ASPO conference. In fact, may folks still don’t know much about peak oil. I didn’t know about it until recently.

My casual online search for ideas about how to simplify my home led me, via Peak Moment, to so much more than I could ever have imagined. I found an episode about a couple who were simplifying, which was my introduction to Peak Moment, and also to the issue of peak oil.

More than 200 episodes later, my life has changed focus in so many ways, which is similar to Janaia Donaldson’s guests on this episode, Logan Smith and Tammy Strobel, a 30-something couple whose lives took a dramatic u-turn.

You tell two friends

Smith and Strobel discovered Peak Moment and realized there were real people and vibrant communities talking about the potentially frightening challenges to come with resource depletion. They were encouraged that folks were facing these challenges with a positive slant, and actively taking actions, from downscaling to DIY living, that would help build a better future. The positive approach is encouraging to Strobel who says,

What we have done to the planet is a tragic thing- but there are so many good things happening, too.

We can do that!

Smith and Strobel made a decision to change their lives, to downsize, and to not be driven like Pavlov’s dog by the advertising-fueled, commercialized society in which we live.

“Sell your TV,” they suggest, calling it one of the best things they ever did. By refusing to engage with the marketing messages targeted to you, you can lessen your impact on the earth. This simple step, they say, can help you become less reliant on a high energy lifestyle and all of the fallout that ensues.

They also suggest you sell your car, and Smith explains why.

We don’t need oil but we depend on oil.  There’s a unique difference between those two. We can live without oil. We need water, we need food, we need sleep, we need companionship. However, when you look at the hierarchy of needs, oil isn’t among them. It’s a dependence.

Strobel’s hopes for the future are “that we can relocalize, have better land-use policies and that we can share more and be a community, versus always focusing on the individual, and always having to do things by yourself.” Her sentiments, to which many of us can relate, are an essential part of facing the coming challenges with resilience.

Less is the new more

Smith and Strobel were $30,000 in debt, had two cars and were living above their means. Within two and a half years things had changed dramatically. They eliminated their debt, saved a substantial amount of money, and found a better, simpler way to live.  They say it’s a lifestyle they feel privileged to lead and in which they find themselves happier, healthier and more in touch with their community.

How did they do it?  Watch the Peak Moment TV episode to find out.

–Anthea Hudson, Transition Voice

Cartoon: Otherwords.org

In Episode #192 of the Kunstlercast which aired February 2nd, James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary have done us all a great favor by interviewing noted petroleum geologist, Arthur Berman.

Berman’s popular in the peak oil world. In addition to his day job as a petroleum geologist and consultant, he’s on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and an editorial board member of the Oil Drum. He occasionally makes appearances on CNN and maintains his own blog at Petroleum Truth Report.

Recently, Berman gave a series of presentations called US Shale Gas: Magical Thinking and the Denial of Uncertainty, and that’s what Kunstler wanted to talk to him about.

What’s at stake

This interview comes at a critical point in our public debate on energy. Berman offers a reality check that questions claims repeated by industry insiders, economists, financial analysts and even politicians that the US has 100 years worth of fossil fuel energy left. According to pundits, new technology is allowing us to frack deposits of shale to release natural gas trapped in the sedimentary rock.

Berman’s take is that this is likely a mass delusion morphing into a bubble. He says the idea that we can become energy independent from the rest of the world is simply a “fairy tale.” His own experience and analysis of the data suggests that it’s “absolutely preposterous” that domestic reserves of natural gas will allow the US to become energy independent.

Madison Avenue gas bags

Intrigued, Kunstler asks Berman to talk about the propaganda being fed to US consumers and investors on the natural gas story. Berman offers two reasons why this campaign has been so successful.

First, what frackers want the public to believe is that the fracking of shale is a manufacturing process; simply apply the technology and produce gas that might otherwise be left in the ground.

Second, fracking proponents claim these large deposits of shale will produce for decades. As Berman explains, decline rates on shale gas were touted by the gas industry in mathematically hyperbolic terms. Their claims, says Berman, were that there would initially be high production rates but that even their depletion would taper off slowly, over an extended period of time. (This might be a good time to brush up on you trigonometry.) By painting such a rosy picture, the industry could make unconventional gas extraction sound enticing to investors and critical to consumer gas supplies. And they’ve largely been successful in that effort.

In other words, the natural gas industry is claiming that fracking is a proven technology that will reap financial benefits at a low risk for decades, aiding energy security and the economy all at the same time.

And, they think, who could argue with that?

The devil’s in the details

The idea that poor quality deposits of natural gas can provide a century of energy is based on a study conducted by the Colorado School of Mines in 2009.

By their own admission, the report notes that their “assessment assumes neither a time schedule nor a specific market price for the discovery and production of future gas supply.” Meaning, their estimate is based on resources they consider technically recoverable. It doesn’t matter where it’s located (ie: under the Statue of Liberty), how deep the deposit is, or if the field is too small to be commercially viable.

This is where Berman defines the semantic difference between a reserve and a resource.

Paraphrasing, “a reserve is a subset of technically recoverable resources” that is commercially viable. This subset typically amounts to only 20-25% of the total technically recoverable resource. In order to prove the reserve exists, the producer must drill an actual well. Even if the reserve of shale gas amounts to a very generous 50% percent, this equals approximately 12 years of natural gas at current rates of consumption.

An aside

Stepping aside for a moment, let’s remember that our financial system is based on compounded debt that requires growth in the economy to keep the wheels of finance spinning. Therefore, current rates of consumption is an inadequate function in our economy.

