Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "life-without-oil"

Life Without Oil--Why We Must Shift to a New energy Future by Steve Hallett with John Wright, Prometheus Books, Amherst, 2011.

Note the publication date! 2011!! This book should have been entitled “The Beginning of Our End.” It begins with a historical overview of humanity’s use of Earth’s resources and the failed example of Easter Island, in which the first resource to be exploited was the bird life, then the big trees. The authors make the point that “Creeping environmental degradation such as this is occurring around the world today.”

Why didn’t Easter Islanders see their problem? Why don’t we? They were divided into territories that competed-- as we are divided into nations.

The impressive Mayan example of disaster is summarized next. Its “…colossal pyramids and stairways were gradually destroyed by 800 CD.E., as they fought over resources.” Their real…enemy was their own exploitation of the environment.”

The Fertile Crescent is a similar, more current example. Questions about the fall of the Roman Empire have arisen. There is good evidence that it depleted its landbase by its “…overuse of wood and clearing trees for agriculture.” The Dark Ages came next.

The authors state that now there are signs that the world is full. Like the “demise of past societies,” we have “over-exploited our sources of energy, [done] environmental damage, [and strained] agricultural productions.

Are we too blind to the evidence from previous civilizations? The author argues in 2011 for a shift away from our addiction to oil. Coal, oil and natural gasses are finite resources. The special constitutional rights of corporations, their limited liability and their shareholder mandate for “wealth increase…to deliver…high levels of productivity” mean they may not be able to respond to the long-term historical dangers this book outlines. The next century will see the “decline, demise, and disappearance of oil.”

During this “petroleum interval… of glittering progress “we have tripled our population, destroyed forests , turned farmland into wasteland or urban sprawl, filled our oceans with plastic and vacuumed them for fish, emptied freshwater aquifers, shaved mountains, sent untold species into extinction (and culture too)….drained lakes and rivers, and stuffed the atmosphere with climate altering gases.”

We need to reduce, reuse, repair and recycle. Now! Maybe that should have been the title of this book. And I’m only referencing up to page 115. The details fill the rest of the book--the false assumptions we keep making: 1)that human well-being requires continued economic growth and all that implies, 2) that the marketplace and its competition will provide the energy, resources and competition to keep it growing, and 3)that resources are unlimited and our “life-supporting processes” cannot be damaged. These are all “false assumptions.”

The author concludes by saying that we can recover from “the coming depression” by replacing sustainability for growth and by sharing , conserving, and NOT competing