What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?

Richard Heinberg

What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?
The Lady Eve Balfour Lecture, November 22, 2007

Our global food system faces a crisis of unprecedented scope. This crisis, which threatens to imperil the lives of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of human beings, consists of four simultaneously colliding dilemmas, all arising from our relatively recent pattern of dependence on depleting fossil fuels.

The first dilemma consists of the direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs.

The second is an indirect consequence of high oil prices - the increased demand for biofuels, which is resulting in farmland being turned from food production to fuel production, thus making food more costly.

The third dilemma consists of the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is the greatest environmental crisis of our time; however, fossil fuel depletion complicates the situation enormously, and if we fail to address either problem properly the consequences will be dire.

Finally comes the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.

Each of these problems is developing at a somewhat different pace regionally, and each is exacerbated by the continually expanding size of the human population. As these dilemmas collide, the resulting overall food crisis is likely to be profound and unprecedented in scope.

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Work in progress

la transition is a work in progress:

Our organization’s objective is extremely broad in scope and scale—in words, "to get society off fossil fuels fast" by offering research and demonstrations in fields as diverse as renewable energy, agriculture, urban planning, grass-roots organizing, and public policy. It operates as a think tank (its list of Fellows includes scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, public personalities, support organisations), but it is also action-oriented and will offer support to dozens of affiliated local groups scattered around the Canary Islands and the World. Any one of these areas of effort can be plenty to bite off for most NGOs.

But with so little time and so much needing to be done in order for society as a whole to navigate a survivable transition to a non-hydrocarbon economy, it wouldn’t help matters much if one of the very few organizations with a holistic view of that transition were to focus on only one project area.

La transition is supporting Richard Heinbergs "energy descent plan" in 12 steps.

This 12 step plan involves many of those who have relevant knowledge and would be made very visible to the community at large, with a tip of the hat to the 12 Steps of Transition, 10 Steps to a Resilient Community:

1. Form a working group
2. Identify people and organizations with something important to offer post-carbon peak
3. Ask their help and participation
4. Work with them to develop a contingency plan in their field: how to scale-up quickly?
5. Seek input from disaster management officials
6. Contact mainstream organizations responsible for water, food, power, fuel, health care, etc.
7. Assemble a coherent Resilience Plan
8. Present the plan
9. Implement the plan
10. Work with other communities to create a national plan: repeat steps 1-10 at higher levels

Most response groups, cultivate an upbeat, hopeful tone, which is essential. In contrast, creating this kind of disaster management is a sobering activity–but it is strategically and practically necessary.

Somebody's got to do it!