Our Promising Future Without Oil
By Daniel Ruiz Sandoval
Last year, during the peak of Hurricane Katrina, I was horrified to see that, for a short period of time, there was no gas at the pumps in the Florenceville – Hartland – Bath area. Is this the beginning of the end I asked myself? Now, one year after Katrina and with the hurricane season still ahead, I wonder what our life would be like without oil.
According to authorized sources, oil production has been exceeding discoveries since 1983. While demand for oil continues to rise steadily, production is expected to decline in the near future pushing prices to unimaginable heights. Some specialists, such as Richard Duncan, see in these developments the beginning of the “post industrial stone age”, characterized by farming villages, kinship tribes and rogue bands; with the surviving population “’achieving’ permanent sustainability at the subsistence level”. Some, like Georgescu Roegen, even foresee a real “danger of extinction” for the human race.
But why not take a more optimistic stand? When I think about the future, I see a world of small energy-efficient rural communities connected on a watershed basis, exchanging organic produce in strong local markets. However utopian this outlook may seem, it is not the product of wishful thinking but of historical necessity.
In those parts of the world not directly affected by the current and future oil wars, fuel scarcity will force the population to resort to traditional methods of production and transportation. Agriculture will turn organic because oil-based fertilizers and pesticides will be too costly to make as well as to transport or, even better, not available at all. Agricultural machinery will sit idle due to lack of fuel. Oil scarcity heralds the return of the horse as a means of transport; the railway would make a come back too, although in its steam-technology version. While oil will be utterly scarce, coal will remain relatively abundant and boilers could run on firewood too. Although switching back to coal may seem like a step backwards on climate change mitigation, overall emissions could decrease as a result of the collapse of the oil-based economy.
Long distance trade would be radically transformed as well. Sail ships would reappear in navigable lakes and rivers, while steam ships would be used to try to keep international trade alive. The end of oil does not mean the demise of the global economy at all. World-wide trade had been around for a long time before oil became the primary transportation energy source. Higher transportation costs and longer delivery times however, will make local manufacturing profitable again, nurturing strong and diversified regional economies.
The question is, will our civilization will be able to make the transition in such a short time span? Since approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce 1 calorie of food consumed in the U.S., famine will surely follow if the agro-industrial sector falls apart too suddenly, and prolonged blackouts –as we are already seeing in some North American cities- would surely undermine the very basis of our current way of life. But oil is not vanishing all at once. Prices would prompt decision makers to allocate it to the most essential uses, although that does not necessarily imply that the most vulnerable social groups would be protected. The oil wars have already begun, and as we know from past experience, societies at war tend to restrict civil liberties and labor rights. The dwindling oil stock that is left would be used for defense purposes and it is very likely governments would tend to ration some products. Food would be one of them, since it does not look like the current world population could be fed without oil-based agricultural inputs. But those communities better prepared to make the transition would surely suffer less. Ironically, the people least affected by the oil crisis would be those practicing subsistence agriculture in the poorest regions of the world