Doing the math

Berman goes on to include the natural gas the industry anticipates to be extracted from reserves using conventional, non-shale gas deposits and comes up with a combined total of just 20-25 years worth of natural gas.

The optimistic scenario laid out by Berman is decades less than what the American public is being told.

At this point in the interview, Kunstler shifts the discussion to a brief history of the gas shale plays in the US in order to segue to the more important topic of depletion rates.

You’ll want to have a map handy for this part of the discussion, but the bottom line is the assumptions of production that were based on models didn’t pan out very well at all. Shale gas concentrations aren’t uniform; there are sweet spots where wells produce significantly better than in other areas.

By Berman’s account, only a stunning 10-15% of the total area in which thousands of wells have been drilled turned out to be economically viable business ventures.

In the words of a famous auto mechanic turned US Marine: “Sur-prise, sur-prise sur-prise!”

Off the cliff

With half a decade or more of production data, the plotted depletion rates are not likely to keep on keeping on in a slow and gentle decline; they more closely resemble a linear drop in output.

Here Kunstler presses the point and asks Berman if the older fields, such as the Barnett in Texas, have peaked.

It’s too soon to tell according to Berman. But yes, we could be at the peak right now in some of these fields. The key factor is whether or not the natural gas companies are willing to drill more wells, even if they do so at a financial loss.

Show me the money

The costs are staggering. Leased land prices can go for $15k to $30k per acre. Horizontal drilling and multi-staged fracks are several times the cost of vertical wells adding another $5 to $6 million dollars per well. Kunstler points out that all this temporary infrastructure means tons of additional steel pipe and convoys of trucks to bring in the water required for the fracking process in places where water is insufficient for the operation.

Current overproduction caused by initial excitement in the marketplace, as well as unintended natural gas coming as a by-product from oil fields has produced a glut in the natural gas market. This accounts for the declining price of natural gas while production costs are going up.

All of this leads Berman to remark that, “Nobody is making money at $2.”

So if they aren’t making money, will the companies cut back on production or go out of business? Taking this question a bit further, Kunstler asks if these fluctuations of production and price will wreak havoc on middle class consumers.

Here Kunstler is making a connection to the oil market. When the price of WTI petroleum goes above $85-90 a barrel there’s strong evidence to suggest that the American economy slows down and heads into recession. If the pattern of supply and demand for natural gas follows suit, we might expect to experience similar events of demand destruction in our economy.

Berman believes that the producers are well aware that a 100 year supply does not exist. By reducing their drilling and holding on to land leases, they hope to dry up the glut and reward shareholders on a longer term basis.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

To speed up this process, the industry is lobbying the US government to switch over vehicle fleets and outdated power plants to natural gas which is cleaner burning than coal. The current price of natural gas and the promise of lower emissions make such investments look enticing. Of course, converting portions of our infrastructure to run on natural gas is risky strategy if we only have 20-25 years of domestic supply available. It’s important to remember that this conversion will be done using oil as a fuel source, take years if not decades, and require vast amounts of investment capital.

Kunstler, already a sharp critic of the money fantasies of the investor class, is particularly interested in knowing where the capital for such a shift would come from.

Berman describes how private investors, as well as countries such as Norway, France, China and India have all entered the market. The other major source for fresh capital comes from petroleum companies such as BP and Exxon.

Now, here’s where the interview gets really interesting.

The big oil companies, which abandoned the US decades ago to pursue more profitable ventures overseas, are back. Why? Because in order for companies like Exxon to maintain their stock value, they need to replace their reserves each year. With worldwide gas and petroleum depletion rates over 5%, the search for new reserve sources is forcing companies to invest in lower quality deposits.

Not only do additional reserves boost their stock prices, speculative companies in need of cash are able to use these claimed assets in the ground as collateral. (It would very be interesting to know what percentage of our 100 year supply has been used as collateral?)

Fools rush in

Kunstler sums this up nicely when he likens today’s natural gas delusion to the 1849 gold rush. Berman concurs, but notes that the cost of entry into natural gas, already in the billions of dollars, is significantly higher.

Where does this leave us?

Berman predicts another five years or so of good production from the shale gas fields. However, the industry must contend with a growing disenchantment from the public due to environmental contamination of aquifers and shallow earthquakes caused by the fracking process. This may result in additional time to conduct environmental assessments and implement new safety procedures, which will add cost. But will it change the actual recovery picture?

Berman also predicts a return to the gasoline lines we saw in the 1970’s in the next couple of years. Noting that our electric grid is already stressed, he suggests that brown-outs will become a part of daily life. Despite the dire prognostications, Berman doesn’t consider himself a “doomster.” Rather, he believes this is “what the future looks like based on a rational approach to supply and cost.”

Kunstler quips that “doomsters are realists who makes you feel bad.”

The interview wraps with a warning that all of our technology and chest thumping can’t produce an infinite supply of cheap fossil fuels from declining reservoirs. The hype and spin in the media may benefit oil companies and their political supporters during an election year, but they do an injustice to our welfare.

As Berman notes, pretending that there are no risks associated with shale gas is a form of magical thinking.

Based on this interview, you might conclude that our current domestic energy policy amounts to a poking a lot of holes in the ground while crossing our fingers.

–JB Sties, Transition Voice

For more information, Berman has written a new piece published at the Oil Drum called After the Gold Rush: A Perspective on Future US Natural Gas Supply and Price.

Listen to KunstlerCast episode 192.

Chris Nelder has also written a fabulous piece at his blog called: Everything you know about shale gas is wrong.